Virtual Earth Team Launches Street-Side Drive-by

The Virtual Earth team is pleased to launch a preview of a new feature we have been working on – interactive Street-side browsing. You can try it out at http://preview.local.live.com Street-side imagery allows you to drive around a city looking at the world around you as if you were in a car. But unlike the real world, you can stop your car anywhere you like and rotate your view around 360degrees. Currently we have street-side imagery for...
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Movie Showtimes

We noticed that a lot of you are looking for movies currently in theaters.  To help get you the info you want faster, we recently launched an instant answer for movie showtimes! We worked with our buddies in MSN Movies to bring you current showtimes for movies near you.  You can search for movie names or the theater down the way: Movies: eight below, curious george Theaters: landmark metro cinemas seattle, amc fenway 13 boston You can...
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Hello Microsoft.com

This past December we quietly made a change to the way people search on Microsoft.com –  Microsoft.com Search is now powered by MSN Search.  This was an exciting project to work on.  We were super jazzed that another team wanted to use our search technology and the Microsoft.com team was equally excited to be upgrading their search to the best Internet Search technology that Microsoft has to offer.  Not only that...
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Search & Win with a new UI

Earlier this week we launched MSN Search and Win. It’s a contest that will be running through April and you have the opportunity to win some pretty great prizes. I like it because it’s easy. As you search on our main site (or through the flash interface) you have the ability to win prizes. If you’re not interested in the prizes then you can ignore the ads.Why are we doing it? Well there certainly are a number of people who have...
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Who won that medal?

When you look at all the data about all the Olympics, as we did to add 350,000 facts about the Olympics to MSN Search, there are plenty of surprises. Sports you never heard of, countries that don’t exist, and an intricacy that defies easy understanding are all waiting for the Olympics data explorer. Architecture, town planning, painting, music, and sculpture all had Olympic medals once upon a time. The U.S. won these art competitions only...
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A little fun with a little office

We like shipping. We work hard to ship good products. In fact, we’re probably working hard right now, as you are reading this, towards shipping something we hope is exceptional. But sometimes we need a break. Hugh Williams, a Search dev lead, took a break in January. After moving across the Pacific Ocean, building a team, and doing a heck of a lot of other great stuff, he flew back to Australia to do whatever people do on vacation (or &ldquo...
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Live Labs & Search labs

Live Labs is live!  Live Labs is a joint venture between MSN and MSR that is chartered to create new research opportunities, new prototypes, and new academic funding for internet research.  Search Labs is a companion organization building innovative new products, and with a presence in Silicon Valley as well. The labs will be headed by Gary Flake who joined us from Yahoo, and Ashok Chandra who was at IBM and Verity before joining...
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Privacy and MSN Search

There’s been quite a frenzy of speculation over the past 24 hours regarding the request by the government for some data in relation to a child online protection lawsuit.  Obviously both privacy and child protection are both super important topics – so I’m glad this discussion is happening. Some facts have been reported, but mostly I’ve seen a ton of speculation reported as facts.   I wanted to use this blog...
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More Instant Answers

When we ask people what they think of our Instant Answers, a common response is “they are great, but I want MORE”.  We hear you and recently added about 1 million facts for your querying pleasure. Here are a few examples: Baseball stats Numerous statistics for historical baseball players and teams along with season data for current players. babe ruth home runs, babe ruth home runs allowed, ichiro suzuki hits 2003, Seattle...
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Windows Live Local: Location Finder & Your Privacy

A few days ago, Mike Liebhold on Geowanking expressed concern over privacy of personal information in the context of the “Locate Me” feature in Windows Live Local. This has been discussed further on BoingBoing and O’Reilly’s Radar; so we thought of adding some clarity on what goes on behind the scenes in this application and with your information. When you visit the Windows Live Local and hit “Locate Me”...
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