Ready for Microsoft to take another shot at Google? Bing it on On says Google! Microsoft is rolling out a redesigned search site and hopes it will lure more Web surfers than their two most recent search efforts, Live Search and MSN Search.
The new search will be called “Bing. When asked why Microsoft chose “Bing,” he said, “The name is short, it’s easy to say, it works globally.”
Microsoft’s last effort, Live Search, failed to catch on partly because the software maker didn’t do much to promote it. Marketing is no guarantee of success but this time, Microsoft appears to be taking no chances. Ad Age reported Microsoft plans to spend as much as $100 million on advertising Bing.
Some of Bing’s features showed up on a Microsoft blog in March, when the new site was known as “Kumo.” The most obvious difference is a bar of links running down the left-hand side of Bing search results pages. Some searches — especially ones for celebrities or travel destinations — yield links to help narrow results into categories. For pro athletes, it might offer links for statistics and highlights. For Thailand, categories include weather and real estate.
Bing also lists related search terms on the left, not at the bottom of the page like Google does. It keeps track of recent searches and gives people a way to e-mail links from that search history or post them on Facebook.
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Microsoft Outlook includes a handy Auto Complete feature. When you begin to enter a name or email address in the To, CC, or Bcc field of a Message or Meeting Request form, Outlook offers a matching list of names or addresses you’ve sent items to in the past.
However, if there’s a name or email address that’s no longer valid, or you sent an Outlook item with an incorrect email address in the past, those names and addresses continue to display in the drop down list until you delete them.
1. To do so, begin typing a name in one of the before-mentioned fields.
2. And then use the arrow keys to select the invalid entry in the Auto Complete list.
3. Finally, press the [Delete] key to permanently remove it from the list.