In a demo that drew gasps at TED2010, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos new augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft.

First of all, congrats to the Windows 7 group for launching an amazing product. I’ve been using it for over 3 months now after using a Mac for over 2 years and can say it’s the best operating system I’ve ever used.

Secondly, one of the neatest features of Bing is the homepage image. Every day I come into work and open up Bing just see the most awesome pictures. Turns out, a lot of other people do that as well and ask us for desktop versions of our homepage images. And now they’re available! The homepage team selected the top images from June, July, and August, and then worked with the Windows 7 personalization team to create a theme pack (download here) featuring these 20 gorgeous wallpapers:

It’s now possible to add Bing search to your site via the Bing Box. The Bing Box allows searchers to query within specified site(s) and the web. To get started, just to go the advanced search setup. It takes about 5 minutes to completely set-up, install, and test. It powers the search on this site. I’m considering writing a WordPress plugin that adds functionality and utilizes some of the features within WordPress. Would you be interested in this?

Here’s what the set-up page looks like:

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For the next few weeks (possibly months) I’ll be beta testing Microsoft pubCenter here on daverigotti.com. Microsoft pubCenter is part of Microsoft Advertising and is a self-serve advertising solution much like Google Adsense. The program has received significant praise, especially from TechCrunch, which wrote in March that (emphasis mine):

“Our tipster says that he receiving from four times more in revenue Microsoft than Google AdSense. And the money isn’t the only advantage PubCenter has over AdSense. The advertisement themselves are are higher quality than Google’s ads, he says, and equally as targeted towards the content.”

I hope you don’t mind that testing and, if you’re interested in joining the program, you can apply here.

In a post titled “Happy Earth Day, 2009” the Virtual Earth Blog covers the Solar Map project. The project, run my Los Angeles County leverages Virtual Earth to allow homeowners and businesses to go online to determine if their properties are good candidates for solar power.

Additionally, Microsoft is working to reduce its own resource consumption, learn more about the planet, and help partners and customers reduce their impact on the environment. In an e-mail sent to employees, Steve Ballmer outlined company goals that include reducing carbon emissions per unit of revenue by at least 30 percent by 2012.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is available for download today at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 starting at 12 noon EDT. If you didn’t try out the beta, I strongly suggest downloading IE 8 and giving it a try, especially if you’re a FireFox user. There’s a number of improvements, such as:

Security

Internet Explorer 8 offers the best security protections among leading browsers: a study released today by NSS Labs indicates that Internet Explorer 8 blocks two to four times as many malicious sites as other browsers on the market today.

Accelerators

Accelerators make it faster and easier to perform common tasks online by making Web-based services such as ESPN.com, Live Search and Sina available for use directly from the page people are viewing. Users can simply right-click a word or phrase and instantly map, e-mail, or share it.

Web Slices

Web Slices in Internet Explorer 8 makes favorite information from sites such as Digg, Yahoo! Mail, OneRiot, and eBay instantly available wherever someone goes on the Web.

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Visual Search Suggestions

The Instant Search Box in Internet Explorer 8 enables rich, real-time search from sites such as The New York Times, Amazon.com and Wikipedia, as well as sites from people’s own Favorites and History, complete with visuals and detailed information that saves time.

There’s a great post on Search Engine Land today titled “How We Establish Internal Search Marketing Priorities At Microsoft.” It’s worth a read if you’re interested in paid or organic search.

It’s by Duane Forrester, an in-house SEM at Microsoft, a member of the Board of Directors at SEMPO, and an author.

Read more about this internal test on the Live Search blog.

TechFlash has a great post covering Viveri, a Microsoft search research site.

Microsoft researchers plan to release their own search site to test their latest technologies separate from the company’s Live Search engine. The site, code-named Viveri, was one of the more interesting finds on the floor here today at the company’s annual TechFest event.

Although some of the technologies from Viveri could ultimately be incorporated into Live Search, the site will give researchers a way of testing new concepts, and getting public feedback, without going through the formal process of adding them to the main Microsoft search engine, said Robert Rounthwaite, a Microsoft Research software architect.

Read more (and see a screenshot) over at TechFlash.

Gerry Campbell recently posted an article on his blog titled “Search is broken – really broken.” His argument is that companies like Google will be faced with creative destruction, because they are failing to recognize trends and consumer demand for real time information. He writes:

Our daily lives are rich with social inference, and they happen in real time. Search from Google, Yahoo… you name it – they are all based on published (e.g. considered, thought-through) documents that take minutes-to-weeks to update in the search index.

Unfortunately, while I think he’s right in that content is becoming more rich and in real time, he’s failed to see some pretty significant improvements by Microsoft’s Live Search.

An updated chart

Instant answers

While the content is based on historical databases, Microsoft has been an innovator with instant answers. More fresh and direct than regular links and most web pages, instant answers gives users valuable data very quickly, such as stock quotes. It’s not an absolutely destination, but a step in the right direction. Here are some of the posts on the Live Search Blog on instant answers:

• Instant Answers in your IE8 search box!
• ‘Tis the season for instant answers
• More Instant Answers
• “I don’t need ten blue links — just give me the answer!”

Partnerships

Additionally, Microsoft’s partnership with Facebook, especially in the search department, gives it access to millions of instant updates. While I’m not sure what the Facebook / Microsoft partnership has in store for users, I’m sure the data will increasingly be shared some way or another.

The partnership with Verizon also helps a ton as more users connect to the Internet via mobile devices than ever before.

Future

Campbell is very right in saying search will be more and more instantaneous and expressed, however I think we’re a a year or two out from mainstream inclusion in one of the big three search engines. Why?

1. It’s difficult to monetize a sentence.
2. There are still large gains available standard search.
3. Twitter, and other “instant” sites, are still very niche.
4. Use of “advanced search” (based on personal surveys) is very low.