Author Archive

We are pleased to announce the beta release of Windows Live Academic Search (http://academic.live.com).

 Academic search helps users to locate information in academic journal content, and allowing them to complete their research and information gathering work more efficiently. At beta, the index focuses on journal content from the subjects of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Physics – we will be expanding the index to additional subjects soon.

  Key components of this release focus around enabling the user to have more control over their search experience which ideally leads to finding the information the right information faster. 

Key features include:

Preview Pane – Users can preview the full or partial abstract of the individual search results alongside additional metadata about the content.  This helps users determine relevance of the content. 

Sort by – Provides users with additional ways to view and analyze their search results including sort by key metadata elements including – Author, Date of publication, Journal of publication etc.

Citation – To aid users in taking the information they have found and easily incorporating into their research – we have added a citation export feature.  From the preview pane,  you can export the data into BibTEx or Endnote format and incorporate it into your bibliography by simply doing a cut & paste.
 

We are currently working to add Windows Live Search Macros support to Academic search – which will allow you to write your own macros (link to the macro entry on the MSN Search blog)  for academic search, and share it with the community.

 You can find more information about Academic search and the Academic search team on the Windows Live Academic search Blog (http://spaces.msn.com/academicsearch)

--Thiru Anandanpillai, Product Planning

-- Mike Buschman, Program Management

On behalf of the Windows Live Academic Search team

 --------------------------------------------

Note from Ken Moss, General Manager Web Search : "Just a quick update from the Web search team: we’ve turned the speller back on and after making some code adjustments are continuing to do long term reviews to help ensure an outage like last week won’t happen again. The details of what happened fall into an area we can’t discuss for proprietary reasons, so we can’t talk about it as much as we’d like, but wanted to let you know we are continuing to treat search availability and performance as a top goal. Thanks!”

We are pleased to announce the beta release of Windows Live Academic Search (http://academic.live.com).

 Academic search helps users to locate information in academic journal content, and allowing them to complete their research and information gathering work more efficiently. At beta, the index focuses on journal content from the subjects of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Physics – we will be expanding the index to additional subjects soon.

  Key components of this release focus around enabling the user to have more control over their search experience which ideally leads to finding the information the right information faster. 

Key features include:

Preview Pane – Users can preview the full or partial abstract of the individual search results alongside additional metadata about the content.  This helps users determine relevance of the content. 

Sort by – Provides users with additional ways to view and analyze their search results including sort by key metadata elements including – Author, Date of publication, Journal of publication etc.

Citation – To aid users in taking the information they have found and easily incorporating into their research – we have added a citation export feature.  From the preview pane,  you can export the data into BibTEx or Endnote format and incorporate it into your bibliography by simply doing a cut & paste.
 

We are currently working to add Windows Live Search Macros support to Academic search – which will allow you to write your own macros (link to the macro entry on the MSN Search blog)  for academic search, and share it with the community.

 You can find more information about Academic search and the Academic search team on the Windows Live Academic search Blog (http://spaces.msn.com/academicsearch)

--Thiru Anandanpillai, Product Planning

-- Mike Buschman, Program Management

On behalf of the Windows Live Academic Search team

 --------------------------------------------

Note from Ken Moss, General Manager Web Search : "Just a quick update from the Web search team: we’ve turned the speller back on and after making some code adjustments are continuing to do long term reviews to help ensure an outage like last week won’t happen again. The details of what happened fall into an area we can’t discuss for proprietary reasons, so we can’t talk about it as much as we’d like, but wanted to let you know we are continuing to treat search availability and performance as a top goal. Thanks!”

 4/19 Addendum - the crew wants to send another shoutout to our fearless leader, Director of Program Management Ramez Naam, who is participating in an afternoon  Webmaster World  Super Session described as "Search Engines and Webmasters: AKA, Search Engine SmackDown! Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask Jeeves."

If he comes back with a new nickname like “the Body” or “The Mezzinator”….we’ll know why. :)

 4/19 Addendum - the crew wants to send another shoutout to our fearless leader, Director of Program Management Ramez Naam, who is participating in an afternoon  Webmaster World  Super Session described as "Search Engines and Webmasters: AKA, Search Engine SmackDown! Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask Jeeves."

If he comes back with a new nickname like “the Body” or “The Mezzinator”….we’ll know why. :)

Betsynote: In advance of questions – Yes, this works stuff in Firefox. Yes, I want to go shopping.

We are pleased to announce the beta release of Windows Live Product Search (http://products.live.com).

Product search leverages the latest research from Microsoft Research Asia to find products available on the internet for sale.  At beta, the index contains commercial offers from over 100,000 sellers, which is made possible by integrating new algorithmic product classifiers and information extraction technology into the search system.

Traditional shopping search sites enable search over data provided by select merchants.  Leveraging a wide range of information on the web enables indexing of hard-to-find and unique products and sellers available online.  Try searching for your favorite products or give the following team favorites a try: alien queen 1/4 scale, bhindi masala, or Andrew Jackson signed documents.

The user interface stays true to the simplicity of the search paradigm and inherits many features common to the Windows Live search family such as smart scroll, image hovering, and level of detail slider.  In addition, users are able to refine their searches by: Related term, Brand, Seller and Price.

There are still many features that that are not yet implemented in the initial Beta for Product Search.  These features include: product ratings & reviews, item clustering and a bigger selection. The product team is continually working on improving the quality of the site and would love to get your feedback: http://feedback.live.com/default.aspx?productkey=wlsearchproduct&P1

You can find more information about Product search and the Product search team on the Windows Live Product search Blog (http://spaces.msn.com/productsearch)

-- Imran Aziz, Lead Program Manager
On behalf of the Windows Live Product Search team.

Betsynote: In advance of questions – Yes, this works stuff in Firefox. Yes, I want to go shopping.

We are pleased to announce the beta release of Windows Live Product Search (http://products.live.com).

Product search leverages the latest research from Microsoft Research Asia to find products available on the internet for sale.  At beta, the index contains commercial offers from over 100,000 sellers, which is made possible by integrating new algorithmic product classifiers and information extraction technology into the search system.

Traditional shopping search sites enable search over data provided by select merchants.  Leveraging a wide range of information on the web enables indexing of hard-to-find and unique products and sellers available online.  Try searching for your favorite products or give the following team favorites a try: alien queen 1/4 scale, bhindi masala, or Andrew Jackson signed documents.

The user interface stays true to the simplicity of the search paradigm and inherits many features common to the Windows Live search family such as smart scroll, image hovering, and level of detail slider.  In addition, users are able to refine their searches by: Related term, Brand, Seller and Price.

There are still many features that that are not yet implemented in the initial Beta for Product Search.  These features include: product ratings & reviews, item clustering and a bigger selection. The product team is continually working on improving the quality of the site and would love to get your feedback: http://feedback.live.com/default.aspx?productkey=wlsearchproduct&P1

You can find more information about Product search and the Product search team on the Windows Live Product search Blog (http://spaces.msn.com/productsearch)

-- Imran Aziz, Lead Program Manager
On behalf of the Windows Live Product Search team.