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Microsoft Works on Search Capabilities

bl8n8r writes "Microsoft is betting millions that someday it will be as well known for search as Google is. Some of its efforts to simplify search on the Internet will soon be in place. The new version of Microsoft's MSN Internet service, available this winter, will include a tool for retrieving digital photos based on images in the pictures. For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background."

21 of 480 comments (clear)

  1. Search on msdn.microsoft.com by julesh · · Score: 5, Informative

    Microsoft? Search experts?

    Has anybody here used the awful search interface they put up on MSDN a couple of months ago? Its hideous. It takes twice as long to find anything as its predecessor did. Googling with site:msdn.microsoft.com is often the only way of finding some documents (I had to do that to find out any information on programming NT Services without using .NET...)

    Searching for a name of one of their programs ("dr watson") doesn't turn up any information on it in the knowledge base. You have to search for 'drwtsn32' to get anywhere, despite the full name of the program being mentioned in the articles about it.

    Yeah, great search interface. Really inspires my confidence.

    1. Re:Search on msdn.microsoft.com by roach2002 · · Score: 5, Informative

      http://www.google.com/microsoft/

      Search all microsoft related websites, microsoft.com and others such as www.outlookexchange.com too.

    2. Re:Search on msdn.microsoft.com by a+low-flying+penguin · · Score: 3, Informative

      I looked for Linux on MSN...The 4 first results are : 1-Amazon 2-Ebay 3-tech.msn.com intruducing Linux ("Red Hat 9.0 is a boon for those who already use it, but it's too expensive to warrant a switch from Windows.") 4-Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP : "Learn about the Microsoft alternatives and how to move to them from open source products." ( www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/migration ) Is it Informations we're looking for, or commercials and MS propaganda ?

    3. Re:Search on msdn.microsoft.com by Tim+C · · Score: 2, Informative

      Easy. There are only really three ways to prevent something or someone from spidering your website without annoying real users:

      * block their IP address(es)
      * block their user agent
      * put a line in your robots.txt file and *hope* they honour it

      None of these methods are effective against someone who is determined to spider your site. For your purposes, though, you could just use a suitably-crafted wget session to download everything.

      You can get more inventive, for example by displaying indistinct images of text and making users submit the word to continue, but there's very little that I can think of that would be effective and wouldn't inconvenience "real" users of your site.

    4. Re:Search on msdn.microsoft.com by anomalous+cohort · · Score: 2, Informative

      Here is a simple experiment.

      Surf to msdn.microsoft.com

      Enter the string "System.Web.UI.WebControls.ListItem" (sans quotation marks) and press "Go"

      Enter the same string in the google search toolbar.

      I believe that anyone who conducts this simple experiment will quickly be able to determine who has the better search engine.

  2. GIFT by malus · · Score: 2, Informative

    doesn't GIFT do the same thing?? .. thing being: search images?

    http://viper.unige.ch/demo/

  3. The URL has changed by Eponymous+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    CNN moved the story ... the link from the article is 404'd.

    The article is now here.

    --
    It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
  4. Correct Link by xaraya · · Score: 3, Informative

    Correct link to article (as if anyone reads them;)

  5. Semantic Web: best solution by MarkWatson · · Score: 3, Informative
    Real breakthrouhs in search technology are likely to come from Semantic Web technoligies: using standards like RDF, OWL, etc. for document markup based on content type (using standard ontology definitions).

    The technology for the Semantic Web is good enough - people and organizations just have to be willing to add semantic markup. This will enable what I would call knowledge based search. Some good tools are:

    HP's semantic web toolkit

    Protege Ontology Editor

    RDF and semantic web tools for Swi-Prolog

    -Mark

  6. Why not search in eXIF fields? by British · · Score: 2, Informative

    What I would like to see in a search engine is a engine that not only knows the picture, but also knows what's in the EXIF tags as well. There's also that XML-based creator field standard thing.

    Could make for some intresting surgical searches. Want to see what output a specific model of digital camera it makes? Put in the model's name in the right field for EXIF, and see what people have come up with.

  7. Re:For image searching GNU has The GIFT by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 2, Informative
    --
    main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
  8. Google has had this for ages by doublem · · Score: 3, Informative

    images.google.com

    A search for Dilbert Images

    A search for Linux Images

    A search for Hot Grits

    A search for Natalie Portman

    Hell, fark.com uses GIS to refer to the results of a Google Image Search.

    Seems MS is once again playing catch up and pretending it's a new idea.

    --
    "Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
  9. Re:domain squatters, and redirects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I use Google pretty much exclusively, and I've been happening upon this sort of activity more and more. It's quite annoying. I think I was searching for servomotors or something, and one site had 3 domains on the first page of the search. All of them were identical. For fun, I click on a link that seemed somewhat relevant, and it takes me to some off the map place that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything. It was about some guy that got his ideas off of Star Trek. Like this is supposed to be something new.

    It seems to be mostly related with non-specific technical type searches. It's distressing when something
    this misinformed makes it to Google's front page.
    on

  10. Re:let's illustrate : by a+low-flying+penguin · · Score: 5, Informative

    The first 4 results for search for "Linux" on MSN are :

    1 - Amazon
    2 - Ebay
    3 - Introducing Linux by tech.msn.com: "Red Hat 9.0 is a boon for those who already use it, but it's too expensive to warrant a switch from Windows."

    4 - Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP : "Learn about the Microsoft alternatives and how to move to them from open source products."
    (www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/mi gration)

    Parent was exagerating the place of commercials on MSN: propaganda reduce advertising space a lot.

  11. Re:uh right... by Iphtashu+Fitz · · Score: 2, Informative

    Um... Google, Ask Jeeves, and other major search engines have had image search capabilities for a while now. Just go to one of their sites, click on the menu tab for image search, then type in what you want to search for. Whether it's a celebrity, porn star, geographic location, tv show, or whatever, they'll usually have images of what you're looking for. MS is WAY behind the times here...

  12. Re:Search is a trust issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I think MS has a good chance of installing their engine as a Google replacement ... remember how they threw the Navigator out of the market and 'imposed' IE on the world? (or 90%+ of it at least.) And the choice of browser is as great an issue of 'trust' as the choice of a search engine.

    The point is, MS doesn't even have to come up with a search engine that is in any way better than Google, or more trustworthy, or whatever. Joe User will look for some way of searching the web, not for the best way. (Proof: We all agree that IE is inferior to most other browsers in terms of quality and privacy, but actually no significant number of people use those better programs. They're looking for some way to browse the web, not the best way.)

    I hate that just as much as everyone here, but I think the sad reality is: MS just has to find the right trick how to "default" to their engine (like giving away IE with the OS so that everyone says "why bother installing anything else, it's already there"), and Google could quickly become history. Markets are only reliable up to the point where someone is clever enough to create an ugly backdoor.

  13. Broken link in article try this one instead by rifter · · Score: 2, Informative
  14. Re:Image Search Request... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    try imgseek

  15. Re:uh right... by nitekrow · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually you can get mouse gestures and whole whack of other spiffy extensions/add-ons for Mozilla.

    http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/

  16. Re:uh right... by aerojad · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sorry, I'm going to have to say Opera rules everyone.

    --

    SecondPageMedia - Wha
  17. Konqueror not Mozilla-based by ae · · Score: 2, Informative

    Konqueror is not Mozilla-based. It uses its own rendering engine, KHTML. KHTML is also used by Safari.

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    Blog Ho