Microsoft Corporation is constantly researching ways to improve search. At the TechCrunch50 event earlier today, Microsoft gave a demo of Visual Search on Bing.com. The Visual Search engine uses images instead of text. The images are arranged by categories and various other parameters.
As of right now Visual Search is just an index of photo albums tagged with certain parameters. For example when I selected the Digital Cameras category, Bing showed me a bunch of cameras that I could click on. Then I narrowed the results to between 5 and 10 megapixels and the cameras out of those parameters disappeared. Nothing really new there. I’ve seen this technology before on e-commerce websites like eBay.
I’m just going to label this announcement as a “meh” since I’ve seen it before. Image searches have longer load times than text especially in countries with slow Internet connections. The Visual Search requires Microsoft Silverlight too.
BlackBerry company Research In Motion is rumored to have full Flash and Silverlight support. Well that is just great, I just bought the iPhone. Had I known this rumor before, I would have saved my money. Flash and Silverlight support may not happen until a while from now. This probably won’t happen until a summer from now.
“This is simply about our running down the checklist and trying to address each thing the fans have said they want” stated Jason Kint, CBSSports.com SVP and General Manager. “Last year, it was foremost about eliminating registration and blackouts, which we did. And this year, it’s about improving the video experience itself as much as we can.”
CBSSports.com has decided to go with Microsoft Silverlight media player to stream March Madness basketball games on their website. About 4.8 million unique visitors tuned into March Madness on CBSSports via March Madness on Demand. This lets viewers watch the game on a first come, first serve basis. March Madness will be starting on CBSSports.com on March 15. It will be available through Windows Media Player or Silverlight.
Silverlight has been winning major content syndication sports deals. Last year, Silverlight was chosen to stream the Olympics this past summer. MLB used to run on Silverlight, but recently decided to switch to Flash. It is absolutely crucial for Silverlight to perform when it comes to March Madness as people take basketball very seriously, including myself. I’ll be a very happy guy if Michigan State wins the Final Four this year.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Silverlight will be used for the Presidential Inaugural Committee website to steam President-elect Barack Obama’s and Vice President elect Joe Biden’s swearing-in event this Tuesday. Microsoft Silverlight is the software giant’s response to Adobe Flash. Flash was originally developed by Macromedia, a company that Adobe bought out several years ago.
Silverlight will also be powering the video for Obama and Biden’s “Whistle Stop Tour” today. The tour will be taking place between Philadelphia and Washington D.C. for celebrations. ISteamPlanet, a content-delivery company based in Las Vegas, Nevada is working with Microsoft on streaming the event.
Silverlight 1.0 was first launched in April 2007, but it was quite ambiguous about what the capabilities were. Silverlight 2 was released last October and it was the first time it could be seen as a Flash replacement. The Democratic National Convention Committee used Silverlight 2 to power the proceedings from the convention. This included Obama’s acceptance speech to over 80,000 in Denver.
