At first I wasn’t too sure about how fun a game would be that has something to do with search and its a game, sounds like something you’d get when on detention at school!

But Microsoft is really been impressive with pushing the boundaries in trying to get more market reach for its search engine, Bing. And they have created this game which could actually help them give better results and this is how…

The game shows a series of web pages and asks users to guess which query would show each page in Bing’s top 5 results. Users score points based on their answers with 100 points if you guess a query that shows page #1. This is how ever time limited to just 3 minutes.

MIT has even looked at this and commented that
“The idea is to gather useful information on user search habits which could be used to fine tune search algorithms and ranking scheme … Page Hunt is a clever twist on “human computation”–using people to perform tasks that computers find difficult to do.”

Thanks to Mashable for the content and great adverts (quite large pics of a woman looking seductive)

Now as we go along we are starting to see the $80-$100million Microsoft put into their marketing for Bing and Internet Explorer 8, do doubt some of it will be saved for when Windows 7 launches.

Anyway, take a look at the ads below they are pretty funny and do remind me of my folks sometimes (except the vomiting one!)

So in a couple of words lets recap what they’ve been announcing so far:

• Twitter + Facebook + Last.fm integration on XBox Live (see video below of the Facebook integration, you’ll also be able to use Facebook Connect and sign-in with Twitter.
• Platinum Xbox Live members in the USA will have access to HD movies and TV Series and be able to watch it instantly without downloads, people in the UK will via Sky have access to more movies and shows (wrote about that here).
• Project Natal for the Xbox 360 – amazing motion sensor (see video below), Microsoft even got Steven Spielberg to talk about Natal (wonder if he’s heard of the Sharks?!)
• Halo 3:ODST
• Beatles Rock Band – presented by Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr
• Tony Hawk presented a new skate boarding game – “Tony Hawk: Ride” which will feature a skateboard shaped controller that is slightly similar to the Nintendo Wii Balance Board
• Stars The Old Republic I think is best saved for last well in terms of awesome trailer that is (its a bit heavy for the bandwidth but well worth it!), see right at the bottom.

Here is a Twitter fountain from E3:

I have been really really impressed with Microsft and this year is going to be a big year for them, been saying that all along so far:
1) These announcements above for the Xbox
2) The new search enginge, Bing
3) Windows 7 due to launch later this year

Be nice when all of these become available in South Africa… I guess we still waiting on Microsoft to install its own servers here, hurry the hell up Microsoft!

Star Wars: The Old Republic Trailer

If you in the UK and have a Xbox 360 you will soon be able to get live football, TV and film content via your Xbox courtesy of Sky. You will either have to pay for it or have an existing connection with Sky (this is still to be determined)

So why does this interest me? The reason being the fact that TV’s are soon going to be able to connect to the internet themselves and with the advent of websites like Hulu there are going to be problems for big satellite companies like Sky or DSTV here in SA.

Sky and DSTV are going to have to find ways of crossing this divide that will grow rapidly as soon we won’t need a satellite dish installed at our house and a decoder linked to the TV, will satellite companies face similar to problems to what the newspapers are facing or will the adapt?

The only reason you might want a decoder is to watch live sports but if you can watch that online and in clear quality then this companies will almost fold instantly as demand for their services would drop quickly.

My prediction in 10years time all our TV will come via the internet and some of these big satellite companies will have serious problems if they don’t adapt.

Read more about it here.

So today there is a conference happening in the States and apparently Microsoft is going to unveil the new search engine they’ve been working on. In the early days this new engine was supposed to be called ‘Kumo’ or at least it was called Kumo internally at Microsoft.

But now there are reports its going to be called ‘Bing’ and that they are going to spend between $80 – $100million on promoting it on TV, Radio and online. This is going to be one hell of a launch and onslaught against Google who only spent $35million in 2008 on advertising.

A quote from AdAge:
“People with knowledge of the planned push said the ads won’t go after Google, or Yahoo for that matter, by name. Instead, they’ll focus on planting the idea that today’s search engines don’t work as well as consumers previously thought by asking them whether search (aka Google) really solves their problems. That, Microsoft is hoping, will give consumers a reason to consider switching search engines, which, of course, is one of Bing’s biggest challenges.”

Some people are saying that no matter how much advertising you throw at people it won’t change anything… I disagree and think Bing will gain some ground on Google the big question is how much ground will it gain?

Lets hope it goes better than the launch of the Nokia Ovi store today where there were server problems or their servers couldn’t handle the load on it…

So just today Microsoft stories were leaking about a possible new search engine been released next week and Netflix now been available via Windows Media Player (unfortunately only available if you have Vista and possibly only in USA which really sucks!)

This new search engine has been speculated about for awhile now with Microsoft playing catch up to Yahoo and the giant, Google. The name they have chosen is Kumo.com which I can’t quite imagine myself saying: “Lets Kumo it….” instead of “Lets Google it…” but maybe one day. If you visit the site now its just a nice blank page.

With Netflix there is going to be 12,000 video/series available to ‘watch now’ and its a set in the right direction I think, just these programs need to be available internationally! If people around the world can’t buy it legally they are going to download it illegally. This might put some pressure on Hulu which has been doing very well (2nd biggest video site in the US) though again its not available world wide.

Don’t these dam companies know that there are lots of people around the world wanting the same access to music/content and are willing and able to pay but just don’t have the facility to do it?

Continuing with the theme of bringing you all Microsoft’s adverts to try increase their popularity and image here is the latest advert. Featuring pre-law student Lauren and her Mom looking for a laptop primarily with good speed, portability and battery life.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:0170090f-53b2-40fc-89a4-c759cb088e0a&#038;showPlaylist=true&#038;from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Laptop Hunters $1700 – Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13">Video: Laptop Hunters $1700 – Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13</a>

This is the question Microsoft posed in their latest ad promoting their PC’s. They got a waitress and told her if she can find the laptop she wants under $1000 they’ll buy it for her – she goes shopping, take a look.

Video: Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion

For me I’ll definitely be getting a new Windows laptop when Windows 7 comes out and the closest I’ll come to a MAC is possibly getting an iPhone.

Apparently this was banned because it was making ‘light’ of killing people, personally I just think its pretty funny and the sound effects are great – take a look:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uubisIpY3iU&hl=en&fs=1]

Recently on the NY Times there was an article on how a 9year old kid was using YouTube to do research on an Australian animal.

Is this the real reason why Google bought YouTube?

To control all areas and methods of searching? The 9 year old said that he uses YouTube if needs help in some of his video games or on his card collection, if he can’t find what he’s looking for on YouTube he’ll use one of the other search engines.

Now according to comScore in November last year people in American did nearly 200million more searches on YouTube than on Yahoo, this moved Yahoo into third spot for search engines.

Surely Microsoft and Yahoo must be wondering how this has happened, how another website (one that is owned by Google) has surpassed them in the number of searches run.

Currently YouTube is busy setting up deals with Sony and Nintendo to be able to allow their users to search and view YouTube videos via the game consoles on the TV, notably not on the Xbox.

I give it another 5 years before we don’t even need a satellite/cable service for our TV’s but simply connect our TV to the internet and watch everything through that. And why not, currently we just PVR/TiVo everything and fast forward the ads, why not just select what you want to watch and download it or stream it to your TV.

Goodbye to the big TV satellite companies…