Bing Spring 2010 Update: New Features Galore

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.winsupersite.com/live/bing_2010.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.winsupersite.com/live/bing_2010.asp</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Moving to the updated Bing web site, we see the biggest changes. And the most important of these, I think, is a rethinking of the overall Bing user experience, with Microsoft moving to more of a dialog-driven model. (Where "dialog" here means a conversation with the user, not a PC-type dialog window.) The impetus for this was the way the Bing user interface had evolved and become somewhat cluttered over the past year, with the left column, or "rail" in Bing-speak, losing its focus and becoming, on many pages, too long to be useful. (Microsoft has found that once the navigational pane extends past the "fold," or the bottom of the initial screen height, that many users simply stop paying attention.)"</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1277326859.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>The new Bing update is out, there's lots to like - of particular interest is the entertainment/media options. When you look up an artist and flip over to the music tab, you'll have an option to hear a full version of the track - as in, the entire song, once - after that, you'll get a 30 second preview. Zune Pass subscribers will get to hear the whole song as many times as they want. I haven't been able to see/test this feature, even when I manually go to the US version of Bing. Anyone else had any luck with this?</p>

[randalllewis]

I have tried out the Bing/Zune integration and it works pretty slick. There was a post from some ZD Net yahoo complaining that the service didn't work the moment it was announced, and sure enough up until today each time I had tried it, a Zune dialog box popped up with a "coming soon" notice.

Today, I typed in Kelly Rowland (just saw her on TV) on Bing and four song links were offered up in the top search box. Clicking on one brought up that Zune window again, but this time with the orange-pink progress bar. The first song took 15 to 20 seconds to begin playing. The window offers the text animation familiar to Zune users, some artist art, an option to purchase the track and a link to lyrics as well as player controls and volume control. I typed in a few other artists after Kelly and these loaded and began playing much faster, taking just a few seconds.

I decided to purchase a track to try out that experience and there were a couple of surprises. First, the per track price is higher than when purcahsed directly in the Zune Marketplace. The track I purcahsed cost 105 Microsoft points. I checked another track that I had purcahsed from ZM for 90 points just a week ago and it was also 105 points purchsed through Bing. The second surprise was the number of windows that opened in the process. If you click on the "Buy Mp3" button on the Zune window, it opens a separate Zune.net window. Click purchase here, and another window opens with the price and Download button. Click this and another window opens informaing you that the download is ready to begin. Then another window opens asking for a destination for the music file. I had to manually direct the file to my Music/Zune folder. This wasn't the most elegant process, but it does work.

With Zune integration into Bing, and Xbox, and Windows Phone 7 and even the Kin, it is nice to see this quality music service finally getting some attention from Microsoft.