On Friday at NCCE Seattle we announced that our next homepage photo contest will kickoff on March 29 and this time there’s a twist. We’re asking students in the United States to submit photos to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and the winning photo will be displayed on the Bing homepage on April 22, Earth Day itself!

 Justin Kraemer, winner of the Bing Home Sweet Homepage Photo contest

In addition to the grand prize winner seeing their photo on Bing.com, we’ve pulled together some great prizes for both students and their schools. Winners across the four age groups (ages 5-10, 11-13, 14-17 and 18+) will win a trip for two to the Microsoft Campus to take part in a Bing editorial team meeting where we pick images for future homepages. Additionally, each winner will receive equipment from HP and Canon to help build digital photo resources at their school. Prizes for individual winners and their schools across the four age groups will total over $70,000.

· 1st place prizes: Individuals receive an HP Pavilion desktop and monitor and a “Digital Photo Lab” for their school.

· 2nd place prizes: Individuals receive an HP Pavilion desktop and monitor and a “Digital Photo Kit” for their school.

· 3rd place prizes: Individuals receive an HP Pavilion desktop and monitor and a “Digital Photo Starter Set” for their school.

And here’s the “everyone wins” part. There’s a great opportunity to help other classrooms in need during the voting stage from April 13th to the 19th. Bing will give a $5.00 GivingCard for DonorsChoose.org to the first 20,000 people who vote each day. Voters can then decide what classroom projects (like math, science, art, reading) will benefit from Bing’s donation. If you do the math, we’re talking up to $100,000 a day to help schools across the country. Each day you can return to the site to cast another vote and have an opportunity to pick up another GivingCard.

Bing helps students explore the world with our rich homepage imagery every day, so we’re excited to see what the country’s students think we might all want to discover.

To find out more about the contest, including the submission and voting process and prizes for the finalists, visit http://earthdayphotocontest.com/. Teachers will be able to order free posters for their classrooms in the coming days, as well as take advantage of other contest resources on the site.

Liz Tassey Gerber, Bing

Other posts of interest:

Home Sweet Home Page Winning Photo

Home Sweet Homepage

Welcome home

The Eye of the Storm – Jeremy Somers

On Sunday night, I like many others will be glued to the television for those few hours to watch Hollywood honor the best of the best in the 82nd Annual Academy Awards show.  Some people watch for the awards, some for the fashion, and other watch for the pure entertainment of the presenters, and this year, with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosting we are sure to have a very entertaining show.

As we have done in years past we are offering up instant answers in order to make it easier to navigate all the important information you might need to know about the show. Currently, you can get the Academy Award instant answer for the show itself, which includes information on the show, nominees and links to images and past show information. For those of you that miss the festivities, there will be a post-show instant answer with links to images and videos so be sure and check back for a quick look at the winners and other highlights from the show.

With ten nominees for best picture, I have a lot of catching up to do before Sunday. So while researching the picks, I found a few places very helpful. The first is www.bing.com/twitter where you can see all of the chatter on twitter that has to do with the Academy Awards, nominees, and the event parties. It is pretty interesting to see feedback and opinions about the show from people around the country in real time. The second is the Oscar Winning Actors Visual Search gallery. In this gallery, you can find information about who won in 2009 and who won the most awards overall. You should also visit MSN Award Buzz which pulls information from blogs, twitter and forums to create a fun graphic on each nominee and predicts the winner of each category based on public buzz. It is a must for those Oscar enthusiasts! Check out the MSN blog for all the details.

Since Stefan is off rubbing elbows in L.A. with the Hollywood elite for the Oscars and I am left here again to fend for myself, there will be no video or Fridays With Stefan. But we’ll still have Free T-shirt Friday and the theme for this week is “The Academy Awards” and all things related. To mix it up a little we want the entries to be RT’s (retweets) that you find on www.bing.com/twitter that have to do with the Academy Awards, add in your own commentary and tweet us at @bing make sure to include @bing and  #FTF. We will be looking at all of the entries at the beginning of next week so tweet us all weekend and through the show.

Have a great weekend and Stefan I hope you are having a GREAT time in La La land!

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

O.K. - pop quiz: which social media game boasts an active fan-base of roughly 31 million players every day?  Here’s a hint: it’s a happy place where you can plant virtual crops that can be harvested, or ask your neighbor to chase away raccoons. If you guessed Farmville, then you’re correct!    

Earlier this week, we began an advertising pilot with Zynga, the folks who brought you Farmville.  For a short time, we invited some people who were playing Farmville to join Bing’s Facebook community by becoming a fan of Bing.  We also encouraged them to tell their friends about it.  In exchange, we provided some farm dollars, which is the virtual currency used to buy things to build and maintain a farm.  Here is what the ad looked like, once a Farmville user clicked on it:

In a 24 hour promotion, we added 400,000 new fans to http://www.facebook.com/bing.  We were amazed by the response (and by how fast it went viral).  But we always have room for more folks in the Bing community, so stop on by and join the fun.

We are excited to have the opportunity to work with Zynga on this advertising promotion, as an interesting way of getting more people to experience Bing’s unique ability to help make decisions, whether in Farmville or outside in the real world.  We look forward to engaging more deeply with these users and helping them learn more about Bing.

Liz Tassey Gerber - Bing

Starting tomorrow, Bing will be participating in full force at what’s shaping up to be another stellar SMX West (March 2-4, Santa Clara CA).  Every SMX show is a special one for Bing.  But this one is super-duper special for one reason – we’re bringing Steve Ballmer!  This will be Steve’s first ever conversation with the search community at an industry event.  Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land and co-chair of SMX, sits down with Steve to discuss Microsoft’s commitment to search and how Bing is working to evolve the search experience. 

In addition to Steve’s keynote chat, you’ll find Bing and Microsoft Advertising engaged with the community all across SMX in a number of ways.  Here’s a quick summary of where you can find us.

March 2nd (TUE)

· 9:00am – 9:45am Keynote Conversation with Microsoft CES Steve Ballmer

· 10:45am – Noon Real Time Search & The Major Search Engines Sean Suchter, GM of Search Technology Center

· 10:45am – Noon Mobile Paid Search Ads: Real Opportunities Raj Kapoor, Global Director, Mobile Advertising

· 1:15pm – 2:30pm Bing: What’s Happening? Stefan Weitz, Director of Search, Bing; Q&A - Eric Gilmore, Group Product Manager, Bing

· Noon – 1:15pm Lunch Topic Table “Meet Microsoft Advertising” Aaron Lauper, AdCenter Search Account Manager

· 4:30pm – 5:45pm Ask The Local Search Engines Mikko Ollila, Senior Product Manager, Bing Local

March 3rd (WED)

· 10:00am – 10:20am Simplify your Campaign Management! (in EXPO THEATRE) Aaron Lauper, AdCenter Search Account Manager

· 10:45am – Noon Bring In The Bling Via Bing Cashback Meagan Rochelle, Search Solutions Specialist

· Noon – 1:30pm Lunch Topic Table “Exploring Bing Captions” Mark Johnson, Senior Program Manager Lead, Bing

· 4:45pm – 6:00pm Ask The Paid Search Reps Aaron Lauper, AdCenter Search Account Manager

March 4th (THU)

· 11:30am – 12:30pm Ask The Search Engines Sasi Parthasarathy, Program Manager, Bing

· 12:30pm – 1:30pm Lunch Topic Table “Talk to a Bing Engineer” Steve Macbeth, Principal Group Program Manager, Bing

Bing is also sponsoring the legendary SMX community event SMX After Dark on the night of March 2nd starting at 9pm in the Santa Clara Hyatt pool side (better not rain!)

And if these weren’t enough, Ignite is coming to SMX West as part of Global Ignite Week!  Ignite is the fun, high-energy evening of a dozen or so “speed presentations” where each speaker has 5 minutes and 20 slides to talk about a topic.  The speaker lineup is an impressive who’s who from around the search industry.  If you’re in the area, come check it out by registering for FREE (an SMX badge will get you in too).  Free drinks and light food provided.  And if you can’t join us in person, be sure to catch the live stream.

Ignite SMX West is March 2nd.  Doors open at 7:30 and presentations start at 8:00pm.  Full details: http://searchmarketingexpo.com/west/2010/ignite.   

Aya Zook, Product Manager, Bing

*Matt McGee from Search Engine Land live blogged Steve Ballmer's discussion with Danny Sullivan.

We’ve been working hard to help your complete your search tasks more quickly.  We’re happy to announce support for query history in Autosuggest today to help make that vision a reality.  Autosuggest now supports suggestions from your query history.  Many users search for a set of topics again and again.  It could be you searching on your favorite hobbies, doing online research, looking up local attractions or directions – the particular query subjects are very specific to you.  To make searching easier and reduce all those wasted clicks, many people found our history feature very useful to get them to where they’re going faster.  So we experimented with providing your prior searches in Autosuggest and found it’s even more useful in to helping find what you’re looking for faster!

Search history in Autosuggest can help you in other ways too.  Many search tasks span multiple search sessions even days or weeks.  In fact, 44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week!  Perhaps you need to research the purchase of a new automobile.  You might use Bing to find a retail location and to further research online – over many days – to make the best decisions on your big ticket purchase.  With history support in Autosuggest, you can restart a previous search session by typing a few characters to see your previous queries and start researching right where you left off.  We know from our testing that this makes you more effective at your longer search tasks.

Previous search queries in Autosuggest show in a special color, purple, the same color your browser uses to display visited links.

You are in full control of your query history.  We know your privacy is very important to you.  You can turn History on or off at any time or selectively remove any portion of your search history using the Manage History option.    You will see both of these choices every time you use Autosuggest.

We hope you enjoy Autosuggest with History and that it saves you time and improves your search effectiveness. 

Use it and tell us what you think! 

Thank you!

Robert Williams and Todd Schwartz

It’s been an exciting 17 days! By the end of the day on Monday, we will have featured 50 homepage images, 200 hotspots, and athletes from all over the globe. You can relive the past 7 images (including hotspots) using the image viewer. Just click the arrows in the lower right side of the image:

If you want to see more, check out our Bing Photo Sharing app on Facebook.

And now that the games are officially done, we’re shifting back to our ‘normal’ programming. Starting Tuesday, we’ll bring you a different intriguing image each day to help you explore the world around you. Look for the hotspots to find out more about each image if you’ve got time; otherwise you can cheat and check the image caption.

If you’re new to the page and want a guided tour, see Welcome Home. Got an idea for an interesting Bing homepage? Send us a note in the comments – we’d love to hear from you!

Enjoy!

Stephanie Horstmanshof

Editorial lead

Stefan has been in the UK this week talking with the Bing UK team and he has sent us this week’s theme and video from across the water. The Bing UK team is doing some great work trying to raise money for Sport Relief, for more information and you are in the UK go to www.givewithbing.com for more information. So take a look and make sure you catch the theme for this week’s Free t-Shirt Friday at the end. Tweet us back at @bing with the #FTF for your chance to win a Bing t-shirt.

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The strange cut outs in the back are of a British Pop Group called The Saturday’s (just in case you were wondering)

Happy Friday!

Kristin Meldahl

Where would we be if people like Columbus or Einstein hadn’t taken a risk on an idea or notion or if people like Jane Goodall or even Dr. Bing hadn’t followed their passions?  As a global community, we have benefited from discoveries in science and technology, exploration and the arts in ways we don’t always recognize day to day.  But without these advances and explorations, our lives would be dramatically different.

Since the launch of Bing we have partnered on projects that we believe support this idea. Through projects like 10,000 Rockets and our work with the Pacific Science Center on the Facing Mars exhibit we try to encourage kids of all ages to learn and discover through science and technology. Our latest partnership with explorer Eric Larsen is something that we hope will keep that interest and importance top of mind.

Eric leaves today from Ottawa on his journey for the North Pole which begins the second leg of his Save the Poles Expedition in an effort to raise awareness and tell his story about the climate change in these areas. He recently returned from his first leg to the South Pole and will be attempting to summit Mount Everest in the fall reaching what Eric calls the “Three Poles”.  Accomplishing all three of these adventures in one year is something that has never been done before. Ever.

It is our hope that you will follow Eric’s progress with us and get the opportunity to learn and discover what it takes to follow one’s passions, to take risks and to make the difficult decisions designed to increase the world’s knowledge and make life better for everyone. We will be tracking Eric’s progress and creating a forum for you to get to know Eric and learn more about his trek.

You can find information on Eric and his quest at www.ericlarsenexplore.com, read the latest news and discussions about his expeditions on Newsvine, engage with the community on Bing and even track his progress through Twitter.

We hope that like Eric, you are encouraged to learn, explore and follow your passion.

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

OK…so maybe it is a bit of an overstatement but isn’t everything bigger in Texas? I’m packing my bags today to join some members of the Bing team in Dallas where we’ll talk to some local bloggers, SEO experts and local media to get feedback, suggestions and to just find out how Bing can be better for them. We really value your feedback and are always looking for ways we can be better. If our paths don’t cross this time, we are always following the comments in Twitter @bing as well as in the Bing Community Forums so keep them coming.

If you are in Dallas this week and would like to join us in a great SEO discussion, Duane Forester will be hosting a SEO meet up on Wednesday night at Central 214 so make sure you grab a spot and register at EventBrite. Following that we will be going out on the town so follow us at @bing on twitter for all the updates…we would love to see you.

In preparation for the trip, I am checking the weather down in Dallas with Bing’s enhanced weather results…have you had a chance to check it out yet? Go to www.Bing.com and enter your desired location and ‘weather’ or you can type in “weather in Dallas” and you get a more comprehensive weather result right there in the results page. We are now pulling information from three different weather sources, giving you the ability to compare sources, and dive into the 10 day and hourly forecast. If you want to dig in deeper you can click “Weather in Dallas, TX” for more details including the monthly averages. Personally this is super helpful especially as I am packing for my trip tomorrow.

This is my first trip to the Dallas area and I hear the team is taking suggestions on things that I should do while I am there. If you haven’t already, you can cast your vote on our Facebook page. And why do I have a feeling it will be something extremely embarrassing?

Dallas…here we come!

Kristin Meldahl - Bing

It’s that time again…it’s Friday which means we have to listen to Stefan again and get a chance to win a free Bing t-shirt. So, make sure you watch the video for this week’s theme and tweet us back your answer at @bing with #FTF in your tweet for a chance to win a Free t-shirt.

 This is a great example of a winning tweet from a few weeks back:

       @zafeuer @bing Miami Freedom Tower http://www.bing.com/search?q=miami+freedom+tower&go=&form=QBRE&qs=n #FTF

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Happy Friday!

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

Did you catch the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics last Friday to kick off the games? To access that and all the latest videos from the games and for a snap shot into all the Olympic excitement visit www.msn.com to view the Winter Olympics module at the top of the page.

 There has been a lot of buzz in the hallways about favorite events and favorite athletes. So we thought we'd look at what people are searching for on Bing to see which events people are most interested in online. According to our search trends it looks like leading up to the games snowboarding is at the top of them heap, followed closely by hockey.

As the games continue, we wanted to remind everyone of the many ways you can take advantage of Bing and MSN and our partnership with NBC Olympics to keep up to date on all the happenings at the winter games. 

Use Bing to find answers to your quick questions about the games. You can use the Sports Events Schedule Instant Answer to get the schedule for each sport at the Olympics. For example search for: figure skating schedule, bobsled schedule, etc.

And when you search for  terms like “Winter Olympics”, “NBC Winter Olympics”, etc. you'll see the Winter Olympics Instant Answer with information from the official Olympics site at nbcolympics.com, an immersive and high definition slideshow experience, a “Today’s Events” section with links to sports with events, and the medal count for the top three countries.

Now if you are on the go, MSN Mobile has quick access to the top news stories for the Olympics, pictures and links to the most recent Olympic video on NBC’s site, and a summary of the US medal count and link to all see all other countries. Just visit mobile.msn.com from your phone.

Now that you can access all of this Olympic information, test how much you really know about the games by taking the Winter Games Quiz on our Facebook page. It’s a fun way for you to learn about all the different Bing features that you can use to keep current on the Olympics, such as instant answers and the Bing Maps app. Once you take the quiz you can share your results to your Facebook pages and challenge your friends to compete for the gold medal status.

We hope that for whatever you are looking for regarding the Winter Olympics whether at home or on the go, that Bing and MSN can provide it to you. 

Kristin Meldahl - Bing

Other posts of interest:

Almost like being there

The countdown is over

NBC Universal partners with MSN and Microsoft to deliver NBCOlympics.com on MSN

Bing and MSN your Olympics Hub

Have you ever thought about all the content and media out there on the Web? Information that we use daily to help make decisions, like reviews of the best restaurant for chicken parmesan or the t-shirt shop perfect for a vintage G&R t-shirt? We all know that you can find nearly anything on the web in the form of blogs, websites, user reviews, tweets, etc.

But the Web is changing. In the past we have been forced to ‘disassociate’ all this content from its physical context. Sure, you can write a review of that great B&B. But once you do that, it escapes into the ether and loses its connection to the real world - the place that gave you the idea to write it in the first place. We thought there was probably a  better way to reconnect all this data with its home, to provide greater context, and to ultimately help you use it to make a better decisions about things you’re trying to get done in real life, not just on a search engine.

We began talking about this idea of Spatial Search a bit back in December when we launched our new version of Bing Maps and today at TED, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Bing Maps architect will be unveiling some more work that demonstrates how we’re reuniting data with context. Some of what we’re showing is in research stage, some you can use today, and some you’ll be able to use shortly. But before we geek out on the features, it might be helpful to frame in a context. So, let’s do that…

The idea behind Spatial Search came from looking at human psychology and trying to understand how we as humans make decisions. We use all our senses: sight, touch, smell, sound, and taste. Today’s blue-link model doesn’t do a good job in tapping any of those senses and instead made you visually recreate models in your head to get through complex tasks. In other words, when you read a review of that French bistro, you had to manufacture everything: the street location, the ambience, where exactly in the city it was, and more.  While we’re not working on smell-o-search (yet!), we do think we can do a better job with the ‘sight’ and ‘touch’ senses you rely on every day. 

So when we think about Spatial Search, we think about the modes you all go through when you’re out and about, interacting with people and places rather than machines. First, you Explore: you orient yourself. You get a feel for what’s around and figure out your environment. Next, you Discover. Using your senses and visual cues you try and make sense of your surroundings. You look at storefront signage, street signs, and other clues to let you know where you might want to go to get your task done. Finally, you Decide: you take in and process all of the input around you to try and make the best decision for the task at hand. Maybe it’s the opening hours of the dry cleaners (oops – its closed) that tells you that you need to go to the bakery you can smell around the corner until it opens, and hop on their wi-fi network to get some work done while you wait. The challenge for Spatial Search is how we use technology to augment all those tasks, bring context to you so that information transforms into knowledge, which leads to actions taken to make your life easier and more informed.

For Exploring, we’ve made a number of updates to the Bing Maps platform to bring this idea to life through high resolution imagery from outer space all the way down to the front door of the bakery. Today at TED, we’re announcing a next step in this evolution of making this imagery more useful and interactive with the release of the technology preview of the Streetside Photos application. This tech preview mines geo-tagged photos from Flickr, and relates them to our Streetside imagery to show images matched to its original spatial context. Why is this cool? You’re now able to see what that club looks like at night (is it really THAT scary?), see if you’re really going to get a good sunset at that B&B you’re looking to book, or check out the crowds on a Saturday morning at Pike Place Market in Seattle or get a view of the same market from decades prior. As more people share imagery, our challenge is to reunite those photos with where they were taken – again, provide context to the data in the ether. Watch Blaise’s demo to see Streetside Photos in action.

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But we’re not just stopping at the street. Today, we’re also excited to demonstrate integration with the WorldWide Telescope, a project out of Microsoft Research. Once launched, you will be able to walk outside in Streetside mode, look up, and see what’s above – way above – right now where you’re standing. Constellations come to life as you pan – you can even set the time of day so you can see what you’ll see at 9pm – great for exploring with your daughter to get her ready for what she’ll see when the sun goes down.

At the same time as we’re getting more “universal” with World Wide Telescope, we’re also getting more intimate. At TED, Blaise showed the first results of our indoor panoramas work. This will provide an experience identical to Streetside, but won’t be limited to places you can take a vehicle. Whether you’re exploring Seattle’s Pike Place Market, or your favorite theme park, Bing Maps will give you the most immersive experience of the place.  We’ve already given you a taste of this with the integration of Photosynths into Bing Maps (18,000 of them and counting), and you can expect Photosynth and Streetside to converge in a way that allows all of us to document the important places in the world – indoor or outdoor – and explore  them in a completely natural way.

When it comes to Discovering, we launched our “Map Apps” gallery to bring that disconnected data home. From our Local Lens to Twitter, we’re bringing data back to where it can help you discover what’s in a physical area. And sometimes, there’s no substitute for absolute real-time. At TED we also demonstrated live Webcam feeds perfectly which enables real-time video to be overlaid seamlessly on street-level imagery, adding another dimension to the mapping experience. Imagine – you can see how long the line is at Five Guys before you head over for a burger. In the coming year, we think you will be pleasantly surprised with how far Bing takes this new technology. Stay tuned.  

Finally when it comes to Deciding, we’ve just scratched the surface with Bing maps. We introduced innovations around our Opinion Index which lets you see just how good that Vietnamese Pho restaurant is based on what the community is saying. Our next step is to continue to augment the Spatial Search experience with these types of data. The potential for ‘augmenting’ your physical world with data pulled from everywhere, in real-time, and in context is exciting. The chance of getting lost diminishes greatly. You may never have to enter a fabric store only to realize you should have gone somewhere else to get your remnant. The ability to re-route before hitting a road closure due to construction will be right at your fingertips. The technology to enable the Deciding pillar of our Spatial Search strategy is daunting – but this is a key element in our quest to better understand how we naturally process information to make a decision. So that’s where we’re headed.

It’s going to take a little while to get there. But we believe our focus on your needs as searchers and more importantly as people will ultimately help us build technology to reconnect the wandering data to where it wants to be – the real world.

The Bing Maps team

Other posts of interest:

New Bing Maps Application: Streetside Photos

If you haven’t bought your gift yet, whether for a relative, your favorite pet or your significant other you might be classified as a “Valentine’s Procrastinator.” Not to fear you are not out of time yet. Today is the day (Feb. 10) to shop with Bing cashback to take advantage of some of the last minute insane savings (as long as the shipping  is fast enough). 

Now if you are “still” trying to figure out what to get that loved one you can check out the Bing Valentine’s Day gift guide or tune into Bing video 7 a.m. PST, today (Wednesday February 10) to get advice from the Victoria’s Secret Bombshells. Candance Swanepoel and Erin Heatherton will be giving hot tips on how to impress that special someone on Valentine’s Day and will be answering questions from the MSN and Bing fans in an exclusive webcast.

If you are a Valentine’s Day Procrastinator or not we hope Bing cashback can help you find that perfect gift just in time for the big day.

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

I first started working on the homepage during the Summer Olympics in Beijing. We had just launched the image on the homepage and 10 days later jumped to updating the picture twice a day. It was a chaotic time, but truly some of the most fun I’ve ever had at a job!

With the Vancouver Olympics fast approaching, the homepage team decided to change up our regular programming a bit to bring the excitement of the Olympics to you. Starting this weekend, we’ll update the homepage with images from the events three times a day. And while we’ll show some winners, this won’t be the standard parade of medalists. We’re out to show the great moments from the games: the alpine skier from Ghana, the debut of Ski Cross as an Olympic event, anything to do with curling—all with the stunning imagery that you’ve come to expect on the Bing homepage.

As always, we’ll have the hotspots giving you lots of fun facts about the images. And if you just want to see the caption for a photo, point your mouse on the copyright symbol. For more info about fully exploring the homepage, see Welcome Home.

And for a full recap of all the Olympics features Bing has to offer, see Bing and MSN: your Olympics hub.

Enjoy!

Stephanie Horstmanshof

Editorial lead

We’re T-4.5 days from the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics Games. Who are you excited to see flying down the men’s downhill course or dancing across the ice? Will you be rooting for your homeland or just your favorite event? Do you know anyone crazy enough to get on one of those luge sleds? Making the trip to Canada or are you planning on enjoying the games from the comfort of your own home? With only a few days before the games begin, it’s time to get prepared.

Whether you’re at the games or watching from afar, we want you to get the most out of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Today, NBC Universal announced their collaboration with MSN and Bing to deliver exclusive digital event coverage to fans online and on-demand. This year’s Olympic coverage is going to be unlike any other year with thousands of hours of video, extensive event recaps, updated medal count info, and commentary from the games, brought to you exclusively by NBCOlypmics.com, MSN and Bing. Check out the MSN blog for more details about MSN’s amazing work with NBCOlympics.com on MSN. 

Bing will be a great place to get quickly to the important Olympics details.  Just search Winter Olympics on Bing for important dates, links to the schedule, breaking news, all brought to you conveniently in the form of an Instant Answer.

You can also search for your favorite athlete for a quick look at their country, sport and links to bio, videos and photos.

Not familiar enough with the Olympic teams or specific event to start your search? No problem. We’ve also created Winter Games themed Visual Search Galleries, like the image below, so you can explore the athletes and events visually and sort by sport, gender or date of the event. 

In addition to providing users with the ultimate search tool for exploring NBCOlympics.com on MSN content, Bing lets users experience and explore Vancouver and Whistler through our Streetside imagery in Bing Maps. During the games we’ll be rolling out and updating additional various features to keep you up to date so be sure to check back here for more updates coming soon.  

We’re looking forward to bringing the best of the Olympic games, right to you!

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

Other posts of interest:

New Bing Maps Application: Winter Games

Olympics sites of the past and future

Almost like being there

Last week we had you tune in to Jason Calacanis' web show TWIST to watch Stefan announce the Free T-shirt Friday theme. I was worried no one would catch his #FTF plug to win a free t-shirt or the copy of Brian Solis’s book “Putting the Public Back into Public Relations” but alas, there were a few of you loyal #FTF players that came through.

The winners for last week were @brmore and @jrameau. Please make sure you DM us @bing with your shirts size and mailing address.

• @brmore: @bing The best and worst airport food http://bit.ly/bYQ5qF (expand) #FTF (WINNER OF THE BOOK!)
• @jrameau: @bing The Terminal Tom Hanks http://bit.ly/bOMJ8U (expand) #FTF

This week we sit down with Stefan (finally sans apron) to discuss some of your questions from the forums and to share this week’s Free T-shirt Friday theme which may have something to do with a small sports event this weekend.

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Kristin Meldahl, Bing

Facebook has been a close and valued partner of Microsoft for a number of years. We have worked together on several fronts all designed to create great experiences and services for our users. As we begin 2010, we are stepping up that collaboration yet again.

Here is a sense for what we are up to:

First, we have deepened our joint work together on web search to provide even more compelling experiences to Facebook users with Bing. As part of this expanded cooperation in search, our two companies will soon provide Facebook users with a more complete search experience by providing full access to great Bing features beyond a set of links, including richer answers combined with tools that help customers make faster, smarter decisions.

Second, we are extending our cooperation outside the US, bringing the Bing-Facebook search integration to the more than 400 million people using Facebook around the world.

Lastly, we made the mutual decision that Facebook would take over responsibility for selling display advertisements on its own site. We have been working together on advertising for a long time, creating the best experience for Facebook users and advertisers. Given the kinds of advertisements that make sense within a product as unique as Facebook, it just made more sense for them to take the lead on this part of their advertising strategy. MS will continue to provide search advertisements to Facebook.

Bing will continue to exclusively power the web search results on Facebook. This change will also enable Microsoft to continue its focus on driving strong performing campaigns across our own social media and communications tools, including Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail, and via rich content environments across MSN and Xbox Live.

This is an exciting time for us as we continue to work with Facebook on great new experiences for customers.  As you know, Bing has been very focused on helping customers make important decisions. We believe that counsel from family and friends can be a big part of that process. Going deeper in web search experiences with Facebook, in addition to the collaboration we announced last October about bringing public data from Facebook’s API into the search experience, will enable us to do great things together for our customers.

You will start to see the fruits of our expanded relationship show up in the Facebook experience over the weeks and months ahead. We are very excited about the work we have done with Facebook, and are really looking forward to the amazing things we can together do for our mutual customers in the months and years ahead.

Jon Tinter - General Manager, Bing

The office pool, big screen TV’s, great commercials, the half time show, friends and family.  These are all things that remind me of super bowl Sunday. However no game day is ever complete without a monumental spread of food. Now that we’ve shared some tips and trick to help prepare for the big game, time for the menu. I know in my house Nachos and Buffalo wings are a must to kick off the game and by the half time show we have the Hot Dogs and Burgers on the barbeque . If you are not a hot dog and hamburger kind of crowd then you might want to try out a new recipe for Pizza or Chili. I know that this year I am going to spice things up with our new recipe feature and get creative with Beer. Beer'Garitas anyone?

Whether or not you are a Colts or Saints fan we know that for some of you this Sunday will be filled with some great football to watch, some pretty entertaining commercials, and if nothing else some wonderful food that you hopefully were inspired to make from searching on Bing.

So have fun eating your way through the Super “Bowl”.

Kristin Meldahl

Other posts of interest:

Colts and Saints Can’t Mess with Texas

Cooking up a storm with Bing Recipes

How Many Calories in a Burger? What’s 2^2^2^2^2? Bing and Wolfram|Alpha Have the Answers

I have a confession to make: I’m a Valentine’s Day scrooge. Despite that, Valentine’s Day still sneaks up on me every year and while I might consider saying “Bah humbug” to Cupid, I just can’t. Duty calls, and because I have some very special family and friends in my life, I feel obligated to do a bit more than a drugstore greeting card and a box of stale heart candies.

Whether you’re a scrooge like me or you’re the romantic type, Valentine’s Day can require lots of preparation. Lucky for you, Bing is here to help you put together a romantic evening your valentine won't soon forget. But just because your sweetie pie makes you feel like a million bucks doesn't mean you have to spend every last penny proving it. With cashback you can shop for your valentine and get cash back for yourself. That definitely appeals to my scrooginess – give more to them and get more for me! Shop our Valentine's Day gift guides and find exactly what you're looking. Plus between February 3-10th, you can get even more cashback savings, up to 30%.

Here are a few great Vday deals for you to consider:

· Looking for bling for your valentine? Get 30% cashback from Ice.com by searching for “Ice.com cashback.”

· Flowers are a classic Valentine’s Day gift and there are four retailers for you to choose your bouquets from, including Teleflora at 25% cashback, Flora Flora at 30%, Proflowers at 30%, and 1-800-Flowers at 25%.

· Gap is offering 20% cashback on their brands, including Old Navy and Banana Republic.

· Sumptuous beauty gifts to pamper your valentine are available at Beauty.com or Sephora, where you can get 20% cashback at both

· Prefer to pick up some sweet treats for your sweet? Ghiardelli Chocolates is offering 25% cashback and at 1-800-Bakery you can get 20% plus free shipping!

Whether you’re a die-hard romantic or a Vday scrooge like me, whether you’re looking to make your Valentine’s Day sweet or sassy, or whether you want to pick up a little bling for yourself this February and put cash back in your wallet at the same time, Bing’s got you covered.

So in the words of my favorite grade school Valentine’s card: Won’t you “bee” mine?

Kelly Scott, cashback Product Manager

Other posts of interest:

Online holiday shopping tips by Mary Hunt

cashback 101

The Saints and the Colts may be our super star teams this year, but neither team takes home the title of most searched for on Bing. In fact, the most popular team on Bing didn’t even make it to the Conference Championship game this year. But their hunky quarterback drew enough attention for his actions off the field to make this team super popular on Bing. Oh and they also cut the ribbon on the biggest stadium known to man. If you haven’t guessed already, the Dallas Cowboys racked up the most searches on Bing among NFL teams for the 2009-2010 season. But back to our super star teams.

Despite their 14-2 record and devout fans, the Colts ranked 15th among most searched NFL teams while New Orleans came in 5th  with Drew Brees, Reggie Bush and coach Sean Payton all garnering more searches than Peyton Manning, Joseph Addai and coach Jim Caldwell, respectively. Although not the most searched throughout the year, after the Indianapolis win against the Jets, all eyes were on Peyton and his team with searches for the Colts increasing by more than 350 percent whereas searches for the New Orleans Saints increased by slightly less at 257 percent. So who’s going to be most popular come game day? Let us know what you think.

You only have a few days to decide whether you lean toward New Orleans or Indianapolis, so spend some time on Bing and get to know the team with our player instant answers (try Peyton Manning or Drew Brees) and compare the teams with our head-to-head comparison courtesy of MSN and Fox Sports. Just search for ‘Super Bowl XLIV’ or ‘Super Bowl 2010’ for a quick look at everything you want to know about the big game including game time, and stats on the Saints and Colts so you’re well versed come game day.

We’ll be updating our Super Bowl answer to reflect quarterly updates and game status  – see the example below - so be sure to check back regularly. And for real-time commentary from Super Bowl watchers on Twitter, be sure to visit and follow the Super Bowl on Bing/Twitter.

We’re looking forward to kick off!

Melissa Powell, Bing