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(I’m probably the last blogger to arrive at this party, but just in case you’re not already aware of it …) I frequently receive comments and emails from vegetarians who tell me that if I’d just read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, I’d see the error of my ways and start counseling everyone to live on a plant-based diet with as few animal foods as possible.  I usually reply that since Dr. Weston A. Price observed amazingly healthy people all over the globe –  most of whom lived

As it has done on a monthly basis for the past several years, AdMob today released a new Mobile Metrics Report for May 2010. The report highlights worldwide trends in mobile requests to its ad network from over 23,000 mobile websites and application...

My last blog post reviewed a book by Dr. Michael Holick, one of the world’s experts on vitamin D, who recommends sensible sun exposure to experience the benefits of adequate vitamin D.  In that post I touched on the idiotic extremes the dermatology mainstream have adopted to discourage people from spending time in the sun. It’s worse than I thought. Not long after posting, I came across a McClatchy column in our local paper pushing the perspective of most dermatologists, a perspective that�

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Also, I worry this one's too geektastic. But, I was told I shouldn't apologize for doing geek humor now and then. So, sorry! No apology!

Earlier this month we announced the top trending searched topics on Bing for 2009 (we wish the circumstances for Michael Jackson topping that list were a bit more positive) and we also revealed the top searched celebrity of 09 (Oh…. Perez Hilton you were hot, hot, hot).  We then asked you to go and take our End of Year Facebook quiz to test your I.Q. of hot topics in 2009. How did you do in the quiz? I was batting around .500 this year and so were the majority of you (roughly 40%) and only 7% of you were search Gurus. I didn’t do too well this year but know I can do better next year.

Who would’ve thought that Las Vegas would beat out Hawaii for most searched travel destinations, or that Susan Boyle was searched for more often than Taylor Swift? We know a majority of you swore the iPhone was the most searched electronic device…well as a matter of fact, you were close, it was the iPod. And over half of you were pulling for New Moon for most searched movie which was actually runner up to the original movie, Twilight. Below is the complete list of the top 2009 searches on Bing.

Top Male Celebrities 1            Perez Hilton 2            Robert Pattinson 3            Jon Gosselin 4            Howard Stern 5            Brad Pitt                  Top Female Celebrities 1            Megan Fox 2            Kim Kardashian 3            Kate Gosselin 4            Jennifer Aniston 5            Kristen Stewart                  Top Musicians 1            Michael Jackson 2            Susan Boyle 3            Taylor Swift 4            Chris Brown 5            Adam Lambert                  Top Electronics 1            iPod 2            iPhone 3            Zune 4            Laptops 5            Blackberry    Top TV Shows 1            American Idol 2            Dancing With The Stars 3            Oprah 4            Hannah Montana 5            Biggest Loser

Top Travel Destinations 1            Las Vegas 2            Napa 3            Hawaii 4            Boston 5            Universal Studios                  Top Political Figures 1            Rush Limbaugh 2            Barack Obama 3            Michael Savage 4            Sarah Palin 5            Michelle Obama                  Top Movies 1            Twilight 2            New Moon 3            Harry Potter 4            Transformers 5            Star Trek                  Top Car Brands 1            Ford 2            Nissan 3            Chevrolet 4            BMW 5            Dodge                  Top Sports Teams 1            New York Yankees 2            Pittsburgh Steelers 3            Chicago Cubs 4            Boston Red Sox 5            Philadelphia Phillies

Now that you know who made the tops of the lists and if you are interested in diving deeper on these most searched people, places and much more, check out our Bing Visual search galleries.

We hope you had fun with this year’s quiz! Who do you think will top the list next year? I already am looking forward to 2010!

-Kristin Meldahl

  It has been a stellar year at Yahoo! Labs, and before 2010 arrives, we want to share an overview of the great science that our colleagues have published in 2009. The Internet is changing as rapidly as ever – from what’s possible technologically to how people are interacting with technology and each other, and it’s part of Yahoo! Labs’ mission to help Yahoo! and the world understand that evolution. On that front, we made major progress during these past 12 months, and were thrilled th

Apple was one of the top 10 US brands on the Internet in November, says ratings firm Nielsen. The company was precisely 10th in terms of parent company rankings, with just under 62.1 million people visiting at least one website owned by Apple, or launching an Apple-owned application. People spent an average of an hour and 18 minutes looking at Apple content....

TweetDeck has launched the first major update to its Twitter app, TweetDeck for iPhone. The app posts and tracks tweets from a user's iPhone or iPod touch, with options to create and watch user-specified groups. The app handles multiple accounts and syncs TweetDeck columns between a user's desktop and iPhone. It supports Twitpic, YFrog and various URL shorteners....

When we launched a Yahoo! News shortcut with Twitter content integration earlier this month, we said more was coming. Starting today, you will see recent tweets directly integrated on the Web search result page when you search for buzzy topics. How is this different from what we launched earlier? You can still see relevant tweets about the most popular topics in the news in the expanded Yahoo! News shortcut with Twitter which combines news articles, images, videos, and tweets. Now you can see tw

We just made it easier to search for local businesses. Starting today, you can see the Yahoo! local business shortcut when you search for a business, even if you don’t include your location in your query. You can also refine results by neighborhood or nearby city right on the search results page. We’ve seen in our user studies that, in many cases, users search for a local business without specifying a location but still want to see a Yahoo! Shortcut for that business. Now, they can. For exam

My name is Sree, and I joined the Bing team just over a year ago after graduating from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Since then, my work has been focused on Bing’s history features, and it has been a wild ride.

I remember when my manager first pulled me into this project; he explained the vision that trust and respect for privacy must be inherent in the features we develop, giving users the control over their information and doing it in a very transparent way. Embedded in this concept is the idea of Bing working together with you in a joint effort to create a better experience. Since then, my team has experimented with new features to understand how people search, what features work (and what don’t), and how we can best enable people to make decisions using Bing. We then built the foundation of Bing history with the intent to improve your ability to quickly complete your search related tasks by remembering your past actions and to help get you back to your previously called on information.

What does all this mean for you?

I think about this in terms of the searches that I did when I was thinking of moving to the Seattle area. I began at a search engine, visited a few sites to learn more about the city, does it really rain 9 months a year? Where should I live? Should I rent or buy? Are there any good places to ski? While I usually tried to block out some time in my schedule to do this research, I often found myself interrupted. An hour (and sometimes a few days) later, I went back to the search engine to pick up where I left off, entering some of the same queries I conducted earlier in my research. Now, with Bing history, I wouldn’t have to remember or repeat all the same searches. Bing history gives you easy access to your recent queries from the Bing home page, search results page, and a history page that automatically organizes your search history chronologically.

Below is an example of a recent shopping experience I had online:

             

image: Recent search history w/ “see all” “turn off” and “clear all    

 

image: Both recent and frequent search history on Bing Home page w/controls

  

image: Your history page with granular controls

We understand that search history can be very personal, which is why my team has focused on developing a service where we’ve tried to build privacy and respect for your search history into the overall experience and not as an afterthought. By focusing on transparency, user control and usability, we believe we have the right approach in place to do that.

Here’s what we offer:

· Off/On switch:  It seems pretty simple, but providing you with tools to make choices is central to what we are building.  With one click, you can choose to turn history on or off directly on the search results page or, if you’re returning, on the homepage. About to perform a search that you don’t want to remember as part of your history? Just click Turn off and new searches are no longer remembered.  Want to get back to building your search history? You can just as easily turn it back on. Your on/off state will be maintained indefinitely, as long as you don’t clear your browser cookies.

· Transparency:  Click See all to get a complete view of the history data that Bing is storing for you. For this release, you’ll find all queries you make using our web search and the sites you click associated with that query. We’ll be checking customer feedback to see what additional information might make search history more useful, and how to better expose it to our customers.

· Control: Too many systems provide us with choice, but little control.  We’ve created Bing Search history with multiple layers of control.  You can remove your entire search history right on the search results page or on the homepage (just click Clear all). For finer-grained control, you can delete individual queries or sites from your history by clicking See all and then removing individual items from your history. You can also clear your entire search history directly from that page. Once you delete an item, it’s gone – it won’t appear in search history again.

Currently, your search history is available for four weeks. We’ll actively monitor feedback and look at other ways to evaluate the optimal duration for enabling you to save your search history. Please note that removing your history removes it from the Search History service and prevents that history from being displayed on the site, but it does not delete information from our standard search logs. These logs are used to operate and improve our products and services, and are retained and anonymized as described in the Bing Supplement to the Microsoft Online Privacy Statement. We store the searches you make separately from any account information that directly identifies you, such as your email address or phone number. For more information, see Microsoft Online Privacy Statement.

While we're delighted to get this initial set of features out the door and into your hands, we’re even more excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. It’s our hope to make it easier and easier for you to accomplish your tasks, while enabling you to make quicker and better decisions. We know that as the internet evolves so will your needs and wants, so please stay tuned for more discussion and announcements, and please let us know what you think.

Remember the power is yours with a flip of the switch.

-Sree Kamireddy - Bing Program Manager and Privacy Champ

Bing on your mobile phone just keeps getting better.  Today we are happy to announce the first official Bing App for iPhone and iPod touch.  You can now download the free Bing App from your phone in the App Store, from your computer at iTunes, or go to m.bing.com and we will redirect you to the app store. 

Let’s talk about some cool stuff you can do with the Bing App.  Our investments in voice search (you may have played with them on Windows phones or BlackBerry already) continues in our iPhone App and works great for map locations as well as old fashioned web search.  Just say “San Francisco weather,” for a quick result, or even say a full address for a map or directions.  Try something complex, like “1 Microsoft Way, Redmond 98052.” (Yes, I know how to get to work.) Hold the phone to your ear and speak, or press the mic button—simple. 

Speaking of directions (ha), looking for a coffee shop nearby? Bing automatically finds your location.  It’s also easy to discover a new spot by category such as restaurants, banks, theaters and choose whether you want walking or driving directions.

We’ve got smooth mapping action. Swipe through each step of the directions, and check out how fast the map pans and zooms.  (Techies take note: we use Seadragon technology for some of this.)  For times when you only have one hand free and can’t pinch, there is a handy zoom-out button.

The home screen shows the Bing image of the day, complete with clickable hotspots to discover related trivia. 

Want more images? Try image search with endless scrolling results (also works for any search result). Then easily flick through image previews and click through to the host site.

There are a bunch of other features we’d love to tell you about, like movies, news and flight status.  But rather than drone on about them, just download the app and give it a spin. 

Justin Jed – Bing for mobile

Other Posts of Interest:

Bing: Connecting People, Places and Things

 Bing™ for mobile availability continues to grow

 Mobile Madness Round 2… Then and Now

Bing for mobile now live at m.bing.com

Use Your Voice to Text, Call and Search with Bing

Mobile Madness is Upon Us

The Mossberg Solution looks at Clicker.com, which helps viewers find their favorite shows online faster.

YouTube late Tuesday unveiled a long-in-development project meant to drive music videos. VEVO provides a larger, streamlined approach to artists' videos than YouTube and organizes their content by more logical categories, such as by the genre or by channels. It still supports common features like embedding but stresses music-friendly features like synchronized text lyrics and direct links to songs when they're available in iTunes....

Google Labs launched an interesting service in partnership with New York Times and Washington Post: Living Stories. The goal is to change the way you interact with news online and to read news stories as they unfold."Each living story resides at a permanent URL, making it easier to follow the latest updates to the stories that interest you, as well as review deeper background materials that are relevant for a story's context. Living Stories automatically track your interaction with the story, ma

Google has partnered with the New York Times and the Washington Post news organizations to create an experimental type of news page they call “living story”. In a blog post announcing this move, Google says that Living Stories try a non-traditional approach of presenting news: “They unify coverage on a single, dynamic page with a consistent URL. They organize information by developments in the story. They call your attention to changes in the story since you last viewed it so you can eas

Music video site Vevo has launched in the US and Canada, geoblocked in other countries. The AP writes that Vevo launches “as both a Web site and an embedded video player that will replace Universal, Sony and EMI videos now available on Google Inc.’s video site YouTube” with Google’s YouTube receiving “a small percentage of advertising revenue for providing Vevo with technology”. If you’re from the US or Canada we’d love to see some screenshots from you! Below is what a proxy