Week 2 Blog 2: Bing New Microsoft Search Engine Or Google

Microsoft launched new search Engine called Bing on Wednesday. “Bing suffers from some handicaps, starting with one whose initials happen to spell out: "But It's Not Google." Yet it works fairly well as a general-purpose search engine, outperforms competitors in a couple of areas and makes a major contribution to mobile Web searching.” This artsy site (mouse over the home page’s images) seems to handle most routine queries as well as other search sites. Bing is trying to compete with other search engines especially Google and yahoo. In this article the most concentration is on the differences between Bing and Google. I personally tried to search some keywords with both Google and Bing. In some cases you will get the better results, right to the point, than Google. As the article mentioned some generic terms can confuse Bing. In this case the term should be enclosed in quotes in order to get the good results. But on the other hand, Google’s result will direct to right point. One of the interesting features that Bing offers is showing the preview of each pages text when you take the mouse over the search results from the right sides. But this feature will not be shown if you float mouse over from any other side. Bing uses the “geolocation “technology, but it is not able to correctly locate it on map. Therefore Google is still the best search engine for this particular feature. Like other sites, Bing offers search for images and videos. But it still not able to as much result as Google provide. That also applies for searching News. It locates “far fewer items than Google News.” Bing, Microsoft, is trying to attract more people in the shopping search tool. It provides the feature for retailers to offer rebates to their buyers who click through this search result. Also Microsoft buys the travel search benefits from the Farecast site, in order to give much better result for airfares routing. As some other features that in other article have been mentioned, Microsoft is trying to compete with Google. Therefore, Microsoft is held talks with Yahoo! Inc. to combine both companies and present more attractive search engine to the advertisers. The traffic through Yahoo! provides more query data, helps Microsoft to refine the search engine and generate more results. Google’s point of view toward the new search engine is that it encourages the search engine companies to work harder and come up with new features for the users. Overall as my experience of using Bing.com as a search engine, I personally get better result for searching basic terms in Bing than Google. But I still prefer using Google for getting variant results through search. As Chief Executive Officer Ballmer said, “Microsoft is trying to get it right”. I think whenever Bing gets complete and provide valuable results, I will mostly use Bing.

Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/06/AR2009060600019.html

Other Sources:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aLz.RKYje3lg

Week 2 Blog 1: Using Cell Phones Coupon and RFID Tags

For the last two weeks, Diary Queen offered the customer the RFID tags, each with peel-off adhesive strips, which can be attached on back of cell phone, wallet, and watches or anything that customers always have with them. So you can not miss it or misplace it when it’s the actual time to use it. These tags give the differing purchase histories of each customer. Also the tags will serve as digital coupons as well as makeshift CRM/loyalty programs. These tags are working as trial and it has been tested only at one location in Rochester. Customers can use the tag only if they have it activated. They can activate it by texting the number which goes to the system controlled by an Indianapolis RFID vendor called Tetherball and associates the tag with the customer’s identification. Coupon recommendations get modified when purchases are made and the CRM database expands. Then customer will receive the coupon on their cell phone. These tags can be scanned by the contactless readers which communicate with both Tetherball and the chain’s payment processor. They are trying to find the way to use the texted coupons and pay by using the cell phone and having the track of first data which is the number that is associated to the RFID tag. (Self-checkout) One of a mobile marketing company in Chicago, Samplesaint Inc., has developed the technology that lets the supermarkets scan the image of the coupons from the cell phone.(the bar code is designed small so it can fit on any mobile phone’s screen. In my idea according to the article since all the supermarket’s items are going to hold the GS1 DataBar, even for poultry items (which the DataBar for this item can hold the expiration date, and gives warning if it was expired). Then the both idea, offering the RFID tag to the customer and the way to do check out and using the coupon images on the cell phones, can decrease the mistakes that impacts the profit margins of that supermarket. Also this way will save a lot of time for the customers. But this idea is only true if supermarkets provide enough scanners for the customers.

Source:
http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/payment-systems/dairy-queens-mobile-coupon-experiment-look-ma-no-phone/2/

Other sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/business/07novel.html?_r=1&ref=technology
http://www.avidian.com/crm/crm-database.aspx