Bing Launches Video Results In Windows 8 App

Bing announced today that it has released an update to its Windows 8 app that includes touch-friendly video results, in addition to web and image results. The update is available in 12 countries.

The video results, of course, feature infinite scroll.

“Scrolling through one giant page of video results is a nice start, but we don’t stop there,” says Bing senior product manager Sara Borthwick. “Who wants to wait for a video to load before finding out if tit’s worth watching? We don’t that’s why this update includes our exclusive Smart Motion Thumbnails that let you watch a preview of results without having to wait for the video to load. Simply tap a video result thumbnail with a play icon in the lower right hand corner, or mouse over the thumbnail image, to start the video preview. Tap again or mouse away to stop the preview video. Click on the text description to the right to go to the full video.”

“If the search results aren’t exactly what you were looking for, Bing has made finding related searches even easier,” adds Borthwick.k “Just place two fingers on the search results screen and pinch to get related search queries. This feature is called Semantic Zoom and is also available for the web and image results.”

Frankly, I find it a little odd that this wasn’t included with the app to begin with. Windows 8 is, after all, Microsoft’s creation. Better late than never, I suppose. There was always Bing.com anyway.

Super Bowl Facebook Buzz Dominated by Beyonce, Blackout

Sunday’s Super Bowl was interesting for a couple of reasons apart from the actual game, and the Facebook data proves that. According to Facebook’s data analysts, two of the top three most-talked-about moments of Super Bowl XLVII had nothing to do with football.

But the top trend did. The top moment from last night’s spectacle, in terms of Facebook chatter, occurred when the Ravens won the game. The second most-talked-about moment was Beyonce’s halftime show, followed by the Superdome Blackout in third place.

Facebook says that mentions of Beyonce across the network started to rise around 8:00 pm ET, and by the time it was all over mentions of her name had increased over 49,000%. As soon as her former Destiny’s Child bandmates joined Beyonce on stage, mentions of “Michelle” and “Kelly” spiked 10,000%.

One of the most interesting spikes in popularity was the phrase “killed it,” which saw a 40,000% spike after Beyonce finished her performance. I guess we know how she was received by fans on Facebook.

And when the lights went out, mentions of the word “lights” skyrocketed (as you may expect) – 66,000%, to be exact.

As far as specific players go, Ray Lewis won the night with the most chatter. Following Lewis was Ravens QB Joe Flacco, who won MVP honors. Coming in third was 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick.

Here’s your complete top ten moment on Facebook from the big game last night:

1. Ravens win the Super Bowl
2. Beyonce’s halftime performance
3. Blackout in the Superdome
4. Jacoby Jones’ 108-yard kickoff return for a Ravens touchdown (and Justin Tucker’s field goal kick)
5. Joe Flacco’s 56-yard pass to Jacoby Jones for a Ravens touchdown (and Justin Tucker’s field goal kick)
6. Joe Flacco’s 13-yard pass to Anquan Boldin for a Ravens touchdown (and Justin Tucker’s field goal kick)
7. Frank Gore’s six-yard run for a 49ers touchdown (and David Akers’ field goal kick)
8. Destiny’s Child surprise appearance with Beyonce during the half time show
9. Ray Lewis’ retirement
10. David Akers’ field goal kick from 27-yard line

Google launches global science fair

SAN FRANCISCO: Google launched a global science fair by inviting students around the world to present ideas that could change the world and perhaps become the next Ada Lovelace. 

Lovelace was a teenager in the early 1800s when she became fascinated with math and went on to write what is considered to be the first computer program. 

"Many great scientists developed their curiosity for science at an early age and went on to make groundbreaking discoveries that changed the way we live," Sam Peter of Google's science fair team said in a blog post. 

Examples included Louis Braille inventing an alphabet for the blind at age 16 and telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell experimenting with sound while he was still in his teens. 

Partners in the third annual Google Science Fair include European research organization CERN and toy maker LEGO Group. 

The Internet powerhouse known for investing in unusual projects such as self-driving cars and glasses linked to the Web said that students ages 13 to 18 can vie for top prize in the science contest. 

Challenges tackled by prior fair winners included early diagnosis of breast cancer, cataloguing the ecosystem found in water, and enabling people with hearing loss to better listen to music, according to Peter. 

Science fair prizes include a $50,000 scholarship and a trip to the Galapagos with National Geographic Expeditions. 

The deadline for submissions is April 30 and top finalists will be brought to Google's campus in Mountain View, California, where winners will be announced during an event on September 23. 

More details were available online at googlesciencefair.com.

Rounds Brings Engaging Video Chat to Facebook

Rounds (formerly 6rounds.com) has announced the launch of an interactive video chat platform for Facebook Platform. Users have already been using Rounds to video chat in real time while engaging in various social activities and real-time games. Offering it for Facebook obviously opens up the door for a great deal more use, given that Facebook has half a billion users.

"We created Rounds to give online social networking and social gaming more of a real-time, fun, and collaborative feeling," Dany Fishel, co-founder and CEO of Rounds tells WebProNews. "Rounds bridges the gap between real life and the online world by helping people feel close to one another no matter how far apart they are geographically."

Rounds was founded in 2008 and has raised $2 million in venture capital funding from Rhodium and Startup Factory investment groups. "Social networking and social gaming continue to grow in popularity, but with Rounds, social networking just got a lot more social," Guy Weltsch, Managing Director at Rhodium tells us. "We were attracted to Rounds because its technology is unlike anything on the market today. Rounds will help take social networking to the next level."



As Rounds prepared its Facebook launch, Facebook launched its own Facebook Live video channel. "Seems like Facebook is trying to dial up the engagement level through video and Rounds definitely ties into this trend," a company rep says.

With the Rounds Facebook app, users can participate in video chats with no download requirements. The company suggests the following use cases: take snapshots of yourself and share them on Facebook, jointly browse Facebook content with friends, watch YouTube videos together, play real-time multi-user social games, Collaborate on virtual whiteboards, or co-browse with Google Maps. source: webpronews.com/topnews/

Yahoo Aims to Mainstream Hadoop with New Security and Workflow Offerings

Yahoo made a significant announcement at its Hadoop Summit today. The company says it's made significant enhancements to the open source software, accelerating the potential for enterprise-wide adoption by mainstream businesses.

"Hadoop is where science meets big data – it's the technical underpinning that powers our innovative consumer and advertiser products on the world's most-advanced digital canvas," says Blake Irving, Yahoo Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer. "Yahoo!’s cloud and Hadoop make it possible for Yahoo! to rapidly personalize our content and advertising, and deliver highly relevant experiences, while maintaining the trust of our 600 million users."

Yahoo says Hadoop plays a key role in its home page, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, and other properties.

"Businesses across all sectors are looking for ways to leverage the vast quantities of data they are accumulating, and Apache Hadoop is an efficient solution for processing data at scale," says Melanie Posey, research director at IDC Research. "Now organizations of various sizes can leverage Yahoo!'s Hadoop investment and deployments to run it on their own systems and build out their own Hadoop deployments without starting from scratch on internal science experiments."

Specifically, Yahoo announced the beta release of Hadoop with Security and Oozie, the company's workflow engine for Hadoop. This means enterprises will benefit from better controls for managing business-sensitive data, according to the company.