All the latest UK technology news, reviews and analysis
|
|
|
12 Nov 2009
Microsoft has announced a deal that will bring the Wolfram Alpha search tool to its Bing search service.
The company said that the deal will allow users to take advantage of the Wolfram Alpha algorithms and search tools within Bing queries.
The initial partnership, which is expected to bear fruit within a few days, will focus on providing nutritional information to users as well as certain mathematical tools. When users search for foods or recipes, the engine will display a small tab containing nutritional information.
Along with increasing traffic to the Bing service, Microsoft hopes that the features will allow users to better monitor their diet and exercise plans.
"This notion of creating and presenting computational knowledge in search results is one of the more exciting things going on in search (and beyond) today, and the team at Bing is incredibly fired up to bring some of this amazing work to our customers," programme managers Tracey Yao and Pedro Silva said in a blog posting.
The Wolfram Alpha partnership is one of several campaigns Microsoft has embarked on to drum up traffic for Bing. Other recent additions include visual search results and the ability to search within a user's Hotmail archives.
Latest stories from Web
Related articles
Related jobs
Poll
Are you confident that the UK's IT infrastructure is secure from attack in the wake of the Flame malware revelations?
V3 examines the key strengths and weaknesses of Samsung's latest iPhone killer
Connect with V3.co.uk
Social networking is almost ubiquitous. This white paper examines the benefits and risks and it looks at the different ways companies can reconcile them
The importance of understanding your infrastructure
Application Security SME, Penetration Tester / Ethical...
Java Developer Thomas Cook Online is the business unit...
Contract Systems Administrator, Southampton My...
PHP Web Developer required to join my market-leading...
Keep up to date with the latest products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies. IThound.com brings you over 2,000 white papers, case studies and analyst reports.
Do you agree?
Formidable Opponent
Bing is surely making Google nervous. Their photo search utility is certainly neat. Using both Bing and Google gives you a good variety of sites to compare. I don't think one will topple the other. Microsoft would have to do something quite revolutionary to enter the ranks of becoming a gerund (You can google something, but can you bing it yet?).
Posted by: enderandpeter 12 Nov 2009
Microsearch Alpha or Alpha Bingosearch
M$ really needs their help to drum up some business. Wolfram Alpha really needs M$ to drum up some business. Maybe they both really need Google to stop working. Maybe they could offer a few dollars for using their service to bring in users. Then at least others would know what Bingosearch really offers, nothing that competes with Google.
Posted by: Rex Alfie Lee 12 Nov 2009