From now on, if you try to reach this page: http://babelfish.yahoo.com/, you will be automatically redirected to the bing translator page (http://www.microsofttranslator.com/). While still in beta, this translator works ok. Still, even if I am an enthousiatic and regular Bing user, I prefer G translate, only because of the instant translation. It spares me a click and I like it.
Just watch the below video, that shows the power of that application. It’s truly amazing and makes me think how often I could use this during my city trips, holidays, or so many other circumstances. This application apparently will ship in the Lumia 900 when it reaches the European markets.
In the Bing Maps Blog yesterday, Microsoft announced the launch of Nokia powered traffic results, which are rolling out today in 24 countries on Bing Maps. These countries are
· Austria
· Belgium
· Brazil
· Canada
· Finland
· France
· Germany
· Greece
· India
· Indonesia
· Ireland
· Italy
· Luxembourg
· Mexico
· Netherlands
· Poland
· Portugal
· Russia
· Saudi Arabia
· South Africa
· Spain
· Sweden
· Switzerland
· UAE
· United Kingdom
· US
Just check today’s traffic in Europe’s capital city this morning:
Brussels Traffic
After the new and really nice social stuff, the guys in the Bing team seem to be very busy. They seem to be getting the message of what’s missing in Bing, and to be doing their best to bring it to users. I mean having live traffic on Bing maps is a very cool feature, I am expecting to have it on my Windows Phone soon enough! And now I can stop using Google maps to have that information. Why do you ask? Well, because with Bing maps, I get the hazards, which I don’t with Google. And because I prefer Bing to Google anyway… 
The Windows team explains in their new post that Windows 8 boots are so fast, that they’re actually too fast to interrupt, and that there’s not enough time to display a “Press F2 for setup” message that would be readable long enough, ok, but also that the system would not have enough time to detect key presses!! Well, that’s really fast…
Here’s how fast Windows 8 can boot (this video still amazes me):
As the team explains:
In previous versions of Windows (as far back as Windows 95), you could press F8 at the beginning of boot to access an advanced boot options menu. This is where you’d find useful options such as Safe Mode and “Disable driver signing.”
They go on with the problem:
However, the hardware and software improvements in Windows 8 have collapsed the slice of time that remains for Windows to read and respond to the F8 keystroke. We have SSD-based UEFI systems where the “F8 window” is always less than 200 milliseconds. No matter how fast your fingers are, there is no way to reliably catch a 200 millisecond event.
Here’s the full scope of the problem as identified by the Windows team:
And here’s the solutions they came up with:
Windows 8 boot menu options
And I like it a lot!
Check the screenshot below:
The new social bing
Doing a search on “resturants” immediately produced results where I can see in a quick look a few restaurants that some of my friends have liked. How handy is that?! Of course, social search would not be useful in every situation. But I think that social search can have an impact on social networks themselves. Indeed, knowing that a what you like might be displayed to your friends when they search, can have an influence on whether or not you will click “Like” in the future. Until now, clicking like was just, at least in a confused way, a short term event in most people’s minds. Now, with new ways to use this data, that situation is changing and people might get a deeper knowledge of the consequence of clicking like on a social network.
Anyway, back to Bing, hovering over one my friends’ lines shows up a small window with more restaurants they’ve liked:
Hovering over social part
Clicking on the restaurant’s name triggers a search in Bing. I regret that for a specific restaurant, I could not see which of my friends actually liked it. Instead, the social column stayed desperately empty.
Anyway, while this social column does pretty basic stuff, like showing you your friends who liked what you are looking for, well, the thing is that having this kind of information displayed this nicely and clearly, can have incredible value for some searches.
It makes finding and asking your friends’ opinions just so easy, just a click away. And this was really missing in search engines I think, at least it totally makes sense to have this information there. I feel that soon enough, searching with having that information on the screen will become a habit that most users will not want to move back from. It will become as necessary as a smartphone.
So this is a nice and exciting move from Bing! I have been repeatedly saying on this blog that I knew the Bing team was up to something big. Well, here’s something big! I think that this improvement will change search forever. I think people will enjoy this and will want to use Bing for some searches only to get this quick look on their friends’ opinions. So this is big because Bing just got – finally – its big differentiator! And if people come to Bing for a few searches at first, they’ll get use to it, probably start to like it a bit better than before, and will start using it more and more regularly. Until they use Bing all the time.
I think Google will have to respond to this and I am ready to bet they will soon enough, since Bing is doing a move that really threatens them right now. The best part is that this move probably is only the first step of the wave of innovations that are coming from Bing. And I am still expecting more changes to happen with the release of Windows (Phone) 8!
As you probably already know, CRM 2011 UR9 is now available in Beta (more information). This update includes cross-browser support. The release guide already included a browser support matrix, see below.
Supported browser versions
But if we go into more details about what “browser support” exactly means, we find that in front of CRM 2011, all supported browsers are not equal.
Cross browser support detailed matrix
So here is what we get from the UR9: browser support will not only depend on browser version, but also on the platform used, and on the CRM functionality.
Internet Explorer will have to be used for the following features:
Notice about solutions and customizations, that for Internet Explorer:
Now for other browsers:
Best practices for cross browser support: