bing

Soon LG and Samsung won't be the only TV makers to offer the ability to control your TV by talking to it.

Yesterday Nuance Communications announced that its Dragon TV voice control platform would be shipping with some Panasonic TVs in Europe this year.

Plans for a US introduction were not announced, and a Panasonic representative I spoke to didn't have any additional details. I don't expect the company to incorporate voice control into its already-announced 2012 TVs, via some kind add-on USB microphone for example, but it is a possibility. I'd be surprised if 2013 … Read more

Facebook users who want to control what information pops up when a friend searches for them at Bing have a new option.

Rolled out yesterday, Bing's Linked Pages let Facebook users manage which of their Web pages, profiles, and blogs show up on Microsoft's search engine. So whether you want to promote yourself or keep your other Web pages off the grid from your friends, Linked Pages will give you a certain level of control.

The feature requires a Facebook account, but you can use it to manage any Web pages about yourself, not just your Facebook profile. … Read more

Microsoft has already cooked up a special Bing page tempting users to check out its upcoming Windows 8 "Consumer Preview."

The first clue is the video of a betta fish swimming from one edge of the screen to the other. Thought of as Microsoft's mascot for beta versions of new operating systems, that particular fish swam its way onto the desktop of the beta for Windows 7 in 2009.

But other more obvious clues are the hot spots and links scattered across the screen that refer specifically to Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Since the page is still … Read more

Microsoft is pouncing on the recent bad press about Google in an attempt to win over more customers.

Frank Shaw, corporate VP for Microsoft's Corporate Communications group, boasted in a blog today that Microsoft offers people a safer choice than Google, which has been buffeted by worries over its new privacy policies. The company also plans a bigger ad campaign to exploit what it sees as Google's recent missteps.

Google's woes follow its move to alter its privacy policies to share user information across different products and services. The company has even been forced to justify its decision to Congress, … Read more

Verizon goes all in for 4G, the first Android watch is pleasing on the eyes, and Google TV adds cloud gaming from OnLive.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded, from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

Microsoft has finally won second place among search engines.

Carving out 15.1 percent of the market in December, Bing narrowly outstripped the 14.5 percent share eked out by Yahoo, according to data released yesterday by market researcher ComScore.

Of course, Google still led the search engine market with a whopping 65 percent share.

But December was the first month in which Microsoft outshone its competitor and partner Yahoo, according to a Citi analyst cited by TechCrunch. As always, ComScore's numbers include only explicit core searches that people manually enter on a Web page.

Under the hood, Microsoft … Read more

Google is taking heat from travel companies that say the search engine is giving preferential treatment to its own travel search tools over those of competitors.

The Wall Street Journal today points to a practice begun by the search giant earlier this month, which provides results for travel-related searches--such as domestic flights--from right within Google, as opposed to pointing searchers towards places like Priceline, Expedia, and Orbitz.

The move poses a serious threat, the Journal says, for these competing travel sites, which can depend on Google for 10 percent to 20 percent of their incoming traffic. With the newer technique … Read more

Next year is one of those years that can't come soon enough for Microsoft.

It's not that 2011 was a particularly difficult year. The company posted record revenue for the fiscal year that ended June 30. And its 2-year-old PC operating system, Windows 7, hit 500 million copies sold, further embedding it as the most widely used operating system in the world. But 2011 had few big product launches at the company, Office 365 and Internet Explorer 9 notwithstanding.

Next year will be altogether different. Microsoft is prepping the big kahuna of its product arsenal, Windows 8. The … Read more

From Twitter to big-time venture capitalist in just two months.

Mike Abbott, who recently stepped down as vice president of engineering for Twitter, has joined the prestigious Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a general partner.

Abbott will focus on Kleiner's digital practice, helping startups involved in social, mobile, and the cloud. A key part of his role will also be to help portfolio companies hire talent, which in the Valley these days is a constant and expensive struggle.

While at Twitter, Abbott amped up the engineering team from 80 to more than 350 people in less than a … Read more