Twitter Lands in Bing

Microsoft’s strategy with its Bing search engine seems to be, in part, to be visibly different from Google. Which is certainly the case with a new feature the company launched on Tuesday: embedded tweets in results. Searches for someone’s name that include “twitter” or “tweet,” or searches for someone’s Twitter name, may produce results topped by a little module with that person’s two most recent tweets and a link to his or her Twitter feed.

Here’s a random example:

Okay, it’s not so random. Bing isn’t doing this with everybody–just a few thousand “prominent and prolific” Twitterers. (I assume I fall into the prolific bucket.) Bing’s indexing of Twitter results isn’t truly real-time, but does seem to be reasonably brisk–as you can see in the image above, it found my most recent tweet within minutes. Google finds tweets quickly, too–this tweet’s also in the Google index–but doesn’t have anything like Bing’s Twitter-centric module.

Microsoft doesn’t mention this in its blog post announcing the new feature, but the Twitter module also shows up even if you don’t reference Twitter in your search. Or at least the one for me shows up in results for “Harry McCracken.” It’s at the bottom of the first page of results.

None of this earth-shaking–or, really, a radical improvement on simply using Twitter’s own Find People feature. But I’m looking forward to the day when Google, Bing, and their rivals weave useful tweets into their results in a sophisticated way, and it’s nice to see tangible evidence that Microsoft’s starting to think about the problem. (As, of course, is Google–even if it hasn’t launched anything noticeably Twittery just yet…)

Windows 7 Family Pack? I Hope So!

ZDNet’s Ed Bott is reporting that the license for Windows 7 Home Premium appears to make provisions for a family-pack version that would permit three installations of the OS, presumably at a discounted price. (Apple sells a five-user Family Pack edition of OS X Leopard for $199.)

Folks have been asking for a Windows family license for a looooong time, so if it’s good news if such a deal is indeed in the works. It would also be consistent with Microsoft’s strategy of making Windows 7 a little eaiser on the pocketbook than Vista was.

At first, I wondered why Microsoft would hold back on announcing a family pack–especially since other versions of the OS are already available for pre-order. You’d think the company wouldn’t want anyone to order multiple copies of Windows 7, then discover that he or she qualified for a cheaper family license. But at the moment, Microsoft is offering copies of the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade for only $49.99, a discount of more than half off. If Ed’s right in his guess that a three-user Home Premium Family Pack would go for $189, the current discounted price of just under $150 for three licenses would be cheaper still, and nobody who ordered now would be out any money.

Maybe Microsoft’s holding off announcing the Family Pack until the big preorder discount ends on July 11th. Any guesses?

Maybe There is Such a Thing as Karmic Justice

The U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that security software maker Kaspersky Labs had the right to label adware from Zango as malware and help PC users identify it and remove it. The ruling ends a legal battle that had been going on since 2007–part of a campaign by Zango to get off of security software’s enemies lists through lawsuits and cease-and-desist letters.

For Zango, Kaspersky’s victory is moot–the adware company closed its doors earlier this year. For consumers, it’s good news: It’s a legal precedent that supports the notion that PC users have have the right to control what’s on their computers, and to use software that assists them in doing so.

Zango’s founders would and did argue that there was nothing mal about their wares. But even if Zango had cleaned up its act before it folded, the company was the result of the merger of 180Solutions and Hotbar, two companies whose applications wound up on a lot of PCs without their owners’ knowledge or permission earlier this decade. Including mine. Zango execs kept acknowledging past sins, blaming third parties such as rogue affiliates, and bragging about the company’s current policies, but when I tried Zango after its launch it failed to live up to its allegedly consumer-friendly policies on multiple fronts. And anti-adware crusader Ben Edelman played hectoring Jiminy Cricket to Zango’s Pinocchio for years, documenting what he said were questionable tactics even after the company had supposedly decided to be good.

In this revealing blog post, Zango CTO Ken Smith acknowledges that Zango’s bad rep helped seal the company’s fate. I hope other companies consider it a cautionary tale: Consumers (and large advertisers) have memories like elephants, and you simply can’t take actions that make their lives miserable, then proclaim that you’ve changed your ways and expect the world to welcome you as a solid citizen.

Last.fm the First Taste of Ads on Xbox Live?

Microsoft left us mostly in the dark at E3 when announcing that Last.fm, the Internet radio station, is coming to Xbox Live. Now, Joystiq has filled in some of the blanks with Xbox Live general manager Christina DeRosa.

Silver-level subscribers — i.e. the ones who don’t pay — can listen for “a trial period” of three hours per month, with occasional video advertisements, DeRosa said. Gold users will get unlimited ad-supported access. A third, commercial-free tier will cost extra.

That’s all good to know, but what’s really interesting is that Microsoft is finally opening the door to ad-supported content. In its current state, Xbox Live is transaction-based. You’ll get a free map pack here and there — and some of them have been sponsored by a third party — but most of the content on Xbox Live requires money, regardless of whether your a paying member or not. Last.fm is either an outlier or a sign of what’s to come.

With Twitter and Facebook integration coming to the service, I wonder if Microsoft has a similar ad-supported plan in mind. It seems likely, considering a recent report by MediaPost that says Microsoft will bring Silverlight to Xbox Live within a year, making it easier for advertisers to get their message onto multiple platforms. If there’s any Xbox Live feature that seems ripe for ads, it’s social networking.

Looking further ahead, could all of this signify a completely ad-supported Xbox Live, as Official Xbox Magazine suggests? I doubt it. My instinct says Microsoft wouldn’t want a free service to cannibalize the paid one, but I can’t say for sure without knowing the ratio of Gold to Silver subscribers, and the company doesn’t disclose that information. I do know that Xbox Live is rich with features, and sticking ads into all its nooks and crannies would be a Godawful mess.

Stop Partying Microsofties, Mac Sales are Back

When Apple’s sales numbers for its Mac computers began to falter in October of last year, fans of Redmond could barely contain their glee. My friend, a Microsoft evangelist, made sure he pointed out Cupertino’s struggles as much as possible. Well, it looks like Apple’s troubles are about to end.

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty says that the revised MacBook line has done much to get sales going again. It also seems cheaper Mac prices may be also doing a world of good for the manufacturer as well. She now expects 2.5 million Macs to be sold in the April-June quarter.

Year-over-year this would mean only a 1 percent decrease in sales, which in this tough economic climate is fairly respectable. She also goes on to say in May shipments were up 25 percent versus only 1 percent for the PC industry at large.

This shows that the company should be able to regain some market share it had lost as a result of weaker Mac sales. Huberty seems pretty confident that this would also result in solid performance over the next two quarters, typically Apple’s busiest. It will be interesting to watch.

(Hat tip: AppleInsider)

A Place For Your Gdgts

What have Pete Rojas (founder of Gizmodo and Engadget) and Ryan Block (founding editor of Engadget) been working on for the past eleven months? They said they were launching a consumer-electronics site called Gdgt and started a popular podcast, but were pretty secretive otherwise. But GDGT went live today–and it’s a neat social-network site where folks can gather to review gadgets, discuss them, and generally help each other get more out technology products.

Unfortunately, Gdgt opened its doors and then was crushed by the onslaught of visitors, so it’s down at the moment. Ryan says they’re working to get it back up asap. But I got a sneak peek shortly before the launch, and liked what I saw. The site’s an extension of what Gizmodo and Engadget do. But it’s also a sort of anti-Gizmodo/anti-Engadget, since those sites rarely have much to say about products other than that they’ve been announced. Gdgt’s about the whole lifecycle of the product after that announcement, and the content is contributed by the community.

Pete and Ryan pronounce the site as “G-D-G-T,” by the way; that seems less harmonious than pronouncing it as…gadget. But I probably shouldn’t talk, since about 40 percent of the world trips up on the name “Technologizer.” I’m looking forward to using the site, and am already signed up as harrymccracken.

[UPDATE: The site seems to be up and running again.]

Does iPhone 3.1 Signal MMS on AT&T Soon?

Apple’s beta of the iPhone OS 3.1 update has begun to circle the web, indicating the company is close to offering the first major update to the new OS. While none of the tweaks are overly groundbreaking, impatient iPhone users will likely be happy about one thing.

The beta appears to turn back on the MMS functionality for all iPhone users, including those on AT&T, as well as updating the “profile” for the carrier. These appear to be the first steps towards bringing the functionality to the consumer, at least on the device side.

It should be noted that installing 3.1 beta will not give you MMS. As AT&T has said, the carrier must enable it from it’s side before you will be able to picture (and video, if you have a 3GS) message to your hearts content.

Rumors had circulated on the Internets that AT&T was targeting a July timeframe for the debut of MMS. Seeing that 3.1 is already enabling the functionality, that’s surely a promising sign.

Besides MMS, most of the other tweaks are fairly minor, and seem to generally be 3GS centric. Non-destructive video editing seems to be the biggest addition (where editing will not destroy the original video), as well as bluetooth-enabled voice control.

Developer enhancements include improvements to OpenGL and Quartz, as well as an API to allow third-party apps to call up the video editor. A video picker API has also been added, according to reports.

Gmail’s Labels: Now Even More Like Folders!

Gmail’s Labels, which started out as a contrarian alternative to the folders used by every other e-mail app on the planet, are getting more and more folder-like.  Google is moving the list of Labels to sit right below your inbox (you know, where folders generally reside) and now lets you drag e-mails to a Label to organize messages (you know, the way you can with folders). You can also drag Labels onto messages, and can hide Labels.

Unlike many new Gmail features, these aren’t debuting as Gmail Labs experiments–Google is rolling them out to everybody right away. (They haven’t shown up in my Gmail accounts yet, though.)

With these changes in place, I’d say that Labels effectively are folders. Except that one e-mail can be organized with multiple Labels at a time.

Now, if Google would only let me undo Conversation threads and see my inbox in an old-fashioned unthreaded view–or at least put the newest message at the top of a conversation–it would be pretty much perfect.

iPhoneys!

Over at Cult of Mac, Leander Kahney has a post on fake Chinese iPhones, which started out terrible and are getting…well, they’re still terrible in many respects, but you might mistake one for a real iPhone at first glance. At least until you turned it on and tried to do anything with it.

These aren’t like the pseudo-iPods I took pictures of last year, all of which imitated Apple’s MP3 players with great energy without quite claiming to be iPods. Today’s fake iPhones are genuine counterfeits (is that an oxymoron?), and even come in knockoffs of the distinctive Apple box.

Of course, it’s a lot easier for a Chinese factory to crank out a piece of hardware that looks more or less like an iPhone than it is to write an operating system that behaves more or less like iPhone OS. So the iPhoneys run Linux, with a home screen that mimics the one on the iPhone. But all they manage to plagiarize from iPhone OS is some of its surface detail.

Here’s a video demo of one from MacMedic:

Tweety Bird No Longer King of the Tweets

Tweety Bird can say he think he taw a putty cat all day long, but he better be careful of how he uses Tweet as a word. Turns out, Twitter has a trademark on the word used to describe microblog entries on the social networking giant.

The trademark was unearthed after Twitter sent a note to a third-party developer saying it was “uncomfortable” with the UI the developer created in that it was too similar to the Twitter interface. Twitter also mentioned that using the word “tweet” was not kosher either, as it was one of its trademarks, TechCrunch reports.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says the company wants to encourage the flourishing ecosystem around Twitter, but that it does have to protect its “marks, logos, or look and feel.”

Trademarks are a tricky area, particularly for words that fall into common lingo. People say they’re going “rollerblading” all the time. But unless they’re using actual Roller Blades, they’re technically “inline skating.” Obviously, a company like Twitter is not going to go after everyone that uses tweet in trademark infringing manner, but those sites that do become more popular will have to watch out what Twitter lingo they adopt.

No word on how this will impact the use of words like Tweetup, Twestival, Tweep and every other “tw-” word that springs up around the Twittersphere.

5Words for Wednesday, July 1st 2009

4.7 million Firefox 3.5 downloads.

Twitter tweaks follower, following pages.

New iPhone Sykpe Skype: no notifications.

Sony iPod dock costs $1000.

Energizer’s USB clip charges batteries.

iPhone copy and paste: incredible!

The Walkman turns 30 today.

Dell netbook gets GPS navigation.

iPhone notification system isn’t perfect.

Remember the Milk gets notifications.