Bing Entertainment Brings Full Music Streams To Search, Plus Gam Bing’s iPhone app isn’t the only thing getting an upgrade today at Microsoft’s search engine. Bing is also starting to roll out close to 100 new features to its main search engine on the Web. The biggest change is a new major search category under Bing Entertainment, which will include better ways to search for music, movies, TV shows, and games. “We did travel, health, shopping and local last year,” explains senior VP Yusuf Mehdi. “Now the Web has unlocked all of this entertainment, but for many people they are spending too much time looking for what they want to do instead of enjoying it. Roughly 10 percent of all searches are entertainment related, according to Mehdi. One of the most noticeable changes will come in music. When you search for an artist or a song, a special Answer Box (informally known as the Bing Box) will appear at the top of the search results page. Movie searches will create an Answer Box with photo stills, a synopsis, local show times, and links to trailers.
Microsoft Cancels Its "Courier" Tablet Collaborate on Microsoft's Docs.com Within Facebook Groups Microsoft's Docs.com announced today that it now supports sharing documents within Facebook Groups. Microsoft's Fuse labs brought Docs.com to Facebook back in April, but the service hasn't necessarily taken off, in part because sharing documents with a specific group was unwieldy, as you had to add people manually. Now Docs.com promises integration into Facebook Groups, something that wasn't previously possible for third-party apps. Users can share documents within a Group for others to view or edit. Updates to Docs.com will post a story to the Group's Wall as well as to the newsfeeds of its members. And you can leave comments about documents on the Group Wall or within the document itself. You don't need to have Microsoft Office installed to use Docs.com, but the system only supports Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF file uploads. I had a few problems test-driving the integration this morning.
End Of An Era: Windows Live Messenger To Be Retired, Users Transitioned To Skype Confirming earlier reports, Microsoft officially announced today it would be retiring its Windows Live Messenger instant messaging service in favor of Skype. In a post on the Skype blog, Tony Bates, Microsoft President, Skype Division, explained that Windows Live Messenger would be retired for all users in the first quarter of 2013, with the only exception being mainland China. Windows Live Messenger will live on in China, with no announced termination date for the service there. Microsoft notes that the move to migrate users from Windows Live Messenger to Skype began with the release of Skype 6.0 for Mac and Windows a fews weeks ago. In that version, users could begin to sign into Skype using a Microsoft account. After doing so, Messenger contacts are brought over as well. Today’s blog post walks users through the switchover process, and promises some “special offers later this year” for Messenger users making the switch.