Microsoft made a number of announcements at its BUILD developer conference this week, including the official reveal of the Cortana digital assistant in Windows Phone 8.1. Cortana uses the Bing engine to access the information it needs to help its users, but that's not the only new thing Microsoft announced this week based on its search service.
In a post on the Bing blog, Microsoft said that it is currently running a beta of the Bing Knowledge Widget, a JavaScript-based program made to be embedded inside websites. Visitors to pages can just move a cursor over selected parts of a sign to activate the widget which shows relevant information about the subject on the right hand side, using the Bing Snapshot database.
Another blog post talks about app linking. Like the name suggest,it allows Windows 8 and Windows Phone app creators to link them to Bing search results. Microsoft says:
For example, in the case of Amazon they have linked their app so when a Bing searcher looks up “Titanfall Xbox Bundle” they would see the Amazon app alongside the search results for the website. With one click, the user can then deep-link to information on “Titanfall Xbox Bundle” in the app or, if they haven’t installed the app on their device, they can install it.
Finally, Microsoft not only offers more information on how Cortana will learn what information their user needs via Bing, but also reveals a new feature on Bing.com that will let people tag and track subjects they care about, such as sports teams, news, stock prices and more. These personalized items will show up on the front page of Bing.com and will be customized for each user. This new feature will be added in the coming days.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft
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