Bing, Fast Flip and Espresso

I am amazed at the constantly changing landscape of information retrieval and access. In one article today there were 2 different new tools available from search engines. As I was checking them out, I found out about something that affects public domain books. Its hard to keep up.

The two new things I tried out were Bing's visual search and Google's Fast Flip.

Putting aside the "ick factor" of visual searching (do we even need to read anymore?) I thought I would give the visual search a try. It clearly is not to be used for academic research (not that there's anything wrong with that). If you just want fluffy pop culture, there you go. Again, pushing aside my bias, I clicked on "dog breeds." A lovely box came up saying I need to install some Microsoft software to run this program. At this point, I had it and clicked "cancel." I really don't want to download more software I will never use. So, if you want, go ahead and try it and let me know what you think.

Next I tried Google's Fast Flip. At least I didn't have to download any new software. It is in beta, so I don't know if it will be around forever. I kind of like it. It allows you to scan the articles they post from 39 publications. You can browse by publication, topic, most viewed, magazine section (e.g., Health, Travel, World News), etc.

As I scanned the "Recent" section, I ran across an article in the Christian Science Monitor about a partnership between Google and On Demand Books to instantly publish public domain books using the Espresso Book Machine. I've read about these book machines being used in large universities to print out textbooks, but now these books are beginning to find their way into the mainstream.

I find a strange juxtaposition in this. You can access these books for free online through Google Books. You can get most of these books from a bunch of different web sources. We've been told that ebooks are catching on, Kindle is becoming huge and print books will some day be no more. And yet, Google makes a relationship with a company that prints books. I don't know how it will all end up, but I don't think the print book will go down without a fight.

Bing

Sigh. When will it end? Yet another search engine has been launched, this time by none other than Microsoft. Which means there is a large number of people who won't use it for just that reason. Be that as it may, Microsoft now brings us....Bing. Yes, like the cherry. Or the last name of Chandler from Friends (which was the first thing I thought of when I heard the name of this thing--or Miss Chanadaler Bong for those who remember this episode one of the best episodes ever). But I digress.

Bing was developed to give Google a run for its money. Good luck with that. Anyway, I did my normal Henry VIII search and it looks pretty much like the way Google returns its results. There aren't as many advertisements along the right side like Google has, so that is a bonus. One thing I do like is when you put your mouse over the line that comes up on the right side of any of the results, it will pop up a window that shows the first few lines of the webpage. It also has available on that thumbnail links to other websites referenced on that page. This thumbnail gives you the ability to preview the site without having to go to it. That's pretty handy.

It also has your search history on the left side of the screen. This is cool because it will help you remember what you may have already tried when searching for something, or what worked and you want to go back. On the left side it also gives you related searches that might be helpful.

Across the top are images, videos, shopping, and maps (like Google maps). One thing that Bing does that Google doesn't in connection with the videos is that when you put your cursor over a thumbnail video, it will start playing the video. The images are more interactive with the cursor as well.

In the end, it does pretty much the same thing as Google, only with a few more interactive bells and whistles.

One interesting thing: When I searched Henry VIII on Google, I got 5,770,000 results. When I searched the same thing on Google, I got 10,200,000 results. Five million more hits? Why? And to what end? I'm not going to look through 5 million, let alone 10 million.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft and Bing can make a dent in Google's stronghold.