Bing overtakes Yahoo as new No.2 with 16% market share,new Bing-a-thon Campaign

According to recent statistics offered by StatCounter, Bing appears to have skyrocketed in market share to an incredible 16% in the US on Thursday June 4th, 2009.
This was just the day after Bing was officially released in the US along with a new TV commercial so it seems that it's really the hype that got Bing to this level. However, this kind of hype is exactly what Microsoft wants to achieve with Bing, and especially if they can keep this up with more advertising and other ways of generating hype.

It was on Thursday, the announcement of Bing that their old search engine Live Search also saw a spike up to 12%, but that was most likely because everyone wanted to try out Bing but didn't know where to go, so they wound up heading to the old Live Search.

If you head to GlobalStats Statcounter, you can see the latest daily statistics for the top search engines. The spike may be related to their ad campaign, but it may also have come as a result of the hype surrounding Bing. However, be careful when assessing that the "race is over", which I've noticed on multiple blogs/news sites. It is far from over yet, and if Microsoft cannot keep their customers coming back every time to Bing, then they'll just go to their old habits. We don't know yet whether Bing will true have the ability to intrigue customers and make them love it.

What we do know, is that Microsoft will not let Bing go down without a fight. Like I mentioned, they planned to spend $100 million with the release of Bing on advertising in various places. Today, we found out that they've decided to step up the advertising game with another set of ads to be released on Hulu and some TV shows.
A report by the New York Times says that their new ads will be in a "Bing-a-thon" format, and will be similar to a TV show, starring aJson Sudeikis, Olivia Munn and Fred Willard.

"The key will be whether we deliver a product and connect with people emotionally in the advertising. You have to do something a little bit more surprising. It's a very tall marketing challenge and a very tall product challenge."

That was a statement from Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president for the online services division of Microsoft. These ads will be integrated with TV shows and Hulu's shows, rather than standalone commercials like before.

It will surely be a challenge for Microsoft, but the innovations on Bing have paved the way for broader features on search engines and will eventually lead to a better overall experience for the users, as competitors and especially the market leader Google will have to respond to Bing's features.
Has Microsoft really shown that Bing will become the next No.2 Search Engine? That's something we can't say for sure yet, but perhaps we'll get a better picture of the situation after about 2 weeks, when the initial hype starts wearing off, and the tech crowd stops "trying it out" and decide whether they really like Bing or not.

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Activision asserts Brutal Legend rights, sues Double Fine

EA showcased and heavily promoted their new game Brutal Legends at E3 this year. This year's E3 has been arguably one of the best E3 displays for a long time, especially with all sorts of new innovations such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 no controller Project Natal motion sensing technology.

EA and Activision both had an impressive line up of games they would be offering, but Activion Blizzard has decided to take some decisive action against the EA and Double Fine deal of publishing Brutal Legends, a game that was had a $15 million investment from Activision Blizzard.

How did this happen? Well you may already know this, but Vivendi Games merged with Activision awhile ago but apparently Activision did not include Brutal Legend in their list of projects they would inherit. Double Fine thought this meant Activision no longer wanted Brutal Games, so they went looking for another developer, namely EA. Activision has previously threatened to sue if Double Fine didn't stop the publishing of Brutal Legends, and now that threat has become a reality.

The lawsuit claims that Double Fine missed a key deadline last year, and asked for another $7 million infusion. Then it claims that Activision was not compensated for their initial $15 million investment when Double Fine went to EA. Activision says that they never gave up their rights to the game, and was still in negotiations with Double Fine, but failed to reach an agreement.
In response, Double Fine President Tim Schafer stated,

"Hey, if Activision liked it, then they should have put a ring on it," "Oh great, now Beyonce is going to sue me too."

Later, EA also commented by comparing Activision to

"a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy."

Should Activision be able to keep their "rights"? It only seems natural that if Activision doesn't include the game in the projects they would inherit, that they mean to give up the game. On the other hand, if they really were negotiating, then perhaps Double Fine is at fault. However, I doubt this is the case, and it's more likely that Activision didn't care much about it until Double Fine was forced to find another publisher.

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Bing Debuts, TV commercial puts Bing as Savior of economy

Though Bing was announced last week and a preview of Microsoft's new search engine came out on Monday at www.bing.com, today was the actual official release of Bing, with all of its features.
Today, the preview note below the icon Bing was removed, and now the Bing service is a full fledged search engine.

These 2 weeks, Microsoft has stirred up quite a bit of interest, in a lot of areas such as the ZuneHD, the announced release of Windows 7, the release of Silverlight 3, and also their revolutionary Xbox 360 no controller, full body motion detecting system called Project Natal, and of course the Bing search engine. However, they plan to stir up even more interest by spending $80-100 million on advertising for their new search engine, or rather, their "decision engine".

"While everyone was searching, there was bailing. While everyone was lost in the links, there was collapsing. We don't need queries and keywords if they bring back questions and confusion. From this moment on, search overload is officially over."

That was an excerpt from the new television commercial they rolled out today, along with the official release of their Bing decision engine. Their ad wants to portray Bing as the solution to the search engine market's woes. What do you think of this idea? This kind of a model has been known to have some effects on people by putting in parallel with some horrible situation of which their product or idea is a cure. But one thing's for sure, Microsoft will need more than that in order to gain serious market share on Google. However, the amount of interest shown and their dedication of large sums of money to the ad campaigns may just put a dent in that market share held by Yahoo and Google.

Check out the commercial:



The battle will be very interesting, but at least there's good competition going on.

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Xbox 360 Groundbreaking no controller motion sensor revealed at E3

Project Natal is the latest new addition to the hoard of revelations by Microsoft at this year's E3 conference.
The Xbox 360 had a lot of news with its new features coming to Xbox Live and all its new games, but this Project Natal may rock the gaming world by defining an all new way of playing.
When the Wii came out, a huge selling point was the motion sensing controller. Now Microsoft's Xbox 360 will have motion sensing capability too. What's the difference? It doesn't need a controller.

Yes, that's right, this brand new revolutionary technology is extremely precise, powerful, and designed to function without you ever touching the controller. All you need to do is move in front of the camera, and it'll detect it. Not only that, did I mention it was extremely precise? More so than the Wiimote in fact, by far.

The technology involved here is absolutely tremendous. This camera can detect sound and 3D movement. That means it has the ability to determine depth of your movements, so you can move in a real "360 degrees" and it'll actually pick up your motion being 360 degrees and not just 180 degrees on a flat plane.
Microsoft demoed this technology at the E3 conference by showing off the game Richochet, and Paint Party. The motions used in playing these was simple but highly responsive when the camera picked it up.

With this new technology, there is no longer a need to even pick up a remote or controller. The camera picks up all your movement, so there's no need to press any buttons of hold anything. This is a one of a kind, Xbox 360 no controller motion sensing technology that may very well even go beyond the Xbox in terms of use and application. With many of Microsoft's offerings in other areas, gesture controls have become increasingly prevalent.

Then came a another demo, one that was absolutely captivating. A virtual character called "Milo", created by Lionhead Studios and Fable designer Peter Molyneux, interacted live with the user in conversation and movements. From the screen, it looked towards the user, and engaged in live conversation as if it were a human being. It also accepted hand-drawn messages scanned into the game in real time and processed.
This is the kind of AI technology that we could only dream of before.


Famed Steven Spielberg also went upstage to rave about the future of gaming and the impact this technology would have. He said "people are too intimidated to pick up game controllers." He's probably right too, and that's why this technology is definitely revolutionary and will define a whole new way of playing games.

Project Natal has most assuredly racked up some points for the Xbox 360, and Microsoft even says that it will be functional for all current-gen and past versions Xbox 360s and all future generations.

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Librarian files a grand $70 lawsuit against Facebook

A Florida librarian and activist has filed a civil lawsuit against Facebook which claims that FB failed to protect its users effectively, resulting in his $70.50 damages.
Theodore Karantsalis, a week ago, filed this $70.50 lawsuit against Facebook claiming that a virus managed to compromise his account on Facebook, changed his name to John Doe, then started sending out spam.
According to Karantsalis, Facebook deleted his friends and other related objects from his account during their restoral process. He then claims that he was forced to manually re-add such data back onto his account, and suffered from a monetary loss of approximately 30 cents per friend he had, which was about 250.

Facebook, in a statement said,

"We're very interested to hear how he came up with the figure of $70.50. He's not going to get it but we promise to refund all the money he paid to use Facebook. Seriously, we're glad to know how important Facebook is to Mr. Karantsalis but his account was not disabled, is currently active, and he is using it, so I'm not sure what the problem is."

Karantsalis says that he did not fall for anying phishing scams and is takes steps to maintain his security. Apparently, he is a privacy advocate that has taken extra caution when dealing with safety, including the use of anonymous proxies. He thinks that if such an issue could happen to him, then it can very easily be happening to many other users, especially because he takes steps that many other users tend not to take in order to protect his security.

This guy also happens to have a background in suing organiztions and companies. He has previously sued the city of Miami Springs for not providing sufficient access to roads, he sued Sprint and Wells Fargo due to a privacy exposure, and he also sued the U.S. Defense Department and Air Force.

This case however, doesn't seem to me that it has any real merit here. First off, the $70.50 is ridiculous in how he managed to come up with such a random figure (each friend is worth 30 cents?? And why exactly is that?). Then there's the issue of Facebook's TOS which states that they're not liable for such problems that they did not cause.
It is an interesting case, but I highly doubt it will pass and I think it'll be striked down as soon as it hits any judge.

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Windows 7 Coming This Holiday Season

Ever since the hate on Vista erupted, Microsoft has been working on their new OS called Windows 7. It was only but a few months ago that I posted some reviews on this incredibly revolutionary product. Now, we know that Windows 7 is in fact coming out this same year that the beta was released.

Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte said in an interview, "We are tracking well to a Windows 7 holiday". While suspicions existed previously that Windows 7 would be aiming for a 2009 Holiday Season launch, Microsoft had refused to confirm it, especially learning from the delays and issues with Vista.

Even since the beta version came out, bloggers and testers were screaming for Windows 7 to be released immediately as is.
With this confirmation, Veghte said that Microsoft has seen a lot of cooperation with its partners as well as good feedback from testers. It seems that they now believe Windows 7 to be almost ready for a launch, at least enough to commit to a launch in time for this holiday season.

It seems that everybody already wants to get their hands on Windows 7 now. Luckily they won't have to wait much longer.

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Top 7 Reasons OnLive Won't Kill Xbox 360, Wii

A start-up recently announced a system called OnLive monday night that aims to distribute games digitally, then host these games on their own servers so that all players could use their system without having game consoles, but merely an broadband internet connection. However, there are too many reasons for OnLive's failure that we simply cannot ignore, no matter what their demonstrations seem to show. The following is an excerpt from CNET news that summarizes the OnLive announcement.

Quote from CNET:

OnLive, which was started by WebTV founder Steve Perlman and former Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey, is aiming to launch a system--seven years in the works--that will digitally distribute first-run, AAA games from publishers like Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Atari, and others, all at the same time as those titles are released into retail channels. The system is designed to allow players to stream on-demand games at the highest quality onto any Intel-based Mac or PC running XP or Vista, regardless of how powerful the computer.

While they may be dreaming of a great future where all gamers can play with consoles, without expensive systems, and without having to upgrade all the time, this dream cannot and will not ascend into reality for a number of reasons. At least not at the current time. Even though they've been working on it for 7 whole years, and their demonstration looks good, there's just no way this will become viable at least for several years. And until them, they won't be making much money. Here are 7 reasons why OnLive will not be able to kill the likes of Xbox 360, Wii, and the PS3.

7. Casual Gamers can't afford the Internet usage
First off, I'll say that it won't be hardcore gamers that will like this, and why that's so will be explained in the next point.
Now, with the current state of the USA, most people will not be able to afford the cost of using this system to stream video. They claim that a 1.5 Mbps connection will be enough for the lower quality version (which they claim to not really be lower quality), yet we also know that the bandwidth required for playing high quality games with detailed graphics is massive, so even if customers could get the streaming available at those speeds, their bandwidth can't support it. The case is different for hardcore gamers that can afford higher speeds and bandwidth, but it's unlikely that hardcore gamers will want to use this system.

6. Hardcore Gamers want their own equipment
Most serious gamers would much rather have their own equipment, games, and basically stuff that's in front of them, and not located somewhere else and isn't really theirs. They probably don't want to use some system that lets them play games, but the games aren't really fully theirs because they don't have a hard copy of it in front of them. Plus, they want their own hardware to operate their games, without having to rely on somebody else. Just take a look at the criticism of Spore to understand how gamers don't want to deal with "digital" copies of games and limited installs, etc. While OnLive might offer unlimited gaming, there's no transferability, no chance of reselling, and technically they wouldn't own their games because they'd have no hard copy of the game. What will happen if the company goes bust? They won't be able to play the games anymore then.

5. Resolution Difference
They talk about Standard Definition with a speed of 1.5 Mbps, but standard definition is actually quite low when compared to PC resolutions. Most games can support HD resolutions and higher when played on PC, and gamers have gotten used to that. If 1.5 Mbps can only support 760p, then not many people will be happy about that kind of quality. Then, if gamers can spare the money for higher speeds, then they probably won't mind just buying games and getting the hardware outright. The current median download speed is about 2.3 Mbps for the US, not including dialup users. That means that to get HD, people need to download at more than 2 times faster than the national median speed.

4. Lag time on fast reaction games
With games that move with lightning fast action and require reactions of the same calibre, then there must be significant lag time for customers that are farther away from the servers. For normal FPS (First Person Shooter) games played on consoles or PC, the time difference between the button signals reaching the server and the video sent out to the systems receiving must be extremely small lest the players notice the difference. If we assume that a game can play at 60 FPS, which isn't high by most measures, then we can say that if it takes a quarter of a second for the button signals to be received by the server, and another quarter second for video to be streamed back, thats a half a second delay. At a rate of 60 FPS, with a half second delay, what you get is 30 FPS, but every 30 seconds it lags. That means that there's a delay every second, and the video will move every half second. That is really enormous lag.

3. No Internet, no Game
While most people use the Internet nowadays, the reason many people don't play exclusively on the computer and/or online games is because they just don't want to play online. Consoles are evolving to allow multiplayer gaming, but many people still play console because they may not have an internet connection, or just because they don't want to connect to the Internet. That means that many people who prefer playing solo games will not want to connect to the Internet all the time, and use up their bandwidth when they can just use their own console to play offline.

2. Multiplayer unsuitable
While it may seem easy for multiplayer to thrive with this kind of system, it really is irrational. Even if we assume that only 10,000 instances of the same game are being played at any one time, they still have hundreds of other games out there that are also being run. The biggest problem with this is that most multiplayer games have a central server to process data, with each computer creating the packets and receiving them, but here, we have one server that is doing all the work. Yes, everything is on one server, so the data doesn't have much distance to travel, but just think of 10,000 games being processed, plus the data exchanged on all of these games in various "rooms" in each game, then being transfered to the people using OnLive's system. That would require absolutely tremendous amount of processing power and ability to host perhaps more than 1,000 rooms for different players. And that's just for one game. This sounds quite ridiculous to be able to have such advanced technology at such a time. There's no way they could possibly support that kind of processing power without having extraordinary new technology, which they can't possibly have stored for 7 years without anyone knowing about it.

Now, finally, the top reason this just won't work. Perhaps this is truly the one that will say it all, all I'll just sum this one up in a sentence, then explain what I mean.

1. Run 1000+ instances of Crysis on the same computer?

I don't think much needs to be said here, but even the greatest of super-computers probably won't be able to support 1000+ instances of Crysis while having multiplayer. Even if they could, what kind of money would they need to support this vast data transfer and processing power? If you could fill up several buildings with pure servers hosting 1000+ instances of Crysis, that's still ridiculous. Plus, if you take into account the video streaming and button jamming signals, as well as how they could host this along with other games + multiplayer, and what you have is a technology that we are FAR from achieving! This is just plainly unfeasible and it won't work. Not until we get fibre-optic internet connections and/or DOCSIS 3.0 and/or the type of connection in the likes of the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (LCG). Obviously, we are many years away from this Internet technology, and possibly even farther away from having the processing power necessary to run everything mentioned in one server. The only way I see this could become possible, is if they use a vast cloud computing network with networking capacities of the LCG, and then combine it all together into one massive super computer that spans all of the USA.

Unless they have that kind of technology backing them up, OnLive is unlikely to kill Xbox 360, the Wii, or even PS3.

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