Advocate's Studio

Here is an innovative real-time information filter for business-oriented Twitter-holics: ExecTweets. ExecTweets is a beta site offering the tweets of the movers and shakers, the captains of industry and the power play-makers across sectors. Backed by Microsoft (who else?), the site has this to say about itself:

ExecTweets is a resource to help you find and follow the top business executives on Twitter. Created by Federated Media, in partnership with Microsoft, ExecTweets is a platform that aggregates the tweets of top business execs and empowers the community to surface the most insightful, business-related tweets.

ExecTweets is also available as a  free iPhone application, offering organization by topic, popularity and industry. I was going to copy the list of participating executives, but the list truly is too long! Hit the jump to their site above to see the “wealth” of information. Instead, check out this list of hot topics on ExecTweets as of the time of publishing this post:

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As promised last week, Microsoft has trotted out its new search engine. It’s called Bing and you can find it here. PCMag has a great review and slideshow of the search engine here. True to its semantic genetics (including the Powerset search engine that Microsoft previously purchased and incorporated), Microsoft is calling Bing a “decision engine” rather than a search engine. Bing offers suggestions for related concepts and information, with answers to inquiries, rather than just links to other pages, offered right on the search results page. You can get even more information from suggested links when you hover over a result entry. You can get “deep” links, such as search boxes for FedEx or UPS tracking right on a Bing results page. Bing’s pages are not spare, but can include images of current events, landscapes or other “bling” (sorry – couldn’t resist ).

Rather than review each element of Bing and how it handles matters such as travel, shopping, images and video and news, I recommend you go try it yourself. Check out the PC Mag article linked above for a comprehensive list of features and the page slide show. While many web commenters are echoing the famous refrain “it’s not a Google killer”, Bing looks to be a promising hike along the evolutionary path away from the popular-by-number-of-links search option.

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Not to be outdown by the likes of Google and Wolfram Alpha, Microsoft appears to be unveiling its new search engine next week at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things D tech conference in Carlsbad, California, according to Resource Shelf.

The engine’s code name is Kumo, but it is really a rebranding of Microsoft Live Search conjoined with its new semantic ally, Powerset. And guess what? It is going to help us find more relevant results! The screenshots over at All Things Digital / Boomtown show a clean, spare look. PC World reports a three-column search results page with useful tools like related searches, a “single-session search history for quick backtracking”, and other related categories tied to your search inquiry. PC World uses an example of searching for a recording artist with results that include song lyrics, tickets, albums and the artist’s biography. Or searching for a product with results including images, reviews and product manuals.

Will Kumo stand or fall amidst the search stars? Not sure, but I can say this: more semantic competitors add up to us edging closer to a truly semantic on-line world! Kudos to Kumo!!!!

Fascinating post by Louis Gray, over louisgray.com, one of my favorite blogs about all things Web and social media-related. Apparently, Microsoft hosted a get-together Tuesday evening about semantic search engine Powerset and its incorporation into Microsoft’s Live Search. One of the topics discussed was how search engine reviewers perform their “craft” and how ineffective their process really is in gleaning an understanding of this complex endeavor. And the effect of this inefficient review might be to sink the better option.

This result seems particularly true as search engines become more complex in design and practice. To truly understand how effective a search engine might be, one needs to spend some time with the engine, put it through its paces and delve deep into the results. “Teaching” search engines to “think” like humans takes time, and recognizing when the engine “gets it right” should also take time.

As I have said before here, when search engine’s compete to grab out attention, we the researchers stand to win the grand prize. In Louis Gray’s words, for Microsoft, “building the better mousetrap” will only be half the battle in the war of the ‘engines. Can’t wait to see the “results.”

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