Remember Bing, the search engine Microsoft launched to topple Google? Ok, it didn’t work that way but it still has lots of great features and deserves a second look.

42 Bing Search Engine Tips and Tricks

Here are 25 tips and tricks to get the most from Bing, the decision-making engine from Microsoft.

1. Add your site on Bing

To add your site on Bing, click on http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

This link sends you to the submit URL page of Bing where you can provide the URL of your blog or website.

2. Area Codes

Area Codes displays the area code or ZIP code. Type area code followed by code. For example, area code 515.

3. Advanced Search Keywords

Using this to find the search results you only what you see. Don’t include a space after the colon in these keywords.

4. Celebrity Tracking

Bing xRank tracks celebrities and ranks them. xRank shows News results, Image results, Video results , biography details, and digg links.

5. Cheap flight tickets

To get the cheap flight deals, enter:

• Deals on specific routes: flights from London to New York
• Deals from a specific city: flights from San Francisco
• Deals to a specific city: flights to Rome

6. Contains parameter refines searches

In Bing, the parameter ‘contains’ tells the search engine to only look for websites that contain that search term. For example

iPhone contains:download

Beatles contains:mp3

Annual Report contains:doc

7. Combine or Excluding words

Use the OR and NOT keywords to combine or exclude words. For example, if you use iphone NOT Green, you will get results for iphone but not for green iphones.

8. Currency Converter

Type ‘convert 100 dollars to euros’ for currency conversion from dollars to euros.

9. Check if your website is listed in Bing.com

To verify that your website is in the index, type url:yoursite.com.

For example, url:ivanwalsh.com returns a single result.

Tip: Check that your robot.txt file allows Bing.com to index your website.

10. Check the number of webpages indexed in Bing.com

Type site:yoursite.com  to see how many pages have been actually indexed in bing.com. For example, site:ivanwalsh.com.

11. DHL and UPS Packages

Track DHL, UPS and other packages by tracking number. For example, type DHL 123456789.

12. Display wallpaper images

You can display Bing’ wallpaper images in its Image search results. Search for a term in Bing image search and then click on the Size category in the left sidebar. This automatically display various size filters including an option for wallpaper. This display only images that have the exact size of the computer screen resolution.

13. Exact phrase

To search for exact phrases, enter the search words within quotation marks. For example, “natural asthma remedy”.

14. Export Session History to SkyDrive

Session History records the sites you visited within a single browser session for 48 hours. You can also save searches to your Windows Live SkyDrive folders using My Search Folders view.

Tip: You can also send your search queries by email or publish them on your Facebook account via Bing.

• Click the Manage link under the previous search queries at the bottom of the Explore Pane.
• In the History Management page, browse through past searches and identify the query you’re looking for
• Click on the link to pick up where you left off.
• To save a search, click Save and Share on the right of the screen.
• Check the boxes next to the results you want to save and click Save.
• Create a new folder to save the search or sign in with Windows Live ID and save the results to your Windows Live SkyDrive.

15. Find Organizations

To find results about golf but that primarily pertain to the organization, type golf prefer:organization.

16. Find Blogs

To see blogs from the BBC websites, type “blogging” (site:bbc.co.uk) .

17. Find RSS feeds

To find RSS feeds about iphone, type feed:iphone.

18. Find RSS feeds of particular website

To find webpages on the New York Times website that contain RSS feeds, typesite:www.nytimes.com hasfeed:iphone. ‘hasfeed:’

Finds webpages that contain an RSS feed on a website for the terms you search for.

19. Firefox Plugin for Bing

Bing provides great general search results, relevance, a big index and speed — all of the hallmarks of a good search engine.

However, because sorting through search results can often be time consuming, Bing organizes popular results in a different way, designed to help you get the answers you’re looking for without having to guess the right way to phrase a search term. https://addons.mozilla.org

20. Search Bing.com if outside USA

If you are outside the US, you may not be getting all Bing’s features and only it’s localized version. To view all the options in Bing, which may not be available in your region, go to http://www.bing.com/worldwide.aspx and set English – US as your default region.

21. Hotels

Use the following as examples:

• New York hotels
• hotels in Egypt
• Dublin hotels

22. Hulu Videos

Search for any TV show episode on Bing Videos. Hover the mouse over the video thumbnail to watch a short clip.

• Click on Videos from the Bing Home Page.
• Click on TV Shows from the Explore Pane.
• Search for ‘house’ from the top search box.
• In the Explore Pane, click on ‘Source’ and choose from where you want to see your results.
• To see a full-length, high-quality video, choose Hulu.

23. Job Salary

For example – Type LosAnglelesmarketing manager salary, developer pay in Bangalore, IT Manager pay.

24. Images by Format and Type

Bing can tell the difference between a photograph and an illustration. Use the similar images link when you hover over an image to see similar related images.

25. IP Address lookup

Use Bing to lookup any IP address

IP:[IP Address]

Change [IP Address] with a valid IP, such as the IP address you want to track.

26. Mathematical Equations

Enter the equation that you want to solve, for example:

7+5/2-(45*2)
sqrt 9
sin 11 * 66
13% of 994

27. Preview Search Results

Hover over any search result and a small bar with a bubble appears. If you hover over the bubble, it gives you a preview of the landing page on the site.

28. RSS Feeds from search results

You can save every search on Bing into an RSS feed. This means you can pull the search results into your blog or website and increase your web traffic.

Access the feeds from the browser’s toolbars (or by pointing a feed reader to the search result’s URL) and then add

&format=rss

to the results.

A search for Snagit v 9 would be available as an RSS feed from the following URL

http://www.bing.com/search?q=Snagit+9&go=&qb=1&format=rss

29. Remove Bing background image

To remove the background image in Bing’s search engine, enter the following url:

http://www.bing.com/?rb=0

This displays the homepage without the background image, making the download faster.

31. Search sites with filetype
To search for websites that contain links to Microsoft Windows Media Audio (.wma) files, type music contains:wma.

32. Search for files with a particular filetype.

To find document created in PDF format, type the name of the document, eg report, followed by filetype:pdf.

33. Snow reports

Type ‘snow report’ followed by a city. For example, type snow report Cairo.

34. Stock Quotes

In the search box, type the ticker symbol followed by stock or quote. For example to find the financial quotes of Microsoft, type MSFT stock or MSFT quote.

35. Statistical Information

In the Bing.com search box, type what you want to find. For example, population of England, or iphones in USA.

36. Track Flight Status

To see the status of your flight:

flight status for United – enter the flight number and press Get Status .

flight status – Bing prompts you to enter the flight name and number on the first result itself.

Enter the flight name and number and click Get Status.

37. MP3 Music Files

Type U2 contains:mp3 will show pages that are about U2 and link to MP3 files.

38. Web pages for a specific language

To find results in a particular language, select the language code after the language: keyword. For example, if you are searching for laptops then type “laptops” language:en.

39. Web pages from a specific country

Enter the country or region code directly after the loc: keyword. Use a logical OR to include one more language. For example, to see web pages about wine from the France or Italy , type wine (loc:FR OR loc:IT). Image results are shown at the bottom of the page.

40. Used Cars

VIN provides protection against buying a used car with hidden problems.

Type the VIN number and hit Search.

41. Unit Conversion

In the Bing search box, type the quantity, followed by in, followed by the conversion.

For example, type 15 kilometers in miles or 33 degrees F in Celsius.

The operator ‘in’ convert units of measurements for distance, weight, time, volume, and temperature.

42. Change the Wallpaper
Click the icon in the lower right corner to see yesterday’s Bing wallpaper.

Got any favorite features in Bing? Please add them below.

What’s the one thing you enjoyed most in Avatar? For my Project Management friend it was the video logging. Did you notice that the team kept their reports not in Microsoft Word (i.e. on paper) but as video logs.

When trying it out, the protagonist in the movie couldn’t get a handle on it. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to it’, was the reply.  Well, it worked for them, could it work for you? Here are some of the reasons you might want to consider using video for project management activities.

What Avatar Can Teach You About Project Management

Advantages of video logging

• Capture Emotions— Capture human elements missing from electronic reports, such as emotions or subtle suggestions made in the video logs that would not otherwise be noticed.
• Speed — Videos are faster to make. You just open your mouth and talk! Consider the effort in using Microsoft Word, applying styles, finding the right template, typing, fixing grammar horrors etc.
• Convenience — you can record videos almost anywhere. The recording device is smaller and easier to transport.
• Faster — For me, using a flip camera is now as easy as a telephone – just start talking! Consider this against the effort in using Microsoft Word, applying styles, finding the right template, typing in, fixing grammar horrors etc.

Disadvantages of video logging

• Structure — you need to train people how to deliver video reports, otherwise they’ll ramble defeating the purpose.
• Search — while you can search Word files on the network by keyword (i.e. metadata), how would you do this with video? Is it possible to tag/keyword videos as we do with Word docs and online reports?
• Edits — while videos are faster to make, if they need to be edited, then you lose the upside.
• Convenience — while you can record videos almost anywhere, this can be abused as employees file in reports pretending to be onsite with the client.
• Compliance – the number of laptops stolen each year (holding confidential data) continues to rise. This raises issues with unauthorized user video apps to submit, retrieve, share confidential data. Of course, this also applies to PC, iPhones etc.
• Storage — maybe this is no longer as problem as the cost of server space continues to fall and compression technologies improve. But would terabytes of data get expensive in the end? Not sure.

Should Project Manager use video for status reports?

It’s early days yet but I can see the attraction of using video to file in reports.  The difficulty may be in getting people to make the change. As it often the case, the problem is not in the processes or technological benefits, but the human issues that underpin these decisions.

What do you think?

Could it work? What do you think is the main barrier to using video more frequently in the work place?

One of the hidden features in Windows Live Writer is the ability to automatically ping (send a signal) to popular blog aggregators every time you publish something to your blog.  This feature actively pings the servers of the blog aggregators you specify and to indicate when there is new material.

To do this in Writer, click on Ping Servers in the Options dialog (Tools, Options, Ping Servers).

Add the names of the servers you want to ping, for example, some popular search engines are:

• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://ping.feedburner.com
• http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080
• http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
• http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

You can also use a pinging service like Ping-o-Matic (this service will automatically ping a number of popular sites for you). Just put the following in the list of ping servers:

• http://rpc.pingomatic.com

What other servers should I add to this list?

Another feature in the new version of Yahoo Mail is the Connection manager. Connections are contacts with privileged benefits. They’re the people you spend the most online time with and the people you are most about sharing information with.

Connections can view more information on each other’s profiles than is visible to the general public and can easily share information through updates.

Adding Connections

To be connected, the other person needs a profile on Yahoo!

You can invite anyone to connect with you, even those without a profile.

Those without a profile can create one and connect with you in a few easy steps.

1. Open the invite window from your profile or contacts page.

2. Click the Invite link near the bottom of the Connections area.

3. Click the Invite to Connect link (which only shows if the person’s details include an email address or a Messenger ID).

4. The Invite Others to Connect window opens.

If you’re inviting a specific person from your contact list, the To: box includes that person’s email address or Messenger ID.

5. Type one or more email addresses in the To: box separating each address with a comma, then

6. Click the SEND INVITE button.

(If the person exists in your Yahoo! Contacts and has an email address, you can also type the name.)

Your invitation is sent!

When people accept it, their names appear in the Connections area of your profile and in your Connections category in Yahoo! Contacts.

You can learn more over here: http://overview.mail.yahoo.com

Posted via web from ivanwalsh’s posterous

One of the new features in Yahoo Mail is the contact manager. It’s similar to a paper or desktop address book but has a lot more features and functions such as categories and links to your connections.
Yahoo! Contacts is an online contact manager that helps you organize and communicate with the people in your life.

1. In Mail, click the Contacts link in the left pane.
2. While viewing your profile, click the Contacts tab.
3. The contacts page opens displaying all of your contacts.
4. From here, you can

a. Add contacts.
b. Connect with those closest to you.
c. Create categories so that you can organize your contacts.
d. Work with contact details.

You can learn more over here: http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/products/new

Posted via email from ivanwalsh’s posterous

Yahoo Tip – Shortcuts to move quickly through your inbox

Originally uploaded by Tech Writer Boy

How can I move to the next or previous message in a thread, that I’ve flagged,

haven’t read yet, or from a friend?

Can I do it with shortcut keys?

There are two ways to do this:

1. Click Ctrl + Shift + the up arrow on your keyboard, or

2. Click More Actions on the Yahoo! Mail toolbar, Extended Navigation and then Configure

2.1. When the Configure Extended Navigation window opens, choose if you want to use this shortcut to go from one message in a thread to the next, or skip from one to messages that have been Flagged, Unread, or from a specific person.

2.2. Click OK.

After you have set this up, you can move to the Next or Previous messages.

2.3 Use the Ctrl + Shift keys and the up or down arrows to go to the previous or next message in the sequence.

I don’t using the keyboard

Ok. Try this.

Go to the toolbar with your mouse and click More Actions, Extended

Navigation, and either Previous in Thread, Next in Thread, or Oldest Unread.
Nice time-saving tip if you use Yahoo mail.

PS – If you’ve found this article useful, please consider giving us a Digg or StumbleUpon.
Regards,

Ivan

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