What do you do when you release a new public Web search engine? You give it a short name, "Bing," and hope it becomes a verb; you invest $100m in marketing; you call it a "decision engine," rather than a search engine; and you offer Windows Mobile users a free download of catchy BingTones. Because nothing spells innovation better than a phone near you serenading its virtues.

Oh, and of course you overhaul the underlying technology, add in your recently acquired Powerset technology, mix this with social search, wrap it up in stunning imagery and offer a new API.

And what does all of this get Microsoft? Well, mostly discussions of whether or not it is better than Google (the overall verdict: slightly, in some ways) and whether or not it’s good enough to snap at the heels of Google’s market share (the general consensus: not really). To sum it up: If you were to be stranded on a desert island with a laptop, would you survive with Bing? Sure. But would you pick it if you were allowed to take only one search engine with you?

Barring the Robinson Crusoe scenario, however, the two most interesting things about Bing are rather inconspicuous. First off, there’s a new API, with comparatively free Terms of Use. It offers JSON, SOAP and XML results; you can differentiate result types ("SourceTypes" such as Web, image, video); you’re allowed to rearrange and mix the result sets and, best of all, there’s no quota on usage. If you want to build your own Web search engine, integrate one in your Web site or intranet or federate results from the Web at large with your own data, Bing has an edge over both the Google and Yahoo APIs.

The second aspect is paradoxical: Bing is more of a quiet evolution than a loud revolution, which makes it an excellent analogy to use. There are a lot of innovations, but individually, none of them are really spectacular: There are categorizations and refinements of search results and suggestions of related searches, and thumbnails in an image search are all on one endlessly scrolling page.

And the search page certainly is pretty. But it’s not enough to "wow" us all into giving up our Google habit.

But if you’re working on an enterprise search project, you can talk about Bing, and you’ll actually be able to use it as an example people recognize. With Bing, Microsoft has tried to do many of the things you’d want to do in a really ambitious enterprise search project. It’ll make for a credible contrast to the bland expectations Google has instilled in most users.

So while I don’t see Bing as the definitive choice of a castaway on a desert island, I do think it’ll show up in quite a few boardroom presentations, either as an ingredient or an example. And if you find yourself there, remember one thing: Turn off your BingTones before you go in. 

Google announced its Google Chrome Operating System, an open source OS targeted at netbooks. The system is designed to be fast, simple, and secure, with a minimal user interface and a redesigned security architecture that takes care of viruses, malware, and security updates without user input. The OS will run on x86 and ARM chips, and all Web-based applications will automatically work while new ones can be written using existing Web technologies. The OS code will be open-sourced later this year, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available in the second half of 2009.

(www.google.com)

Yahoo!, Inc. announced Search Pad beta, a Yahoo! Search feature that lets people capture, organize, save, and share information they find while researching online. Search Pad is aimed at those conducting extensive research in categories such as academics, health, jobs, travel, or shopping. It automatically recognizes when people are conducting research and allows them to capture information and Web sites found in their search results.

(www.yahoo.com)

Fios Inc., a provider of electronic discovery services, announced that it has expanded its Information Governance consulting services to help clients reduce the costs of managing electronically stored information (ESI) in response to litigation and governmental investigation. Fios’ Information Governance consulting services now include assessment and planning for records management, retention policies and legacy data reduction. The new services are designed to help clients develop more robust protocols, methodologies and tracking mechanisms for managing ESI across all phases of the discovery process.

(www.fiosinc.com)

Extensis, a division of Celartem Inc., announced the availability of Portfolio Server 9, a digital asset management and media delivery solution. This powerful release allows organizations to seamlessly deploy multi-channel marketing, control their brand, manage and process rich media, and deliver assets through the Web. Portfolio Server 9 introduces a Web Client to allow users to catalog, search, edit, batch convert, automate tasks, and manage assets from anywhere at anytime. This new Web Client and the optional NetPublish component for instantly publishing assets to the Web provide a mechanism for organizations to easily share all types of rich media assets to internal and external teams.

(www.extensis.com)

Zscaler, Inc., a provider of cloud-delivered, multi-tenant Security as a Service (SaaS), announced the immediate availability of Safe Search for Microsoft Corp.’s newly-released Decision Engine, Bing. With a Safe Search solution like Zscaler’s, companies can further enforce appropriate access to Web content--including explicit images and videos. And whereas with traditional software or hardware appliances similar deployment would have taken months, Zscaler was able to add this protection to its service within days of the availability of Bing.

(www.zscaler.com)

Acquia, Inc., an open source software company that integrates with Drupal, the Social Publishing platform that combines content and community, has announced the general availability of Acquia Search, a hosted Acquia Network service which can be installed as a module on any Drupal 6 website. Acquia Search was released into beta in March 2009 and provides support for enterprise-scale site indexing and navigation.

(www.acquia.com)

SwiftKnowledge, LLC, a provider of web-based business intelligence (BI) software, announced SwiftKnowledge for ISVs, an embedded BI technology which can be deployed either in a cloud computing environment or as an appliance. With SwiftKnowledge, independent software vendors (ISVs) can embed reporting and analytics, predictive modeling, data mining, and trend analysis capabilities into their solutions. SwiftKnowledge enables ISVs to extend to their customers secure, unified access to information located in multiple data sources--via flexible BI technology featuring executive dashboards.

(www.swiftknowledge.com)

Abla Mawudeku, chief of the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHI) of the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response in Canada, and her team use the latest technology to detect threats to human life. Those can include such risks as the H1N1 virus, also known as "swine flu."

To spot potential problems, multilingual analysts comb through content from many sources worldwide--including news aggregators like Factiva--that has been parsed from about 1,000 concepts such as "mysterious ailments" and "outbreak."

The GPHIN uses Nstein’s TME (Text Mining Engine) to assign a relevancy score to each article, according to a recent news release from Nstein, and TME also de-dupes redundant news articles. The system helps the analysts count and track instances of possible risks, then triggers responses, Nstein says. (In the case of the H1N1 virus, the World Health Organization declared a geographic pandemic, which, in turn, speeds the development of vaccines.)

"The job is a tremendously stressful one," says Mawudeku. "We are normally adding 4,000 articles a day. Right now (during the H1N1 outbreak), we are overwhelmed with more than 20,000 a day. It would be impossible to track this volume without technology."

The GPHIN monitors all man-made and natural threats to human life, not only diseases.

Omega Legal Systems, a provider of integrated financial and practice management software for midsize to large law firms, has embedded dtSearch into Omega Legalvx.

Omega says Legalvx allows users to manage time, billing, accounting and business intelligence to streamline workflow, improve cash flow, increase productivity and boost profitability. Features include streamlined reporting processes and capabilities, paperless office, enhanced collections and easy marketing. Further, Omega Legalvx can analyze influences affecting firm performance and allows the firm to learn from its most profitable practice areas.

dtSearch products can index over a terabyte of data in a single index, says the company, as well as create and instantly search an unlimited number of indexes. The software offers more than two dozen search options, including Unicode support covering hundreds of international languages. Proprietary file format support highlights hits in all popular file types. A built-in spider supports searching of local and remote, public and secure, dynamic and static Web data, with WYSIWYG hit-highlighted displays. The dtSearch Engine API supports .NET, Java, C++, SQL, etc., including native 64-bit Windows/Linux.

Inmagic has introduced Version 12, a foundational component of the Inmagic DB/Text Library Suite. The additional functionality allows special library and information professionals to focus on providing high-quality access to information and research to their organizations, says Inmagic.

DB/TextWorks is a specialized database and text retrieval system used by more than 5,000 organizations to manage special library collections and content. DB/TextWorks can efficiently organize nearly any type of digital information—including documents, images and multimedia—resulting in a centralized knowledge repository that is accessible to all constituents.

The new features of DB/TextWorks V. 12 include:

• improvements to batch modify, validation lists and import functionality;
• enhanced search capabilities for more accurate information;
• enhanced e-mail with improvements that allow for more professional e-mails that can easily target larger groups; and
• advanced imaging to support newer image formats.

 MindTree has launched its knowledge management solution for the manufacturing industry. The company says the offering is designed to help manufacturing organizations systematically collect, manage and execute the numerous ideas and suggestions of their work force to facilitate developing innovative solutions and higher productivity, as well as faster response and delivery times. MindTree highlights the follow key features of the solution:

• Knowledge Repository—providing a central location for storing and accessing data for collaborative content creation and continuous capture of information;
• Idea Management—capturing, evaluating and implementing employee ideas for faster product introductions, improved decision-making and opening new markets;
• Process Data Management—managing process documents for adherence to organizational and industrial standards and company policy;
• Communities—building relationships among people of all levels of the organization to ease knowledge sharing and increase skill development, as a means of improving methods to achieve company goals; and
• Event Management—capturing solutions for significant events that happen within the organization, which will reduce time and eliminate duplication of work when responding to similar situations in the future.