It's about time I started blogging again, it's been a while. A couple of days ago I realized that Google has made a new offering with it's search services. Google Personalized Search. And almost instantly I was thinking, this looks familiar and you know why. I blogged about something very similar before a while back when I posted about Windows Live Search Macros.

It looks like Google are offering a very similar service to WLSM. I have not tried Google's yet but will be checking it out soon.

I guess Google likes some of Microsoft's ideas! They even have an ugly looking service similar to Windows Live, have you ever seen the link that says personalized page on Google?

This just keeps getting better and better all the time! I've now found yet another reason to use Live Search. The Image Search features are really great. Viewing full size images was a very nice idea but here are some even better ones IMO. The scratch pad and the related people panes, VERY NICE. The scratch pad allows you to drag images to the side of the page and build a collection of images from the search results you get and the Related people pane also shows when you search for a person in images, if you seach for bill gates for example, you see Paul Allen, Warren Buffet ...etc in the related people list.

Here's a screenshot showing the scratch pad.

So Windows Live Search is now Live, and also has new features. I just noticed that there is now an "Only from New Zealand" checkbox that lets you localize the search. It's good this has now been made avaialbe and surely enough I had to try it out.

So I decided to seach for myself and it looks like Windows Live Search knows best!

Searching for "Dan" using WLS with only NZ selected returns my blog as the no1 result (yay!) and if I search for "Daniel" on WLS search I also end up on the first page but I show on 5th. Not bad!

On Google searching for "Dan" finds my blog on the top of page three when NZ is selected.

Will try to play with the algorithm customization thing I blogged about earlier and see what that does to the results (not that I want to!) it's good to be on page one.

The only annoying thing that I see after the release is renaming Windows Live TM Search to Live Search. I think it was better when all Windows Live pages had the Windows word in them rather than some having it and some not.

Just read this on Computer World. I have been wondering about this a few years ago thinking that it would be nice if it does happen.

I guess we will be seeing more softies in Christchurch on regular basis now. Nice... 

As you can probably tell by now, I've been paying a lot of attention to Windows Live generally lately as well as Windows Live Search specifically. This has actually got me thinking about Google again and back again to my Innovation and Creativity post.

As you would have read in that post, I mentioned that I don't like it when companies go out of what they do best to invest in offerings done by other companies and that I think there should always be new ideas ...etc but acknowledged that new entrants help evolve existing products but here's the question. Do they?

Now as you know I've been having a close look at Windows Live Search recently and I like it a lot, it even looks like it might be out of beta soon. The logo doesn't have the word beta any more, there's no news of that anywhere though.

So I went back to take a close look at Google Search, now we all know that this is their big thing, after all they are the best search engine in the world. Well they might be, but is it going to stay so? I wouldn't be so sure about that, and here's why. Unless there's a secret Google search revamp project going somewhere. I thing Google has a problem, they are investing in areas which IMO are out of their main services - email,spreadsheets,IM's ..etc and are forgetting their core service?

I personally am starting to slowly go away from Google. Windows Live Search is great for me and I use a lot of the other Windows Live offerings anyway, so it's easier for me that way. So unless Google are doing something to renew their search engine, they could lose me!

One of the other cool features that Windows Live Search has that I've been playing with lately is search macros, which allow you to create a sub search engine - the best way to explain this in my words - so basically enabling you to have a context or so for a search. Some of the things you can do is specify a list of sites for the search to work on and even use advanced search queries. Once a macro is defined you can then use this macro as the search engine and use that to search for what you want.

I guess the benefit of this is getting more specific results returned to what you are looking for.

One example I've tried is creating a macro to search auction and e-commerce shops sites such as TradeMe,Zillion and Ferrit ..etc

To create a macro, search for anything and then when the search bar appears above the results go here:

and then follow through.

I'm still not happy that the pageless search has been removed but displaying 50 results on the page kind of minimizes the need for me to click a page number anyway, so not so bad.

While looking through the advanced options of Windows Live Search after my previous post I noticed this

Apparently you can customize how the search works, cool idea. Will have a play with this shortly.

Two of the features that made me like Windows Live Search a lot was the ability to navigate results without having to click on a page number to go to a next page and the ability to customise the depth of the results. It looks like these two features are now gone and I dont see why.

Eventhough I can setup Windows Live Search to show upto 50 search results on one page, I still hate that whole pages idea and LOVED the feature in Windows Live Search that overcame that problem.

Those two features were the reason I decided to use Windows Live Search more than I used Google, but now whats the difference between both?

They are both good enough for my search result purposes and I favoured Windows Live Search for the two features that are now gone.

Feedback posted to Live.com. It would be nice if the page can be customized to use either option I think.

I'm finally back up and running again on Vista with only a few more software to install. I've gone through a PC rebuild recently mainly because I needed a new Hard Disk.

It feels good to be back on Vista. I'm on build 5472 which makes me one build behind now. It's hard to catch up with the downloads! and I decided I'll wait for RC1 before my next upgrade.

Here are some of my thoughts.

- Installation time felt a little long still. From start to finish took a little over an hour.
- The non AERO UI in this build is much more appealing than the older greyish one, however, it feels like it doest match well with the black task bar.
- The first time load was quite slow but otherwise it loads at reasonable speed.
- The 'Hour Glass' is gone! Say hello to 'The Ring' (thats what I'll be calling it!)
- Everything seems to be running just fine so far. However, I wasnt happy I had to restart the system after a couple of software installs.

It's good to be back running AERO, after over a month away from VISTA and mainly using Win 2k3, it feels good to see some cool graphics

More thoughts later.