Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Jorge Galindo — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:36:54 -0000

@MelC thanks!

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

William H. Gates — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:37:57 -0000

They should consider having a selection of pictures to choose from like Ask search does.

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Miriam — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:46:55 -0000

Murali - I tried, and you're not going to believe it: it seems that Microsoft Israel's sites are hosted by Israel's phone company, Bezek, so if I click on any of the options, like the country or options, I get an error page saying (in Hebrew): "The page you are trying to reach is not working due to a problem with the Netex system [whatever that is - M].We are doing our best to fix this problem, blah blah."

Microsoft isn't big enough to have their own servers? How can they be "Live" if they can't keep their websites up?!

Not only that, when I click on English to get the page to appear in English and not Hebrew, nothing happens. And they wonder why something like 90% of Israelis use Google....

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Murali — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:39:30 -0000

click on the country name on top right corner and change it to US. you can see the new home page.

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

MelC — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:42:47 -0000

You should be able to see the pic if you change your location setting to the US - top right hand corner of the Live.com homepage next to "options"

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Jorge Galindo — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:29:43 -0000

All the Spanish blogger community is waiting for that to be activated here, just to have a really strong reason to explain propperly our monopolistic Google's market share (over 96%, highest in the world).

No, seriously. One of the main reasons for the impressive Google's market share here in Spain is its light design: when we started to use internet massively, around 2000-2001, we had a fuckin' 56k connection as standard, and Google was the only search engine that didn't turn browsing a desperating activity.

Today we still have one of the slowest DSL connections in the Eastern world (yep, we are an Eastern world country, somehow), and one of the lowest patience in Europe, so we still love Google`s speed. And we`ll hate (or simply ignore) this new skin feature in Live Search.

(Why any blog conversation always ends with Google? By the way, sorry for my 4th Grade English).

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Miriam — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:23:02 -0000

Thanks for your sympathy Michael. It's not so bad that we can't see Microsoft's search page, even though I'm curious, but Hulu...sigh.

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Eric Rice — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:42:44 -0000

Google changes their logo from time to time for certain things, so let's not get too 'omg how zany' on this. It's damn pretty and they have a huge amount of resources to provide awesome images.

I like that idea of it starting to display things I'd like. Show me lots of big city skylines and 3D imagery... is subconciously cool. The hotspots are just toys and I don't think they'd have a big impact on usability. Also a great place to start bringing in wikipedia-like featured content maybe?

That said, the search results are crap compared to Google and let's not even bring up Cuil, heh.

One thing though, a bunch of us are curious and looking at Microsoft a bit more than usual lately and at least attempting to see what's up. So the spark of hope, is there, albeit a very, very faint one.

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Michael Daehn — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:44:27 -0000

Poor kid :(

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Michael Daehn — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:43:07 -0000

"A" for effort, but I have a hard time seeing how mass market mainstream novices are going to know what the heck is going on. Random boxes popping up and new windows opening don't usually do well in usability tests.

I get the impression sites are overcompensating for a lack of valuable innovation when they overdo the animated graphics. This is spinning 3d globes 2008.

The Live search for images is great since you can keep scrolling and save pictures to a clipboard. But it's not the most user friendly either.

I'm not a big Microsoft fan, but I tend to use the best product regardless of brand.

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Aaron — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:29:52 -0000

Ask.com has had skins on their home page for a while. They seem to show up occasionally, or you can manually select them by going to skins, right below the search bar. No hover images, but thats fairly minor. what are the chances i'm searching for african safaris?

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Chris — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:58:34 -0000

Its limited to the US market only at the moment. That's not a problem though, just use http://www.live.com/?mkt=en-us

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

adam — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:11:56 -0000

Nope, it doesn't look like that at all, did you photoshop it?

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Alyssa — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:43:01 -0000

I think that the idea is pretty cool, but the execution is definitely lacking. I don't know if it has to be much more dynamic (some more hot spots would be good), but as far as I saw the image shown with the post is the only image they have. It would have a lot more value if when I refreshed I saw something different.

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Miriam — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:34:14 -0000

Oh, that must be why I can't see it. I'm in Israel. Yet another online service that non-americans can't access. Oh well.

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Adam Ostrow — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:01:39 -0000

where are you connecting from? It's US-only for the moment, apparently.

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Miriam — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:59:08 -0000

I can't see any pretty pictures there. When I go to live.com, all I see is a boring page with a search box.

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Adam Ostrow — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:54:05 -0000

ooh having it update in real-time would be cool, hopefully they read your comments :-)

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

dain Kennison — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:47:37 -0000

The idea is "neat" but I think it lacks execution. When I saw this page I immediately expected a lot more. I was let down when my query took me to a normal-looking search page. With all the technology we have, and all the developers on the MS payroll, is this really the best they could come up with?

Make the image change in real time based on my query and add hotspots to it dynamically. Animate it. DO SOMETHING. Make it more than just "neat".

Re: Live Search New Homepage Design Is So Bizarre That It Might Just Work

Marko — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:13:31 -0000

Not cuil at all.

(had to go there)

Their image results are nicely organized, and the video results each play on rollover. Not too shabby, something I haven't said about an MS product in ... ever.