July 3rd, 2009

Microsoft has decided to improve the company’s real-time search by including the latest output of popular Twitter users in the company’s search engine, Bing, which was launched one month ago.

Microsoft said there has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created, primarily by Twitter, and the company has been watching this phenomenon with great interest and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space.

But the change will affect a limited number of Twitter-related searches. For instance, when users enter “Al Gore Twitter,” “Al Gore tweets” or “@algore” in the Bing search box, the top result will be the most recent Twitter updates from the former vice president.

Microsoft said it had picked a few thousand Twitter accounts based on their number of followers and the volume of tweets they produce. They include the actor Ashton Kutcher; Kara Swisher, a technology journalist; Danny Sullivan, a search analyst; and some news services that are popular on Twitter. Bing will update the Twitter results every 60 seconds.
The new service does not involve any special relationship between Microsoft and Twitter. Microsoft developed it using public programming interfaces or API’s that Twitter makes available to anyone.

Although all major search engines index Twitter profiles and some older tweets, Bing is the first major search engine that is integrating with Twitter in this way, and it may help Bing keep up the buzz it has generated in the past month.

America’s gadget group Palm will provide confirmation next week that it has signed an agreement with Britain’s O2 in which the British mobile phone network will become the exclusive partner for its long-awaited Palm Pre handset.

The Pre, which began to be sold in the United States last month, has been listed as the most feasible alternative and produced to the iPhone. The new version of the Apple device, iPhone 3GS, began to be sold within less than two weeks ago and a million were snapped up in the first three days.

O2 has an exclusive deal with Apple to stock the iPhone and grasping the Palm Pre is likely to further cement its position as the Birtain’s largest mobile phone network. Reports of a cooperation between Palm and O2 first appeared in May and Carphone Warehouse is also expected to stock the Pre.

It is believed that O2 has seen off fierce competition for the device from Orange, which it also beat to the iPhone at the last minute.

Analysts estimate that Palm has already sold more than 300,000 Pre devices in the US alone and the handset has a crucial role to play in reviving the company’s flagging fortunes.

After leading the handheld computer market in the 1990s with the Palm Pilot, the company’s move into the mobile phone business was scuppered by the arrival of the iPhone.

In the beginning of this year, Palm said that launching a hit device was the vital first step on the road to recovery. Palm has been fighting the battle with basically both hands tied behind its back for the past year and half. Now Palm is getting on the playing field, and it is going to be extremely competitive.

The Apple device sent many handset manufacturers back to the drawing board when it appeared two years ago. Since then a series of similar touchscreen devices have appeared, from the Nokia 5800 and Sony’s X-Series Walkman to the HTC Magic and T-Mobile’s G1. Business email device manufacturer RIM, meanwhile, has pushed hard into the consumer market with the Blackberry Storm.

The Palm Pre has received positive reviews since it launched in the US under an exclusive deal with Sprint. Its touchscreen has been compared favourably with that on the iPhone, while the Pre also has a full slide-out keyboard, making emails easier to type than on the Apple device.

Anyway, for many users the most striking difference between the iPhone and the Pre is the way in which the latter device charges, rather than being plugged in, it merely has to be placed on what Palm calls its “Touchstone” and charges through magnetic induction.