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Tags: Free WiFi / Airports / Airport News / WiFi / Technology / Airport WiFi / In-Flight WiFi / Bing / Google / → All Tags
Google And Microsoft Battling To See Who Can Provide More Free Holiday WiFi
When the tech world's two major borgs square off for travelers' time and attention, that can only be good news for the rest of us. Google had already arranged for free WiFi on Virgin America flights and—as of this morning—they're also giving it away at more than 40 airports across the country. But that's small time compared to the deal Microsoft just struck to promote their search engine Bing.
Bing has worked out an arrangement with WiFi provider JiWire which will allow users to get free Internet in exchange for doing just one search on Bing. This is a campaign that will reach all of JiWire's hotspots which, more or less, amounts to just about everywhere:
Tags: Travel Booking Sites / Kayak / Bing / → All Tags
Did Bing Totally Copy Off Of Kayak's Homework?
Microsoft's new Bing search engine hasn't even been available to the public for a month yet and already it's under fire for potentially copying the site's design from good old Kayak. We have to admit that we thought it looked a little too familiar, and the people at Wired recently tore it apart and aired claims on both sides:
There’s no question Bing feels like Kayak. When Microsoft showed us the search engine under embargo, this reporter’s first comment upon seeing the travel page demo’d was 'This looks like Kayak.'
Kayak noticed too. 'We have contacted them through official channels about concerns about the similarities between Bing and Kayak,' Kayak’s CMO told Wired.com 'From the look and feel of their travel product, they seem to agree with our approach to the market.'
That’s careful language for 'Microsoft copied our stuff wholesale.'
Tags: Breaking News / China Travel / Twitter / Flickr / YouTube / Bing / → All Tags
China Pulls the Plug On Social Media; No More Tweeting From the Great Wall
Our Chinese visa expired last month, and after today's news we doubt we'll be renewing it any time soon. Seeking to quiet social media networks before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, China has blocked the population from accessing a surprising range of the internet's most popular communication tools. Currently affected by the ban are: Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Wordpress, Blogger, Bing (which hasn't officially even launched), Hotmail and MSN's Live.com.
While there's no word yet on if this ban will continue after Thursday, what is apparent is that the country is only drawing more attention to itself at the same time as it cripples the communication channels of its modern businesses. Taking this one step further, we see serious repercussions for tourism to China because of it.
Tags: Travel Booking Sites / Technology / Bing / Farecast / → All Tags
Farecast's New Bing Engine Wants To Make Your Travel Decisions For You
While we've tinkered around with predicting airline ticket prices using MSN's Farecast engine, we always seem to pick the routes that cannot be computed or have no cool historical graphs over which to drool. So we're hoping that the upcoming launch of Bing Travel, a combination of Farecast and MSN Travel's content works out much better in terms of doing what is says it will.
And what it says it's going to do is go beyond simply returning results from search queries to help you make a decision. They're even calling it a "decision engine," a kind of Wolfram-Alpha of travel results, able to tell you if what you just paid for your air ticket or hotel room is the cheapest at the moment.
In addition, MSN wants you to keep returning to Bing Travel for more than just price updates and wanderlust indulgences; the site will be supplemented by an online community with blogs from the likes of Peter Greenberg and Pauline Frommer. Watch for it to go live by June 3, but until then check out their official Twitter, the @Fareologist.
Related Stories:
· Announcing Bing Travel [Farecast/MSN]
· Travel Websites Coverage [Jaunted]
[Image: Bing.com]
