Microsoft has cooked up a new version of its Bing software toolbar that the company thinks can change the minds of toolbar haters.
"I know what you're saying to yourself--'really, a tool bar?'" Bing Director Stefan Weitz joked to me in an interview last week. Weitz mused that when he had first heard the pitch about it, his first response had been "are we doing dial-up too?"
But Weitz was pleasantly surprised with the results of the new version of the software, and so were the testers who tried it during the new version's development. "People--when they saw what we built--even if they said they hated toolbars (myself being one of them) said 'hey this is actually remarkably useful.'"
That enjoyment, Weitz said, centered on taking some of the same ideas from Bing--things like bringing more tasks front and center--and making them take fewer steps to complete. One of the big targets for that goal ended up being Facebook, which users had wanted to keep an eye on while doing other things in the browser.
More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20032892-75.html
"I know what you're saying to yourself--'really, a tool bar?'" Bing Director Stefan Weitz joked to me in an interview last week. Weitz mused that when he had first heard the pitch about it, his first response had been "are we doing dial-up too?"
But Weitz was pleasantly surprised with the results of the new version of the software, and so were the testers who tried it during the new version's development. "People--when they saw what we built--even if they said they hated toolbars (myself being one of them) said 'hey this is actually remarkably useful.'"
That enjoyment, Weitz said, centered on taking some of the same ideas from Bing--things like bringing more tasks front and center--and making them take fewer steps to complete. One of the big targets for that goal ended up being Facebook, which users had wanted to keep an eye on while doing other things in the browser.
More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20032892-75.html