More To Bing Than Just A Search Engine

Windows Live is now Bing.com, a very useful search engine if you know how to use it.

Search Bing Images at http://www.bing.com/images and you can refine your results by picture size, shape, aspect ratio, colour and style. So if, for example, you want a square picture of a dog, you can search specifically for that. It will also give you links to any related searches. What I like best about this is that it lets you scroll through all the images without the need to click onto different pages.

Go to http://www.bing.com/xrank to find out who's hot news and who everyone is talking about right now. This section shows the most talked about celebrities on the web and the most searched for. (Useful if you write articles about celebrities.) You can view images of them and read short biographies, and watch videos. For example, the top three talked about celebrities for the day this article was written are Michael Jackson, Oasis and U2, while the top movers in terms of searches are Wesley Snipes and John Wayne.

Video can be found by using http://www.bing.com/video and it can be sorted by date, relevance and length. Sort videos last less than 5 minutes and long ones over 20 minutes. You can also search your results by source. So, if you have already search 'youtube', you can eliminate those results. Bing allows you to search MSN, MTV, BBC, and dailymotion as well as 'youtube'.

Bing instant answers can also give you answers to mathematical questions like calculations, conversions and even equations. It can also tell you about the weather, or tell you the distance between two places. Just type your question into search box.

There is also a 'safesearch' feature and filters which stop inappropriate sites coming up in results. It is easy to turn on by clicking on 'Extras' and choosing 'preferences.

You can add Bing to your browser if you haven't got enough sitting up there already.