Bing launched

Microsoft's new search engine bing has been launched. Now I didn't like live.com (now redirects to bing) but I've had a play with bing and it's actually a decent search engine. They've got a lot of ground to make up, but Microsoft might actually have something worthwhile here. Now they've just got to convince people of it and probably pull something out of the bag in the next year or two - to give people a reason to use them over google.

Read more: (Make sure you read the acronym note at the end. LOL)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/01/searchengines-microsoft

Pixar launched UP to top of US box office

Pixar's latest film UP has gone straight to the top of the US box office, taking $68.2 million. All I've got to say is go and watch it. This film is beautiful, funny, emotional and cinematic!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8076541.stm

Adobe UK price raise

Adobe is increasing the price of its software. Creative Suite Premium 4 will rise £123 to £1,372 (all ex. VAT). This means that it will cost £1,578 incl. VAT a total of £480 more than in the US.

Quick summary:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/254173/adobe-hikes-uk-prices-by-10.html

Lots more here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/01/adobe-price-rises-pound-dollar-exchange

Google's new Wave

Google's new large venture is Google Wave - a kind of mix between email and chat and the future. It's easier to read the Tech Crunch article than a summary by me, but they're pretty excited about it.


Read more:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-drips-with-ambition-can-it-fulfill-googles-grand-web-vision/

Read about WaveProtocol:
http://www.waveprotocol.org/

MS Ba-da-BING

Microsoft is launching it's new search engine: Bing.com
It can't be any worse than Live Search - which is awful. Competing with Google is always going to be a challenge. As I've blogged about recently Wolfram-Alpha is taking on the search giant, but with a different slant on searching.
Bing will try to be intelligent about searches, by using the current date, time etc. to make your search results more relevant. It will also provide related search results and search terms.

It's explained well with examples here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/may/28/microsoft-bing

EDIT
More information here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/28/microsoft-search-bing-google

EDIT 2
And more about how it works:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/29/microsoft-bing-search-engine

Facebook runs a fifth of all UK ads

Apparently Facebook ran 21.6% of all ads in the UK. That's a lot of ads.

Read more:
http://www.nma.co.uk/new-measure-of-ad-views-finds-facebook-runs-a-fifth-of-all-uk-ads/3000814.article

Is adding the third dimension worth it?

This journalist on the Guardian website reckons that the new spat of 3D films isn't anything big and isn't going to be here to stay, and that cheaper technology is far more important.

I'm inclined to agree. I saw UP in 3D the other day and it being in 3D added nothing to the film what-so-ever. (Excellent film by the way.) Coraline (Which is a beautiful film.) made much better use of 3D, but I still think it would have been a great film without 3D.

Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/may/28/up