The Weekly Round-Up: 29.05.09

Never say those Redmond guys give up easily - Microsoft has tilted its lance at Google once more in the search engine wars. Microsoft's latest charge at its multi-coloured search windmill is underway again after Steve Ballmer unveiled the follow-up to Live Search.

Except this time it isn't a search engine it's a 'decision engine'.

Yeah, just like the Round-Up is a 'sentence architect'.

The service is called, rather charmingly, Bing. It was previously known as Kumo.

Although its competitors may have already beaten it to the punch with some new features, some analysts claim that Bing has finally caught up with Google on the relevancy of search results.

According to Microsoft, Bing uses semantic technology to help it recognise not just key words but what is intended by phrases typed in as online queries.

However, the best bit about Bing is the reason behind the name.

"We like Bing because it sounds off in our heads when we think about that moment of discovery and decision making - when you resolve those important tasks," stated the company's developer blog.

It added: "The name needed to clearly communicate that this is something new, to invite you to come back, to re-introduce you to our new and improved service and encourage you to give it a try.

The blog was silent on whether the next version of Windows might be renamed "Aaaarrggh!" in the same onomatopoeic spirit.

The Round-Up also wonders whether your browser will go 'Bing!' each time it returns a result, which would be a charming but short-lived pleasure, in the same way that Clippy was.

Bing launches on 3 June so by the end of next month we may all be using the word Bing as a verb just as we currently 'google' everything. Although, we may just as likely not...

Twitter and Facebook are now part of the digital lives of millions of people around the world, putting social media right on the (mashed-up) map.

They give anyone under the age of 30 yet another excuse to waste time in the office, and simultaneously offer anyone over the age of 30 a chance to look old and past it should they try to join in. A bit like your boss dancing to Lady Gaga at the office party.

Still, there's one small matter troubling both companies.

'How so?' you tweet. After all, with much acclaim, so many tweets from Stephen Fry and Demi Moore's husband and so many users, what more could a couple of social media fireballs want?

A surefire way of making money would be nice. After all, someone has to pay for all this.

Attempts to monetise the hugely popular web services are increasingly becoming a priority, according to the chiefs of both companies.

While they both have the appeal of sexy internet companies like Google, neither have managed to identify a revenue goldmine in the way Google has.

That's not to say they haven't got some ideas on how to make a bit of moolah.

Facebook sees advertising as its primary money-making strategy, said its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, noting that the company could eventually offer ads not just on its own website.

Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the company is less interested in generating revenue through advertising than it is in offering premium features for commercial users of Twitter.

But rather improbably, the financially rosy future for Twitter may lie in product placement and use of social networking tools as a prop in reality TV shows.

The microblogging service has developed the first TV series that incorporates Twitter into the action of the show.

The untitled show will feature ordinary people competing while on the trail of celebrities.

Not that you care, anyway.

According to a silicon.com poll, more than 75 per cent of respondents who were asked how they use Twitter responded "not at all".

Which makes the Round-Up feel rather foolish for harping on about it for about 400 words, next time it will restrain itself to 140 characters (unless most of the people who would have responded to the poll were too busy tweeting to respond). Of course, if you do care, you can follow silicon.com at twitter.com/siliconlatest

And finally this week - nostalgia corner. Sweeter, more innocent days: early January 2001.

Just before lunch.

One of the reporters at Silicon Towers started to emit a number of excited squeaks, which were eventually interpreted as being news that AOL and Time Warner had announced they were merging in a whopping deal.

'Hm, the shape of the future,' thought the Round-Up at the time before popping out for a quick bite to eat. On its return to the news room three hours later, the Round-Up couldn't help but notice that silicon.com - plus every other news site on the planet - had plastered news, comment and images of wildly grinning executives all over their front pages.

Fast forward to this week and Time Warner said it is casting off the AOL division to become a standalone company. Before that separation can take place, Time Warner will buy the five per cent of AOL owned by Google so that it will have 100 per cent control of AOL.

Time Warner expects the transaction with Google to take place in the third quarter and the final AOL spinoff around the end of the year. And the Round-Up is older, wiser and missing the dot-com days of three-hour lunches.

In other news this week: it's showtime!

If you've seen the trailer for Pixar's new movie Up, you will have no doubt marvelled at the scene where 10,000 brightly coloured helium balloons inflate and lift an OAP's house into the sky. If you have, you'll marvel even more at how long the single scene took to create: find out more here.

Zune going head to head with the iPod Touch?

'On the buses' goes high tech

And don't forget to take a crack at the ever excellent caption competition and check out some of the other top stories below.