Bing bang?

Few people turned to me concerning Bing so you may want to hear something from myself to this new engine.

Okay so what is the primary reason why were are still working to be Nr 1 on providing easier access to informations on internet (objective)?

In spite of undeniable progress up to 40% of searches still remains without relevant response. Almost half of attempts to find information lasts up to 20 minutes. And that is why there is clear motivation for a company like Microsoft.

And what is the secondary (my subjective) reason?
As 5 years ago the catalogue search was the way we looked information on the internet, with the Google´s entrance into internet new era begun, the fulltext search. But as the internet is fastly developing, there will be something new again, soon. It might be visual, verbal search for instance but Microsoft doesn´t want to wait and we made the first half step and introduced the decision engine.

When will it be available for Central Europe´s languages?
Bing as a search tool is provided in all Microsoft present country. The full functionality decision tool is not only about search, but provides sophisticated answers based on language, first major market are already covered (English, Spanish and German). After the bugs will be corrected, more countries will come but for CE we don´t expect Bing as a decision tool before end 2010.

What are the results so far?

Bing already achieved 1% percent on the market (one month result) and based on New York Posts article from June 14th Google´s co-founder Segey Brin assembled a team of top engineers to conduct Bing study and try to upgrade their service.

If you think, this is subjective reasoning, of course, it is. But to do you own consideration, try Blind search and decide, which is the most relevant for you. There is not big difference, is there?

Pause

Hi folks, sorry not posting any blogpost for so long but I had to prepare and execute my wedding as well as marketing planning for next fiscal year within Microsoft. And all of you from this company know that this a quite complex process.
I will be back with lot of my campaigns, thoughts and observations soon.
Keep tuned!

Spending abroad

Lot of Slovaks visited not only before Easter shopping centers and groceries in Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland due to depreciation of their local currencies against Euro. It gained 10-30% against national currencies in last couple of weeks. Our banks reported up to 10x increase in payments with cards in these countries.

Reactions:

• Citizens usually tend to say: local stores should decrease their price and find savings in order to keep up with their counterparts in abroad.
• Local authorities say: we have 19% flat VAT compared to 7 or 10% VAT on groceries in Poland or Czech so there is the reason of higher price level in Slovakia.

Whether is the truth on one, or other side or somewhere in the middle one thing is indisputable: price of cars or real estate today compared to last year´s are much lower. This answers their earnings of 3,4 billions Euro for Volkswagen in H1 2008 or 183 mil. Euro for Immoeast (biggest CEE developer) in Q1 2008.

New Microsoft viral

Have you seen it?

It is aimed against Apple as continuation of the "I am a PC" campaign. It´s goal is to convince people that PC platform is cheaper and offers much wider range of products where everyone can easily choose according to his/her preferences.

Microsoft asked 2 people Lauren and Gianpaolo called as "laptop hunters" to get laptop as they want between 700 and 2000 USD. They were allowed to keep the laptops they selected plus the difference in money from what they had originally planned to spend and what they actually spent.

See Gianpaolo video


See Lauren video

There are more than 340 000 of Lauren and 500 000 views of Gianpaolo virals on YouTube today.

Campaign was again created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky. Reported The inspiration room.

Cultural difference

Our globe is getting more cross connected but there are still differences:

• When I was in Spain or Italy you know that the restaurants are empty until 8pm but full at 9pm. There is hardly a chance to get a seat without reservation in good restaurant. That is the time when people get from work and have a good time in usually larger company.
• When I was on New Zealand you know that after 8pm you hardly get a seat in restaurant and after 10pm it is impossible. That is the time, when people are at home or getting to bed that is why you should hurry to restaurants before 6pm there.

We in Central Europe are somewhere in between. Our dinner time is usually between 6-8pm. We are the golden average.

Fascinating pictures

You already may have seen these pictures but they still be amazing and thrilling:

- Nissan has announced plans to cut its Sunderland workforce by 1,200. Thousands of unsold cars are stored around the factory's test track:- Imported cars stored at Sheerness open storage area awaiting delivery to dealers:- The build-up of imported cars at the port of Newark, New Jersey:

Slovakia produces most cars per capita in the world. VW, Kia, Peugeot are produced here which makes automotive industry the biggest by contributing with 30+% into country´s GDP. With that we are strongly affected by the current economic situation. The situation is the same here at local car dealerships. Parking lots and also the grass lawn around are usually full of cars.

So what to do?
The local government decided to support new cars sales by financial contribution if someone decide to scrap his 10+ years old car. I don´t want to be too protectionist but this helped mostly to foreing producers as approx only 5% of all production ends on local market. Thanks God that "scrap funding" is introduced in more than 15 EU countries.

Continuous Partial Attention

On the blog of Linda Stone I have found an interesting article describing new behaviour of young people today called continuous partial attention. I am posting some interesting excerpts of this article:

What is continuous partial attention? Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We're often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task -- we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch -- we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive.

To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention -- CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.

We pay continuous partial attention in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. We are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention. This artificial sense of constant crisis is more typical of continuous partial attention than it is of multi-tasking.

Is continuous partial attention a good thing or a bad thing? Like so many things, in small doses, continuous partial attention can be a very functional behavior. However, in large doses, it contributes to a stressful lifestyle, to operating in crisis management mode, and to a compromised ability to reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively. In a 24/7, always-on world, continuous partial attention used as our dominant attention mode contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and to a sense of being unfulfilled. We are so accessible, we're inaccessible. The latest, greatest powerful technologies have contributed to our feeling increasingly powerless.

More on the link above.