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Microsoft brought Windows Live Search out of Beta mode today and also initiated the process of unifying its services. “We taking users of MSN Search and upgrading them to the Live Search experience,” over the next few days, said Christopher Payne, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, Windows Live Search. “Live.com is now first and foremost a search destination,” he said.

Microsoft has also pushed the Windows Live Local service out of beta, and added a number of new features to the overall suite of Windows Live services and MSN.

Image search has also been upgraded. Previously powered by PicSearch, Microsoft is now using its own internally developed image search algorithms and index that have been over a year in the making.

A slider at the top of the result page allows you to control the size of the thumbnails presented, and a menu gives you a number of different options for displaying thumbnails of specific sizes. Mousing over a thumbnail causes the image to expand, and also spawns information about the filename, size and location of the image.

Unlike web search, image search continues to use the “infinite scroll” for results, allowing you to see a continuous series of images as you scroll down the page.

But the coolest feature is the addition of a “scratchpad” that lets you drag images to the right pane and save them as a “collection,” which you can name and then recall at any time. The scratchpad , which made its debut with Windows Live Local search, is a very helpful addition to image search, and would be a welcome addition to web search results, as well.

Microsoft has also added its relatively new QnA question answering service, as well as a video search service to Windows Live Search. Payne says that social search initiatives have become a key area where Microsoft feels it can aggressively compete with Google and Yahoo as it leverages and integrates tools like QnA, Messenger and MSN Spaces for its more than 200 million registered users.

For the new video search, Microsoft partnered with AOL owned Truveo due to strong customer demand, according to Payne. He said that Microsoft is building its own video search, however, but did not say when the company plans to roll it out.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Windows Live Search, MSN Search, Windows Live Local, MSN, PicSearch, image search, QnA, social search, Google, Yahoo, MSN Spaces, AOL, Truveo, video search,

I was a solider at one time in my life back 17 years ago. I joined the Army at 17 and then served in the US Army Airborne during the First Gulf War. After that I served for 2 more years for deployments with combat engineers in Panama, Hondours and El Salvador.

Today in my mid 30s I am a prior service “old man” in the eyes of the young guys out there serving today and like most “old men” from time to time I day dream and think back to my less sane years when jumping out of an aircraft flying so low that deploying a reserve was not a real option was something I considered, “fun”.

The other day during a morning drive I was trying to think about some marketing ideas and one such old solider day dream came to me. I attempted to fend it off and think of some new marketing ideas. For some reason, the old “Riflemens Creed” kept playing in my head.

Perhaps you have heard in the movie, Full Metal Jacket, it is the one that starts out, “This is my rifle, there are many like it, but this one is mine. Without me my rifle is useless, with out my rifle I am useless”. I then thought about how as Internet Marketers we could easily call our knowledge our “rifles”.

Think about it, “this is my knowledge, many have it but this knowledge is mine. With out my knowledge I am useless, with out my actions my knowledge is useless”. That is about as true a statement as can be made about being an online marketer!

By the time I reached my destination the “Internet Marketers Creed” work was already complete in my head, only getting it into print was necessary.

I published it on Friday over at Comtech News, if you want a new look at your mission of internet marketing follow this link The Internet Marketers Creed

Technorati Tags: the internet marketers creed, internet marketing, marketing, seo, sem, search engine marketing, online marketing, search engine optimization, web marketing, web site marketing, blog, blogging