When Bing was launched, Microsoft had stated that further developments were in progress, and users could expect new features in due course. True to their word, they have added a new feature recently.
Bing will now be used to power the new Quick Add feature on Hotmail. This essentially means that users can now search Bing from within Hotmail and add information from the search results directly into their email body.
Details about movie listings, images, videos, maps, restaurant reviews and many more info bytes can be searched and added directly into outgoing email messages, as can be seen in the example below:
The procedure to do this is actually quite simple.
The user first has to open up a new message page, by clicking on ‘New’. Then selects a category from the ‘Quick Add’ column, which can be found on the right hand side of the page. After that, users can select what sort of results they are looking for (image, video) and then search in the Bing search box. Bing returns the top 10 results within the same page. More results can be viewed in a new window. Lastly, clicking ‘Insert’ on the relevant result will add it in the message body where the cursor was placed.
One shortcoming of this facility is that it lists only a few search results. Those looking for more detailed search results, have to go over to Bing, and then it is not so easy to add the required result into the Hotmail message.
At present the Quick Add feature is available only in select locations like Australia, Canada, China, India and of course in the U.S. and U.K.
