So here’s the really big idea.
A lot of us use GPS for a variety of things today, especially driving directions. But when we get driving directions, like the directions from my home to the Blue C Sushi restaurant in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, there’s one basic issue – the directions are provided in a totally reactive way. The search engines don’t know where we want to go until we tell them.
But there’s a way to change that.
What’s the one place that knows where we will be hours, days, even months in advance? Our calendar.
What if when a calendar appointment is created, we get prompted with a “would you like directions to this appointment?” and you could answer yes or no.
Then, if you clicked “yes” what if it asked you how familiar you are with the departure location and the destination (high/medium/low buttons would probably do the trick) that way it doesn’t spend the first 10 lines of the directions telling me how to get from my house to Interstate-5. I know how to get to I-5 and I know Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood pretty well too.
Then when it’s about time for you to leave for your appointment, it goes out to scrape information about accidents and events from DOT and related sites so if there’s a likely slowdown, it can recommend a different path.
Then, if you want to sell some ads, tell me that Blue C is on the left side of the street just after the gas station.
So then Bing can run the searches and send me an e-mail with the directions, which might also be a good reminder of the event. Proactive search.
Integrating Bing with Outlook would be great for Bing and Outlook and I would use it every day.
Go bing or go home.
-Ric
By the way, if you haven’t used Bing Visual Search, it’s really a great experience.
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