It’s time to dust off your best hat and find that recipe for Mint Juleps. That’s right, this weekend marks the 136^th running of the Kentucky Derby.  Before the horses take to the track as “My Old Kentucky Home” plays we want to make sure you are ready for the festivities.

If you are looking for the Kentucky Derby details Bing provides an instant answer that will give you the information to the event as well as some useful links to the race contenders, tickets, and fashion. Make sure to check back after the race for the instant answers with all the race results as well.

Each year the excitement that surrounds this event grows as fans wonder which horse will claim the right to wear the garland of roses. So even if you are not at Churchill Downs taking part in the many Kentucky Derby traditions make sure you check the horses, grab your hat, pick your favorite horse and tune into to watch as they speed around the track to the finish line.

Good luck!

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

Attention! Mother’s day this year is on Sunday, May 9. Since it’s usually one of those holidays that sneaks up on you before you get a chance to run to the store to pick up a card or nice flowers (for me anyway), consider this your reminder! With less than two weeks to go, you can now be prepared. Now what to get? We can help there too.

Bing has teamed up with celebrity mom, Brooke Burke to share her tips on some easy Mother’s Day gifts. Brooke suggests; photo frames highlighting special moments, handmade cards, personalized jewelry, spa days or homemade coupon books. All these gifts are thoughtful, personalized and most of all, won’t break the bank. 

We’ve also created a Visual Search gallery for the occasion. Just type in Mother’s Day and you’ll see a link to The Mother’s Day gift guide full of great ideas with images for all kinds of mom’s including new mom’s, working mom’s or tech savvy mom’s. You can even narrow by price range or category such as baby & nursery, jewelry & watches or electronics.  

So between Brooke Burke’s suggestions at www.Bingmothersday.com, the Mother’s Day gift guide and the great deals in Bing shopping, we’ve got you covered! What are you waiting for? Get shopping and come with a great gift in hand for Mother’s Day.

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

Brooke Burke on Fox and Friends

Bing has been partnering with Microsoft Research for the past year on a private beta called Microsoft Web N-gram Services, where research using large data sets surrounding natural computing experiences, such as in linguistics, as well as in queries using spoken words, was being supported. 

Today, during the World Wide Web Conference, it was announced that this private beta will become available to professors and students at accredited colleges and universities worldwide. To read more about the announcement, as well as the different technologies included in this effort, see the Microsoft External Research blog.

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

Last Thursday, NuTsie launched a new iPhone app called Top 100s by Year by Bing and within days it was the #1 download in the App Store. If you haven’t tried it, the app allows you to sort by year from 1948 to 2009 and hear the top songs from those years. Want to know the top songs from the year you were born or relive your high school favorites? Spin the wheel to find the year you’re looking for, click to listen and enjoy!

If you are looking for more information about the song, you can find it along with band info and song lyrics using Bing.

This $1.99 app is offered for FREE by Bing for a limited time. So make sure you download this app and give the Bing app for your iPhone a try while you are at it. Your feedback is always welcome and helps improve the app, in fact you may have already noticed some of the improvements based on your reviews to bring you more music and less interruptions. Let us know what you think on the Digital Dream Door Forums.

Wibe Wagemans – Bing for mobile

What better way to celebrate Earth Day then to congratulate Explorer Eric Larsen and his teammates Antony Jinman and Darcy St-Laurent on their arrival to the North Pole later today. What an amazing accomplishment! We thank them for making the trek to help bring awareness to climate change and for taking Bing along for the ride! 

Awhile back we mentioned that we had sponsored explorer Eric Larsen’s Save the Pole expedition, he had just returned from the South Pole and was getting ready to take off on the second leg of his trip. Destination: North Pole. It has been exciting keeping up with his day to day progress on his journey, from the many stories of how they maneuvered through the ice, to Eric having to get geared up in his dry suit to swim across open water dragging their equipment behind him. His use of social media during his expedition has enabled us to follow along and watch and learn from his travels; through posts on the blog on their website, updates on Twitter and posts on Facebook, we feel like we’ve been there every step of the way.

Eric still has one leg of his Save the Poles expedition which will take him to the top of Mt. Everest this fall and we will be there to cheer him on (ok…we will be there in spirit). You can find information on Eric and his quest on his website, read the latest news and discussions about his expeditions on Newsvine as well get all the up to day information on Twitter and Facebook.

Like Eric says “Remember, it’s cool to be cold. Save the Poles. Save the planet.”

Happy Earth Day!

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

Other posts of interest:

Discovering the World with Bing

The Bee is all the Buzz at Bing

The Bing Student Earth Day Photo Contest Finalists

Earth Hour on the homepage

Bing’s Earth Day Photo Contest for Students

The Bing team has an enormous amount of pride and respect for the community we’re a part of in the Pacific Northwest. We think that this is a special place and are we’re thankful for the people and companies who make living and working here what it is. This is why we’re very pleased to join the Seattle Storm today in announcing a multi-year marquee partnership.

This partnership helps Bing engage with Storm’s dedicated fan base in a unique way. Bing is now the official decision engine of the Seattle Storm and you’ll see the Bing logo inside the arena, on the players’ game and practice jerseys, as well as on the big screen during games. We’re also extremely proud and excited that Bing will be the presenting sponsor of the Junior Storm program, a year round program dedicated to supporting youth basketball in our own community.

At the core of this partnership is our commitment to collaborate on community outreach and activities right here in our own backyard. We feel that it is important to show the value of women in sports and to engage kids with the excitement of women’s professional basketball.  Bing will be giving away thousands of Storm tickets to the local Boys and Girls Clubs to give them the opportunity to be inspired by watching players like Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson compete in world-class WNBA basketball.

Bing’s Danielle Tiedt (2nd-L) and Karen Bryant 2nd-R) of the Seattle Storm along with players Ashley Robinson (43) Swin Cash (M) and Camille Little (20) unveil the team’s new jersey as part of a sponsorship announcement at the Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club in Seattle, Washington, on April 21, 2010. Rob Sorbo/Microsoft Handout

We are thrilled to be partnering with the Seattle Storm. We are proud of the community they have built in Seattle, and we look forward to many great seasons and great work in the years to come.

Danielle Tiedt – Bing General Manager

Other posts of interest:

Taking it to the field

The Bee is all the Buzz at Bing

With more than 200,000 votes cast in the final round of our student Earth Day Photo Contest, we’re pleased to announce that the winning photo was taken by Alan Bosse, a student studying web design at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City, FL. His photo of a bee gathering the nectar of a passion fruit blossom was chosen by Bing users to be featured on our homepage in honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22. The photo, titled “Passion and Bee” from the 18+ age division, was taken in Long Beach, California using a digital Fujifilm Finepix S8100.

Photo by: Alan Bosse

Winners in the other age divisions included: a whale off the coast of Maui taken by a student in 4^th grade at Lomond View Elementary in Pleasant View, UT; a butterfly taken by a 7^th grader at Hommocks Middle School in Larchmont, NY; and an iguana in Puerto Rico shot by a high school senior at Princeton High School in Princeton, NJ. You can view all the 12 finalists in a slideshow here.

In addition to their sheer numbers, voters impressed us with their generosity. Bing gave out $5 DonorsChoose.org GivingCards each day during the finalist voting round. To date, people who voted have made donations on the DonorsChoose.org site to more than 6,500 projects across the country, with these projects impacting more than 170,000 students.

Bing will be bringing all of the division winners out to Redmond in late May to meet our team and help pick out photos that will appear on the Bing homepage. All of the finalists have won prizes for themselves and their schools to enable students to continue their passion of photography, including computer equipment, digital cameras and photographic printers.

Be sure to visit Bing tomorrow to see the winning photo on the homepage. Congrats again to Alan and our other finalists, and a big thanks to everyone that participated.

Stephanie Horstmanshof, Bing Homepage team

Other posts of interest:

The Bing Student Earth Day Photo Contest Finalists

Earth Hour on the homepage

Bing’s Earth Day Photo Contest for Students