WebProNews

Bing Launches New Maps with Apps

Microsoft has announced the launch of a new Bing Maps beta, which incorporates Streetside and Photosynth imagery. "The new Bing Maps experience also features innovative new mapping applications such as Twitter Maps for real-time updates by area and Local Lens featuring hyperlocal, neighborhood content," a representative for Bing tells WebProNews. There are a number of interesting apps available, which is easily the most interesting part about Bing's new Maps experience:

Social Networks Feed Holiday Shopping

If online retailers have a profitable holiday season - or even if they don't - they'll owe a "thank you" to social networks for helping out.  New data from Hitwise indicates that retail sites are receiving a significant (and ever-increasing) amount of traffic from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

Perfect 10 Comes Out Swinging at Google Again

Those who have been following the search industry for some time, may recall that Google had some legal issues with the (former) magazine Perfect 10 (nsfw). The company, which ceased publication of its magazine, but still operates on the web, has issued a press release saying that its five year battle with the search giant is "about to heat up."

The Internet is All Over Climategate While the MSM Sleeps

Update 1:42 PM ET - Man caused global warming may be nothing more than a hoax. The actual temperature readings have been deleted by the CRU making review impossible.

Cyber Monday Sales Reach $887 Million

Cyber Monday sales were up 5 percent compared to a year ago reaching $887 million and matching the heaviest online spending day on record, December 9, 2008, according to the latest report from comScore. "We've seen an encouraging start to the online holiday shopping season and it would appear that retailers' aggressive and early marketing efforts have so far succeeded in persuading consumers to open their wallets online," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

Google Does More To Appease Disgruntled News Publishers

Google has created a new web crawler specifically for Google News. What this means is that publishers who do not want Google News to index their content can more easily control that. That also applies to publishers who don't wish to completely cut out indexing, but wish to limit/restrict certain elements of their content from being indexed.

Google Offers Some Disturbing Suggestions

Google's "suggest" feature can be quite useful. It can save you time when typing your query if you happen to be searching for something that a lot of others have searched for before you. The feature is even useful for Google itself, because a while back, they began incorporating ads into it.

Microsoft Launches Twitter-Esque Service In China

Microsoft has launched a new service in China, and although it's based on Windows Live Messenger, comparisons to a site that's popular elsewhere in the world have become inevitable.  MSN Juku, which is in beta, seems a little bit similar to Twitter.

Google Makes Online Stores Incredibly Simple

Update: Google has now introduced a gadget wizard for the Store Gadget. The company says: Today, we're excited to introduce a new feature for the store gadget: a wizard that streamlines the store creation process. By automating the manual steps in the original instruction guide, the new store gadget wizard should leave you with even more time to focus on your business.

Gmail Gives Users New Default Text Styling Feature

Google has introduced a new Gmail Labs feature, which gives Gmail users control over the default style of their text. In other words, you can set how you like your text to appear normally, and it will automatically appear that way.