Bing – the new Live Search is now live; create your own IE8 search provider add-on.

Bing, the new rebranded Live Search, has just been made available to public. The first thing I’d want to do is to make this the default search provider in Internet Explorer 8.

Searching www.ieaddons.com, I couldn’t find the Bing search provider! But not to worry, they’ve made it just too easy to make your own search provider. Head along to http://www.ieaddons.com/en/createsearch.aspx and follow the instructions!

Essentially, it involves:

1. Search for “TEST” (capital letters) using Bing
2. Copy the URL of the first page after you made the search
3. Paste that into the search provider creator, give it a name and click install!

Update: As pointed out, this method doesn’t give you search suggestions. As a quick hack to give the impression of Bing suggestions, we can add Live Search suggestions to this accelerator.

I really wish I could add javascript to this blog so that you can just click a button to add the search provider to IE8, but unfortunately hosted WordPress won’t let me. It won’t even let me upload an .xml file! So I’ve included after the break the Open Search Description file that would give you that.

Just create a new XML file Bing.xml, and host that up on your favourite web server. Then create a shell HTML file that calls a javascript function to add this as shown.

Update: Head along to Mozilla Addons, where Long‘s made the Bing search provider available for download. Even though it’s meant for Firefox, it’s based on the same open standard (open search description) so it’s the same. The “Download Now” link works in IE8 too!

Update: Get the addon now at ieaddons.com! It now uses the search suggestions from Bing rather than from Live Search.

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Jumpstart and Demystify your Live

There’s been so much hype and so much talk revolving around Microsoft’s Live Services. Live Mesh has even made it to the keynote feature of this year’s TechEd in Sydney. So what is Live? Simply put, Windows Live is a collection of services that we use every day from Live Messenger (MSN) to Live Mail, Live Search, Live Maps, and pretty much everything else that has the word ‘Live’ in it.

What Microsoft is doing though, is more than just providing these services – they’re also making it easy for people to make use of creatively, building on top of them as a platform. But at the speed they come in, it’s pretty easy to become lost in this strange new world.

So that’s were Live Services Jumpstart 2009 come into play. It’s a FREE 2-day training session that’s coming to 11 cities around the world, dedicated to demystifying all things to do with Live Services and the hottest new Software + Services architecture.

So Sydney’s pretty lucky to be one of these 11 cities to host this event, on 8 – 9 Dec 08, 8:30am – 6:30pm, at Four Points Sheraton, Darling Harbour. Since this is the ultimate place to get free in-depth technical training, spaces are limited -Register now!