For the past two days I’ve been using Microsoft’s (MSFT) new Bing search engine exclusively. I’ve stopped using Google (GOOG) and instead used only Bing. The main reason why I did this was because I’d like to see viable competition to Google in the search engine space — plus I just like to try new things. After using Bing for two days exclusively though, I think I’ll probably be going back to Google. I’m still going to give Bing a couple more days but so far the Cons of using Bing outweigh the Pros.

As it see it, following are the positives and negatives of Bing.

Kodachrome. They give us those nice bright colors. They give us the greens of summers. Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day.

Well everyone has known for years that the move from film photography to digital photography would not be good for Kodak (EK). But after cutting about half their work force in the past four years it looks like still more job cuts may be in the cards for Kodak in the near future. From Bloomberg:

Flickr Designer George Oates (left) with Community Manager Heather Champ (right).

Several news outlets/bloggers are reporting that Yahoo (YHOO) has laid off Flickr Designer George Oates in their recent bout of layoffs. George was an early member of the Flickr team and was the company's first designer, signing on with Flickr back before the Yahoo acquisition. She was oft credited with much of the simple and clean feel and look that went into the site's overall design. According to the Guardian, two other Flickr team members were let go as well. I have not seen/heard who these other two individuals are yet. The entire list of Flickr staff at Yahoo is listed here. (George is still listed on this staff page at present, but I imagine that this is just an oversight and that Flickr hasn't had a chance to remove her from this page yet).

I signed up this weekend for Netflix's (NFLX) "Watch Now" service on my XBox 360 and have to say that after a weekend of intensively playing around with the new service, my impressions are largely positive.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this new service, basically Netflix and Microsoft (MSFT) have partnered to allow you to access over 10,000 videos on demand from Netflix (including many in high def). This new service was first announced by Microsoft earlier this year at E3.

My wife got the email below a few hours ago from General Motors' (GM) Troy A. Clarke, Group Vice President and President GM North America.

I assume that we got this letter because we own a GM car. The email reeks of desperation to me. GM says in their letter that they don't want a bailout from Congress, that they only want a $25 billion loan.

There has been a lot of new news lately around the idea of home entertainment and media and I wanted to write a post reflecting on recent announcements coming out of Microsoft (MSFT) on their Media Center platform in Windows 7, the new XBox 360, an increasing role for Netflix's (NFLX) "watch now" technology and Thursday's announcement regarding Netflix by TiVo (TIVO).

Put simply, the battle for your living room and the dollars associated with your living room is heating up and I believe that 24 months from now there will be clear winners and losers. The next 24 months will likely represent the biggest changes we've seen yet for mainstream America's media consumption.

Well no sooner is Canon (CAJ) out with its EOS 50D than Nikon creatively is out with its D90. However, for most consumers, at least at first blush, the D90 sort of blows the more expensive 50D out of the water.

The killer feature on the D90 is that it shoots video (1280x720, .avi format, HD720p). In addition to being a kick ass DSLR, it also shoots video. If video wasn't a big enough bell and whistle for you, it also includes GPS geotagging. As far as I know, this is the first DSLR to include both video and geotagging on the market today. Amazon lists the price for the new D90 at $999.95 here (but it's out of stock). The Nikon press release confirms the camera at that price: "The D90 will be available throughout the United States beginning September 2008 at an MSRP of $999.95 for body only and $1299.95 for body and lens outfit that includes the new AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens." (Note, that's $400 *less* than the suggested retail price of Canon's 50D which won't be out until a month later in October).

Interesting article (Official: Microsoft Buys ME Lunch, Gives ME Private Tour!) over at the blog "Save the Intern" from some guy named Ben about a recent run in the blogger had with Microsoft (MSFT).

So this is kind of crazy. I don’t know if you guys have been following the comments over on my post here but a couple people from Microsoft have contacted me because of this blog! Apparently they’ve been following my posts about my tech troubles at work and through their commenting have offered some helpful solutions. In particular like their free online training site which includes training videos. Pretty helpful stuff. I really didn’t expect Microsoft of all companies to reach out like that. I guess they figure it’d be good PR for them or something. But, what I REALLY didn’t expect was their offer to take my buddy Josh and I out to lunch and give us a private tour of their office in Irvine! Kinda badass right? Needless to say I’m pretty excited about it.

I've had my new 3G Apple (AAPL) iPhone for about a month now and I thought I'd take a few minutes to write some of my thoughts and reflections on the experience for people who might be considering upgrading to the new 3G iPhone. First a little background though.

I've been critical of the new iPhone ever since first learning the details about it. I felt that after existing iPhone users had shelled out $600 for original iPhones less than a year ago, that Apple should have done more for existing early adopters via an upgrade path. I'm not saying that the company had any obligation to do more, but just that I thought it would have been the right thing to do.

On Wednesday and Thursday last week I attended the Microsoft (MSFT) Professional Photography Summit at Microsoft's Conference Center in Redmond, Washington. This was the third year that this invite-only two day conference has taken place in Redmond.

One of the things that I was impressed by with this conference was that it really was product neutral. Although this first post is going to mostly be about Microsoft photo technology, most of the conference presenters were not affiliated with Microsoft and came from many of the leading companies in photography today -- Adobe (ADBE), Getty Images, Canon (CAJ), Epson  - and many other smaller photography related businesses were involved in various presentations.

Microsoft (MSFT) is out with an announcement Monday regarding a new alliance with Netflix (NFLX), whereby beginning in late Fall, XBox 360 Gold Members will be able to stream "a growing library of more than 10,000 movies and TV episodes" to their XBox 360. In addition to an XBox 360 Gold Membership, users will also have to have a Netflix subscription.

Although I think that this offering might be interesting for people who don't have Media Center PCs, it is a bit discouraging for those who do have Media Center PCs. Personally I'm not interested in signing up for an XBox 360 Gold Membership at $45 a year or so. I don't use XBox 360 live at all and don't have an interest in the service.

Getty Images and Yahoo (YHOO) Tuesday announced a partnership which will allow Getty Images to begin marketing select images that Flickr users upload online.

"We are excited and proud to be partnering with Flickr to offer our customers even more choice for their projects. Our customers will be able to select and use the best imagery from a fresh collection of high-quality images chosen by us from Flickr's diverse and prolific community," said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images. "Flickr is the ideal partner as we continue to move the imagery industry forward by offering the broadest range of high quality digital content to our customers."

My pal Robert Scoble has a blog post up entitled, "Is Microsoft (MSFT) Trying to Capture the Photography Market?" Robert's post is in part a reaction to Microsoft's invite-only Pro Photo Summit which is taking place this week on Wednesday and Thursday at Microsoft's campus in Redmond. Scoble is going to be attending as am I.

This is the third year that Microsoft has held a Pro Photo Summit, so I'm not entirely sure that this event is predictive of any change in Microsoft strategy towards photography per se. This is the first year that I'm going, though, and I'm excited to check out what Microsoft has in store to share with us.