Sometime after midnight PST academic search for Live.com will be launched at academic.live.com. The landing page is there now, although the search results actually point to normal Live.com search until the overnight change. To see what the actual results look like, see Kevin Briody’s screen shot here.
Welcome to Windows Live Academic
Windows Live Academic is now in beta. We currently index content related to computer science, physics, electrical engineering, and related subject areas.
Academic search enables you to search for peer reviewed journal articles contained in journal publisher portals and on the web in locations like citeseer.
Academic search works with libraries and institutions to search and provide access to subscription content for their members. Access restricted resources include subscription services or premium peer-reviewed journals. You may be able to access restricted content through your library or institution.
We have built several features designed to help you rapidly find the content you are searching for including abstract previews via our preview pane, sort and group by capability, and citation export. We invite you to try us out – and share your feedback with us.
Academic allows users to search through academic journlas in computer science, electrical engineering and physics. More subjects will be added over time “based on user feedback and demand”.
Update: It’s official
This is a big play by MSFT against Google. Is it me or are MSFT always playing catchup. It’s a pity because they have some really smart folks there who could really innovate instead of retaliate.
Well Universities have been providing this service for many many years so this isn’t some brilliant scheme from google by any means. I have never seen it offered publicly though, without having subscription costs. This one doesn’t sound free either “subscription content for their members.” So…what’s the difference?
Anyone know if there are plans for an API for this?
The results are much weaker then Google scholar. I use google scholar for quick searches and it is really nice. You can see how many times the paper is refered etc.
The only think that I like in microsofts search is the direct link to bibtex entries for the results, otherwise it is not good.
#2 … I completely agree with you. Microsoft is just playing catch up with Google at this point — I just wish they would leave the search market and come up with something innovative elsewhere… Particularly in their area of expertise.
Microsoft develops an O/S and Office apps … That’s what they should focus on. Just like Google is a search company — they should focus on search. I don’t give two craps about shareholders and diversity, and quite frankly if I *WAS* a shareholder, the fact that both companies are doing half-assed innovation would scare me a bit.
It seems that they would do better to just crawl Pubmed and display the abstracts alongside it than what they have right now.
The image search did not do any better in showing just the images from academic sources. plenty of image spam in there as well.
This is a really nice interface and well suited to users researching this niche. Its interesting to see Academia being targeted as an initial verticalized search segment by Google as well as Microsoft. It is definitely easier than other vertical due t othe domain specific aspect. Results are somewhat better on Google as per my quick comparison but the live.com interface is better – question is : Will end users adopt such interfaces for search or will prefer the plain looking Google search results pages which are definitely easier on the eye.
If anyone with a strong background is maybe looking to work for live.com, please feel free to contact me: Headhunter00@gmail.com
I am working closely with them.
Email me if you would like more info & Descriptions..
No. 9 …
I’m not denying you’re a headhunter … but why GMail, and not Hotmail?
Take off the “Microsoft Filter” off your lenses and see the much more useful/innovative UI of Live.com Academic.
BTW, lookup the definition of Innovation and you will agree that many, not all, Microsoft’s products meet the criteria. Being first to market w. something that’s not as useful as intended, is not innovative.
MS vs. Google issues aside, the GUI is nice, much better than the usual MS portal. Now, one might call it Googlish, but I think it’s more than that…it’s simply more up to date with web 2.0 standards. Regardless of where MS ought to be exerting energy, I hope this sort of gui treatment is adopted in other areas such as MSDN, MSN and Hotmail.
Is “beta” the new “Under Construction”?
I would really like to see this kind of search for web developers. Right now I spend much of my time looking through del.icio.us for interesting stuff.
I very much doubt that new SE will make serious competition Google and Yahoo. The market поисковиков already for a long time поеделен. I only do not understand why Microsoft have not continued to advance MSN at which there is though what that chances.