THE WORLD PORTAL

BING

Software giant Microsoft grabbed the market’s attention with their new search engine named “Bing”. Microsoft termed it as a ‘Decision engine’ and it would help customers to make better decisions. Microsoft has been testing this search engine internally under the name “Kumo” for several months, and now it introduced with new name “Bing”. In addition, it is the replacement for Microsoft’s ‘Live search’ . This service is available at www.bing.com, and it will be competing with other search engines Google and Yahoo in the future.
FEATURES

Microsoft introduced “Bing” as a Decision engine, and it includes many features. An important features of the Bing is that the “Explorer pane” which is the list of search suggestions located on the left side of the search results.  It also includes the ability to Save & Share search histories via Windows Live SkyDrive, Facebook, and e-mail. Other features is that ‘auto competes‘ feature, which is similar to Google, and it offers a minimalist results page and acceptable results. Bing is a better solution for shopping searches, trip planning, health care queries and finding a local business. It also includes many other features that give the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help to make important decisions faster. Cashback in which we can actually give money back on great products and Price Predictor, which actually tells you when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price is the other important features of Bing. It also gives a preview of the content of the page rather than just depend on the meta description. In video searches, bing let to watch short previews of videos. Other peculiarities of this search engine is that it censored sex related terms in India and some other countries. In addition to its search tool, it also provides other search offerings including ‘Health’, ‘Images’, ‘Local’, ‘Maps’, ‘News’, ‘Shopping’, ‘Translator’, ‘Travel’, ‘Videos’ and ‘xRank’. From bing ‘Health’, we can get health informations and from ‘Images’ , we can quickly search and display most relevant photos and images of interest. Bing ‘Local’ searches local business listings with business details and reviews. From the Bing ‘Maps’ we can search for businesses, addresses, landmarks and street names worldwide, and can select from a road-map style view, a satellite view or a hybrid of the two. Bing ‘News’ is a news aggregator and from this, we got online news. Bing ‘Shopping’ lets user search from a wide range of online suppliers and marketer’s merchandise for all types of products and goods. Bing ‘Translator’ allows the users to translate texts or entire web pages into different languages. Bing ‘Travel’ searches for airfare and hotel reservations online and predicts when is the best time to purchase them. Bing ‘Video’ allows the user to quickly search and view videos online from various websites. It is also providing a short preview of the videos and Bing ‘xRank’ allows the users to search for celebrities, musicians, politicians and bloggers and also read short biographies and news about them and track their trends or popularity rankings. Another feature ‘Bing Mobile’ allows the users to conduct search queries on their mobile devices either via the mobile browser or a down loadable mobile application.

LEANDER PAES

India’s living legend of Tennis, Leander Paes won the men’s doubles final at the French Open with his partner Czech’s Lukas Dlouhy. They defeated South African-Belgian pair of Wesley Moodie and Dick Norman in the final with the score 3-6, 6-3, 6-2. This was Paes ninth Grand Slam title in his tennis career. Leander Paes is considered as one of the most successful professional Indian tennis players, and he was also the former captain of the Indian tennis team. In addition, he was the first Indian, who gained individual Olympic medal for India since KD Jadhav won an individual Olympic medal in 1952.

BIOGRAPHY

Famous tennis player Leander Paes was born on 17th June, 1973 in Calcutta, India as the son of Vece Paes and Jennifer Paes. He belongs to a sports family where his father was a hockey player and his mother was a basket ball player. He did his school education from “La Martiniere School” and graduation from “St.Xavier’s College Calcutta. He was married to Rhea Pillai and they have a daughter named Aiyana Paes. Paes started to playing tennis at the age of 5. In 1985, he joined in Britannia Amritraj Tennis Academy and was coached by famous player Dave O’Meara. This academy helped him to grow into international fame and in 1990, he won Wimbledon Junior title and rose to No.1 in the junior world-rankings. He turned professional in 1991 and in 1992, he reached in the quarter finals of the doubles event in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with Ramesh Krishnan. In 1996 Atlanta Olympics, he won a bronze medal in single tennis for India. He represented India at various international events and won many matches. He is also a member of the Davis Cup squad since 1990 and won many matches for India. In addition,  in 1996, he paired with Indian fellow Mahesh Bhupathi in doubles tennis, and they showed good performance in many grand slams. This pair won French Open and Wimbledon doubles and also entered into the finals of the Australian and US Opens. This dream team separated soon after due to mutual misunderstanding. They came together again in US open, but lost in the first round and in Sydney Olympics, they failed in the second round. Nevertheless, in 2001, this dream team won French open and also won the gold medal at the 2002 Asian Games. In 2002 Leander paired up with Michael Hill and won many tournaments.  From 2003, he focused on doubles and mixed doubles game, and he won the mixed double’s events at the Australian Open and Wimbledon with Martina Navaratilova.  He also won U.S. Open doubles event in 2006 with Mahesh Bhupathi. In 2006 Doha Asian Games , Paes won two golds in the Men’s doubles with Mahesh Bhupathi and Mixed doubles with Sania Mirza. In 2008 Beijing Olympics, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi entered in the quarter final of doubles event, but they were defeated by Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka. Paes also won 2008 US Open Mixed Doubles event with Cara Black. Now in 2009, he won the French Open title with his partner Czech’s Lukas Dlouhy. It was his ninth Grand Slam title in his tennis career. Leander Paes faced controversy on the partnership with Indian tennis player Mahesh Bhupathi. Indian government honored him by giving “Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award” and “Padmashri award” for his contribution to Tennis. It is no doubt that Paes is a great player and he has proved to be a genius in the world of tennis.