In case you’ve been completely unplugged for the past week (and therefore not reading this blog) Microsoft has launched Bing, its much anticipated search engine. What surprised–and frankly delighted me–is that they’ve planted their flag pole firmly in the travel category. Each day showcases a panoramic photo of a different destination–Florence, the Great Barrier Reef, Las Vegas–with factoids that appear and disappear over different parts of the image as you move your cursor.  Video and image searches maximize social media so that you can see both professional (i.e. beautifully staged) and amateur (i.e. true to life) shots to help you make a more informed decision about whether or not this is a place you’d actually like to visit.  I also like their travel blog, which balances the newsy–swine flu, Ryanair’s decision to start charging passengers for the privilege to pee while aloft– with big picture questions posed by travel heavyweights such as Rick Steves and Pauline Frommer about the promises and perils of going places. I especially liked Frommer’s posting about traveling while your children are younger than two so you can save both save money and not have to amend your itinerary to suit their interests.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 9:34 am and is filed under Why we travel, international travel, travel blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.