Bing

Recently we’ve discovered a few more Bings out there – besides Microsoft’s. There are several similar, small design agencies across the country that share our name. And, upon the release of Microsoft’s search engine, some of them are changing their names.

We’re not.

Because, our “Bing” means more than just “eureka!” It’s part of our history.

Here’s some Bing trivia for your Thursday:

Our agency was established in 1979 by Bob Bingenheimer. At that time, the agency was known as Bingenheimer Design. Bob “retired” in 2000 and sold the agency to an employee, Nick Gaskins. As the new owner, Nick shortened the name to Bing.

For more information about Bing, visit our site.

We were wondering how the new bing.com web search would affect our business once it was released. So far, one result has been that we’re turning into a third-party sounding board. Here are some of the comments we’ve received through OUR web contact form at bingdesign.com…

I constantly mistype weather making it weatehr or something similar, when I search for the word it suggests weather even if it was mistyped in the search results but if you could show on the suggested pull down list correctly spelled words if its not a recognized word to help me catch the typos before waiting on the search you could speed up my search time.

When a subject is typed into the search space and the enter is hit, one does not like to have to do it twice becuae someone programed the computer to make it happen that way. I could care less about the first group of crap that po’s up, I want the subject and do not want to have to hunt for it. That is why I do not, and my friends who come over and use my computers will no longer do so. Thank you so much for that one. Try Harder Please.

nice job, found out about this site in business week, search brings up different sites that I really do appreciate you finding for me, nice to see microsoft kicking some butt.

I attempted to use Bing to do two simple searches. First, the names and contact information of Motels, Hotels etc in Gladwin, Michigan. It produce what I would call garbage information. One of the facilities that it came up with is for sale and is not even open. Second, I asked for Multuple Sclerosis and known recognized treatments. I was looking to see if you had the material that i could get from my local library. The library has access to articles and medical journals from all over the world. The material that I saw listed did not include very much data from outside the United States. The British have a great deal of data and studies done over the past 50 years that do not even mention. Some of it includes studies done on things like Greek Extra Virgin Olive oil done in the 1960’s which turned out to be quite effective. Best of luck with the site. It appears today that some tweeking is in order.

is Pakistan not a country to live.com name was cooler bing is kool but not cooler ur website is cooler but why is no name of pakistan in ur countries list we r better than india plz put Pakistans name on it we r better than middle eastern countries as well google has a pakistani google why not bing

Hello, I just want to thank you all for creating an awesome online seach engine – bing.com. I have been a big Google fan for many years, but ever since I discovered bing.com a while ago I have transfered over – making Bing my #1 online seach engine. I discovered bing.com through a friend and now I have all my family, friends, and co-workers hooked on this site. It has gotten so bad at work that now we all have it as our Internet homepage. I love everything about Bing. It is easy, quick, better results, and has other cool features, which include the \”Popular now\” links. And the best thing about it all – I can access it at any time and still get great results, without error messages. As a student and as an employee, I definately appreciate this site. Great job guys! I will definately speak to my friends at school and work to give Bing.com a try. But I am most convinced that once they try it – they too will be hooked. Keep up the good job. I look forward to this site\’s future success. As I tell my friends, GO BING.COM!!

I’m a programmer and the search on your site doesn’t work. I typed in ‘What color is a blue car’ and the results were complicated and didn’t make sense.

I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO DOWNLOAD THE BING TOOL BAR. I HAVE TRIED 3 TIMES

Please forward to the president or marketing director. I\’m a producer and have a cool song called BING  DING, it would be great for marketing your co. contact me for a licensing deal please. check the song out at cdbaby.com/cd/joeswampdawghenry

A broad spectrum of suggestions can spark some interesting conversations around the water cooler. Join the crowd and let us know what YOU think of the new search engine too.

You might be looking at the logo to the right and thinking, “Did Bing Design re-brand their logo again!?” No, we are happy with the way our logo turned out. But what you’re seeing is Microsoft’s identity for Bing, a new search engine.

To stay competitive with Google’s dominance in online searching, Microsoft has positioned Bing as a “Decision Engine”.

We have all heard when you need to look something up, to “google” it. In fact, google was added a few years ago to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a verb. Interesting point #1: I wonder why it’s not included as a noun too – isn’t a google a one with a hundred zeros after it? Interesting point #2: I see that Microsoft is already trying to verb-ilize ‘bing’ also.

Microsoft’s marketing gurus hope that Bing will evoke the same feeling as the sound – the ringing of a bell that signals the eureka moment when a search leads to an answer. The name is meant to conjure “the sound of found” as Bing helps people solve complex tasks.

Bing (the other one) seems to be focusing on searches related to:

• Making a purchase decision
• Planning a trip
• Researching a health condition
• Finding a local business

A “cherries-to-cherries” comparison of that Bing and this Bing shows a few similarities:

• We help clients make marketing decisions that meet their needs and fit their budget.
• We assist you with team outings. Yellow Springs is great place for a trip.
• We provide communication audits that help determine the health of your marketing efforts.
• We can localize your message in the new sense of the word – through social media communities.

So there you have it. The skinny about the Bing that’s been around for years, and that new startup from Microsoft…

During our weekly staff meetings, Bingers are encouraged to share any professional development they’ve accomplished over the past week in order to sharpen their talents. Here’s a snippet of some of our recent skills shared:

Joyce Jones:

You can add a background to a PDF in Acrobat, and set that background to appear only when printing, only onscreen, or both. Here’s how: Choose Document > Background, select a color from the color picker, or browse to a file you want to insert as a background, and set its opacity, scale and position. Then click Appearance Options in the Appearance area of the dialog box. There, you can control whether the background appears on screen, when printing, or both. The possible uses for this are mind-boggling.

Laura Arber:

It always amazes me when you start researching or learning about something, the more you realize how much it is already being used around you. I started looking at digital publications last week and have noticed them everywhere, including in my Zappo’s e-newsletter. Same thing with the book Twilight; my sister told me to read it, and now it seems everyone I know is reading it. This week, I learned that it’s always fun to learn.

Joe Gauder:

I attended Updayton’s Young Creatives Summit and realized how effective collaboration can be, given the right tools. It was good to see a significant turnout that genuinely cared about the future of Dayton. It’s time to work together and show how innovative and creative we can be at making Dayton the best possible place to attract and retain creative talent and generate some active growth.

Roger Starnes:

Being “off” on vacation allows time to focus on family and one’s self. It is very beneficial for one’s sanity! The hectic times we are in due to market conditions and the volatility of business can eat a person up, just trying to keep up. Those of us with homes, young children to tend to, a spouse, responsibilities at church, bills and such, find that too much pressure can really be harmful. This reflects on your attitude and your ability to be creative.

Melissa Blevins:

I attended a webinar on how to build a persuasive business case for marketing initiatives. When building the case, keep in mind the goal is NOT perfection (a difficult idea for creatives to swallow, I realize). Instead, you should try to demonstrate thoughtfulness and comprehensiveness. Use tangible measures and data whenever possible – and get stakeholder buy-in on the numbers in advance. Better yet, get your data directly from the stakeholders (finance, accounting, etc.).

Angela Brown:

In researching a problem for a client, I found that JPEGs that are emailed from Mac to PC users can become corrupted. These corrupted files will give the error “No Preview Available” when the PC user tries to open it. This problem can be corrected by zipping the JPEG before emailing it.

Joy Sutton:

I’ve been razzed by family and friends about compulsively checking my BlackBerry for new texts and emails, and I’m also guilty of checking Facebook or the latest news headlines on my mobile even in the middle of conversations with real live people. This week I learned that there’s a term for this type of behavior — infomania. I guess it’s time to seek help!

Nick Gaskins:

I’ve been investigating PDF SEO best practices with Joe’s help. Learning this is a big field with lots of places to make improvements. Should have some good implications for our clients who post lots of PDF files in hopes of making them easily findable, crawlable, searchable. Overall, we’re learning how critical it is to invest more time in developing a structured approach to clearly written content with appropriately hard-hitting tags.

Holly Shannon:

When moving a Binger from a MacBook to a Mac tower, applications and user data moved over easily, but the migration of e-mail data proved a bit more challenging. In order to successfully retain all e-mails, contacts, addresses, mail rules, and signature files, I came up with an easy process:

1. Prepare Apple Mail data by filing all e-mail located in the Inbox. (Mail left in the Inbox at the time of migration will not transfer into Entourage correctly)
2. Backup your current Mail database located in user/Library/Mail.
3. Copy the entire Apple Mail folder to the new machine (replacing the default Mail folder) either using target mode or zipping the folder and moving via external thumb drive.
4. Launch Entourage 2008.
5. Since Entourage has never opened before, an option to import will start – Choose Apple Mail.
6. Select all items EXCEPT for Accounts.
7. The importing will begin and you should see all folders, messages, signatures and rules successfully populate in Entourage.

Selby and I recently attended “Printing 101 training – a “Magical Mystery Tour” into the world of printing. The session was presented by Kathy Goodman at 3G-Graphic Solutions in Springfield, Ohio.

Kathy helped unveil the ‘Smoke and Mirrors” behind the magic that is printing. Even though I was never trained in design or print, I work closely with designers and this training helped me to understand their processes (and frustrations).

For example, here are a few lessons that I took home and some of the topics that we covered:

1. How to measure paper – an 8 ½ ” x 11″ is not 8 ½ ” x 11″
2. What upright and oblong means (landscape is not a correct answer)
3. How to count pages (this is more complicated than you think)
4. What is a bleed and why you want it
5. Printers spreads vs. reader spreads (it matters)
6. At 70#, linen paper does not have any linen in it
7. Printing is actually tiny dots on the paper – the dots are so close they fool your eye
8. CMYK does not mean – Color My Yak Khaki. It stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black. (What you see on your monitor right now is not CMYK though; it is RGB – Red, Green, Blue)
9. There are over 16 ways you can fold piece and over 16 ways you can bind a piece
10. Who knew there were so many shades of white?

This may be novice information to seasoned designers or collateral creators out there, but it was a great learning experience for me. I have more of the know-how needed to keep projects moving forward and I learned some important questions to ask.

(And when Selby and I showed up at Bing dressed alike, we knew the training would be a true team event.)