By A Bisht
Microsoft has added a new feature, called ‘Quick Add’ to Hotmail recently. The feature uses Bing to enhance the usability of hotmail. But more importantly it expands the ambit of Bing. The feature enables a user to add Bing search results in their hotmail messages, with a single click.
For instance if a user (while writing a message/mail), wants to include a picture of a vintage car in the mail; All he/she has to do is to search for it in Bing, from within the same compose page and simply click on the ‘insert’ button on the bottom left of the desired vintage car image. The image will be added at the place where is cursor is placed on the message body.
The user can add Text and video content in the same way.
Below is the step by step procedure to achieve the same.
Step 1: Log in to your hotmail account
Step 2: Click on the New tab, to open the write new message page.
Step 3: On the right hand side of the page there is a ‘Quick Add’ column with the following categories-- Restaurants, Images, Videos and Business Listings. Choose the type of content or info you’d like to include in your message; by clicking on the particular category. A Bing search box opens
Step 4: Type the search and then click on the insert button on the bottom left of the desired search result; to add it in the message body. The info will be added to the place where the cursor is placed in the message body.
What we feel: Although this is an interesting feature-- the arrangement of showing only the top ten results within the same page, puts some limitation. As seeing 10 plus results takes the user to the Bing search page, where there are no insert buttons under the search results. So adding the relevant result into the message will not be so easy. We think, the problem lies in the thinking that the user will get the relevant info in the top ten results; which is not the case generally. So more results in within the compose page will make the feature more exciting.
--------