14 DAY TRIAL // Users of Bing will notice that today, April 22nd, 2010, Microsoft’s search/decision engine welcomes them with a picture of a bee gathering nectar from a passion fruit blossom. It’s the company’s way of tailoring Bing to the Earth Day celebration, but also one aspect of the winning prize that went to Alan Bosse, a student of the Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City, FL. Bosse’s picture was chosen out of 17,000 entries in the Bing’s first Earth Day Photo Contest, which attracted an impressive number of votes, no less than 200,000.
“His photo of a bee gathering the nectar of a passion fruit blossom was chosen by Bing users to be featured on our homepage in honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22. The photo, titled ‘Passion and Bee’ from the 18+ age division, was taken in Long Beach, California using a digital Fujifilm Finepix S8100,” Stephanie Horstmanshof, managing editor for Bing, revealed.
Recently, the Redmond company selected no less than 12 finalists from different age groups, and gave the green light to the voting process. The software giant has prepared prizes for both the winners and their schools of more than $70,000 in total. All the winners of their category (ages 5-10, 11-13, 14-17 and 18+) will be flown to the Redmond campus and get the chance to have a say in the imagery that will get chosen for upcoming Bing homepage backgrounds.
“Winners in the other age divisions included: a whale off the coast of Maui taken by a student in 4th grade at Lomond View Elementary in Pleasant View, UT; a butterfly taken by a 7th grader at Hommocks Middle School in Larchmont, NY; and an iguana in Puerto Rico shot by a high school senior at Princeton High School in Princeton, NJ,” Horstmanshof stated.
Microsoft also awarded $5 DonorsChoose.org GivingCards to the people that opted for their favorite image in the voting round. The company informs that over 6,500 projects in the US received donations as a result.