Microsoft has been kind enough to give me a limited number of invitations for readers of Searchblog to grok Pivot, which I wrote about here last week.
In that post I promised to grok Pivot, then report back more here. Alas, Pivot is currently Windows only, and – alas – I am currently Mac only. I do have a couple of PCs in my house, but they are owned by my son and my wife, and it’s fair to say I’m not eager to to use them for experimental installs. My son in particular will kill me if I touch his machine (though I’m pretty sure he’s going to download Pivot before I ever do).
Anyway, those of you with a PC and a desire to check out a new approach to search, you’re in luck.
Head to the Live Lab’s Pivot page, and when you hit the download button, enter this code during the install process:
A1C8 7318 57F3 E92C
But hurry. This code expires after a certain number of you use it…..Tell ’em Searchblog sent ya, and please, let me know what you think. I wish I could play with it…
Update: There are some international use issues, from Gary’s email explaining it:
…we think your readers are encountering another issue which is summarized with a work-around at:
http://www.getsatisfaction.com/live_labs_pivot/topics/no_setup_internet_connection
Basically, in order to release the Pivot as early as we did, we chose to defer fully internationalizing the code. As a result, Pivot will not cooperate with a system that is non-English and non-US. However, some of our users have reported that by changing the system defaults for language and location, they have been able to successfully install and use Pivot.