The earlier post today was about Apple, so here’s one tangentially related to Microsoft.

Actually, I’m just going to come out and say it. It’s Bing. It’s about Bing. It’s almost like a confession – “My name’s Darren, and I use Bing.”

I won’t start a big debate about whether Bing is better than Google or Yahoo is better than MSN or whoever is better than whoever, that’s for you to do in the comments. Instead, I will focus on a very small aspect of the site’s design, point out one of the things I like about Bing, one of the small touches that make their site appealing. Just as Google used a minimalist design to make the site appealing and showcase it’s results (or at least said they did – note point #3), Bing tries to make their site visually appealing through the use of daily images.

However, while the images are nice, every once in a while they have one that is animated, using the new-in-Internet-years HTML5 standard. Sometimes they’re subtle, sometimes they’re more animated, but I’m always mesmerized by them.

If you go to Bing today, February 10th, you’ll see the header image for this post with animated water. A nice, subtle touch. If you go after February 10th, you can click on the little left-arrow icon next to the (info) button at the lower-right of the screen, and it will cycle through the previous days’ images. I’ve also included a couple of videos below that show animated wallpapers they’ve had in the past.

Then, if you really want to get the discussion heated, you can go to www.bingiton.com and do a blind comparison of  Bing v. Google to see which one reigns supreme. Do you dare? Just to show you I’m fair in my approach, here are my results from last year. I’m not proud of this.I still like Bing! Anyone ave any preference? Want to defend your search engine? This is the place!

Here are a couple of videos of some animated wallpapers they’ve had in the past. It was surprisingly, and sadly difficult to find any.