Faster Forward: Bing adds music, videos, games (no kidding)

First, if you try a query that Bing recognizes as musically inclined, it will include links to play relevant songs–in many cases, entire recordings, not just 30-second previews–and view their lyrics. TV-schedule listings are supposed to come later. A query for “Toy Story 3,” meanwhile, brought up a Bing page showing the episode at a more normal size. Searches for “Mad Men” and “The Office,” however, yielded nothing special. That’s “potentially” because some of these features aren’t working yet. A query for “r.e.m. radio free europe lyrics,” for instance, will connect you to a page with the song’s inscrutable verbiage (“Keep me out of country in the word”) and an option to listen to the 1983 recording.

Microsoft says it’s added “nearly 100″ titles, courtesy of its Microsoft Games division, but many searches I tried (“sudoku,” “checkers,” “Risk”) didn’t pan out. But on Wednesday afternoon, that second link only led to an apologetic please-come-back-later notice. The easiest way to try these new features, however, is not to throw in random queries as I just did, but to visit Bing’s Entertainment page, which lets you browse through them all.

Second, a Bing search for a TV show or movie title now surfaces extra data. For example, looking for “The Simpsons” brought up thumbnail previews of individual episodes, which started playing once I parked the cursor over each; clicking on the thumbnail brought up a Bing page showing the episode at a more normal size. Searches for “Mad Men” and “The Office,” however, yielded nothing special. That’s “potentially” because some of these features aren’t working yet. A query for “r.e.m. radio free europe lyrics,” for instance, will connect you to a page with the song’s inscrutable verbiage (“Keep me out of country in the word”) and an option to listen to the 1983 recording. Microsoft says it’s added “nearly 100″ titles, courtesy of its Microsoft Games division, but many searches I tried (“sudoku,” “checkers,” “Risk”) didn’t pan out. But on Wednesday afternoon, that second link only led to an apologetic please-come-back-later notice. The easiest way to try these new features, however, is not to throw in random queries as I just did, but to visit Bing’s Entertainment page, which lets you browse through them all.