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Bing Maps updated to show more traffic data

May 20, 2012 | By andrewbares

Traffic is finally useful for those who don't drive on interstates!

In the past few days, Microsoft has silently rolled out an update to Bing Maps’ traffic data, expanding the number of roads it covers.

The changes were first spotted by two of our tipsters, Sean and Bob, and also on a thread over at WPCentral’s forums. Sean and Bob noted that Bing Maps on their Windows Phone started displaying traffic on main roads, instead of just on the highways/interstates.

In my local city, Tucson, the traffic info finally covers the smaller roads. Previously, traffic was limited to the interstate or a very small amount of major roads through the city.

Bing Maps for WP7 still doesn’t support displaying traffic info yet like its bigger sibbling bing.com/maps does, but hopefully in the future you will be able to read about construction or accidents directly from your phone!

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Bing Maps Gets New Look for Pushpins, Popups, And Transit

March 14, 2012 | By Pradeep

Today Microsoft Bing Maps team announced another set of visual changes to the Bing Maps interface. Few weeks back Microsoft & Nokia announced the unified map style based on one set of design principles with the goal of providing a more intuitive and pleasing online mapping experience. Now the pushpins, popups and transit in Bing Maps got a facelift.

Push Pins & Popups:

The updated pushpins are designed to better overlay on top of our base map color scheme and make it easier to find results when you perform a search. Search related content appears in blue, while user-generated and saved content (such as “My places”) use an orange colored pin. The contrast changes are more pronounced on hover (and for business searches, the corresponding item in the left-hand panel is adjusted as well), and we’ve also added a new small popup to tell you the name or location or the pin you’re hovering over. Now it’s much easier to quickly scan a bunch of pins to see what they are.

Transit & Sharing Options:

Public transit (and UK transport) users will find a handful of subtle improvements to our directions experience that make it easier to get where you’re going, and make sure you’re on the right line to get there. We’ve changed the way we represent each transit line to better reflect the actual colors and signage used by the line, both for our US and UK markets. You’ll see this reflected both in the on-map waypoints as well as our enhanced directions list.

We’ve also extended our ability to send directions to your mobile phone (via SMS) to support transit directions.

Other than the above, Bing Maps has now added the facility to modify their directions routes by clicking and dragging on start, end, or waypoints. And at last, a new URL www.bing.com/maps/venues will allow you to explore over 850 venue maps of airports, malls, shopping districts, and more.

Hope we see these updates on Mobile Bing Maps experience as well.

A very Bing dilemma

February 29, 2012 | By rush24

It has been a longtime since Microsoft’s main location and mapping service, Bing, made any announcements regarding new features. With Nokia’s updated maps and Nokia Drive apps that now include offline maps and public transportation capabilities, are we facing the unpleasant future where a core functionality, location and mapping on Windows Phones, will differ significantly between the OEMs with Nokia having the best experience while others lag behind with a more limited Bing feature set as it currently stands? The latter’s experience outside North America and a handful of European countries leaves a lot to be desired to say it politely. I think Microsoft needs to address this sooner rather than later because I bet neither Samsung nor HTC, or the other smaller Windows phone device makers are happy about it either.

The situation worsens when you consider that the awesome Local Scout feature combined with Bing Vision, Audio and turn by turn directions are inaccessible in most countries. With the addition of 23 new markets onto the platform, I think a solution to bring a uniform premium mapping and location experience to all Windows phone needs to be tackled as soon as possible.

What do you guys think?

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Yandex replaces Bing on the Russian HTC Mozart

December 8, 2011 | By Surur

We posted 2 weeks ago that Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine, would be replacing Bing on many Windows Phones sold in the country.

Now W7forum.ru is reporting that an update has been released for the HTC Mozart, the only first generation handset officially sold in Russia, which enables the change. The HTC Radar, HTC Titan, Samsung Omnia W and Nokia Lumia 800 sold in Russia all already come with Yandex Search pre-installed.

Bing is generally thought to be pretty poor in Russia, and while the change breaks the all-Microsoft user experience on Windows Phone, the utility is expected in general to be better.

Bing For Mobile Goes Hybrid With HTML5 And Native Experience

November 2, 2011 | By Pradeep

Today Bing announced an update to its Bing for Mobile experience. Instead of developing native applications on each platform and updating them all for every release, Bing is now going to be powered by more of HTML5. This will enable Bing team to deliver new experiences sooner and in more consistent manner across all mobile platforms.

Rather than tightly binding functions into a mobile client, we want to embrace the drive towards exposing our functions via an HTML5 experience. In order for search to advance, engines need to be able to call functions that are currently ‘hiding’ in apps so we can better help people get done what they are trying to get done. Using HTML5, our goal is to build a mobile experience that leverages the unique capabilities of the different platforms including camera support and voice search, while making the functions the apps can provide consistent across the platforms and – in the future – callable by engines to help people get from searching to doing.

This new Hybrid app will be available for iPhone and Android for now and will be available for Windows Phones soon. This new update features following new things,

Maps/List Split View: Provides a dynamic way to synchronize a list such as business listings and directions and a map in a single view making it easy to see the location of what you’re searching for. Also works for driving directions and transit.

Deals: One-stop deal shopping and convenient mobile phone access for local deals from more than 100 deal providers across the US.

Video Domain: launched last month on m.bing, the new video domain is now available on iPhone.

Transit/Real-Time: the Android app now features transit routing/real-time transit and news– all features that were previously only available on m.bing.com.

Source: Bing Blog

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HTML5 enabled Bing Mobile finally rolls out for WP7.5

October 29, 2011 | By Surur

bingmobile

Much earlier in the year Microsoft released a HTML5 enabled Bing Mobile site for iPhone and Android, and promised to release the update to Windows Phones also when they finally got a HTML5 enabled browser.

Now that Mango is available to 100% of Windows Phone 7 users (except maybe the recalcitrant Samsung Focus 1.4 devices) the Bing search team must have felt confident enough to push the button, as visiting m.bing.com now produces a completely different experience than before.

The app is now fetchingly dark and slick, and features much of the built-in options found on the Bing app in Windows Phone 7, including the backgrounds

Of course even HTML5 is not as fast as a native app, and while the site is now much more visually attractive it does not offer anything more than the dedicated app.

Give it a spin however and m.bing.com and let us know if there is anything we missed.

Thanks Milad for the tip.

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Bing Team Shows Their Integration In Windows Phone Mango

October 10, 2011 | By Pradeep

There is nothing new shown in the above video for our regular readers. This will be useful for new Windows Phone users who are not yet done with exploring the phone. Windows Phone 7.5 has Bing integrated into it, you can press the search hardware button on your device to launch Bing anytime. In the video above, you can find Bing Vision, Bing Audio, Bing Voice and App connect features demoed. All the features works seamlessly in a coherent UI that makes your experience even better.

Enjoy the Mango ! ! !

Source: Bing team

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Another Set Of Commercials From Microsoft Showing Bing Integration on Windows Phones

October 7, 2011 | By Pradeep

Yesterday we posted a set of Windows Phone commercials from Microsoft to promote Windows Phones. Today, again Microsoft posted 4 more Windows Phone commercials showing Bing integration in Windows Phones. What do you think of these ads??

See the rest after the break.
Continue reading →

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Bing For Mobile Browsers Gets Facebook Integration,Videos And Movies

September 12, 2011 | By Pradeep

Today Bing Mobile team announced a new set of features coming to Bing for Mobile browsers. This can be accessed by pointing your browser to m.bing.com. The site is designed for HTML5 mobile browsers, so it won’t work on your Windows Phone devices yet, but it will work when you update it to Mango soon. Here are the list of features added,

From Bing Blog,

“Liked Results”: Through our exclusive partnership with Facebook, earlier this year we rolled out “Liked Results” to the web. Now we’re bringing it to mobile browse.

Instantly see which stories, content and sites your Facebook friends have “liked,” from news stories, celebrities, movies, bands, brands and more. With the “thumbs up” from your friends you can jump right to the stuff that matters the most to you. Bing shows the faces of up to three of your friends that like a search result, offering a visual and virtual seal of approval from your trusted social network.

To get help from your Facebook friends, please visit the Settings page from the home page screen and use the secured authentication process to connect to Facebook.

Videos: We’ve brought together millions of videos from across the web – from Hulu, MSN, Youtube and a slew of other sources — for you to watch while on the go. Catch up on current news, check out your favorite sports videos, or see what the latest viral video your friends are all talking about. It’s all just a click away. Oh, and if you’re a sports lover, be sure to check out the special tabs for MLB, NBA, and NHL.

Movies: The age old question: what movie to watch tonight? That decision just got a lot easier, and more fun. We’ve put all the information you need to make that decision right at your fingertips. Quickly review user and critic ratings while you browse the list of currently playing movies, watch trailers, and find show times. You can even ask your Facebook friends what they thought of a movie, or if they want to join you, all from within Bing.

Its good so see Microsoft taking its Facebook integration in Bing beyond desktop. If you have an iPhone or Android device with full HTML5 browser, give it a try.

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Bing Launches "We’re In" App For Windows Phone, Lets You Share Your "where" With Friends

August 18, 2011 | By Pradeep

Bing just announced an app for Windows Phone called “We’re In”. It helps people when planning their road trip or meeting among friend at some places, etc.

App Description from Bing blog,

We’ve made We’re In super simple to use – all you need is your phone number to sign up. Simply invite your friends (via your contacts) to start sharing location info with each other including who, why, and how long:

Pick your friends from the contact list or enter their phone number, tell them what the plan is. At this point you can choose how long you want to share location info.

Your friends receive a text message with these details. They can use the app to join you or, for friends that don’t have a Windows Phone, they can join from the mobile website via the invite.

Once your friends have joined you on the place, they will appear on the maps as seen in the screenshot above. You can update status of your own to notify your friends on what’s going on..Your friends can view that by just tapping your photo on the map.

The app is coming to other platforms as well. More details on Bing blog. Try the app here.

Update: The app is available only in US.

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Developers: ThinkGeo Launches Map Control for Windows Phone 7

August 12, 2011 | By Pradeep

ThinkGeo recently announced their Map Suite Windows Phone Edition, a map control for Windows Phone developers. Its a full fledged Map control with integration of device’s GPS, custom map data and more. Here is the detailed description of it,

Map Suite Windows Phone Edition gives .NET developers the ability to deliver a completely custom GIS solution to Windows Phone 7 handsets. It also integrates with the device’s GPS and boasts full support for touch events, including pinch zooming and tapping to draw and edit shapes. WP7 apps built with Map Suite Windows Phone Edition can utilize custom map data (including consumption of WMS services), perform spatial queries, track vehicles, draw thematic maps and much more, going far beyond what’s possible with the simple map services built into Windows Phone 7.

Map Suite for Windows Phone is now in public beta and also free 60-day evaluations are also available for download from ThinkGeo’s web site.

Source: Directionsmag

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Help beat Google and raise money for Leukaemia research at the same time! – Update

August 6, 2011 | By morenoj47

Hey Everybody!
So the competition ended this Monday and…
MICROSOFT WON!!!

I would like to thank everybody that donated! I received a ton of support which was a pleasant surprise! As promised, here is the link for the pictures of my significant other wearing a Microsoft shirt at Google today! The blog is apparently being actively updated throughout the day so make sure you keep checking it today!!

I would like to give a special thanks to GogoGodzilla!

Thanks Again Everybody!!
Jose

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Help beat Google and raise money for Leukemia research at the same time!

July 22, 2011 | By morenoj47

How much would you give to have a Google employee wear a Microsoft shirt in the Mountain View campus?
How much would you give to not have a Google shirt be worn by a Microsoftie in Redmond?
How much would you give to come back from behind and beat Google in a donation competition?
How much would you give to raise money for Leukemia and Lymphoma research to fight cancer?

joecarol Here’s the deal, my significant other and I are running a half marathon with Team in Training to raise money for Leukemia and Lymphoma research. My significant other, who took an internship job at Google this summer, decided to make our fund raising a small competition.

If she raises more money than me by July 30th, then I will have to wear a Google shirt to work one day. If I raise more money than her, she will have to wear a Bing shirt to their weekly gathering where even Larry and Sergey are in attendance! That’s right, chances are Larry and Sergey are going to see a Bing shirt at their gathering!

To view the progress of the competition, there is a nice graphic here . As you can see, Team Google is currently up on Team Microsoft $1,325 to $650.

I was winning until yesterday when some random Googler decided to donate $1000 (and Google will match it 100%). So this is where you come in, will you give to a great cause and get some satisfaction on the side? I’m not asking for you to give $1000 (that was ridiculous), but any small amount will help. If you would like to, please donate here pages.teamintraining.org/wa/nikesf11/teambringit . Make sure you choose to donate for “Jose Moreno” and specify that the donation is for Team Microsoft.

Thanks,

Jose Moreno

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