If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week, Simple Mobile changed its low-cost plans for the better and actionable notifications in BlackBerry 10.2 were shown off in a video walkthrough. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that's happening in the mobile world for this week of June 1st, 2013.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
With Windows 8.1, Microsoft made a significant change to the way users search: it unified the experience to include web, cloud, app and system results. Now, the company's putting something else into Smart Search: Bing Ads. It's okay if this strikes you as a bit troubling -- most users are accustomed to seeing ads display within browser-based search, not OS-driven queries. But that's the new face of Win 8.1, like it or not. So the next time you use that convenient all-in-one search sidebar, expect to see sponsored results like the one above appropriately highlighted and packed with site previews, links, addresses and phone numbers. Basically, it's no different than what you're getting from a regular Bing search, only now it's baked into your live-tiled OS. You can thank Microsoft in the comments below.
Filed under: Software, Microsoft
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Bing Ads Blog
Here's a nice little feature for those of us who love to post images on the internet. Bing has added the ability to refine image results by license. The addition's simple enough to use -- just do a search and pull the appropriate license from a drop down on the top of the results page, alongside options for date, size and color. Selections include public domain and options like "free to modify, share and use," based on the Creative Commons licensing system, so there's no doubt as to precisely how you can incorporate them into your own posts. Google's had a similar option on its own search engine for some time -- albeit one's that's a bit less prominently displayed.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: Bing Blog
The threads of the universe are known to intertwine in mysterious ways, and recently they've been tangling themselves around two largely unrelated things: Twitter and Windows Phone. It's hard for us mere mortals to make sense of it, but here's what we know:
1) Twitter.com now supports language translation, courtesy of Microsoft's Bing. You just have to look for the "View Translation" link directly under eligible tweets. Good news for mono-linguists, but it would have been a bigger surprise had we not already spotted the Bing Translator making an early debut in the official Twitter app for Windows Phone. (That's the first tangle, right there.)
2) We stumbled upon this translation feature while trying decipher the specific tweet shown above, which subsequently yielded an interesting tidbit for Nokia Lumia WP8 owners.
Honestly, the mind boggles.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile
Source: Nokia Spain (Twitter)
It's not every day we see Windows Phone being used to launch a major new feature, but Twitter has done just that. An update to its official app has just enabled automatic translation if you happen to be reading a person's tweet that isn't in English. The tweet isn't translated in your actual timeline; instead you have to manually click through, but that's nothing to complain about. Microsoft's Bing Platform, also released yesterday, is likely being used as the backend, so this feature could very well come to Twitter's official apps on Android and iOS (not to mention a whole range of other apps) in the near future.
Filed under: Software, Microsoft
Via: The Nokia Blog
Source: Twitter (Windows Phone Store)
Microsoft wants developers to make Bing a central part of their apps, and it's powering that with a new developer platform unveiled today at Build. The Bing kit will let programmers tap the search engine's wealth of knowledge, providing direct information and translations when they're relevant. It should also grant access to natural interfaces, such as gestures, as well as real-world map data. Microsoft showed the platform at work in both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8, so it's clear that developers who want Bing's resources won't be locked into any one device type.
Bing is headed to the classroom in a more targeted form, with Redmond announcing this morning a new version of the engine dubbed "Bing for Schools." The initiative takes the standard Bing search engine and cuts all adverts in search, filters "adult content" (the specifications of that are murky) adds more privacy protection, and adds "specialized learning features to enhance digital literacy." Schools can opt in on a per-case basis, and if they do, that will enable the specialized version of Bing on an entire school's network. The program's kicking off "later this year," and interested parties can put their name in the hat right here. Should you like to see the full note introducing Bing for Schools from Microsoft's Bing Behavioral Scientist Matt Wallaert, we've dropped it just beyond the break.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft, Bing for Schools
Bing might not yet have achieved true verb status, but it's definitely making all the right moves to get there. The latest twist on search? Curated content in search results. It's an experimental feature at the moment -- live in the US, but possibly not all territories just yet -- that delivers collections of images, videos or links relating to your query a-la Google's Knowledge Graph, but curated by a person (not an algorithm). Microsoft's testing the waters with a hand-picked selection of food and lifestyle bloggers right now, but hopes to expand this to more topics as the idea grows. Head to the more coverage link if you want to see what these cards might look like, in the meantime, time to dust off that abandoned spreadsheet blog?
Filed under: Internet, Microsoft
Source: Bing
If you thought the 215TB of satellite imagery Bing Maps added last year was hefty, think again. In what is the largest installment of Bird's Eye shots yet, the mapping folks in Redmond piled on a whopping 270TB of high-res flyover images to their database yesterday. Some of the more notable (read: gorgeous) additions include overviews of Rome and Milan in Italy, Stavanger in Norway and Kaanapali in Hawaii. Aside from the new visuals, Bing also added a couple of improvements to its Venue Maps with an expanded points of interest list and a new "Report a problem" system so users can inform Bing if a location is marked incorrectly. So go on, head over to the source, select any of the amazing locales and take a little free trip to the other side of the world.
Source: Bing Maps blog
