14 DAY TRIAL // Having transitioned all former Live Search properties and projects under the Bing brand umbrella earlier this year, Microsoft is offering users much more than just a search/decision engine. In this regard, Bing is a more complex package, an important part of which is the company’s mapping, search, and location platform. Having started serving Bing for Mobile to users of iPhone and iPod Touch devices, the software giant included Bing Maps into the application, to deliver a comprehensive package designed to help users also find and access geospatial information.
Bing for Mobile on the iPhone is “Location Enabled – Bing Maps for iPhone locates your position based on the GPS onboard the phone. The application will prompt you on whether to use your phone’s position. Click ok,” revealed Chris Pendleton, the Bing Maps Technical Evangelist for Microsoft, adding that the app also brings to the table features such as: “Multiple Map Styles – Road, Shaded (sort of a terrain road map, Aerial and Hybrid maps are all supported on the app. Zoom In / Out – Double touch or pinch out to zoom in; pinch or use the zoom icon to zoom out.”
Users will also be able to leverage the Voice Command capabilities of the program. Microsoft informs that the voice command feature is designed to transcript vocal commands into text, and subsequently submit the result into Bing Maps’ search service. With Geocoding, customers will be able to assign certain info to specific location, and have pins placed on the map accordingly.
“Directions – Directions come in multiple flavors: shortest route based on time (clock icon); shortest route based on distance (the ruler icon); driving directions as if you were in a car (the car icon); walking directions if you’re just walking (the pedestrian icon); traffic-based routing that takes into consideration the current traffic flow to produce the optimum route. A route overlain on the map with step-by-step directions. Plus a real-time pushpin to indicate your current location.History – All of your historical search requests will be kept…unless you want them deleted,” Pendleton added.
There are, of course, additional Bing Maps features for Bing for Mobile, including the possibility to access a Map View of all search results in addition to the List View. “Traffic – Traffic flow will be overlain as a transparent map. Detailed Results – Results will include a popup with the business name, a rating, a phone icon (to call the business) and a car icon (to generate driving directions),” Pendleton said.
