14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is little shy of attempting to take its latest Search Engine incarnation beyond the limits of a desktop browser. In this regard, the Redmond company is now providing the tools and resources necessary for developers to integrate Bing with Mac OS X and iPhone. On August 27th, 2009, the software giant announced the availability for download of the Bing iPhone and Mac Software Development Kit. The Bing SDK for iPhone and Mac is currently up for grabs via the Redmond company’s repository for open-source projects, CodePlex.
“The SDK provides: the ability to easily query Bing from within your Cocoa or Cocoa Touch application. Perform both synchronous and asynchronous queries. Search Bing for Web, Image, Video, News, and Phonebook results. We hope that you'll be able to make some great Cocoa/iPhone apps that harness the power of Bing,” revealed Tom Rudick, program manager intern, Bing API, and Alessandro Catorcini, lead program manager, Bing API.
Essentially, Microsoft is making it easy for developers to integrate the Bing search experience into applications designed for iPhone or Mac OS X, allowing users to enjoy dynamic search results. This is the stable version of the software development kit, Microsoft noted. Developers looking to leverage the Bing SDK for iPhone and Mac OS can do so by downloading it from CodePlex. The Redmond company is offering the SDK under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL), which is an open source license.
“The Bing SDK for iPhone and Mac is a Cocoa Framework which enables Mac and iPhone developers to easily integrate Bing search results into their applications,” reads the description of the SKD from the official project page. “The SDK was designed to remove the headache of manually having to parse XML or JSON in order to communicate with the Bing API.”