Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ll be in London for the 2012 Olympics and you’ve got no clue about where to go, Microsoft has got a solution for you if you own an iPhone. Called Bing Get Me There, this app will help you go from where you are to where you want to be – in this case, the stadiums you’ll need to be at to catch certain events. The app lets you plan your journeys using Bing maps, the London Underground network, DLR, London buses and London Overground trains.

The app also features full tube maps and live service updates , live departures and status updates by tube station, nearest tube/strain stations (with map and walking directions), set up favorite journeys with “live tile” alerts on your homescreen, weekend service updates as well as offline access to tube maps. Even if you’re not using it to get to the Olympics, it’s still a useful app to have just to get around London. Download it from the Apple App Store for free.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Find my Facebook Friend hits the App Store, Chrono Trigger coming to iOS in December,

Microsoft unveiled a new architecture for Bing in May this year that included the nifty sidebar functionality, which promises to integrate with popular social networking platforms such as Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. Today, the team behind Bing is announcing the sidebar integration with Foursquare. Beginning today, Bing users in the U.S. will be able to view public tips from Foursquare in the sidebar column on the right hand side of the screen. Basically, public tips from Foursquare will appear on a user’s location and query search.

You can do venue search queries for places like Gary Danko in San Francisco, Chez Napoleon in New York, Whole Foods Market in Austin, Golden Gate Park, and more. “Now when you’re planning a trip to that dream destination, or a night on the town, you can find people who are knowledgeable about the place you’re searching, based on what they’ve publicly shared on Foursquare,” Swati Gharse of the Bing team said. This feature will be rolling out to all Bing users in the U.S. starting today. Hopefully, Bing will deploy this feature to other countries as well soon.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Bing Maps get 165TB arsenal of new images, Bing image search revamped,

Microsoft’s Online Services Division (OSD) hasn’t exactly had a lot of good news to share lately, most painful being the recent $6.2 billion write-down thanks to the aQuantive acquisition, so it’s turning to a higher power for its next bet. The company appears to be creating an angel incubator called the Bing Fund, which would foster startups that could “bring a wave of innovation to OSD” — which currently includes MSN, adCenter and, of course, Bing. While the company is being slightly coy about the details of Bing Fund, hosting only the tangerine teaser shown above at BingFund.com, some digging by ZDNet‘s Mary Jo Foley has revealed that Rahul Sood will be the chief cherub of this angel fund, stepping away from the Entertainment and Devices Division (aka the Xbox Division). Who better, we say, than the open-minded Voodoo PC founder who famously cut his chocolate birthday cake with a MacBook Air and later said: “Every executive in the PC industry should use an Apple notebook.”

Bing Fund taking shape to help Microsoft search for the next big thing in online services originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Jul 2012 08:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In case you thought all those 165TB of satellite shots would slow down the Bing Maps updates — think again. And while this one might not be as loaded as the aforementioned goods, the latest refresh to Redmond’s mapping service is likely to make at least a few shopaholic Europeans very happy. To make things short, Microsoft — in partnership with Nokia — is taking Bing Venue Maps over to the Vieux Continent, boosting the total number of mall-friendly maps to over 2,700, and making it more than 30 countries in which the offering’s now live. For those unfamiliar with Venue Maps, the service allows you to find stores, bathrooms and even ATMs located within a good amount of shopping malls across North America, Europe and Asia. Even better, you can see if your favorite spot is one of them at the source link below, where you’ll find the full list of venues supported.

Continue reading Bing Venue Maps gets global-sized update, makes Euros’ shopping trips easier

Bing Venue Maps gets global-sized update, makes Euros’ shopping trips easier originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 20:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Maps, watch out! Microsoft has just announced that they will be throwing in 165TB of new images into Bing Maps, the software giant’s reply to the world of navigation. It is said that this particular data dump is the “largest satellite release to date” for Bing, and the entirety of it is not lost on us. In fact, Microsoft pressed the matter further by saying, “In fact, this release is larger than all of our past Aerial releases combined!”

Just how much data does 165TB amount up to? We are talking about new imagery over North America, South America, Africa, Australia, Europe, and Asia – which equals to nearly a whopping 38 million square kilometers. The aerial images snapped comprises of a mixture of those taken by satellites or aircraft, in addition to Global Ortho photography. You can say that plenty has happened since Bing launched its Global Ortho Project a year ago, and we do not think that Microsoft intends to stop working on making Bing Maps better in the immediate future.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Windows Phone Maps Traffic, Now Powered by Nokia, Bing intros new Britannica Online Encyclopedia answers feature,