Bing Search updates for Windows Phone detailed

By Rich Edmonds
last updated

The Bing UK team has published an interesting article on the official blog, detailing two new features coming to the search engine integration featured in Windows Phone. 

Bing Vision on Windows Phone already enables the user to detect product information scanning QR codes and Microsoft Tags with the camera, but now Bing Vision supports barcodes on CDs, DVDs and book covers. As well as picking up information on the product, the service will provide local availability and cost comparison for convenient shopping/price checking on the go. This feature goes live as of today (see above photo).

The second announcement covers the ability for users to take a photo of a newspaper (or magazine) article and Bing Vision will fetch the digital version, if available. Offering global access to users this feature, which is set to launch in March and will simply be added functionality to Bing Vision, will provide access to over 3,000 publications worldwide. Pretty neat, eh?

Source: Bing UK Blog

Rich Edmonds
Rich Edmonds
Senior Editor, PC Build

Rich Edmonds was formerly a Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.

29 Comments
  • Hasn't it scanned barcodes since Mango? Or was I hallucinating it?
  • Yea, it did, I remember taking a Xbox 360 game and scanning it's UPC when Mango was in beta....
    I've tried a few of these "scanning" apps from the market place and I found that the Bing Vision works the best out of all of them for finding and reading stuff.
  • Only in the US, and probably some other markets now. It still isn't available in Australia unless I switch the language to US English
  • Nope ur right
  • One feature I want. Be able to scan a URL from a computer screen/printed paper with Bing vision and let it launch on mobile ie.
  • I like this idea :D
  • 1 up. I like that as well.
  • Well, scanning the URL as text would be very awkward - most of the time they are too long to fit on the screen at once. What we need is a little pop-up like a Web Slice or Accelerator in IE, or some sort of plug-in for Firefox or Chrome that will generate a QR Code or MS Tag for the current page at the click of a button, then you can Bing Vision-it onto your phone.
  • How about you check out Send To WP7?  It's a fantastic app, includes plug-ins for Firefox, Chrome, accelerator for IE, and a desktop app.
  • check out qrbookmarklet (hosted at Google Code).  You can even select text and it will generate a QR for that text.  It's pretty awesome.
  • It'll scan the Barcode but there on it does nothing :S
  • It does if you click on the pic it took
  • I can even scan my beer bottle and it'll at least do a web search.
  • Ha ha!! Nice
  • Bing Vision has only been able to scan bar codes, books, dvds, cds and video games in the US. I don't know why Microsoft didn't give support to other english speaking countries seeing how we all watch and use the same media. All you have to do is switch the browsers and search language setting under region+language to English (United States). I did this and it allowed me to succesfully bing vision all of the above media items in Canada, as well as give me access to local scout. Again why would microsoft not give Canadians access to local scout when they clearly have enough information about places in Canada to provide the service. 
     
  • Nope, i'm in the UK on an Orange-locked Mozart and its been available for a while. In fact i did it last week to find the cheapest price for a DVD box set. Walked into HMV, scanned the DVD cover and looked at the results.
    Maybe it only came in in the last couple of weeks - i certainly didn't remember it from mango - but it certainly isn't "NEW TODAY"
    This is the problem we have versus the Apple and Android marketing machines - we are our own worst enemy. Apple restrict access to everything, to the verge of crippling their devices, so that the fanboys can suddenly flood every available media channel with "LOOK! WALLPAPERS ARE AVAILABLE!!!!" or similar stories - whereas us sane people get drip-fed AWESOME features on a FANTASTIC platfom - but in a way that we can't make a major media-splash. 
    Don't get me wrong - I MUCH prefer this way of ownership - but it means we dilute our own marketing pool.
    However - what i'm REALLY waiting for is the much-hyped mango feature of being able to scan book covers etc.....NOT barcodes, COVERS.
  • If you switch to 'US English' you can scan book covers right now. I've tested it in Australia and we don't have the functionality unlocked either . I really don't see why this is restricted outside the US. I don't think anyone cares if there aren't local partners to buy books through.
  • Well, even Bing search is still in its early stages of development. Hopefully give them one more year? I think they are already in the midsts of solving that
  • Scanning articles to open the web-based version is a great idea, lets just hope the amount of countries it works for is a decent number.
  • Agreed. CTRL + a, Right click, MS Tag... Bazinga!
  • Its unfair this isn't in Ireland , we use the same media . Its unfair and stupid we should get the very same as the UK .We still don't even get a HTML5 Enabled Bing . We can't even use local search or even get directions on maps . We can even get Zune Pass . Its just silly and ridiculous !
  • *can't get a Zune pass (my mistake)
  • Scanning books still doesn't work as it was shown in the mango demos for me...
     
    Scan book cover, it recognizes it, but it takes me to a web search. Scan barcode, it takes me to a nicely formatted page of catagorized information. Why didn't scanning the cover do this?
     
    Then I'll go to swipe over to "apps" and ShopSavvey and eBay recognize it as a book... but why isn't my Amazon app in the list?? Very frustrating.
  • It would been nice if they first of all made sure the standard search function was operating decent.
  • Bring it to other countries other than Europe, Australia or US please.
  • It'd be nice if it scanned more than QR codes and MS tags, in Australia
  • Come on... In Singapore, we only have Bing Vision and voice. The vision only can scan QR codes and texts. Give us everything!!!
  • Not been available in UK till now. You could do barcodes and qcodes but never book covers etc....
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