Microsoft is turning out to be quite the iOS developer. Earlier this month, the company released an Xbox Live app for the iPhone. On Monday, the company announced OneNote for the iPad and Lync for the iPhone. Today, Redmond announced iPhone versions of both Kinectimals and its SkyDrive online storage service. That’s on top of an existing stable of apps that includes Bing, Photosynth and Windows Live Messenger. While most of Microsoft’s iOS apps are free connections to existing services, the company is charging $2.99 for Kinectimals. As I noted earlier this week, Microsoft has long faced the challenge of wanting to support its own mobile operating system, while also acknowledging that it is not the epicenter of the phone universe. The company still reserves some of its most extensive work for Windows Phone, which offers mobile versions of the full Office suite as well as a deeper Xbox Live connection Read More

It’s not surprising that the iPad is getting another cool app. After all, the Apple tablet has tons of such programs, while its Android rivals still suffer from a paucity of great, tablet-centric programs. What is noteworthy is that Google is the one making the new app that is widening Apple’s lead. On Monday, the company is releasing a major overhaul of its Google Search for iPad app. The new version allows, among other things, the ability to use the left-hand side of the screen to search, while using the right-hand side to view the actual Web site result, easily shifting back and forth between search and results. Other features include immersive image search and a visual search-history page. It’s the kind of app that makes a compelling case for why tablets are great. Unfortunately for the Android team, that case is being made for the iPad. Google does have an Read More

Bing for iPad, which was already pretty damn nice, has added a sweet new feature that lets you search without even typing. It's called Lasso. Just draw a circle around a word you're interested in and Bing will auto-search it. Genius. [iTunes via Bing] Watch how it works here: Read More

In this continuing series, we round up some of our favorite new applications for smartphones each month, specifically for iPhone and Android devices. This spring edition is one of the longest lists yet - there have been a number of incredible new launches to highlight this past month. (And yes, we know it's May already, these things take time). As a bonus just for this month, we've added a section for new iPad and Honeycomb apps, too. As always, feel free to share your favorite apps in the comments! Fring: Not new, but a new release for both iPhone, Android and Nokia lets users make free group video calls with up to four friends. (Free, multiple app stores) Trapcall: Available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry, this call screening/call recording/call blocking app lets you see who's calling, even when the number is blocked, plus blacklist callers, record calls and more. Ethical questions Read More

  Bing is Microsoft’s answer to the powerhouse search engine that is Google. It’s not nearly as popular, and it’s probably going to be a very long time before Bing can be declared a verb (Not that Google ever seemed too pleased with that happening to their name). But it’s hard to deny the popularity of a search engine like Google, and that’s why we actually asked ourselves if Microsoft was crazy when we heard about Bing. What did they do? They released an iPad app. Our first question was ‘Why?’ It’s like the Google iPad App. It’s not totally necessary. The browser version within the iPad works well enough, and we can always make the device default to the Bing search if we’d like. We can do a search, and browse within the Bing App, but it actually feels slower than just using Mobile Safari. We will say it has Read More

Microsoft introduced its new dedicated Bing iPad search application Thursday, and my first impression is that it offers more useful features than Google’s iOSapp in a better package. Yet while it may outclass the competition, I also doubt I’ll ever use it again. Microsoft did a nice job with the iPad Bing app. I’ve included a gallery below so you can see for yourself just how pretty the free app is. The sweeping vistas that make Bing so visually distinctive on the web look great on the iPad’s screen. The dynamically updated section thumbnails along the bottom of the interface not only look good, but they also offer some pretty great centrally located useful features as well. You can call up news headlines, weather, movie trailers and more with a single tap from the home screen. And everything transitions beautifully from one screen to another with the help of snappy and Read More

By Rene Ritchie, Thursday, Apr 7, 2011 | Microsoft has released Bing for iPad in the US App Store. Based on their search knowledge engine of the same name, it aims to do more than a web app alone could achieve: Experience search that is truly designed for the iPad. Bing for iPad is here. Bing is a decision engine that’s been designed to work beautifully with your iPad. Bing for iPad brings you closer to what you’re looking for by delivering a visually rich, touch-enabled way to search and browse news, movies, Bing homepage images, local businesses, popular searches and much more. Except of course for iPad users outside the US, where Bing.com remains accessible but where, for some reason, Microsoft thinks Bing apps should not be. If anyone in the US tries it out, let us know how it works for you. If anyone outside the US knows of Read More

Microsoft's search tool has surfaced on the iOS App Store, and a first look at Bing for iPad (free) shows it to be a solid and well-designed competitor to Google and the parade of news, weather and search apps that have appeared for Apple's tablet in the last year. The app has been available for iPhone and iPod touch for quite a while and is now in version 2.1. Although there's probably no truth to the rumor that Bing stands for "Bing is not Google," the search service has been steadily gaining market share (usually at the expense of Yahoo!) since it first appeared in 2009. The iPad app should help Microsoft's plans for domination of the search world and give them a good solid grounding in how to design apps for future Windows-based tablets. Launching the app displays a changing photo, with small transparent squares on it that appear when Read More

Microsoft a finalement fini par céder aux sirènes des appareils mobiles de la firme à la Pomme. Le géant de Redmond vient en effet de lancer une application Bing. Cette application permet d'accéder aux informations disponibles sur le portail Bing ainsi bien entendu, qu'au moteur de recherche éponyme. Malheureusement, pour le moment du moins, l'application n'est disponible que sur l'App Store américain. Il est donc nécessaire d'avoir un compte iTunes US pour la télécharger. Read More