Microsoft releases sexy Bing app for iPad

It's still a bit odd seeing Microsoft deliver apps for Apple's mobile platform. And it's even stranger still to see one as sexy as the new Bing app for iPad, which brings a slick, immersive search experience to Apple's tablet.

Just as a regular search on bing.com will, the Bing app for iPad tailors the results it displays based on what you're searching for. There are loads of custom views, covering everything from movies and maps to weather and shopping. The app also offers a heads-up display of currently trending searches, complete with related images, which is an iPad-exclusive feature.

Navigation is a breeze thanks to multitouch controls, allowing users to flick or swipe through results. And while the development team refers to the app as "touch and decide," Bing Voice Search is also built in -- making it easy to start a query without using the iPad's on-screen keyboard.

The Bing app for iPad is available for download now from the App Store.

Microsoft releases sexy Bing app for iPad originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CrunchGear Week In Review: Independent Edition

Here are some stories from the past week on CrunchGear: Weekend Giveaway: Toshiba 47-inch TL515 Series 3D LED TV Starbucks Merges Their Two iOS Apps, Lets You Gift Your Friends Coffee From Your Phone Warn Friends And Foes With These Nine Aperture Science Test Chamber Labels SocialBicycles Bike Sharing Is Now A Kickstarter Project Ricoh [...]

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Offline Gmail, Google Calendar and Docs? Um, Yes Please! [Google]

Gmail. Damn near everyone you know uses it, and now they (and you) can use it offline. Sound the trumpets! And if that's not enough, offline Google Calendar and Docs will be rolling out within the week. This pleases me. More »

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This Is the Coolest Way to Take a Self Portrait I've Ever Seen [Video]

So you're with your pals, and you want an Adorable Group Shot?. No problem! Just have the ugliest friend take it. Or awkwardly point it towards yourselves, arm extended. Or hurl it into the air with a fisheye lens. More »

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Daily Crunch: Fiend Edition

Hot Cool Box: Thanko?s USB Mini Fridge Doubles As Heater Starbucks Merges Their Two iOS Apps, Lets You Gift Your Friends Coffee From Your Phone IBM Takes Another Step Towards Reliable Phase-Change Memory Samsung?s Galaxy Tab 8.9 Hits The FCC How Making Can Help Our Economy, Improve Education, And Make Us Happy

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Daily Crunch: Power Supply Edition

Behind The Scenes At The Impossible Project?s Resurrected Polaroid Facility ?The Best Chance To Beat Gasoline:? An Excerpt From Seth Fletcher?s Bottled Lightning The ZEHST Is The 3,000 MPH, Zero Emissions Airplane Of 2050 Japan Takes Top Spot From China: Fujitsu?s ?K? Is The World?s Most Powerful Supercomputer Finally, A Solar Powered Netbook Comes To [...]

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Cineskates ? Get ya (camera?s) skates on

Just new on Kickstarter but already fully funded in just over a day CineSkates is a set of three wheels that attaches to a Gorillapod Focus tripod and enables fluid, rolling video in an ultra-portable package. “CineSkates can produce shots that have previously been impossible or only possible with bulky and expensive equipment. Here are [...]

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Amazon Appstore for Android Test Drive hands on: surprisingly cool, but still US-only

When Amazon Appstore for Android launched last week, one of its primary features -- Test Drive -- was disabled just a few minutes after it opened. With no try-before-you-buy, no refund process, and 1-Click purchasing ready to strike at any moment, this caused some problems. Anyway, don't despair: Test Drive is now enabled.

Before you get your hopes up, Test Drive doesn't work with every app. The IMDb app works fine -- you can even watch movie trailers on it! -- but the Angry Birds games are sadly not enabled. Some games work surprisingly well, though, like Bubble Buster. There's very little latency, and the framerate is really rather good. The Test Drive experience is so true to life that you even get ads; how cool is that?

Gallery: Amazon Appstore for Android Test Drive

Continue reading Amazon Appstore for Android Test Drive hands on: surprisingly cool, but still US-only

Amazon Appstore for Android Test Drive hands on: surprisingly cool, but still US-only originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung Galaxy S II logs confirm NFC support for AT&T, none for Sprint

What's the point of investing $100 million in a mobile payment system if you don't have the goods to back it up? AT&T may be adopting this philosophy, beginning with the Galaxy S II. With the aid of eagle-eyed Android dev François Simond, we conducted an extended analysis of Ma Bell's latest gem and discovered it's rife with NFC. In addition to containing kernel drivers and a pre-installed APK, the system files also indicate the device is running in a mode named NDEF -- short for NFC Data Exchange Format. We haven't been able to determine if the handset will be capable of making payments, but the presence of Near-Field Communications in the Galaxy S II is definitely a good sign. T-Mobile is keeping a tight lid on its variant for the moment, preventing us from getting an in-depth look, but FCC filings confirm it will contain NFC as well.

As for the third handset announced last night, the Epic 4G Touch contains no mention of NFC. Upon further analysis, we uncovered something else potentially more disturbing: it's using the same WiMAX module (cmc732) as the Samsung Nexus S 4G, a handset that was plagued with performance issues when it was originally released (those concerns were eventually resolved in a later update). In this case, it's hard to tell if that means we'll relive the painful experience once again, or if it will come with improved firmware to ensure it doesn't take the same path as its 4G brother. We're starting to unravel the mysteries, folks, and will continue to fill you in as we learn more. If you're considering one of these three lovely models, will these discoveries sway your decision in a particular direction?

[Thanks, François Simond]

Samsung Galaxy S II logs confirm NFC support for AT&T, none for Sprint originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PSX games now available in the Android Market, if you own an Xperia Play

If you're lucky enough to own an Xperia Play -- Sony Ericsson's new Gingerbread-powered smartphone-cum-gamepad -- you can now buy PlayStation (PSX) titles from the Android Market.

There are five titles currently available, all priced at £3.99: Syphon Filter, MediEvil, Cool Boarders 2, Destruction Derby, and Jumping Flash. They don't have an American price yet, but that will surely change once the Xperia Play launches in the States.

Two important questions remain unanswered: How big are these games? The Market descriptions say the games are only 5MB, but that sounds incredibly unlikely -- and more importantly, will it be possible to 'spoof' the Xperia Play and download PSX games onto other Gingerbread-powered phones, like the Nexus S?

In other news, the PlayStation emulator PSX4droid was recently removed from the Android Market. This obviously has nothing to do with today's release of first-party PlayStation games.

PSX games now available in the Android Market, if you own an Xperia Play originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 04:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gmail, Google Docs and Calendar finally regain offline access

Since the death of Gears we've been, rather impatiently, awaiting the return of offline access to our Google apps. Well that day has finally come -- provided you're a Chrome fan. The fine folks in Mountain View just unveiled a new app for their browser (which means it also works on Chome OS) called Offline Google Mail that will keep you connected to your all-important messages even when you can't get a connection. You'll notice the app looks a heck of a lot like the web app for tablets, and that's because that's basically what it is. There are some differences -- keyboard shortcuts work -- but at it's heart it's the same HTML5 browser app mobile users have been enjoying for some time. To install the offline version you'll have to uninstall the standard Gmail Chrome app, which is a little odd, but there's nothing stopping you from typing Gmail.com in the address bar. Docs and Calendar are also going offline. Starting today the feature will be rolled out to users over the next week. To activate it just look under settings for an offline tick box. At the moment Docs is view only when disconnected, but Google promises offline editing is coming soon. Hit up the more coverage link to install Offline Gmail now.

Gmail, Google Docs and Calendar finally regain offline access originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Firefox 4 rockets to 5% global usage share, IE9 wallows at 1.5%

Using some early numbers from both StatCounter and Net Applications, Mozilla's noisiest hominid, Asa Dotzler, has illustrated Firefox 4's meteoric rise to around 5% of Web browser global usage share. Internet Explorer 9, which launched two weeks ago, seems to be enjoying a much more casual stroll in the park with just 1.5% of the global Web usage share.

Interestingly, we can see IE9 dipping between March 20 and 21, just before the 'Important' Windows Update rolled out. It's hard to say whether IE9 is only growing because of the installed-by-default Windows Update, but that small dip definitely sticks out -- did excitement peter out? Did people download IE9, try it out, and summarily uninstall it? Perhaps, given their close proximity, the stats show an attention shift from Microsoft to Mozilla?

Numbers-wise, if the bottom left corner of the graph shows 2.3 million downloads for IE9, we can guesstimate that that it has now been downloaded 5 million times. Firefox is clocking in at 37 million downloads after five days of public availability.

We wonder whether Microsoft knew its release schedule would coincide so closely with Firefox 4. Internet Explorer 9 -- a great browser by almost every metric -- was never going to do well against anything emanating from the maws of Mozilla. The main thing, though, is that Microsoft has now shown that it's serious when it comes to the Open Web. If Internet Explorer 10 is good, and 11 and 12, then we might finally see it compete with the zealous Mozillan horde.

Firefox 4 rockets to 5% global usage share, IE9 wallows at 1.5% originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 05:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Snapseed Photo Editing Software for iOS

A lot of Apple mobile products now include cameras, so I find myself taking more photos than before. �When I take a photo with my iPhone 4 or iPad 2 that needs a bit of tweaking, I have to transfer it to my laptop because I have no editing software for those devices. �I recently [...]

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Ask DLS: What's your favorite mobile app at the moment?

The mobile app marketplace is exploding; there are now hundreds of thousands of apps on the iOS, Android and BlackBerry app markets. Heck, even Windows Phone 7 just crossed the 10,000 mark!

But alas, not all apps are created equal; some are way, way better than others. Which leads me to today's Ask DLS question: What is your favorite mobile app at the moment?

We don't necessarily mean the latest craze; we'd like to hear about apps that have stood the test of time on your device, apps that are among the first you install on a new smartphones, apps that have earned their place on your home screen and in your heart.

So, what are some of these apps? Bonus points for links to screenshots in the comments!

Ask DLS: What's your favorite mobile app at the moment? originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Voice Search learns Latin American Spanish, Indonesian, and Malaysian

Google Voice Search has just introduced localizations for Latin America, Indonesia and Malaysia, enabling native language search for hundreds of millions of users.

Google's official blog post offers some interesting insights into the process of collecting and analyzing the speech data needed to expand support. Thousands of hours were spent gathering voice samples and choosing key regional accents to analyze, and International Program Manager Linne Ha is clearly very appreciative of the Google users who helped the company complete the expansion. Without an enthusiastic base of users to lend a hand, Google Voice Search's polyglot powers would have been nearly impossible to deliver.

Google Voice Search learns Latin American Spanish, Indonesian, and Malaysian originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Evoluce Win&I brings Kinect gesture controls to Windows 7

We've been looking at some pretty cool Kinect and Windows interactions for a while now, but we were hoping that the release of an official SDK would lead to even more coolness. Evoluce has stepped up, and is now offering Win&I -- a full-featured gesture control system for Windows 7.

The company claims that a range of up to four meters is supported, which should be perfect for just about any home theater setting. In the video embedded after the break, you can see an Evoluce demonstrator flip through a photo album, pan through a map, rearrange application windows, browse the Web, and control media playback. Two versions of Win&I are offered -- the home version goes for about 20 Euros, the business version for 40.

Anyone else having fun pretending his stance is a little "Iron Man"? We're tempted to put a repulsor on that hand.

Continue reading Evoluce Win&I brings Kinect gesture controls to Windows 7

Evoluce Win&I brings Kinect gesture controls to Windows 7 originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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International Tech Companies Helped Gaddafi Spy on Libyans [Libya]

Muammar Gaddafi was a desperate man even before the civil war, and it shows more since the recent fall of Tripoli. The Wall Street Journal reports that Gaddafi had the Libyan people systematically spied upon online for years. And international tech companies helped. More »

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