Streetside in the US had a radical makeover a few months ago using the Streetslide design where users can effectively slide down a street and see all the businesses and sites along it, users don’t actually move down a 3D street anymore.

Currently Streetside is only available in London but I hope to see a rapidly rollout of more Streetside places around the UK. It will be interesting to see if this has only positive impact on Bing in the UK and if there will be any mobile counterpart for this mapping feature.

If anyone had spotted Bing Streetside being available in the UK before today then please let me know; I’ve contacted Microsoft to try and find out.

Thanks to @henryed07 for the tip!

The reason why this is surprising is that the two companies compete on quite a few fronts and don’t appear to have much common ground at all. RIM make mobile phones and a mobile OS, Microsoft make Windows Phone and partner with many hardware companies to make the phones. RIM offer many business focused tools, like Microsoft. Another reason why this was surprising is that there had been absolutely no leaks or rumours suggesting such a partnership.

So it could be argued that Bing doesn’t really have a direct counterpart from RIM and therefore the two companies could partner on providing Bing on RIM’s products. However, this deal is more likely to be summed up by “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, with the enemy here clearly being Google. (So far that strategy seems to be working with the Yahoo! partnership, with Bing-powered searches gaining considerable market share at the expense of Google.

Google as I am sure you are aware makes the very popular Android operating system but generates only a fraction of its revenue from the mobile OS. RIM are feeling the pressure from Android with a rapidly declining market share and Microsoft are struggling to gain a strong foothold against Android (that may of course change with the Nokia partnership). So it kind of makes sense for these two companies to partner up to combat Android, right?

If Bing can eat away at Google’s search market share then could Microsoft start to reduce Google’s revenue? Perhaps. Would this mean Google put less into Android and refocus on search? Perhaps. Would this give Microsoft and RIM a chance to catch up in the mobile OS space? Perhaps.

There are a lot of “perhaps” there but the two companies certainly need to do everything they can and Bing is certainly a differentiator against Android phones featuring Google. But will consumers really care about Bing on BlackBerrys? I doubt it. But the question you need to ask is does Microsoft care about Bing on BlackBerrys? Of course it does.

Up until recently Nokia and RIM were the world’s biggest producers of smartphones and still have a very sizable market share between them and by the end of the year Bing will be integrated into a number of their products and the default search and mapping service on more. That’s a huge win for Microsoft. But in additional to this Bing is also integrated into Windows Phones and HP demoed the map app for their slate a few months back that, guess what, made use of Bing Maps. Apple have included Bing as a search option and I wouldn’t be surprised if they plan on making Bing the default at some point in the future on their mobile devices. Microsoft have also invested a lot into the Bing iPad app that received very high praise when it was released.

Bing will be present in a big way on all mobile OSes apart from Android (with the exception of many Verizon Android phones) by the end of the year. That is quite amazing considering Bing is only just coming up to its 2nd birthday now and with the expected explosion of mobile computing in the coming years Microsoft have done a great thing getting Bing on to so many OSes.

So at the minute Microsoft are very keen to get Bing on RIM devices for their large market share but what if RIM continue to lose market share? Microsoft are probably hoping that by the time RIM’s share is too small to be of any value Windows Phone will be able to take Bing forward by itself.

In addition to this thinking, Bing seems to fast be becoming *the* mobile search engine to have. This is probably through a combination of good mobile features Bing has, Microsoft’s partnering with mobile OS makers and OS makers wanting anything by Google on their devices as they try to combat Android. But, whatever the reason, as the number of people who use Bing increase Bing’s mobile results and features should improve quickly through a combination of feedback and algorithm based refinements. At the minute consumers probably wont be bothered that they have Bing integrated into their phones instead of Google but what if in a few years time people expect Bing on their phone. Microsoft certainly seem to be doing more for mobile search than Google is.

You might scorn my thinking of the popularity of Bing Mobile and Bing Maps over the coming years but I’d just like to point out that one man is the architect of both, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, and he certainly seems to know what he is doing (he was responsible for the Bing iPad app and new iOS Photosynth app). I feel confident that he could well bring new features to Bing that make it excellent on mobile devices and in turn would benefit the whole of Bing.

I wouldn’t be surprised if HP sign up to partner with Microsoft for further Bing integration on their WebOS devices rather than just Bing powered apps. HP, like Microsoft and RIM want to combat Android and Google anyway they can and so using Bing is perhaps the easiest way they can do it.

But, looking into the future also makes me think of other ways Microsoft could partner with other companies. Just as Nokia needed a new mobile OS so it would seem that BlackBerry does too. I don’t think its implausible that Microsoft might try and get RIM to use Windows Phone as an OS over the coming years. Of course it would depend on how well RIM’s devices were selling but I can certainly see benefits for the most business focused smartphones to run Office natively with full support for all Microsoft’s business services and products.

So in summary I don’t think Microsoft have much to lose from this partnership. Microsoft want Bing to succeed to combat Google and to do that they need market share, RIM needs to do something to combat Android and using Bing is probably the quickest and easiest thing they can do. Even if RIM continue to lose market share Microsoft wont be too bothered as Bing should be able to improve and gain market share quickly at the expense of Google and it might even make people want Bing on their mobile devices or at the least not be opposed to using it. Further in the future the partnership might allow Microsoft and RIM to partner up to offer Windows Phone on some or all of RIM’s products.

It would seem “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” motto is a good one and could work out well for Microsoft.

I’m not sure the name will stick but it does a good job of titling what it is this project does. We live in a read/write world where people can make content just as easily as any company however its not easy to aggregate this content into a single, meaningful structure. That very problem is what RWW aims to address.

The new project will take elements of the Streetside imagery and flatten them down into 2D view of a street, something that keen Microsoft followers have been expecting the company to do for some time and has been seen on Bing Mobile for quite a few months now. The 2D allows people to look around the street but that probably isn’t of much value to people, what is useful is taking a look in some of the buildings on that street, exactly what RWW offers. People will be able to submit their own imagery to RWW that shows off their business, taking people of tours within buildings. To do this Photosynth is used to show off the inside of buildings but this Photosynth allows people to jump from one “sphere” of imagery to another with some clever transition techniques used to emulate actually moving.

I think this could be a great new feature for Bing that allows people to keep images far more current than Bing could do and should allow for images of places Bing would never take pictures of or inside of. As this is an alpha release I don’t imagine many people or businesses will do much with this yet, however I can easily see this technology being incorporated into Bing Maps Streetside. If that happens businesses would be silly not to show off what their premises look like on the inside.

Another element of RWW is its real time nature, something the Bing team have been working on since they released the Bing Map App that allows users to view geotagged photos over the Streetside imagery. By making it real time should make it more useful and interactive for people. It’s possible to right click on a photo point and see all the related images of the content of the original photo. Also it is possible to move the point at which the photo was taken, this is because Microsoft found that most geotagged images are actually well off the location that the photo was actually taken. I’m not sure how this part of RWW integrates into the part of RWW I explained earlier but I do see it perhaps being like Twitter for photos at events, it could be very useful.

Below are a couple of videos showing off RWW, which perhaps shows off the functionality better than I could explain it.

RWW looks very interesting and will perhaps provide a new way to explore real locations in 3D by using a lot of 2D data from a large number of sources, mostly individuals. It could finally offer a great way to explore various types of imagery in a way that feels quite natural. I look forward to using this service when its available, Blaise mentioned that not all RWW features will be available yet so we have more to look forward to when the service launches. You can find out more about RWW at its new site.

The only thing I am not sure about with RWW is if this is a standalone project or if it basically a testing ground for new Bing Maps features and designs.

This new site dedicated to Streetside in the UK seems to be a direct response to the controversy caused by Google when it has its car roaming around the UK taking pictures. Microsoft have a hotline people can ring to find out where the cars currently are and there is a page showing where the Streetside teams are planning to take pictures. The company will also only be taking Streetside images for popular destinations and not every street. There are good and bad points to this strategy and I’d imagine that over time that more areas are covered.

Streetside is currently available for some US cities and it’s a rather impressive piece of tech offering 3D perspectives and a more fluid experience than Google’s Streetview. Bing Maps also provides that apps that allow for other features to be experienced such as viewing geotagged photos over the Streetside images. There have also been previews of other Map Apps that allowing real-time videos to be placed over the correct points within Streetside and for Streetside to go inside buildings.

In addition to this news it would appear that over the next year Microsoft are looking to bring new Streetside photos to 4 more US cities: Dallas, Miami, New York and San Francisco.

Microsoft do not take these photos themselves but partner with Navteq, a Nokia owned mapping company. It will be interesting to see if the Microsoft/Nokia partnership leads to more collaboration for Bing Maps. Microsoft Research have previously shown off an idea of showing the information provided by Streetside in a 2D map, I wonder though if we will ever see this in Bing Maps. This news follows more good news for Bing which in the US now has over 30%.

Are you glad that Microsoft are bringing Streetside to more than just the US markets or do you think its an invasion of privacy?

Now you are probably thinking that this isn’t that interesting of a story but to me it was because, for the first time I can remember, I didn’t use a computer once for the whole weekend. I didn’t even use my PC at home despite it being a few metres away from my bed. You’d be forgiven for thinking I’d gone mad for not doing so but the truth is I didn’t need to use a PC; my Windows Phone 7 was perfectly capable at doing everything I needed it too.

Now let me retell the story this time including how I used Windows Phone 7.

A few weekends back I travelled the length of South England and back again. A few of my friends from school were meeting at Exeter University where a few more of my school mates current attend and so I thought it would be great to meet up with them. On route to Exeter it made sense for me to visit home too so the Friday evening was spent travelling, by train, into London then back out and on to Bristol. First I needed to collect my pre-booked tickets from the Hatfield station and I used my WP7 earlier in the day to check my email and note down the booking reference code on OneNote and then pinned this note to my Start Screen. Once on the train out of London I wanted to pass the time and so fired up Bejewelled Live which kept me entertained for the entire journey, the journey increased my number of Xbox Live Gamer Points quite considerably.

Once at Bristol I was promptly picked up by my mum and driven home where we listen to some of my new music via Zune. After eating and watching some TV it was bed time where I used the Twitter app to check out the day’s latest news, checked what my friends were up to using the Facebook app and checked my Hotmail and university emails.

In the morning I was awoken early by the alarm on Windows Phone 7, had some breakfast, went back into Bristol and caught my train on the Exeter. Once at Exeter I found the restaurant I was to meet with a friend by using the Bing Maps app on the phone and then went to another friend’s house again using the map app. I stayed at the house most of the day until I went out to Exeter Castle for the night where I took several photos using my Windows Phone 7. In the morning I missed my train (not my fault) and so found out when the next train from Exeter would be leaving for London using IE. I then took the next later train and arrived safely back in Hatfield some hours later.

Never before have I relied on or used a single piece of technology so much but I have to say it performed extremely well, the only issue I had was battery life which I believe was only an issue because I have a developer device. The thing with all these experiences is that I didn’t use them just as a “proof of concept” but actually because they were the easiest thing to to use and made the most sense.

Since the weekend I have since found myself using my Windows Phone 7 n place of my PC in a few other ways too, I attended a meeting without bothering to print out the agenda before hand and only downloaded the word document to my phone minutes before the meeting started. I’ve also found that reading emails can be quicker on my phone than on my PC.

Have you had any good experiences of using different features of Windows Phone 7 extensively? I’d be very interested to know about it.

Slideshow option

When searching image on Bing there are 4 different options to view the endless list of photos “zoom small”, “zoom medium”, “zoom large” and “show image details”. I think that added to this should be the option for a slideshow. With the refinement options on the left hand side of the image results its possible to have quite a stunning selection of photos and in fact people might not be looking for a single image but a selection of images all of the same subject.

I think that people should be able to remove some images from the results to make a “playlist”, of sorts. This could also help refine Bing image searches for all as photos that are removed by many people are likely to not be photos that people want to see when searching a specific query.

Further to this idea is that some people might like to have wallpaper sized photos (selectable on the left) as their desktop wallpaper (even as a slideshow on Windows 7) which could also be an option on Bing. It might also be useful if Bing provided the option to download selected photos, this would require a different way of browsing photos with the emphasis on selecting multiple photos rather than just viewing one.

This is seen clearly with searches such as “Hawaii flowers”. Most images are of stunning photos of flowers found in Hawaii and would make an excellent slideshow, desktop wallpaper or a selection of photos for a slideshow etc.

Full size should be default

I find it odd that when searching photos that once I have found one I like I am taken to a site and then have to click again to see the image in full size. When I click an image its because I want the image, not to see the site the image is on. I think to remedy this Microsoft should make the default behaviour of Bing Image search to present the full size image when an image is clicked but allow a user to go to the site from there.

Geo tag, date should be a refinement too

As I mentioned earlier there are some refinement options down the side of the image search but I think there should be choices. With more and more photos featuring get tag meta data I think users should be able to choose to see images from a location. This could link in with Bing Maps too.

With the web becoming more real time it might also be good to specify when images were uploaded/indexed by Bing. There are plenty of ways to see photos being uploaded and shared on Twitter but if it was possible to see the most recent photos uploaded by anyone on any service.

As part of this I also think Bing should make it very easy to share images with people, they already provide this functionality for some web sites but I think images should have this ability too.

Photosynths should be listed

I really like Photosynths as they can show off something far better than just a collection of images, however Microsoft haven’t done much to take the technology and photosynths mainstream (yes they are accessible in Bing Maps but only by turning them on). I think that photosynths should appear in image searches too, there will be some image searches that have a lot of photosynths associated with the search term. This could improve the awareness of photosynths and also give Bing another unique feature over Google.

It would be great if the photosynths could be viewed with the search results, rather than having to go to a separate site. It would also be good if it was possible to refine the image results to photosynths only in the same way its possible to select image sizes.

Bing image search feels very unchanged to me over the past few years and I think they need to address why people search for images today. Surely most people are now looking for more than just one photo and are interested to new images and to select where the images have come from. I also think that image results need to be treated more as a media experience rather than just a list of images. Sometimes a single image is being searched for but if Bing can make looking at images a stunning and immersive experience then they could create another reason to use Bing instead of Google.

For a service that has a quite often stunning image on the front page everyday I’m not sure it actually does a great job a providing an attractive, useful and immersive way to browse images; I think it should.

I doubt many of you are particularly interested in the business side of the announcements, I know I don’t understand most of it and I couldn’t even hope to explain them to you so I don’t think it wise of me to talk to you about them. However there has been quite a few new things for us consumers from Microsoft.

• Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Beta will be released in July
• Windows Phone 7 will support multi Exchange accounts
• Bing Maps is now running on Silverlight 4 with a host of new features I have found the new Bing Maps to be a lot smoother than before
• Bing Map Apps can now be rated
• Right click functionality and menu
• Full screen mode
• Breadcrumb structure for quickly navigating in and out on a map
• Bing Maps SDK is available
• Microsoft Expression Studio 4 is launched
• .Net 4 is now part of Windows Azure

At the tech ed keynote there were some good short demos of new tools from Microsoft for IT Pros and Developers and there was a real emphasis on how focussed Microsoft is on the cloud. I thought the demo of Windows Phone 7 was great and showed just how good the device should be for businesses and Office users. I also found the video featuring James Cameron to be interesting and showed how Microsoft were very useful in the production of Avatar.

There are 4 types of alternative look for the map:

• Sketchy Style
  Very much what you would expect, looks just like a map sketched out on a napkin or back of an envelope
• European Style
  This style looks like the Bing Maps UI but as I said above a lot of the streets that won’t aid someone in getting to the destination have been removed
• American Style
  Appears to be a cross with the traditional look of Bing Maps and the sketch view
• Treasure Map Style
  Like Sketchy Style but with the “paper” it has been drawn on looking ages and folded

To create the map only takes three steps, the first is entering the address of the destination, the second is selecting how large an area the map should show and finally a name for the map. Then the computation starts and this takes some time and then finally you can see the map and easily switch between the different styles. It is also possible to save the map to your computer as a JPEG or PDF and easily print it or share the map, either by sending a link to people or by embedding it in a webpage as an image.

I think that this is a great Map App and should allow people to create maps that are much more obvious to them about which roads they need to take by removing a load of unless information. I just think it a shame that the Map App is currently only covers destinations in the US, Canada and Mexico.

And here’s the pirate style.

I very intuitive and useful feature which is as relevant on the front page as any of the other links.

Moving on to the Four Square integration on Bing Maps, I’ve tried Four Square and don’t really see its appeal but its implantation on Bing Maps makes me think I can find a use of it. If a user enables the Four Square Map App then they will be presented with lots of icons over the map, some showing users’ comments about a place and others showing where people have won awards. Its the comments part of this integration I find interesting as its possible to find out what people think of a specific location which could prove very useful for sightseeing.

And finally the new UI that Microsoft have planned for Bing, some bits which I like some I don’t.

So as you can see above there are quite a few tweaks the page and its probably easiest to start from the top:

• In the header the 1 pixel high line below the navigation has been removed, not sure if this adds much but it doesn’t break the image of the day up
• Image of the day has moved t the right side of the search box, something I don’t think should be done. Generally the eye is drawn to the top left of the screen where the image is and where most content is aligned too. The search box’s is aligned to the left, the related searches, artists and history are all aligned to the left, the navigation at the top starts on the left etc etc. Having the image on the right side actually seems to make the top of the page right-heavy, I’d much prefer it to be left where it currently is
• New tabs below the search box offer access to the related content for a search, in addition to ones that can be seen above are access to maps, shopping etc etc.
• With the specific content sections now being tabs below the search box the sidebar has been refined with only related searches, related content (dependant on the search) and the user’s search history
• There will be a new section for specific searches shown in the results where the official website to the search will be shown prominently along with related information which the users was likely to have been searching for, such as events, and finally a real-time result whether it the latest tweet from a person or company
• When news results can be shown for a search it appears that “Bing and Ping” will be readily available for users to share the news with their friends quickly and easily

I am looking forward to most of these updates but can’t help but feel they are “fixing” things that weren’t broken in terms of the UI where there aren’t new features. Here’s another picture.

Oh and sorry the name everyone, I couldn’t help myself or get things to rhyme with Bing.

Its been a whirlwind…there’s some stuff coming out, as well, in the next couple of days I think that are pretty exciting in Bing Maps.

Stefan then goes on to explain what Bing Maps is and how it can “pull in all those pieces of data that came from somewhere but then have been cast out and have lost all their association with reality…that’s the power of Bing Maps”.

You can watch the video here (it’s an MSN video so I can’t embed it).

I shall be keeping a keen eye on the Bing Blogs this week and look forward to seeing what else they add to Bing Maps, they have certainly been busy with it after only recently releasing the Streetside Photos and WorldWide Telescope Map Apps. I am also expecting another Bing UK TV ad to be aired this week.

Update: adCenter believe that these updates will be arriving on Thursday, whatever they might be.