The Bing guys announced an app for iPad today and it looks pretty sweet – Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land is effusive in his praise. Stefan and Zach take you through the details in the video above. I love audio search in particular….and Stefan’s use of the word boom. Heard that somewhere before. His new word – searchploration? Not so much.
Anyway, you can make your own decision on what you think of the app but I wanted to mention something I think is often missed at Microsoft. Design chops. I know great design and Microsoft are not exactly synonymous but there is definitely a design underbelly here that is starting to peek through. I see it in Windows Phone 7, Kinect and the Xbox UI. I also see it in hardware like the Arc Touch Mouse and the less well know Arc Keyboard. A few weeks ago I mentioned Manuel Lima – an interaction designer on the Bing team. He’s one of many design folks over there. The real test of the success of their work is that you don’t notice it – it just looks an feels beautiful. I think they’ve achieved that with this app for iPad.
Download through the Apple App store.
[update] i think Chris Pirillo likes the app
Second video below is included purely so you can see the Microsoft coffee stand that makes the finest dry cappuccino on our campus. A regular haunt of mine.
