At Microsoft, we’ve been hard at work updating our Bing apps as well as bringing a new set of apps to Windows Phone. Today, we’re releasing a comprehensive update to our Bing apps with fresh features and the ability for your personalised content to roam across all your Windows devices. We’re also excited to introduce you to three new Bing apps for Windows Phone: Travel, Food & Drink and Health & Fitness.
First, let’s start with the new apps:
New: Introducing the Bing Food & Drink app for Windows Phone
Fans of the Windows 8 Food & Drink app will be happy to see the companion app on Windows Phone. The Bing Food & Drink app was designed with the novice cook and seasoned chef in mind. With thousands of recipes from leading culinary content partners including Great British Chefs, AllRecipes.co.uk, Food52 and more, you can now find these on Windows Phone.
Find the Perfect Recipe: The Food & Drink app lets you access over 600,000 illustrated recipes so there’s something for any menu or occasion. With infinite scroll, you can keep scrolling through the selections until something catches your eye.
Easily Create and Manage your Shopping Lists:With one tap you can quickly create and manage multiple shopping lists, whether it’s your weekly grocery list or something special based on a particular recipe. The ability to roam your shopping list between Windows 8 and Windows Phone makes it simple to always stay in sync regardless of the device you use.
Find the Perfect Drink:For the wine lovers and drink aficionados, the app offers a wine encyclopedia with information on over 1.5 million bottles of wine, 3.3 million tasting notes and hundreds of the most popular cocktail recipes. Browse cocktails by ingredient, flavour profile, glass type and more.
New: Introducing the Bing Health & Fitness app for Windows Phone
Health & Fitness is designed to be your all-in-one tool for wellness. The app brings together nutrition, fitness and medical information, hundreds of workouts and tools that can be customised to your specific needs so you can make smart choices for a healthier you.
Tailor the App to You:for your preferences, interests and goals.
Track your Activities & Nutrition:The Health & Fitness app has three trackers: Diet Tracker, Cardio Tracker and GPS Tracker. These are an easy and powerful way to gather information about your activities and nutrition to make better decisions.
Diet Tracker: Think of the Diet Tracker as a food journal. Over 200,000 foods, including brand names, are available via partnerships with companies like FatSecret, that have full nutrition profiles and exercise equivalencies to bring the ‘cost’ of a dessert into new focus. The tracker includes weekly and monthly reports with goals that you can customise.
The Cardio Tracker lets you keep track of all your cardio exercises, including time spent and calories burned. Like the Diet tracker, the Cardio Tracker provides a seven day and 30 day analysis of workouts.
GPS Tracker: Now all you need to track your morning run is your Window Phone. Launch the GPS tracker in the Health & Fitness app at the start of a run, and see the duration, distance, pace and calories burned. The run data automatically updates your cardio tracker across your Windows 8 phone, PC and tablet.
Symptom Checker:The Symptom Checker is a unique and intuitive way to get information about possible conditions based on the symptoms you might be experiencing. The guide is not intended to be medical advice but a helpful reference.
Fitness Instruction: Looking to get in shape? We’ve got you covered with step-by-step instructions and videos for over 1,000 exercises and workouts across strength training, yoga and Pilates. You can search or browse by body part (e.g. arms), equipment (e.g. dumbbells), duration, type and difficulty. Explore beginner to advanced yoga poses, or choose a 5 to 30 minute long workout with a focus on lower body toning, calm breathing, or improving flexibility. From Pilates to strength training, you’ll find the workout that best matches your goals.
Medical Lookup: How is endoscopy done? What is GERD? What does aspirin do and what are its side effects? Medical lookup gives you information about conditions, procedures and medication.
New: Introducing the Bing Travel app for Windows Phone
The Bing Travel app helps turns your travel inspiration into reality, providing destination guides, rich photos, expert reviews, and much more, right in the palm of your hand. Plan your next trip from hotels and flights to top attractions, or make last minute booking decisions after comparing prices from multiple sources.
Pinned Flights: Easily track your flight status with the Bing Travel app with pinned flights. Right from the tile on your home screen you can see the status of your flight including departure information and arrival terminal. You can search flights by flight number or if you don’t know it, you can search by arrival or departure airport.
Book flights and hotels:Search for hotels, read reviews, and book a room right from the phone app. Sort by price, class, proximity, or popularity. Find both round-trip and one-way flights based on price, distance, departure time, or number of stops.
Explore destinations:You can get the full experience of your destination, down to the current weather conditions and currency conversion rates. Each destination provides both professional photos and travel photos. Check out nearby attractions, restaurants, and more.
Roaming & Personalization
We make it easy to personalise what you want to see across the Windows 8 apps and Windows Phone apps. You only need to set your preferences once, and your favourite stuff will always be there. In the Health & Fitness app for example, you can track your run on your Windows Phone 8 and it will show up the same way on your Windows 8 PC or tablet. And it works the same way if you set it up on your PC – so no matter where you start, you don’t have to set it up all over again, changes and updates work the same way. So setup your favourite cities for weather, pick your favourite sports teams, choose the news topics you want to follow and everything will be with you at your PC at work, on your Windows 8 tablet in the living room, or on your Windows Phone when you are on the go.
Updated: Bing Finance app for Windows Phone
Keep an eye on your favorite stocks and funds in the Watchlist and the latest from the market on your Windows Phone. With this release you get a personalised experience with up to the minute news and information from the markets you are interested in. And of course you can still access the mortgage calculator and currency converters.
Pin Your Favorites: You can pin your favorite stock to the start screen so you can keep tabs at a glance.
Real-Time Financial News:Stay up to date with real-time information from leading financial outlets including articles from the Press Association, Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Reuters and many more.
Updated: Bing Sports app for Windows Phone
Live Match-Ups:View live event coverage for all major football leagues
Player Profiles: Get updates on your favorite players with dedicated profiles that include news stories, photos and social media updates from the sports stars.
Pin Your Favorites:You can pin your favorite team to the Start screen so you can see their details at a glance.
Personalise the News:You can customise the news section to showcase stories from your favorite team or league.
Updated: Bing News app for Windows Phone
Leading News Outlets: In addition to world class outlets including the The Guardian, Associated Press and Reuters we have The Independent, Sky News, and many more in our list of sources. We have also enabled sharing so you can send an article via text, email or on your social network.
To try the apps out, head over to the Windows Phone Store:
Bing Finance: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=1e0440f1-7abf-4b9a-863d-177970eefb5e
Bing Sport: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=0f4c8c7e-7114-4e1e-a84c-50664db13b17
Bing Weather: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=63c2a117-8604-44e7-8cef-df10be3a57c8
Bing News: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=9c3e8cad-6702-4842-8f61-b8b33cc9caf1
Health & Fitness: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=cbb8c3bd-99e8-4176-ad8c-95ec6a3641c2
Food & Drink: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=cc512389-0456-430f-876b-704b17317de2
Bing Travel: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=19cd0687-980b-4838-8880-5f68aba1671e
– Brian MacDonald, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft