It is possible to use Bing on your iPhone or iPod Touch

As we’ve known for quite some time, Microsoft was seriously interested in extending its Bing navigator and Windows Live Messenger for Apple’s portable devices (for iPod as well as for iPhone). The interesting news for the users of these devices and for those who prefer Microsoft’s search engine over Google’s, is that it was moved forward the launch of at least one of these applications and now it is possible to use Bing on Apple mobiles.

This important initiative from the Redmond Company, allows us to use the famous search engine Bing directly on the mobile screen and with the same functionality as in the computer.Moreover, as we got used by Bing.com, it is also displayed on the device screen with the “daily image” as the background.

Being used from an iPhone or an iPod, one of the main advantages of its use in portable devices is that the application allows us to use the voice recognition technology to start a search (although it only recognizes words in English at the moment, it is expected that after its use and popularity increase, new languages will be added). The application also allows the use, of course, of the alphanumeric touch keyboard of the device to search.

One of the standout features by the thousand users that already use this Bing application on their iPods or iPhones is that it can detect our location, allowing us to navigate though maps and search news, images, addresses and shops that are near from where we are.

Another important thing to point out about the mobile Bing is that it offers the possibility to search roads between one point and the other, choosing different alternatives like: the shortest route, the fastest, the one with less traffic (only available on the US at the moment), etc.

As regards the technical parts that makes it easy to use and navigate through the maps using the device, Microsoft highlighted that the application resorts to the SeaDragon technology power to achieve really fluent transactions when moving maps and images or when zooming them, avoiding the annoying loading “frame by frame” (as it happens with Google Maps).

It seems that the complementarity of applications among portable devices and computers is a matter that big companies are taking very seriously to keep them alive on the market. Microsoft and Apple, two of the companies that in other markets seem far way, here they are giving strong steps, and they were able to show that with this launch, which is expected to be the first of many other applications.

How to convert videos into iPhone-compatible format

It seems like a cliché among iPhone users to run into video playback issues. The issue lies on the device specific video format. Therefore, we must first convert them in order to play them on our iPhone properly.

Even though Apple´s iPhone offers numerous features, we found a few issues when importing and playing specific multimedia files. This is due to the short amount of formats the device supports, which inevitably forces us to have a tool like iPhone Converter to work with file formats unsupported by iPhone.

Next, we will show you how to convert video files quickly and easily with iPhone Converter.

Upon running the application, click on Add –located on the top bar- and a browser will be displayed for us to select the files. It´s worth mentioning that iPhone Converter can convert more than one video at a time.

Select the file(s) added on the main box and beneath it you can customize conversion options.

We´ll start by selecting the output format (MPEG-4 o H.264) on the Conversion Settings tab. Once we´ve done that, we can customize video options in the Video Settings tab. Just to name a few, we can adjust the definition (we can choose among several default sizes, though we can also customize width and height in X and Y boxes). We can also modify Frame per Second (16, 24 and 30fps) in the Framerate box, and image quality allowing users to choose different bitrates –for iPhone devices it is recommended to choose 768 kbps.

As for audio options, inside Audio Settings we can customize audio channels (mono or stereo), bitrate quality (64 kbps recommended for iPhone) and sample rate to choose different frequencies (24000, 44100 or 48000 KHz. The higher the frequency, the better the quality).

The next step is to the folder where converted videos will be saved. Click Browse next to Path Information and select the folder where you want to save the videos.

Before starting the conversion process, we can preview the videos by clicking Preview, or just start converting them. Upon hitting the convert button, we will be asked to register, ignore the message and click Later to continue.

In a matter of second iPhone Converter will convert the select videos into iPhone compatible format.

As you can see, the whole process takes just a few seconds. Simply, select the video you want to convert, set the conversion parameters (format and quality) and set the destination folder. iPhone Converter will do the rest.

Faithful to its standard, Apple world continues to surprise people all over the world with news in telecommunications technology. This week three new announcements were released to the public by representatives from Apple. They also talked about some issues regarding some of their products.

Apple

After a long arduous research road, Apple has announced the upcoming two new iPhone patent applications, related to the improvement of multi-touch devices. The first one has to deal with changes in the device´s surface by means of vibration, enabling the user to master the device without even having to look at it. You will be able to use your iPhone from the pocket without having to take it out.

The second patent is even more impressive, since it enables the device to identify fingerprints from each user´s fingers. Thus, depending on the finger a person uses, the device will perform different tasks or actions.

In other news, Apples talked about vulnerability issues with the device. Charles Miller explained that one of the security components suffers from a security issue when sending and receiving SMS, and it allows the attacker to obtain certain user information, whereas a user can´t even tell when someone retrieves data from them.

To put an end to this vulnerability issue, Apple plans to release an update that prevents the device from sending binary code at the moment of the delivery. This case is very similar to an issue that came up a few years ago when Apple devices were equally vulnerable due to issues in the web browser´s device.

This vulnerability is not the only problem Apple is facing. A few weeks ago, several differences arose between the Fruit Company and nVidia -the world leading video card and chipset company- which provides Apple with video cards. It seems the difference cannot be left aside, and the new 4 year contract is now in danger. As a consequence, Apple will have to review the agreement with nVidia or else turn to its video cards competitor: ATI.

These are some of the news in the revolutionary, yet shaky, world of Apple. The only thing left is wait for the security issue to get fixed soon as soon as possible so users can send and receive messages.