Bing Developer Blog

SourceType code samples on MSDN

george — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:38:00 GMT

Whether you are new to the Bing API or have been working with it for some time, you may not be aware of the SourceType code samples available on the Microsoft Developer Network. A SourceType is a source of information accessible to the API, and you can include multiple SourceTypes in a single request, which is preferable to creating multiple requests.

Specifically, code samples are available for:

Ad SourceType (Bing, Version 2.0)
Image SourceType (Bing, Version 2.0)
InstantAnswer SourceType (Bing, Version 2.0)
MobileWeb SourceType (Bing, Version 2.1)
News SourceType (Bing, Version 2.0)
Phonebook SourceType (Bing, Version 2.0)
RelatedSearch SourceType (Bing, Version 2.0)
Spell SourceType (Bing, Version 2.0)
Translation SourceType (Bing, Version 2.2)
Video SourceType (Bing, Version 2.x)
Web SourceType (Bing, Version 2)

The code samples are available for the following protocols:

JSON
XML
SOAP

Visit http://www.bing.com/toolbox/developers/ for a variety of information about the API, including how to get started using the Bing API.

--George, Bing Toolbox team

Bing Developer FAQs available for download

george — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:12:00 GMT

Got questions about the API, SourceTypes, working with PHP? The answers to these and other Bing developer "frequently asked questions" now are available in a single document:

Download the Bing Developer FAQs now (512 KB .pdf)

These are the same FAQs that have always been available in the Bing Toolbox support center. We just wanted to provide the FAQs in a single, indexed document as a convenient alternative to searching online.

If you have questions or comments, please post them to the Developer forum. The forum also is a good source for help and advice from other developers.

Webcast: See What's New with Bing Maps

george — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:22:00 GMT

Join Bing Maps technical evangelist Chris Pendleton to learn about the latest innovations in the Bing Maps Platform that can help you take your Web mapping solution to the next level. Hear about Deep Zoom and multimedia integration possible in the new Silverlight Control and see how the latest release allows developers to show data in more innovative, powerful, and faster ways. Attend this webcast to stay at the forefront of mapping innovations with Bing Maps.

Date: Thursday, December 10, 2009
Time: 10 A.M. Pacific Standard Time

The rich imagery, quality geospatial data, and leading-edge technology of Bing Maps is already being used by thousands of organizations, governments, and developers worldwide. Choose from a robust set of APIs to build innovative applications that allow you to better display data, excite end users, and improve business insight.

Learn more: http://www.microsoft.com/maps

Finding the page not found is now even easier

Kristin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:05:00 GMT

When we launched last year the first version of our Web Page Error Toolkit we got a lot of interest from the community and lots of feedback on how we could make it better.

This year not only have we revamped the existing Windows/IIS version, but we have also listened to your feedback and the full source code is now available on Codeplex in open source under MS-PL.

Also, thanks to the help of our colleagues in the interoperability team, we have today the pleasure to announce a version of the Web Page Error Toolkit for PHP users that can work on Apache as well as IIS and is not bound to a Windows Server.

All the versions of the Web Page Error Toolkit are available as Open Source and put you just one AppID registration away from increasing the ability of your site to keep users from hitting broken links.

After all, if you can’t find it, you better search for it J

Alessandro Catorcini - Lead PM, Bing API

New tools, guidelines for Bing Maps

george — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:49:00 GMT

The newly-released Bing Maps Silverlight Control (Version 1.0) provides some great new feaures, and the Terms of Use has been updated:

Innovative uses of the Bing API

george — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:43:00 GMT

Watch short videos featuring two "Will Code for Green" contest winners, who introduce their innovations based on the Bing API. Patrick Colin McGraw discusses his winning entry, GreenZig.com -- a site that illustrates energy-saving costs he developed with the Bing API. And Ed McConnell describes his winning entry, the Climate Times Help Engine.

Sprinkle Some Cocoa on Bing

Kristin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:06:00 GMT

The Bing iPhone and Mac SDK is available for download on CodePlex, open source under the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL).

The SDK provides:

* The ability to easily query Bing from within your Cocoa or Cocoa Touch application.

* Perform both synchronous and asynchronous queries.

* Search Bing for Web, Image, Video, News, and Phonebook results.

We hope that you'll be able to make some great Cocoa/iPhone apps that harness the power of Bing!

Happy Bing-ing!

Tom Rudick, Program Manager Intern, Bing API

Alessandro Catorcini, Lead Program Manager, Bing API

Bing Product Guidelines released

Kristin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:39:00 GMT

We’ve posted Bing Product Guidelines on the Microsoft Download Center. This document provides visual guidelines and recommendations to implement the branding for Bing for third parties. These guidelines can help echo the Bing product brand experience into your environment.

Topics include:

Bing branding guidelines
Bing searchbox guidelines
Bing searchbox guidelines for third party (web)
Font guidelines for UI
Visual elements for Bing search UI
Editorial style
Approach to UI error messages
Overview of China Transliterated Logo
China Transliterated Logo searchbox guidelines for third party (web)

Please use these guidelines as a starting point for any questions you have about how to incorporate the Bing brand in your applications.

Thanks,

Alessandro Catorcini, Lead Program Manager, Bing API

Silverlighting with Bing

Kristin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:53:00 GMT

Another week, another great Bing API application – this week it’s a Silverlight control that gives users the ability to manipulate results with the click of a button:

But the real news here is the SDK behind the app – an SDK that provides you with everything you need to develop Bing apps with Silverlight. In addition to the sample control, the SDK includes three components:

A reusable framework extension to the Microsoft Silverlight Toolkit. This framework is designed to provide support controls for the sample Bing component, but also to provide an additional reusable view control toolkit for implementing and using some of the advanced data metaphors shown in the Bing search component. Components such as the CloudView, TileView, BandCloudView and StackView can be used in any Silverlight application. All the controls in this assembly support theme-ing and accessibility. All these controls are build on the same infrastructure as the Silverlight Toolkit controls.
The Bing Silverlight service runtime itself - an assembly called Microsoft.Bing.Data. This assembly houses the service proxy for the Bing API, as well as a flexible interface contract for implementing search providers, and a concrete singleton implementation for use in data binding and consuming results from Bing.
Rich documentation of all the types and classes used in the project.

Bing developers, Silverlight developers, any developer who sees the potential here – download the Silverlight SDK for Microsoft Bing and put it to work!

-- Alessandro Catorcini, Lead Program Manager, Bing API

How to Integrate Bing into Windows 7 in Three Minutes or Less

Kristin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 22:12:00 GMT

We’re very excited to announce a seamless solution for integrating Bing directly into your Windows 7 Windows Explorer, so that you can search the Internet just the way you search for files and folders in Windows Explorer now. The solution requires only that you download and open the Bing OpenSearch description document.

This document enables you to perform web searches. In the future, we plan to publish new OpenSearch description documents that will help you search, for example, the latest news from Bing - straight from your Windows Explorer. Stay Tuned!

To get started, just follow these 3 easy steps.

Download the Bing OpenSearch description document.
Double-click the downloaded document. This will automatically add the Bing "Search Connector” on your machine.
From Windows explorer use the Search Box, type the terms for which you want to search and get the power of Bing into Windows.

You can perform Windows actions on the search results, such as Open, Send to, and so on. For a more detailed look at how search connectors work in Windows 7, take a look at Federating Windows Search with Enterprise Data Sources in the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

For more general information about OpenSearch, see OpenSearch.org

Happy Binging from Windows Explorer!

-- The Bing API Team

Bing API SDK Available for Download

Kristin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:46:00 GMT

We've posted the Bing API SDK on the Microsoft Download Center.

The Bing API Software Development Kit provides:

A Compiled HTML Help file that documents core concepts, available protocols and SourceTypes, and reference infomation necessary for developing applications with the Bing API.
65 code samples covering each of three protocols (JSON, XML, and SOAP) for each SourceType in multiple languages (JavaScript for JSON, Visual Basic and C# for XML and SOAP).

Enjoy!

Roopali Kaujalgi, Program Manager, Bing API

New tools for Bing API Developers in the Bing Toolbox

Kristin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Today we're really excited to announce the Bing Toolbox, a new portal for all you Bing developers, publishers, advertisers, and webmasters out there. The Toolbox is an organized set of tools for the entire Bing community, plus links to our new blogs and forums. The Toolbox provides everything you need to work with Bing in one site to which you'll want to return for announcements of cool new features the moment they're ready.

Developer tools now available in the Bing Toolbox include those for API access, PowerToys, Maps, and Translator.

This is a first effort and we’ll be building out the site with new content and updated tools as they become available. Please use the forums to give us feedback!

Thanks,
The Bing API Team

Customize your 404 error pages with the Bing API Web Page Error Toolkit

Kristin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:45:00 GMT

Today we're releasing the new Bing API Web Page Error Toolkit. The new Toolkit replaces the previous version, and provides the following enhancements:

Streamlined for the Bing API.
Uses an AJAX client call instead of a SOAP server call, improving performance and simplifying configuration.
Improved, easier-to-customize page design.
Bug fixes.

Toolkit Overview

As much as ten percent of the traffic to large web sites is heading for pages that either don’t exist or have been moved. Most web servers return a generic 404 error page or a sitemap when a user’s desired page cannot be found. These unhelpful pages often result in a dead end for users.

With the Bing API Web Page Error Toolkit, you can create dynamic 404 pages that contain customized error messages along with search results seeded with relevant keywords to help your users move past the missing page and find the information they need.

The Toolkit is an ASP.net application that replaces the default error page on your IIS server. The Toolkit enables you to send an AJAX client call to the Bing API that returns results for the specified domain and locale. You control the number of results returned on your page, choose whether to offer spelling corrections, and customize your error message.

You also have the option of choosing from several keyword extraction strategies that are included with the install, or providing your own implementation.

Get the Toolkit

To install the Toolkit, navigate to the Web Page Error Toolkit page on the Microsoft Download Center.

Before you install, review the Bing Web Service API Terms of Use.

Happy 404s-no-more,

Eric Carter and Tom Rudick
Bing API Development Team

Bing it on!

Kristin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:06:00 GMT

Ten days have passed since we launched the new Bing API, and we are happy to share with you, the developer community, how busy *you* have been working with Bing during those ten days. You’re keeping us busy answering your questions about the new API promptly, but not only that, you’re keeping us busy reviewing a whole slew of new community projects you’ve created around the Bing API.

We can’t promise to vet all of these projects. However, several of them stand out as, well, BingStars. These include:

Bingable, PowerShell cmdlets for interacting with the Bing API
Poshbing, a PowerShell library for accessing the Bing API
Bing API PHP Library, a simple PHP library for the Bing API
Python Wrapper over Bing API. For more information about this one, see this blog post.
Hovering Bing Search using jQuery
Silverlight-powered Bing news web part for Sharepoint

The AppIds number is growing so fast we can hardly keep track, and this is just the tip of the BingBerg! Keep these great projects coming, and, as always, let us know what we can do to facilitate more great energy around the new release.

-- Alessandro Catororcini, Lead Program Manager, Bing API

Bing Developer Community!

george — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:31:00 GMT

Author: Roopali Kaujalgi, Program Manager II, Bing API

Welcome to the Bing API Developer Community blog. If you have not already done so, please be sure to read Alessandro Catorcini's introduction to the Bing API. If you already have been developing with the Live Search API 1.1 or 2.0 Beta, thank you for your continued support and we hope you're as excited as we are about the new features available in Bing. This blog, as well as the developer forum, is here to help you get the most out of the API.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog's RSS feed for updates on the API--new features, whitepapers, etc.--and check the FAQ and developer forums to find answers to many of your burning questions.

And if you have any suggestions for new features, give us feedback on the forums.

Thank you again for being a part of what we hope will be a new era in Search excellence!