Hello,
I've just been poking around the API and started to wonder whether you might, one day, offer support for more specific datatypes.
For example, allow me to query only for:
i'll put this in another way. Why not allow us to query for specific microformats (all of the above are microformats). That would eb a really cool feature to have in the API.
Let me know if you need me to elaborate.
-Jamie
I second the cooking recipes idea! It would be awesome and quite handy :)
Bing API PHP Library Bingtastic Application to get you started
If you don't mind sharing more details, you made me curious - how do you envisage using this data?
Thanks!
--Alessandro
Alessandro Catorcini: If you don't mind sharing more details, you made me curious - how do you envisage using this data? Thanks! --Alessandro
Hi Alessandro,
Sure, no problem.
The motivation behind the request was actually recipes. I live in the UK where the leading online grocery retailer (Tesco) has released (in beta) an API (http://tesco.cloudapp.net/) that one day will allow 3rd party developers to build apps that allow people to purchase groceries from Tesco.
Our idea is simply to build an app (probably running on a smartphone) that enables people to browse through recipes and one-click add the ingredients to their shopping list. Obviosuly in order to do that we require a way of collecting recipes from around the web; seeing as there is already a (draft) microformat for recipes it seems a natural fit for a search decision engine to be able to return that information via an API.
That's just one idea. its not hard to envisage a mobile app that goes out and presents local events to a person either. Lots of possibilities. All you need to do is allow us to ask for a specific datatype!!
I'd welcome feeedback on this. By the way Alessandro, do you work for Microsoft?
Thank Jamie,
The scenario looks very interesting.
Yup, I am one of the API dudes in Bing.
HTH
Alessandro Catorcini: The scenario looks very interesting.
Yup, I think there's huge untapped potential here! I'll keep my fingers crossed!
Alessandro, Has this come up in conversation at all? Is there any chance that we may one day have the ability to search for microformat data on Bing?
cheers
Jamie
Hi Jamie,
We are looking into it, but don't have out yet.
Hi
Please correct me if i am thinking in wrong direction.
Search Engine (API) is suppose to return links poiting to recipes in question along with brief description. Which it can do now if used with good keywords.
The Recipe micrformat you talked about needs BING to own Receipe copyrights making it a content site like BING MAPS (which has to be property of BING) otherwise it will be a legal issue.
Your events idea is good as the News Search API has location information and can be targeted to a specific area/region events can be linked.
Regards
BollywoodSargam Dev Team
BollywoodSargam.com Dev TeamBING in action at http://bollywoodsargam.com/search_bing_news.php?search_term=Microsoft
You nailed one of the problems :-)
That is also why we have so few instant answers currently available to the public
Alessandro Catorcini: Hi Jamie, We are looking into it, but don't have out yet. --Alessandro
OK cool. I guess "looking into it" is as much info as I can hope to extract out of you :)
Thanks for the reply.
BollywodSargam: The Recipe micrformat you talked about needs BING to own Receipe copyrights making it a content site like BING MAPS (which has to be property of BING) otherwise it will be a legal issue.
Sorry, I don't understand. Why does Bing/Microsoft need to own copyright on the stuff it expposes via search results? If this constitutes turning Bing into a content site and that they would need to own copyright for that content (as you suggest) then every single one of the billions of searches that are conducted every day on Google/Bing/etc are violations of copyright as well.
I don't understand what you're saying!
Dear Jamiet
jamiet: Our idea is simply to build an app (probably running on a smartphone) that enables people to browse through recipes and one-click add the ingredients to their shopping list. Obviosuly in order to do that we require a way of collecting recipes from around the web; seeing as there is already a (draft) microformat for recipes it seems a natural fit for a search decision engine to be able to return that information via an API.
To return a result as needed by you in microformat is something very interesting and I am sure is a very good suggestion for future BING extension of its services. What i meant to say is this
What you need is this
Say Recipie10K.com has 10K receipies available and is displaying its data in the Microformat as proposed. It gets indexed by BING in same Microformat and through Search API the WHOLE data is returned to user.
You will get what you need as you no longer need to interact with Recipe10K.com directly.
But as Webmaster of Recipie10K i will not be happy as the website itself did not come in picture. In this request no one visits Recipie10K and it gets no advantage (traffic wise and revenue wise).
The concept of Search n Decision engine is to re-direct a user to a content websites. (This can change offcourse if some one from BING Think Tank picks up your request and brings out a white paper on this idea and the whole idealogy of Search Engine is changed).
So that was what I was trying to say.
I really loved your idea however i have yet to see a implementation of it across any search engine (BING, Google or Yahoo BOSS)
Please do post your thoughts as it helps in coming up with good ideas.
What this API need to do with?
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