Windows Phone and Bing Maps

Last week at the Mobile World Congres in Barcelona, Microsoft took the wraps off Windows Phone 7 series. If you’ve watched the keynote (also available on demand) you saw that Windows 7 phones have a Bing button which provides quick access to Bing Search.

Interesting about doing a Bing search on a Windows 7 phone is that it gives local search results where you’d want local results, e.g. when you search for something to eat (like pizza). In those cases it will give you the local results including a Bing Maps snippet, to let you know where the results are. Windows 7 Phones also automatically recognize addresses from within Calendar (Agenda view, meeting details). To see that address on Bing Maps all you have to do is tap on the address! Handy!

All that is made clear in a video made by Bing Maps evangelist Chris Pendleton backstage at MWC. He got Ian Todd, one of the Program Managers on the Windows Phone team to give him a full Bing Maps on Windows Phone demo.

[youtube_video]YXviZCdzrJo[/youtube_video]

This video also confirms that there will be Windows Phone developer announcements at MIX 2010 in Las Vegas, where Chris Pendleton will also be present.

In another post on the Bing Maps blog, Chris did announce some developer news already, be it not for Windows Phone: For web developers who want to jumpstart their Bing Maps development there is a new web application toolkit providing sample ASP.NET code for common scenarios.