One of the favorite features of Bing for many users is the daily image that appears on the homepage each day. Whilst not yet available in every country, this will change! According to this blogpost, international markets will also get a rich image version of the homepage. Starting next month, a number of those markets (including Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and the UK) will begin customizing the images to suit their unique audience, as well as adding their own hotspots!

Hotspots? Yes those little squares you see when you hover over the homepage image, they tell you more about the picture.

And did you know that you can mouse over the copyright symbol in the bottom right corner to see a quick caption about the image, as well as the photographer’s name and agency?

And on top of that, that you can click the arrows to scroll through the past 7 days of homepage images? All that is required for that is that you have Silverlight installed. And what if you see a nice one you want to share it with your friends? Head on over to Bing Photo sharing App on Facebook. But that’s just for the last 7 days, what about if you want to see all images that ever appeared on Bing? Long Zheng to the rescue! He started the Bing Image Archive. Here, you can find all background images from Bing presented in a simple calendar format, appropriate to the day which the image was originally displayed on.
 

Photo Contest, get your photo on Bing.com

Speaking of the images, the Bing Team launched their first ever photo submission contest on Facebook. The theme is “summer travel,” and the winner will have his or her photo displayed on the Bing homepage on Monday, August 3rd.
 
Want to find out more about/participate in this contest? Head on over to the Bing photo contest on Facebook, read the guidelines and rules, upload your photo and who knows…

Source: Bing Community Search Blog - Get your photo on bing.com
istartedsomething - Bing Image Archive, for your viewing pleasure

Edit: In the UK the customization will start in a few weeks already, starting with the background pictures and hotspots. A little later in the summer categorisation will be introduced, paving the way for the “full blown” Bing experience and beta tag removal following that by a few months.