Ever see something cool on the street that you’re wondering where it might be from? If you are, you might be interested to learn that Microsoft’s Bing for iOS app has recently been updated and has gained a nifty new feature: the ability to search for something on the web by taking a photo of it with your smartphone.
So for example if you see a pair of shoes that caught your attention and you want to know more about it, snap a photo and let Bing search the web for you. Now this might seem like it could be Microsoft’s answer to Google’s reverse image search, but actually the folks at VentureBeat point out that this seems to be more similar to Google Goggles.
For those unfamiliar with Google Goggles, the concept is the same as the feature Bing is bringing to its app. You point your phone at an object in real-life and it will attempt to identify it for you. However the app has not been updated in years and for the most part, Goggles appears to be rather rudimentary.
To Microsoft’s credit, the Bing app will actually try to perform a full-fledged image search, while Goggles just does basic identification (if it is able to). In any case the update app should be available from the iTunes App Store, so hit it up for the download if you haven’t updated already.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, Bing (Microsoft), iOS and Microsoft.