released an updated version of its Bing iPhone app this morning that introduces two new features: Social networking integration, and a feature it's calling Visual Scanning, which lets you search bar codes and media cover art with your camera.
The app can now connect to your Twitter and Facebook accounts to let you view updates from your friends. Microsoft takes that integration a step further by allowing you to search your friends' social updates, as well. And, of course, you can now share items directly to Twitter and Facebook from within the app.
The Visual Scanning feature is basically Microsoft's spin on Google's Goggles visual search, which is currently only available on Google Android devices. The feature is fairly straightforward: After choosing the "Camera" option on the main screen of the app, you can either perform a search on any bar code, or search on the cover of any book, CD, DVD, or video game. The bar code search worked fine for me, but the cover art search was a bit more finicky. It would recognize covers of obscure books, but had trouble with the cover of Microsoft's own Halo 3 Xbox 360 game.
In typical Microsoft fashion, the company didn't see fit to include support for its own 2D bar code technology, Tag. To read those bar codes, you need to download the separate Microsoft Tag Reader app. I'm not entirely certain how difficult it would have been to include Tag support in the Bing app, but it's something Microsoft should consider. It could easily boost the amount of iPhone users running the Bing app by killing off the Tag Reader app altogether.
The app also includes improvements to its Movies section with the addition of more trailers and videos, as well a new Shopping section to let you find products easily.