Bing on Tuesday highlighted several new features rolled out in search over the past few months, including its most compelling feature, the intelligent camera, which allows users to take a picture of a complex math problem and solve it in a second.
How smart is this camera? In addition to the math features, Bing lets you snap a picture of any text and it will understand not only what the text is about, but what a user can do with it. Bing said you can take a picture of a “phone number to call it directly, add an email to your contacts list, visit a website, navigate to an address, or simply copy/paste text.” You can take photos of words you don’t know how to pronounce, books you want to buy and so much more.
Image search. Bing also made their visual search box easier to use by allowing you to drag and drop an image, either from Bing or your computer’s desktop, directly into the image box to search. You can also copy and paste an image directly into the box, in addition to a URL, or take a picture directly by using your computer’s camera.
Tutor time. Coinciding with the start of the school year, Bing has launched an educational carousel that gives searchers information about the Solar System, Fraction Calculator and Language Translator and more. Bing also added an American Sign Language (ASL) feature box that gives searchers answers on how to sign, including common signs, doing the alphabet, numbers and then some quizzes. It contains 159 videos of words and 13 phrases to learn from.
Game time. Finally, Bing added smarter football/NFL answers. You can ask Bing NFL trivia questions, and Bing will try to answer them. Such as Who was the NFL rushing yards leader in the 4th quarter of the 2015 playoffs? The answer’s C.J. Anderson, who ran for the Denver Broncos at that time.
Here are some screen shots of the new features:
Intelligent Camera
Visual Search
Education
Sign language
NFL trivia
About The Author
Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land’s News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.