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Microsoft just launched a new version of its Bing iPhone app. The iPhone app gives you comprehensive access to Bing’s core services, including Bing maps and directions, as well as news and image search. Besides offering better stability and a few interface tweaks, the new version of the Bing app also integrates more tightly with the iPhone by giving you access to your contacts in the mapping feature and making it easier to copy and paste URLs and share interesting results through email. Sponsor Releasing Bing for iPhone Worldwide was an Accident… Just as it launched this new version of the app, however, Microsoft also pulled the Bing applications from all the non-U.S. versions of the App Store. According to a statement Microsoft sent to Neowin , the company “inadvertently made it available to all countries in which the Apple Marketplace has a presence.” Why it took Microsoft three months to pull the app, which was released in December 2009, remains a bit of a mystery. New Features If you are in the U.S., however, the Bing iPhone app remains to be the best way to access Microsoft’s “decision engine” on your phone. The new version now includes a number of interesting new features. One of the most useful features is the app’s ability to let you bookmark maps, websites and direction. Sadly, however, this feature isn’t integrated with Apple’s Safari, so your bookmarks don’t carry over to the iPhone’s default browser. Other new features include better parental control settings, private search and the ability to edit your search history and support for first generation iPod touch devices. Discuss

Based on a patent filing that was published by the USPTO today and first discovered by Patently Apple, Apple could soon enter the location-based social networking market. The patent , which was filed in September 2008, describes a scenario where a group of users with mobile devices like the iPhone come together at an event like a concert, wedding, political rally or trade show. Normally, you would have to collect personal information from all the attendees you meet and then transfer this data manually into your existing social network if you want to stay in touch with them. Apple’s patent, however, describes a system where all of the devices in a specific location can automatically become part of a new social network based on their location. The patent filing refers to this service as iGroups. Sponsor This could, for example, allow event organizers to provide attendees with additional content and services during the event and after it is over. The exchange of this information would be brokered by trusted devices at the event and information about the social network can be stored in the cloud and exchanged with other services. Turning Ad Hoc Networks into Permanent Social Networks As Apple notes in the patent (“Group Formation Using Anonymous Broadcast Information “), technologies like Bluetooth personal area networks allow modern cell phones to easily create ad hoc networks, but it is virtually impossible to recreate this network at a later time for users to continue their discussions or exchange additional content. In a very detailed example, Apple’s patent describes how iGroups could automatically detect that a group of users is in or around a specific location (in the example, this event is Apple WWDC 2008). The iGroups service could then invite all the attendees to join this group and create a permanent social network for everybody who was in attendance and opts in to the group. Will Apple Actually Do Anything With This Patent? This, of course, isn’t Apple’s first patent for a location-based service. As with all of Apple’s patents, it remains to be seen if the company will actually release any product based on this filing. Given Apple’s position in the mobile market, however, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if the company decided to turn some of these patents into actual product. Discuss

It’s been a rough day for Google’s Android phone, the Nexus One. First we learned this morning that initial sales have been far weaker than the iPhone saw when it first came out of the gate. Now it’s being reported that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected its application for a trademark on the name Nexus One. The name “Nexus One” was ruled too close to Portland, Oregon based Integra Telecom’s own registered trademark for its Nexus fixed bandwidth integrated voice and internet T1 product . Sponsor Mike Rogoway, of Portland’s The Oregonian newspaper, got the following statement from Integra: “We appreciate that the PTO is protecting our trademark rights. Integra has over $60 Million in annual revenue associated with our Nexus brand and it represents millions of new revenue for the company each year. Google hasn’t contacted us since the PTO issued its objection but we hope we can work together to achieve our respective business goals.” Does that mean Google will rename the Nexus One, or that it will end up paying the trademark holder for the privilege of using the name? Google just expanded the Nexus One onto the AT&T network today. Either way, we wouldn’t be surprised if the hunt for a new name is already on. What would you suggest, readers? It’s tempting to say this is another example of the Patent and Trademark Office moving too slow, but note that Integra was granted its trademark in December 2008. The Nexus One was just release January 5, 2010. Meanwhile, the open Android operating system marches on. XML co-creator Tim Bray announced this weekend that he has joined Google to work on Android. He called the iPhone in a blog post “a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.” Discuss

As much as startups want to launch their applications across all mobile platforms, it’s often more realistic to focus on just one. But which one? The iPhone has the biggest numbers in terms of both apps and app buyers, whereas Android usage stats are rocketing. Earlier today we wrote about a new mobile analytics report that showed that Google is no Apple . We explained the difference between these two as relates to phone sales and usage. Now we’d like to highlight the difference for startups that are deciding which one to do business with. It’s tempting to go with Apple because of their current sales figures, but in the long run Google is going to be a far less limiting business partner. Sponsor What’s the Best Reason to Go With Apple? In early March at the Mobilex Conference in Chicago, Charles Yim, of Ad Mob explained his company’s mobile metrics report : “Android and iPhone users download a similar number of apps every month and spend a similar amount of time using the apps. However, iPhone users continue to download more paid applications, with 50% of users purchasing at least one paid application a month compared to 21% of Android users and 24% of webOS users.” This, as well as the iPad’s pre-order numbers, is one of the strongest arguments for why the iPhone is the best way to go. So yes, the money is in Apple apps, but consider that app developers are starting to make equivalent money with Android. Difference between Apple and Google as a Business Partner Recently ReadWriteWeb guest writer Daniel Cawrey pointed out that Google makes most of their ad revenue by driving traffic to Google-owned websites. So the greater the number of apps Google can get on their websites, the more page views and resultant ad revenue they generate. Yes, that’s good for Google. But since selling mobile apps increases the amount of page views Google can generate, the company is going to be far less concerned with charging or limiting app developers in the way that Apple does. Finally, mobile innovator forums are already being dominated by Android. Where do you think you’ll find more app makers to partner with? There are far fewer barriers to app developers collaborating on the Android platform compared to the walled-garden of Apple. Tech startups often have to plan for long-term economic growth in ways that the current market says is not yet possible and when it come to long-term growth, Google Android is going to limit those possibilities far less than Apple. UPDATE: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the Android and Google marketplaces. We regret the error. Discuss

Editor’s note : We offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write posts and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products. We were walking the streets of San Francisco and happened to witness a street band in the process of setting up shop. On the cue, almost all the observers around the band fished out their cellphones and started snapping pictures and video. Which lead us to ask this question: Which is the greatest camera? Sponsor A renowned photographer pointed out to us during Macworld Expo that the greatest camera is not the one that gives you the best quality picture or the best resolution. The greatest camera is the camera in your hand. Going by that, I guess it makes the mobile camera the greatest camera of our time. Mobile photography has really blossomed in the past few years with almost every cellphone worth its merit having a camera built into it. We now have cellphone camera capturing with up to 12.0 megapixels. We have citizen journalists providing breaking news of the Indian Ocean earthquake through phone footage. Let’s step back a little. There are 110 or more million cellphones with camera on them. Add the dimension of them connecting to social networking sites , and that really makes things interesting. But there is a raging debate as to whether the cell phone camera can really be called a “camera”. Maybe it depends on individual choices. However, from personal experience we have observed that people are passionate about photography from whichever source it comes from. The sheer volume of photos taken using cellphone cameras makes mobile photography a serious affair. (For instance, our iPhone app Camera Plus has been downloaded 5 million times.) Consequently,the ecosystem around mobile photography is also blossoming. The range of photography applications in the iPhone App Store is the testimony to how serious mobile photography is. The apps have covered all aspects of photography from the actual capture of the picture to editing, managing and sharing them all within the phone itself. No Limits for Mobile Surprisingly, the limitation of the phone hardware here is not stopping the application developers to dream any less than the digital camera manufacturers. If anything, they’re dreaming bigger. You can use multi-shot to snap photos, adjust anything from brightness, sharpness of a photo, and add funny effects to them. With most of the cameras having GPS, users can also geotag their photos with just a click. It does not stop here. You can also instantly share your photos on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and other social media platforms all from the phone itself! And things have also started moving on the video side. Did you know you can not only capture video using a mobile but also add effects like black and white, sepia from within the phone itself? And of course, you can share your videos on YouTube. Now just step back and wonder whether you can do all the above from within a digital camera, and you realize that mobile photography might not be that primitive at all. To put things in another perspective, you can liken the use of a cellphone camera to the use of a Swiss army knife. This was the theme around which we built our photography application Camera Plus Pro . Both Mobile Geeks and Kodak have some tips on learning how to use all the tools in the knife. With all the mobiles around, we can now reduce the disappointment of the sentence – “I wish I had a camera right now.” Discuss