ZDNet, Microsoft is now hiring engineers or what it calls the Bing Information Platform, and the company is looking to develop apps that feature camera tracking as well as audio and visual recognition. The team is set to build both an AR (Augmented Reality) framework as well as apps that will be appearing on Windows 8 tablets, among other devices. Mary Jo Foley, over at ZDNet, writes:
“This AR-focused Bing team is working on everything from camera tracking, to visual and audio recognition, to optical character recognition and translation and vision-based natural-user interfaces. The team already has made available some AR deliverables, including the Bing translation app, augmented-reality-enriched Bing Maps, and the Bing Vision and Bing Audio technologies in Windows Phone. But the Bing AR team — which is staffing up further — also is working on an AR software development kit (SDK) for third-party developers interested in building (sic) AR apps; Microsoft-developed and -branded AR apps and games using this SDK; and a Windows Azure-based cloud framework for supporting both the Microsoft- and third-party AR apps”.Obviously, nothing is confirmed as of yet, but seeing that Microsoft’s new Windows 8 ecosystem needs quality apps more than ever, this seems to be a step in the right direction. No projected release date is set, but the apps are very likely to float up in the Windows Store sometimes during 2013. We’ll keep you posted on what’s cooking as soon as we smell it.]]>
