Microsoft has released a new version of their Bing app. This time it’s for their rival’s device, the Apple iPad. It comes with many cool new features that will allow you to view news articles, search for photos, check out movie listings and everything else.

Some of the new features you can expect in the Bing for iPad app include weather, stock quotes, Bing Maps, and voice search, and you can also view websites that you are searching for inside the Bing app. Sounds like some good improvements.

It looks like Microsoft may announce plans to introduce Silverlight for the Xbox 360. The company will apparently detail its plans at the MIX11 conference next week in Las Vegas. This has been planned for months and Microsoft had already revealed that it was planning to bring Silverlight to the Xbox.

This seems like a good plan for Microsoft, to bridge the gap between it’s mobile, PC and Xbox platforms. It ties in with their plans for Windows 8 as well.

There are large touchscreens, and then there are large touchscreens. Microsoft isn’t fooling around with this humongous beast. At the CeBIT 2011 show in Hanover Germany, Microsoft, with the help of a company called Stereolize, showed off ‘Microsoft Cinema’, basically a giant 234-inch touchscreen display.

It has more area than anyone, even an NBA player could touch, but we assume that the touch functionality goes all the way to the top. Pretty impressive if you are the Jolly green giant.

This generation of consoles is pretty long-lived. It’s taking awhile before a new model is released. But the time is drawing near. Now, an online portfolio of a team member of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business Design Group has said that a new Xbox is scheduled for a 2015 release.

They have already started work on it this month. If this is true, then it means that the Xbox 360 will be a decade old when the new model arrives. We know that Microsoft was recently searching for engineers who are willing to work on its next-generation console.

Microsoft may be working on the next generation Xbox, which we might as well call the Xbox 720. This speculation comes from some recently posted some job listings on Linkedin for what seems to be Microsoft’s next generation console.

There are listings for an Audio/Video Hardware Architect, an Audio Architect and a Graphics Architect and the listings reference ‘next generation’ consoles, so this isn’t wild speculation. We have no idea when we might see a new console, but at least they are working on it.

Microsoft has released the Express Mouse. It’s glossy white, egg-shaped and has a unique off-center USB cable to reduce resistance when the mouse is used on the right-hand side. As far as a mouse goes, they look pretty stylish.

The three-button-plus-scroll design comes in six bright colors and is one of the cheapest mice around that uses Microsoft’s blue laser to improve tracking. The Microsoft Express Mouse will be released in April 2011 for $19.99. Only gray and red versions will ship at first and should be followed by green, pink, and two shades of blue for a colorful June.

On the same day that Google decided to get a bit more social, now Microsoft has released a new version of their Bing toolbar, with new features to enhance your Bing experience. The new Bing toolbar helps make tasks much easier and quicker.

There’s the inclusion of a Facebook button, so you can see what’s going on in Facebook without having to leave your current page or open a new tab. It allows you to share content on the social network more easily and quickly. You can also read email from multiple services now instead of just Hotmail.

Many of us have a problem shooting blurry pics. It can be hard to hold your camera still. If you have this same problem and have some DIY skills, you might be able to make your own custom solution to blurry photos.

This is thanks to a team at Microsoft Research who is working on deblurring images by detecting inertial movements of the camera itself. They took an Arduino board and bundled it with some sensors, including a Bluetooth modem, 3-axis accelerometer, gyroscope, and a trigger for the camera. The system works by detecting rotation, translation and planar depth and then it applies mathematical transformations to the image to remove the blur caused by these movements. Pretty good solution.

The time is right for Microsoft to make a play for the set top box market. Apple is never at CES and Google is asking its partners at CES this year to hold back while Google takes its Google TV back to the drawing board. The timing seems perfect.

And according to the Seattle Times that is just what they are doing. Looks like Microsoft is going to enter this market with a stripped-down version of Windows suited for set-top boxes and connected TVs. The software is a version of its embedded device software, overlaid with the Windows Media Center interface, with media streaming and remote-control capabilities.

The Microsoft Kinect hacks just keep on coming and the latest one looks like it might be one of the most useful Kinect hacks yet. Researchers at Georgia Tech College of computing are working on a hack for the Kinect that can be used to teach people American sign language.

This one will help teach sign language to deaf children and has a ton of potential in other ways as well. Judging by the amount of Kinect hacks we are seeing, hackers and modders are limited only by their imagination.

Microsoft’s Albert Penello, in an interview by the British Official Xbox Magazine, admitted that although “faceplates were what everybody wanted to do” five years ago, they pretty much fell flat in terms of retail success. Fail!

So Microsoft killed them off pretty quickly. I know that I just want to play a good game myself, I could care less about dressing up my console like some doll. So, which of you guys bought these faceplates anyway?

What could possibly be better than a tablet or smartphone covered in Swarovski crystals? Microsoft’s kinect, that’s what. At least that’s what DS Styles thinks. This Kinect will blind you before you even get to use it, then take some stills of you stumbling about.

Well, I know what Elton John is getting for Christmas. This thing matches some of his suits. If you like gaudy gadgets, this will cost you $632. You’ll be picking these cheap crystals out of your carpet for eternity as they fall out.

Looks like Microsoft is planning to reward it’s most loyal customers. How? Word is that there may be a dedicated TV channel for Xbox Live users coming. The channel will offer brand new shows as well as old ones. It’s possible that Fox TV is involved so it might actually offer decent content.

The channel idea was apparently pitched by Peter Chernin, an ex News Corp. President. So far the subscription prices will rise by just $1 or $2. So, what do you think? Is this something you want?

Reuters has some information suggesting that Microsoft is getting ready to launch a video subscription service for the XBox 360. The details are scarce and nobody knows yet how this will work, but Microsoft has several options.

The first option is to become a virtual cable operator and charge for bundles of channels. This is a model that we all know well and one that networks are familiar with. They could also create one app per channel, similar to what Roku does. It will be interesting to see what happens with this one.

A new patent from Microsoft has been spotted and it could lead to touchscreens that could change shape to create keyboards and other tactile objects where none exist. It is called a technique for a “light-induced shape-memory polymer display screen”.

It can send ultraviolet light to a plastic layer above each pixel, changing its topography. Varying UV wavelengths would serve to make different parts hard or soft, creating bumps and ridges that could feel like a real surface with actual keys. This design could be used with projectors, though it might not be limited to projectors.