Get Windows Live Messenger & Bing on my iPhone

I’ve been on an app purchasing spree for a while so I had to update my iTunes account with an SG one. Recently though, MS has released a few apps that are US only: Windows Live Messenger & Bing. So what I did, I created another account with a US country (you can search how to create one without having to input credit card info). Once you have a new account, you can go to settings –> store and logout/login with your new account.

It’s a bit of a hassle though because once you’ve downloaded an app with one account, even if it’s available on both stores, you’ll have to be in the correct store to do an update. If that happens, just delete and re-download (of course, you’ll only want to do this with free apps.

So what to check out? For Windows Live Messenger, apart from the obvious social feed integration and IM, you should also check out the photos application that allows you to apply some basic effects to your photos before posting them onto skydrive, privacy setting settable to everyone or just you. <- new emoticon!

For the Bing app, there’s a new social tab that allows you to integrate with facebook and twitter so when you do a search, it searches your social feed as well.

Another new one is the Camera search. I thought this was really cool, you can search a barcode or cover art using your iPhone camera. I haven’t seen a successful search using the barcode yet since my camera is a bit crap. Perhaps 3GS users will have better luck.

So yes, now I have to figure out how to back up my apps to update to iOS4.
//Update: so it’s in iTunes: Right click on iTunes –> transfer purchases. Haven’t tried it yet though, I accidentally hit sync thinking it would prompt me for options on what to sync, now it’s just taking forever to backup. AND no cancel button.