Microsoft regularly introduces new features to its Bing search engine — such as the coming 3D maps — but often those features can't be used outside of Bing. That changes as of today with the launch of the Bing Platform for developers.

Announced today at Microsoft's Build 2013 conference, the Bing Platform will let app developers create experiences in their apps around Bing's services. For example, if an app wants to perform real-time translation of text, it could tie into the Bing Translator Control API for that capability, so the developer won't have to create the service from scratch.

Or, more pointedly, developers can use Microsoft's services instead of Google's.

The Bing Platform offers developers three kinds of services: First is "Entities," which bring Bing's "deep knowledge" about various subjects to apps. In a demo at the Build 2013 keynote, Microsoft Vice President Gurdeep Singh Pall showed how the Bing Entities API could be used to show information about an architect of a particular building in a maps app.

The second Bing Platform service helps developers introduce "natural and intuitive" user experiences. A major component of this is integrating voice interaction with apps, but it also includes things like optical-character recognition, so an app can interpret the text on a sign or document as information and not just an image.

Finally, Bing Platform has the "awareness of the physical world," which extends beyond simple interpretation of location, letting apps "put the user at the center of the action." That implies augmented-reality experiences with real-time response to the location of the user's device and the ways he is interacting with it.

The Bing Platform will let developers more easily create apps with features such as text-to-speech, real-time traffic and translation. It also gives them motivation to integrate Microsoft services into their apps instead of those of a third party.

Although Bing has a small market share compared to Google, Microsoft is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the service, and it powers search on many devices beyond PCs and Windows Phones, including BlackBerry phones, Kindle tablets and Apple's Siri.

Will developers favor the Bing Platform over other services? And will it rival Google's offerings? You tell us. Give us your thoughts on Microsoft's new developer tools in the comments.

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Buckle up, because you're about to experience the Audi S6, one of the fastest sedans in the world. Besides its muscular performance, it's bristling with the latest car tech, so advanced that it gives you a hint of what's to come in the future of self-driving cars.

Audi lent us this car for a week, giving us a close-up look at the most advanced technology available in cars, circa mid-2013. The option-packed Audi S6 we tested ($87,720) is not the most expensive car from this upscale German automaker, but it's high enough on Audi's hierarchy to show off the tremendous power and astonishing technology of today's best cars. Read more…

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A new mode of personal transportation has beat hoverboards to the market: the flying bicycle.

Czech companies Duratec, Technodat and Evektor have created a prototype of a flying electric bicycle. Unlike E.T.'s run-of-the-mill two-wheeler, however, this one looks more like a snow bike. Read more…

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James Bond villains, take heed: Here's a way to one-up all those other yacht owners in the bad-guys club — the Migaloo Private Submersible Yacht. This luxury design concept for a 377-foot submarine was created by design firm Motion Code: Blue, and could become a reality if some well-heeled buyer steps up.

Of course this vessel features all the usual super-luxury features that are so important for taking over the world on your yacht, such as a helipad for quick escapes, a two-story owner's suite with a private patio on the bow, eight VIP suites for all your henchmen, and plenty of room for those white cats you love to pet as you concoct your diabolical schemes.

And for all those lovely ladies that constantly surround you — because they like you, they really do — there's a huge beach club midship, complete with a pool, bar and plenty of deck space for them to bask in the sun. Read more…

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In the last decade or so, invisibility cloaks have captured the imagination of researchers and the public alike. The excitement is based on two advances.

The first is the idea of "transformation optics," or the ability to bend light around a region of space to make it look as if it weren't there. The second is the creation of metamaterials — synthetic substances with optical properties unknown in nature that can be designed to achieve this goal.

One of the goals in this area is to create a Harry Potter-style cloak capable of hiding a human at all optical frequencies in all directions. A bonus would be the ability to make this device as big or small as required so that it can hide objects of any size — even ones as large as orbiting satellites, according to U.S. researchers.

Achieving all these features in a single gadget is currently impossible. The first cloak worked only at a single microwave frequency. More recent cloaks operate over the entire a range of optical frequencies but can only hide tiny objects over a limited viewing angle. Read more…

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Several HootSuite users are reporting privacy concerns due to a technical issue which caused users to receive dozens of email reminders. The messages warned them that their 60-day trial of the HootSuite Pro Twitter management software was ending, but also included the names and email addresses of other users in the Hootsuite database.

The Next Web reports some users received more than 1,000 emails about the topic, and many of the users who are getting the email spam were not even signed up for HootSuite's Pro trial. Read more…

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