Windows Phone Local Scout only for US and UK

Local Scout Mango UK US

Its no surprise that some online service offered by Microsoft via Bing, Zune, etc are only available in the US. There is a break down of the features and availability in various zones here ( andrewtechhelp ) and its clear that to enjoy the full Windows Phone experience you have to be in the US.

Most of you would have seen the video previewing the cool new features in Windows Phone Mango.There was a cool new feature called Local Scout which prioritizes hyper-local search results based on user preferences and recommends the closest restaurants, shopping and activities in an easy-to-use guide. It looks like that will only be available to US and UK customers.

I am not sure if it will be considered but there is an Open Plea to Microsoft ( click ) to allow users to turn on/off features like Local Scout. The issue with this is Bing might not have ( I am guessing ) the data outside the US and UK to provide users with any valid results, it sucks I know, living in Melbourne I too will be missing out on this cool feature. Its a real shame coz most of the time we end up paying more and will end up with a product with less features .. Its a crazy world we live in..

Update : Here is a Facebook group that is trying to gets Microsoft’s attention regarding this issue. ( thanks for the tip Ludwig )

Update 2 : Apparently Local Scout works in France. See video demo ( Thanks David )

David

Hmm, I think we can still definitely use local scout just as we can use “local” functionalities on our phones by changing region.

In this video, even though it was in france, local scout was still running.
See the 2:20 mark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJmstWXOJpk
Though, there seems to be no pretty pictures for the highlights, etc. which US and UK seem to have.
- http://www.bestwp7games.com Saijo George
  
  Thanks for the tip David.
- Kim Thran
  
  Ha Ha, in this French video they are all saying that almost nothing is working.
  
  They are saying the bar scan does not give the right result (0:30)… (nothing compared to Google Goggles)
  The woman is unable to show Bing Audio (the Shazam mimic), that for some reasons does not work either.
  
  All MS services seems unfortunately as mediocre as Bing Map outside US/UK :(
Omen

This is not true, here is the list of what is and isn’t supported over on the neowin forums. http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/999998-local-bing-support-in-mango-information/page__gopid__594013300
http://www.techendeavour.com/ Rahul Aggarwal

Microsoft is trying hard with the window7.5 phone to stand apart for good from the mobile space kings (ANDROID and Apple) but, may be Microsoft will still have to wait for the features of much awaited iOS 5 and Ice Cream sandwich to be disclosed. Apart from the IE9 browser, there are 2 features among the reported 500 features of Mango, those are Quick Cards and Local Scout. Though both the features are identical, the Local Scout will give the info about the events happening in the neighborhood whereas, the Quick Cards displays all the info about a searched item in Bing.
http://www.sheeds.com.au Sheeds

My Open Plea to Microsoft on Mango release outside US…
| Sheeds’ Blog http://bit.ly/kglVBt
Kim Thran

When will Microsoft stop to be US-centric ??????? Enough!

And then MS will complain that sales are not very good.
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