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We hope you enjoyed today’s episode of This Week on Windows! In case you missed it, yesterday we announced that the Windows 10 Creators Update will begin to roll out on April 11. We also highlighted some awesome Windows 10 PCs built by our partners that will light up the Windows 10 Creators Update. You can catch up on both of those blog posts below. Here’s what’s new in the Windows Store this week: Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition – Power Rangers Skin Pack – Buy for $2.99 https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/d38fa339f134b869a088c03fb648fef1.jpg Assemble a team of superhero skins! The new Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Skin Pack ($2.99) is now available for Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition. Learn more on Minecraft.net and get Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition from the Windows Store here. Hidden Figures – Buy for $14.99 https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/3ede6cc42bf6154c446500b260f0e690.jpg Based on the untold true story, Hidden Figures ($14.99) shines a light on a group of brilliant female African-American mathematicians who were instrumental to the success of NASA missions in the early years of the US space program. Nominated for three Academy Awards® – including Best Picture – Hidden Figures is available now in the Movies & TV section of the Windows Store two weeks before it comes to Blu-ray. Lyft – Get the app for free https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/5f6a4f64e783dc7cd68aac6d378b525b.png You can now use your Windows 10 mobile phone, PC or tablet to request a ride with Lyft. Instead of hailing a cab or waiting for the bus, just request a car with the tap of a button, and get picked up by a nearby friendly driver who’ll take you to your destination right away. Never worry about having cash for a cab or the bus again — with Lyft, you pay through the app. It’s easy, fast, and secure. You can easily split the cost of a ride with friends through the app – no more IOU’s. Get the app from the Windows Store here! Have a great weekend! The post This Week on Windows: Windows 10 Creators Update, Xbox Clubs and more appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

The Windows 10 Creators Update will begin to roll out to customers around the world on April 11, and will bring exciting new features and security enhancements to the devices already running Windows 10. Over the last several months, we’ve worked closely with our device partners to ensure customers will enjoy great Windows 10 Creators Update experiences on the devices they’re using today. They’re excited, and so are we! These OEMs are building innovative new devices designed to light up the new creativity and gaming experiences enabled by the Creators update. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/0968a3b1b92d6c701965ae4ff450ddef.jpg Dell Canvas You can read about the exciting new features in the Windows 10 Creators Update including the all new Paint 3D app and Remix3D.com community, gaming innovations, Windows Mixed Reality, Windows Defender Security Center and more in Yusuf Mehdi’s blog post. All these features combined with additional security capabilities and privacy tools, really come to life on the amazing devices our partners have created. This includes Dell Canvas, ASUS Zenbook Flip, HP Spectre x360, and many others partners will make available in coming months. The Dell Canvas, for example, is a smart workspace technology that channels the innovative possibilities of Windows 10 Creators Update. This vestal 27-inch QHD smart workspace lets content creators and designers create, communicate and express ideas naturally with touch, digital pen, and totems or dials. The Dell Canvas allows you to turn drawings into part of the digital workflow with Windows Ink or by marking up web pages in Microsoft Edge. 3D for Everyone in Windows 10 With Paint 3D, you can easily change color and texture or turn 2D images into 3D works of art. Remix3D.com offers pre-made 3D art in a growing online library and provides a space where you can capture, create and share in 3D. 3D in Windows 10 really shines in the powerful HP Spectre x360. This slim device is light, fully-convertible, and boasts 14-hour battery life. It includes Windows Hello and HP Fast Charge to power the device up to 90 percent in just 90 minutes. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/c0f6b96717b14181a9e99eb14cf99f6f.jpg HP Spectre Another great device harnessing the power of 3D for Everyone is the ASUS ZenBook Flip UX360UA, an ultra-thin (less than ½ inch thin and 2.64 lbs.) 2-in-1, featuring a beautiful aluminum shell and premium feel. It is fully-convertible with a FHD or QHD+ display, 12-hour battery, and optional Windows Hello fingerprint reader. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/1ea06657a43026f692a81ca06e62058f.jpg ASUS ZenBook Flip UX360UA The Lenovo Miix 720 2-in-1 detachable is best paired with the Lenovo Active Pen 2 that works with Windows Ink, an integrated infrared camera that unlocks Windows Hello facial recognition, an ultra-crisp 12-inch QHD+ display for superior screen resolution, and a precision touchpad-enabled keyboard that makes for an awesome input experience really brings 3D for Everyone to life. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/f284de22d893195d170770841c4746bc.png Lenovo Miix 720 2-in-1 detachable Game Mode and Beam offer more for Windows 10 PC gamers Windows 10 Game Mode aims to offer the best and most consistent gaming experience on your Windows 10 PC by dedicating more system resources to your PC games. Microsoft’s newly acquired, ‘sub-second latency’ streaming solution, Beam, also invites Creators on Windows 10 PCs to stream gameplay and interact with the community in near real-time using Beam’s ultra low-latency – no extra hardware or software required. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/328ceee3126bc6e9f8d70671b458285e.jpg ASUS ROG Strix GL502 The ASUS ROG Strix GL502 and the Dell Alienware 15 R3 provide great options for PC gamers to try Beam and Game Mode in the Windows 10 Creators Update. They both feature the VR-ready NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10 series and have 15.6-inch Full HD display graphics offering amazing visuals. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/0fcaa49cd34cf3b6b6723ce537ab4b6d.png Dell Alienware 15 R3 Windows Ink Windows Ink is a lot more fun and productive in the Creators Update. You’ll now be able to do things like draw or write directly on maps, photos and videos using the built-in Maps and Photos apps. Create 3D objects from scratch with Paint 3D. Even write or draw directly on a Microsoft Edge web page and mark up digital documents in Microsoft Word. Acer, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba, all offer unique Windows Ink experiences on their new devices. The Acer Spin 7 convertible has a 13-inch all-aluminum unibody that houses a 14-inch FHD IPS Corning Gorilla Glass touchscreen display with a narrow bezel, perfect for drawing with Windows Ink or marking up web pages in Microsoft Edge. The HP EliteBook x360 has a powerful thin and light design has up to 16 hours and 30 minutes of battery life, is optimized for Windows Ink and offers a full-size Wacom pen and digitizer. The Lenovo Yoga Book 2-in-1 includes a Wacom dual-use stylus that writes on paper and screen, and real ink tips so one can write on pieces of paper that cover the multi-use keyboard panel. Everything from doodles and drawings to notes is then instantly digitized and saved on Microsoft OneNote. The Toshiba Portege X20W includes TruPen using Wacom Feel technology, which can detect 2,048 levels of pressure, perfect for taking notes, drawing on web pages in Microsoft Edge and using Windows Ink. Click to view slideshow. OEMs and ODMs will help us bring the Windows 10 Creators Update to consumers and businesses around the world, and we are thrilled by our partners’ ongoing commitment to Windows. We’ll continue to showcase their work on innovative devices that light up Windows 10 experiences. We look forward to seeing even more new devices soon. The post Windows 10 partner devices bring Windows 10 Creators Update experiences to life appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Creativity has led the inspiration of our world’s greatest inventors, architects, educators, entrepreneurs, developers, and students, delivering advancements that move our world forward. Today, people value creativity more than ever, placing us on the cusp of a new wave of exploration, advancement, and impact. We designed Windows 10 to empower the creator in all of us. To us, that means that everyone has the power to dream big, whether that involves starting a company, developing a lesson plan, inventing a product, developing or broadcasting games, or imagining a whole new world in Minecraft or mixed reality. And we want Windows to be the place you love to create and play, with the tools to help you make your mark on the world. Windows 10 Creators Update coming April 11 Today, I’m excited to share our latest update to Windows 10, the Creators Update, will begin to roll out on April 11. The Creators Update is designed to spark and unleash creativity, bringing 3D and mixed reality to everyone and enabling every gamer to be a broadcaster. Beyond creativity, it brings new features to Microsoft Edge, additional security capabilities and privacy tools, and so much more. Whether you’re already a Windows 10 customer or looking for a new Windows 10 device from Surface or our partners, here are just a few of the new features coming in the Windows 10 Creators Update. 3D for Everyone and enabling mixed reality https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/a2a5d09953144a7727be5690a37b924c.png With the new Paint 3D app in the Creators Update, it’s simple to create 3D objects from scratch, easily changing colors, stamping textures, or turning a 2D picture into a 3D work of art. The 3D industry is estimated to grow by over 62% by 2020, and we want to empower everyone to experience, create and share in 3D with the Creators Update. Most of us have been limited to a two-dimensional canvas with existing tools, yet we live in a multi-dimensional world. With 3D, we can communicate ideas and express ourselves better, and learn faster because it’s much more representative of the world we live in. The 3D industry is estimated to grow by over 62% by 2020, and we want to empower everyone to experience, create and share in 3D with the Creators Update. Windows has long been home to creation, with the original Paint seeing over 100 million monthly users as one of the most popular creation tools. With the new Paint 3D app in the Creators Update, it’s simple to create 3D objects from scratch, easily changing colors, stamping textures, or turning a 2D picture into a 3D work of art. Remix3D.com offers pre-made 3D art in a growing online library for your use or you can share your own creation with this creative community. From 3D to mixed reality, the Windows 10 Creators Update enables immersive experiences that blur the lines between the physical and virtual worlds. Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo will ship the world’s first Windows Mixed Reality-enabled headsets with the Creators Update, starting at just $299 USD later this year. These headsets will contain built-in sensors to enable inside-out, six-degrees of freedom, allowing for easy setup and free movement without the need for external markers or sensors in the wall. These devices will light up with new, immersive Windows Mixed Reality apps and experiences, which developers are creating on the recently available Windows Mixed Reality dev kits. Watch, participate, chat and interact in real-time with Beam https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/ffbf89bf15ea6bac9d79b04c6c3647c4.jpg Built-in game broadcasting on Windows 10. Now you can effortlessly stream your gameplay using the Game Bar—just hit Windows + G, click Broadcast, and start streaming on Beam—all without the need for additional log-ins. We’re committed to making Xbox the best place to create and play games across Windows 10 and Xbox One. As part of that, we are unifying players across Xbox console and PC with Xbox Live and through programs like Xbox Play Anywhere, which enables you to buy a game once and play it on both your Xbox One and Windows 10 PC. With the Creators Update, we are delivering more ways to play, interact, share and enjoy across Windows 10 and Xbox One. With Beam, we’re inviting Creators on Windows 10 PC and Xbox One to stream gameplay and interact with community in real-time using Beam’s ultra low-latency – no extra hardware or software required. With Beam, you don’t just watch your favorite game streams, you can chat, interact and participate with streamers and community in entirely new ways. With Windows 10 Game Mode our goal is to offer the best and most consistent gaming experience on your Windows 10 PC by dedicating more system resources to your PC games. Once you’ve enabled Game Mode, you can apply it to any game. Learn more about the corresponding Xbox One update and new features here. Microsoft Edge is faster and safer with better browsing and entertainment https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/9676e65bfc2a520646109230cb1a3207.png Set your tabs aside for easy access; Microsoft Edge is the default reader for books in Windows Store. Because so much time is spent online, we’ve designed Microsoft Edge to be the best browser for Windows 10. People are choosing Microsoft Edge because it is safer and faster than Chrome, with better battery life. With all the dangerous security threats online today, Microsoft Edge blocks 9% more phishing sites and 13% more malware than Chrome* – helping protect your identity and information; speed matters on the Web and according to Google’s own benchmarks, Microsoft Edge is faster than Chrome**. Finally, Microsoft Edge makes your battery last longer so you can stream up to 1.5 hours of video longer than Chrome***. But that’s not all. With the Creators Update, we’ve added new features like advanced tab management to help you find, organize and open tabs you’ve set aside without leaving the page you’re on. You can now discover and get your favorite e-books in Windows Store and read them in Microsoft Edge across all of your Windows 10 devices. And, it is the only browser that can play Netflix movies and TV shows in 4K Ultra HD resolution ****. From sleeping better to easily managing your children’s screen time Sometimes it’s the little things that delight the most. And with the Windows 10 Creators Update, there are many delightful updates and features based on your feedback. By reducing the blue light emitted by your screen, the night light feature helps you sleep better. With night light, when you’re working late your brain is more ready to power down for a good night’s sleep. Smartphone users love this feature and now, it’s coming to Windows 10 with the Creators Update. The mini view feature lets you keep an ever-present small window on top of what you’re doing. This means you can do things like binge-watch your favorite show, carry on a Skype conversation or control your music, regardless of what else you’re working on. With the Windows 10 Creators Update, parents familiar with screen time limits for Windows 10 will now find a similar set of controls for Xbox One. With screen time limits parents can manage how much time their children play games across the console and PC, giving you an extra hand, say, when your younger family member has played enough Forza Horizon 3 for the day. With screen time limits, parents can set a daily time allowance for each child and your Xbox One or Windows 10 PC will automatically sign them out when time is up. For Windows 10, you can even get a report telling you what your child played each week. To set up screen time limits, head over to account.microsoft.com/family, sign in with your parent account, and select “Screen time” for your child’s account. Windows Hello can use any paired iPhone, Android or Windows Phone to detect when you step away from your PC or tablet, automatically locking it behind you for an extra measure of security and privacy. This remote lock feature works with smartphones, fitness bands or any device that’s paired to your PC or tablet. Additional security and privacy protection https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/552433b9bd9d5d962aedcc3794561ff0.png The new Windows Defender Security Center dashboard coming with the Windows 10 Creators Update gives you visibility of your device security, health, and online safety. Customers like MARS, Adventist Health Systems, and the Australian Department of Human Services are choosing Windows 10 because it is the most secure enterprise platform. Businesses and people at home need advanced protection because security experts are seeing increased efforts to make common malware and ransomware more prevalent and difficult to track and defend against, putting everyone at greater risk. With Windows 10, we’ve built the most robust security protection into Windows to protect you from these threats whether you are visiting a website, sending an email or storing files in the cloud. With the Creators Update, we offer a new service to help you monitor your security, the Windows Defender Security Center. It offers a single dashboard display so you can control your security options from one place – everything from anti-virus, network and firewall protection; to assessing your device performance and health; to security controls for your apps and browser; to family safety options. And there’s more: The Device Health Advisor gives you information on the vital signs of your device, and new settings give you more control over app installation. For our business customers, the Creators Update will continue to bring new tools and capabilities that help simplify IT – making it easier to better deploy, manage and support Windows 10 devices – and to help stomp security threats. Your privacy deeply matters to us and to you, and the Creators Update makes it easier than ever to manage your privacy with Windows 10 and other Microsoft services with a new set up experience that lets you choose the settings that are right for you. A new Microsoft privacy dashboard lets you see and manage your activity data across multiple Microsoft services. The Creators Update will start to roll out via Windows Update on April 11. We will be rolling it out in a measured way to ensure the best possible customer experience. Surface Book and Surface Studio coming to more markets https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/fae46dc4395759150f62305418189fa1.jpg Surface Studio turns your desk into a creative studio. It is a new class of device that transforms from a desktop PC into a powerful digital canvas, unlocking a more natural and immersive way to create. Since we introduced Surface Studio, Surface Dial, and Surface Book with Performance Base last fall, we’ve heard amazing feedback on how these devices are transforming the way people bring ideas to life. Surface Studio has captured people’s imagination with a completely new way to create at your desk. And Surface Book with Performance Base has delivered an unprecedented combination of performance, battery life, and portability. We’ve heard from engineers, developers, Silicon Valley startups, designers, and photographers about how Surface devices not only help them get more done but to interact with their work in new ways. To help meet the demand for Surface devices as part of the modern office setting we are investing in partnerships with companies like Steelcase to help businesses unlock the full creative potential of their employees. With Surface and Windows 10 we are helping people realize their full creative potential and we are excited to bring that experience to more people around the world today. Surface Book with Performance base is available for pre-order today in Austria, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom and will be available for purchase on April 20th. And, Surface Studio and Surface Dial are available for pre-order today in Australia, Canada and New Zealand and will be available for purchase in Canada starting April 20th and in Australia and New Zealand on April 27th.* Windows 10 Creators Update for Surface Hub Last but definitely not least, Surface Hub customers worldwide will receive the Windows 10 Creators Update for Surface Hub. The update delivers some of the top requested features to make Surface Hub an even more powerful collaboration device. The updates include an improved new start screen that allows you to sign on with your credentials and access your Office 365 apps and OneDrive materials as well as new manageability tools to simplify large-scale deployments. Apps like Skype for Business are being improved to help you connect better and the Whiteboard app will now easily enable real-time collaboration between Surface Hubs. Expect a more detailed update on the great Surface Hub improvements coming in Creators Update before April 11th. Stay tuned right here on the Windows Blog for more information soon about how to get the Windows 10 Creators Update. We are so excited to deliver the Creators Update to you and for more of you around the world to experience the amazing Surface devices that bring creativity to life. Thanks, Yusuf *Based on NSS Labs report. **More information on benchmark here. ***Windows data found here. ****Exclusive DRM privilege to allow 4K stream for Microsoft Edge and Netflix app on Windows 10 on compatible Windows PCs. *3/29/17: Updated to clarify date of purchase availability. The post Windows 10 Creators Update coming April 11, Surface expands to more markets appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/44e84359311458813d4ca9fe4e75de17.jpg Microsoft Store continues to make it easier than ever for customers to experience virtual reality by rolling out four new VR game demos on Oculus Rift, powered by Windows 10, this week. Customers can try new demos including one of the biggest exclusive games for Oculus Rift, Rock Band VR, as well as Fruit Ninja VR, Lumiere’s Dress Rehearsal and Robo Recall. Rift and Windows 10 make it easy to step into new worlds and experience VR gaming like never before, while Oculus Touch motion controllers feel as natural as your own hands. Whether you’re rocking out onstage or mowing down waves of rogue robots, experience how powerful and interactive hands-on virtual reality can be. Microsoft Store is the destination to try these experiences before you buy, empowering you to find the game and hardware that’s right for you. Check out the following Oculus Rift demo experiences available in select Microsoft Stores this week. Demos are free, with no appointment needed.* Rock Band VR Channel your inner rock star and let Rock Band VR transport you onstage to perform in front of a sold-out crowd. Interact with bandmates and shred on the stage with a Fender® Stratocaster® wireless guitar controller so you can craft unforgettable solos. Get Rock Band VR for free with purchase of Oculus Touch on microsoftstore.com, valid until April 5, 2017, or while supplies last. Lumiere’s Dress Rehearsal https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/8e6e3769a6465bdcb28e675711b252c1.jpg Disney fans rejoice! Explore the fantastic world of Beauty and the Beast with Lumiere’s Dress Rehearsal— an interactive VR experience that puts you in the dining room of Beast’s enchanted castle as Lumiere prepares for a special feast in Belle’s honor. Fruit Ninja VR https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/552e7a2aeb5b0c4c93bbaf433fb2712a.png The Fruit Ninja phenomenon continues in a VR dojo. Take your ninja skills to the next level by slicing, juggling and skewering fruit from all angles. Robo Recall https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/e0bac25343f817b38fee17aba66769ca.jpg Built from the ground up for Rift and Touch by Epic Games, Robo Recall is a brilliant, action-packed adventure with over-the-top arcade action. Visit your local Microsoft Store today to get in on the new VR action! All games require an Oculus Rift headset, compatible PC and Oculus Touch controllers, available for purchase at Microsoft Store. *Customers 18 years of age or older can participate in the experience. Customers ages 13 and older can participate with parent or guardian consent. The post Microsoft Store adds new Oculus Rift VR demos powered by Windows 10 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

The Xbox app brings together your gaming world across Xbox One and Windows 10 devices; that includes your friends, your games, your achievements, your avatar, access to the Xbox and Windows Stores and more. You can easily stay connected to the Xbox Live community, view your Gamerscore leaderboard across devices, view your GameDVR clips, start Party chats, stream your favorite games from Xbox One to any Windows 10 PC in your home while using your Xbox Wireless controller and more. Today, we’re going to show you how to get started creating your first Club and Looking for Group posts in the Xbox app: Clubs are online meeting places created by the Xbox community for people to play and socialize. Join clubs that interest you, or create a new club from scratch. To start a Club: To get started, open the Xbox app and click on the Clubs icon on the left-hand menu. From here, you can view and post to the clubs that you already belong to, search for new clubs to join, or create a club of your own. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/d4dc93cc6c5487a58f7c0f81b17396c2.gif Select “Create a club,” then choose the type of club you want to create: public, private or hidden. Name your club and select Continue. Then, select Create club. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/1a18797905e88555744445495bf4a58e.gif Once you’ve created your club, give it some personality. Add a background, choose a profile pic, and make other customizations that’ll show the Xbox community what your club is all about. To create a Looking for Group post: Think of Looking for Group as a “players wanted” bulletin board—a way to help you find players on Xbox Live with similar goals and interests. Browse posts created by the Xbox community, or try creating your own post. Start by opening the Xbox app on your Windows 10 PC, select Parties from the right-hand menu, then select Looking for Group. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/7c61c3ad48ac1d4bdf88e42323810aed.gif Select a game from the list (this takes you to its game hub). Then, select Create post. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/e0ddcbf73f09b3970b83c0cbea0a368d.gif Add tags and a description, then adjust the details, such as the number of players needed. You can schedule a time to gather by adjusting Day and Party start time, or if you want to gather people into a party right away, select Now. When you’re done, select Post. Looking for Group posts can also be created within a club – just go to the Looking for Group section of a club and follow the steps above to create a new post. Have a great week! The post Windows 10 Tip: How to create your first Club and Looking for Group post appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Since releasing Cortana* on Android and iOS a year ago in the US and more recently in the UK, you have been telling us what you liked and how you’d like it to be improved and we’re excited to tell you more about what we’ve been up to this month. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/e8dddac993d1d9236c6b7b43fedb30c9.png The information you need to keep on top of your day is now at your fingertips with Cortana above the lock on Android. We introduced the ability to get Cortana on your lock screen earlier this month so you could quickly swipe and see what Cortana’s got for you for the day. Today, you can now interact with Cortana above the lock. Quickly get answers to your questions, set a reminder and more without having to unlock your device. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/69c71cc9c0ffb705d7bf3d78a83f7088.png We’ve also made updates to the Cortana home on Android, giving you glanceable information about what’s upcoming in your day like your schedule, commute times as well as upcoming reminders and the ability to quickly add reminders and new calendar items to your day. Your lists are also easier to access so you can view, edit and add items quickly. Today, we’re also announcing that both the Android and iOS apps are available in Australia, extending the functionality of your Cortana on Windows 10 to whatever smartphone you carry to help you stay on top of things. Reminders that Travel with You: Cortana has your back, seamlessly keeping track of the things you need to remember across all the platforms you use her. Set a reminder on your PC and get it on your mobile phone. Never Miss a Phone Call: In a meeting and can’t answer your phone? With the Cortana app, get a missed call alert on your Windows 10 PC and let Cortana send a text back letting them know you’ll call them later – all without leaving your PC. Optimized for Mobile: Designed specifically for your mobile life with quick action buttons and voice to get what you need quickly, a streamlined design and widgets for Android and iOS. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/f3a267202ef7df8f08d6327be6150f8d.png Earlier this month, we also brought the refreshed design of the app to iOS in the US and introduced the app to the U.K. The more simplified look and feel for the apps makes it faster and easier than ever before to get things done with quick actions, putting the most frequent things you do front and center, so setting a reminder or viewing your reminders is just a tap away when you don’t want to use voice. *Cortana available in select markets **Images updated for accuracy The post Cortana at your fingertips, now on Android lock screen appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

We hope you enjoyed today’s episode of This Week on Windows! Head over here to read our Windows 10 Tip on how to set active hours so your PC doesn’t restart while you’re working, save on seasons 1-4 of The Americans, get Resident Evil 7 biohazard from the Windows Store – on sale until March 27 – or keep reading to catch up on this week’s news. In case you missed it: Here’s what’s new in the Windows Store: Buy Rogue One: A Star Wars Story for $19.99 https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/1a83a83fd018d077bb518a42761f3614.jpg As the Empire continues to gain power, a group of rebel spies will risk everything to steal the plans to their enemy’s most terrifying new weapon: the Death Star. Buy the epic adventure Rogue One: A Star Wars Story tomorrow on Digital HD in the Movies & TV section of the Windows Store. Can’t get enough Star Wars? Buy the Digital Six Film Collection March 24 through April 10 and get a $5 gift card to spend on even more movies, games, apps, or music! For additional details, visit microsoft.com/movies-and-tv. TurboTax Online Tax Return App – Free https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/9bcfba24ce083b2d7d66958dfaead374.png With one month left in tax season, we’re excited to announce the launch of TurboTax for Windows 10 PCs and tablets in the Windows Store. The app is available to download for free starting today. The TurboTax app brings technological innovation to tax filing, so you can file your taxes with confidence, anytime, anywhere. Read more in our blog post! New content in Halo Wars 2 A fierce and fiery new ally joins the fray in the UNSC’s battle against Atriox and The Banished. Lt. Colonel Morgan Kinsano, the first of many new add-on leaders, is available today on the Xbox Play Anywhere title Halo Wars 2 for both Windows 10 PC and Xbox One. Read more over at Halo Waypoint! NCAA March Madness LIVE – Free https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/99e1d10d539d9c27ed5e14a50ff4f1c3.jpg The NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament is underway, and the official app, NCAA March Madness LIVE (Free, TV subscription required for some games), is here – ready with every tip-off, layup, 3-pointer and slam dunk of the action. It’s the place to enjoy unlimited access to live-stream video of every tournament game, along with a live, interactive bracket from Bing to keep you up-to-date, too. Get season 2 of Into the Badlands – Buy from $18.99 https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/446ff19b754e8d910036a20419c739c4.jpg Get ready for all the post-apocalyptic action you can handle with Season 2 of Into the Badlands ($24.99 HD, $18.99 SD). Catch up on past episodes of the hit martial arts drama and then dive into the season premiere, available now in the Movies & TV section of the Windows Store. Have a great weekend! The post This Week on Windows: Star Wars, Windows Hello, Resident Evil 7 and more appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/49f26aa4213cff093f184c61c28863fe.jpg Spring is here, birds and blossoms are back, and Microsoft is charging forward with tons of exciting news. Thanks for joining us for this edition of Weekend Reading, where we round up highlights from across the company. This week, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 Creators Update will roll out to customers worldwide on April 11 as a free update, bringing 3D and mixed reality to everyone, enabling gamers to be broadcasters and making Microsoft Edge faster and safer. “We designed Windows 10 to empower the creator in all of us,” writes Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft corporate vice president, Windows and Devices Group. “To us, that means that everyone has the power to dream big, whether that involves starting a company, developing a lesson plan, inventing a product, developing or broadcasting games, or imagining a whole new world in Minecraft or mixed reality.” Nicola Bonzanni has a passion for combining computer science and biology, and he’s using that passion to make the world a better place via a web-based tool he built called ConBind.org that enables researchers without access to powerful computers to do computationally intensive work. The cloud provides the on-demand scalability needed for running his complex bioinformatic queries, and he’s now using Microsoft’s Azure Batch service to make it even easier. While his research originally focused on understanding cancer, the techniques are equally applicable to all living things: viruses, bacteria, plants and animals. That led Bonzanni to see if his tool could help farmers achieve such benefits as creating drought-resistant plants, or increasing crop yields. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/da91963ee921da5a5d557c5f5cf08be1.jpg Microsoft’s IoT Insider Labs on February 23, 2017. (Photography by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures) Companies of all sizes strive to embrace the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), two of the most significant trends driving today’s technology. Microsoft’s IoT & AI Insider Labs serve as one-stop shops for its customers to work hand-in-hand with the company’s experts to take their products from proof-of-concept to commercial deployment, fueling transformation across sectors ranging from energy to retail to robotics. The newest lab, opening in Munich in April, joins two others launched recently by Microsoft in Shenzhen, China, and in Redmond, Washington. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/3e306ffdac66cfbe389f4c83670b6c71.jpg The top prize for the 2017 Imagine Cup competition is $100,000, and now there’s also something else to compete for: the chance to have a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Imagine Cup is the company’s global student innovation competition. Now celebrating its 15th anniversary, the competition “represents Microsoft’s enduring commitment to supporting young developers and their drive to create the next game-changing innovations,” writes Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of Developer Experience & Evangelism and Microsoft’s chief evangelist. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/ef7b9fd61c6e3d4e5157fce6aa350255.jpg Originally from Mexico, Cristina Mittermeier has traveled to more than 100 countries as an award-winning National Geographic photographer with 24 photographic books to her name. She was among the speakers at six #MakeWhatsNext workshops on March 18 at Microsoft stores around the country. Held in partnership with National Geographic, the workshops are part of a broader campaign aimed at sparking girls’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, and narrowing the persistent gender gap in those fields. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/efcc45c4f8fcef21018322d3c3129e23.png Call the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers into action with the Power Rangers Skin Pack, now available for “Minecraft: Console Edition,” “Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition” and “Minecraft: Pocket Edition.” Also, the ultimate in mini game-themed sporting skins – the Mini Game Masters Skin Pack – is available for the “Minecraft: Console Edition.” Using the skin pack, slip into that streamlined spandex, strap on those sturdy pads and prepare to out-style and out-play your friends. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/4229845e2db6669d43ae6d1c488f39a2.jpg This week on the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages, we highlighted James Burke and Jason Ewert, two teachers dedicated to helping every student have access to tech education. They bring everyday materials, technology and creativity to their classrooms, making STEM learning more fun for their students. We hope you enjoyed Weekend Reading and got a good sense for the action at Microsoft and beyond. Please check back next Friday for a whole new edition. Thomas Kohnstamm Microsoft News Center Staff The post Windows 10 Creators Update, biology meets cloud computing and Power Rangers get a ‘Minecraft’ makeover — Weekend Reading: March 31 edition appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

It was a busy week and this edition of Weekend Reading gives you the highlights, which include Microsoft’s first partner in a new intellectual property licensing program for connected cars, new joint solutions with Adobe and awards for world-changing ideas. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced an agreement to license its intellectual property (IP) for connected cars to Toyota, its first partner in the launch of a new auto licensing program. “As one of the leading auto companies in the world with a deep heritage of innovation and ground-breaking research and development, Toyota is already a valued partner of Microsoft through the Toyota Connected program and an early adopter of Azure IP Advantage,” writes Erich Anderson, corporate vice president and chief IP counsel of Microsoft’s Intellectual Property Group. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/6155fe579ca23811a2b66a6949f35bad.jpeg At Adobe Summit, and building on their partnership announcement from September, Adobe and Microsoft announced the availability of their first set of joint solutions designed to help enterprises transform their customer experiences. These solutions will transform cross-channel experiences and campaign orchestration using Adobe Experience Cloud and Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365 and Power BI. The companies also announced a collaboration on an industry standard to define and unify the language for marketing, sales and services data needed to deliver digital experiences consistently at scale. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/2ed5938f6a84c66b2570f0939b3c30bb.jpg A patient of the L V Prasad Eye Institute (Photo credit : L V Prasad Eye Institute.) Microsoft projects are among the 192 finalists of Fast Company’s first-ever World Changing Ideas Awards, including Project Natick, an underwater data center; and Health finalist Connected Eyes from Microsoft India and the L V Prasad Eye Institute, which focuses on harnessing artificial intelligence to correct vision. Among the Consumer Products finalists are DuoSkin from Microsoft Research and the MIT Media Lab, which uses temporary tattoos to control electronics; and Inclusive Design, with Microsoft designing with people with disabilities in mind (which also emerged as a finalist in the World Changing Idea category). https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/a643f5c096c37b8d0c707ca3a396b8d1.jpg The Vancouver Education team, Write Ideas subteam. Left to right: Lifu Huang, Shefali Garg, Ram Agrawal, Kun Ji, Adam Kelly (Photo by Pam Saunders) Released through Microsoft Garage, Write Ideas is a new app for iOS that focuses on alleviating the difficulty of getting started on book reports, essays and more. It does so through guided prompts and exercises, including speech-to-text and drawing features. Read the full story at the Microsoft News Center. In the latest installment of “Brad Anderson’s Lunch Break” video series, the Microsoft vice president of enterprise and client mobility continues a conversation with Simon Cheng, manager of corporate technology at Lululemon, as they tool around Redmond, Washington. There’s also a new Channel 9 series, “The MVP Show.” https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/4ef01e3a303600f63e1b715ff233c118.jpg GO Karts donated to Seattle Children’s Hospital In the Xbox world, we found out about this weekend’s Halo World Championship 2017 Finals, the debut of the Xbox Wireless Controller – Recon Tech Special Edition and a donation of gaming kiosks to patients at Seattle Children’s Hospital. And in the Windows Store, you can now check out the second season premiere of “Into the Badlands,” the fourth season premiere of “The Originals” and the TurboTax Online Tax Return App for Windows 10. Catch up with more news through “This Week on Windows.” That’s it for our round-up. See you next Friday for another Weekend Reading! Posted by Athima Chansanchai Microsoft News Center Staff The post World-changing ideas, accelerating the drive to connected cars and teaming with Adobe to transform marketing — Weekend Reading: March 24 edition appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Speaking to some of the best and brightest student developers at Imagine Cup, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella once said, “All of you represent that passion, that ability to dream the impossible and make it possible.” The Imagine Cup embraces this principle as the company’s global student innovation competition. Now celebrating its 15th anniversary, the competition represents Microsoft’s enduring commitment to supporting young developers and their drive to create the next game-changing innovations. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/dbaee1877f1c163bd3d1fd0a4302f8b5.jpg Last fall, we launched the 2017 Imagine Cup competition along with the news that we were upping the ante and doubling the top prize to $100,000 for the winning team. Now, I’ve got even more exciting announcements. Students competing in Imagine Cup will also vie for the chance to have a mentoring session with our CEO, during which they will have the opportunity to draw upon his years of experience in the technology industry to help them take their project to the next level. Also, we want to celebrate the Imagine Cup’s 15th anniversary by immersing these talented young developers in Microsoft’s culture of innovation, which has fostered the development of cutting-edge Microsoft products across a variety of technologies, including the cloud, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and more. To that end, we’re holding the competition at Microsoft headquarters so students can mingle amongst the tens of thousands of Microsoft employees who come to work every day with a desire to impact millions of people through the power of technology. And then, of course, there’s the competition itself. It’s never short on excitement and drama, and we’re preparing an especially thrilling experience for the students who advance to the Imagine Cup World Finals. And you can join in to view the Imagine Cup Grand Finale, which will be webcast at imagine.microsoft.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, or visit Microsoft Imagine or our blog to learn more. Every year, I’m amazed by the ingenuity and imagination unleashed by young developers from all around the globe. Over the course of the Imagine Cup’s 15 years, I’ve had the privilege of watching students develop projects designed to make an immediate and wide-ranging impact. There seem to be no limits on the imagination and competitive spirit that drive innovation among the young creators who participate in the Imagine Cup. There’s still time to participate if you haven’t already signed up. If you’re a student who is interested in shaping the next generation of world-changing technology innovations while surrounded by other inspiring student developers from all over the world, then I encourage you to learn more about the Imagine Cup today. There’s lots more excitement to come! The post Compete for Imagine Cup glory and a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

This week was a showcase of new technologies helping people to live, work and function better, from a digital workspace for teams to artificial intelligence for improving patient outcomes to a new physical programming language that enables children with visual impairment to create computer code. Let’s take a look. Microsoft Teams became generally available for Office 365 customers around the world in 181 markets and 19 languages. The new chat-based workspace provides a modern conversations experience with customization options, advanced security and compliance capabilities, and tight integration with Word, Excel and other Office 365 apps. Since its preview in November, more than 50,000 organizations have started using Microsoft Teams, including Alaska Airlines, ConocoPhillips, Deloitte and Expedia. “In a world where information is abundant and human time and attention remain scarce, we aspire to help people and groups of people be more productive, wherever they are,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Tuesday. “Office 365 is the broadest platform and universal toolkit for creation, collaboration and communication. Today we are adding a new tool to Office 365 with Microsoft Teams, a chat-based workspace designed to empower the art of teams.” The non-profit group Cochrane, which does systematic reviews of health care interventions, is also using technology to improve workflow — and patients’ lives. The company uses artificial intelligence to handle the high-volume, monotonous aspect of analyzing thousands of medical research reports, so its health experts can focus on high-level analysis of best treatments and interventions for patients. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/8f30405fa830267560ff10e224378d72.jpg From left, Louisa Turtill, 9, and Khadijah Pinto Atkin, also 9, use Project Torino. Photo by Jonathan Banks. A team of Microsoft researchers and designers in the company’s Cambridge, U.K., lab has created a physical programming language as an inclusive way for kids with visual impairment and other challenges to learn to code. The Project Torino system enables kids to physically create code and learn computational thinking by connecting pods. Inclusion was a key design principle, but researchers are hoping the project appeals to all learners to help bridge digital skills gaps in technology. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/11a2c6dec80889d52e8a4a38a17a5616.jpg Seoul, South Korea Microsoft Translator’s neural network-based system, which is powered by artificial intelligence and modeled after the human brain, can now translate Korean. Neural-network translation uses the full context of a sentence to interpret words, generating more fluent and human-sounding versions. Korean became the 11th language in Microsoft Translator’s stable of available languages, joining Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/89ef154012d5f1879464e17c1f724c25.jpg In app news, the award-winning Complete Anatomy is now available in the Windows Store, in response to a large demand from medical students and clinical professionals who use Windows devices. “The experience particularly shines on Surfaces and other pen-capable devices, where you can take advantage of Windows Ink support for smooth drawing and annotation,” writes the Windows Apps team. Company 3D4Medical ported its app to the Windows Store with the Windows Bridge for iOS. Also in the Windows Store: the updated edjing PRO – Music DJ mixer app, which makes showing off your DJ skills even easier with new access to Deezer and SoundCloud. And laughs a plenty are available in the Windows Store’s Comedy Sale, where you’ll find big savings on hit movies like “Sausage Party” and “Ted 2” through March 20. Thanks for reading and see you next week! Vanessa Ho Microsoft News Center Staff The post Microsoft Teams, improving health care with AI and a way for kids with visual impairment to create code — Weekend Reading, March 17 edition appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

We met a wide range of inspiring people this week, each of whom we’d gladly have over to the house for dinner. Their determination seems to reflect what Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” Plus – they’re awfully nice, which doesn’t hurt, either. Let’s meet them, and catch up on other news from Microsoft this week. Anyone who goes up against Anton Grotz will find they have big shoes to fill – snowshoes, to be exact. The 22-year-old is among 2,700 athletes competing in the 2017 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Austria March 14-25. Grotz’s “fighting spirit to win” and determination to always keep improving are among the traits his father says he admires in his son, who has learning disabilities but doesn’t let them stop him from what he wants to do. “Never give up, and always keep fighting,” says the young snowshoer, whose smile is as winning as his talent. Grotz is from a small town, Unterammergau, Germany, and is one of 30 athletes Microsoft is supporting in the event. As a Special Olympics partner, Microsoft also has provided technology, support and devices to help the organization support the management of 100,000 events in 170 countries each year. In honor of International Women’s Day this week, Microsoft announced it is building upon last year’s campaign encouraging girls to #MakeWhatsNext The new campaign raises awareness of the issues that cause girls to drop out of or lose interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and “aims to pique their excitement in how they can change the world — if they stay engaged,” writes Mary Snapp, corporate vice president of Microsoft Philanthropies. In a new video, girls ages 11 to 16 are asked about how they want to change the world. Their answers range from making sure there is “fresh water for everybody” to finding “a cure for cancer because my mom had it.” The girls’ faces fall when they hear so few young women graduate college in the U.S. with STEM degrees. But they insist they will not be deterred. The daughter of the cancer survivor says unflinchingly: “I WILL discover a cure for breast cancer.” Asta Roseway, who, besides having a cool name, is principal research designer at Microsoft Research and co-founder of FoodFutures, an exhibition addressing food production needs in the year 2050. It “melds the seemingly strange bedfellows of urban farming, machine learning, research engineering and design,” writes Thomas Kohnstamm. Roseway also recently founded Microsoft’s first ever artist-in-residence program, called studio99. The grassroots effort, driven by employees, invites unconventional thinkers and artists to collaborate with researchers on the next wave of technologies. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/b7215cf320e8be2ec58961693b57b6b3.jpg Asta Roseway. Cloud and mobile development were top of mind in the building of Visual Studio 2017, released this week. Designed for streamlined cloud development, built-in tools provide integration with all your .NET Core, Azure applications, microservices, Docker containers and more, notes Julia Liuson, Visual Studio corporate vice president. “It is easier than ever to build and deploy applications and services to Azure, directly from the IDE (integrated development environment). Visual Studio 2017 with Xamarin make it faster for you to create mobile apps for Android, iOS and Windows through updates like advanced debugging and profiling tools.” And more cloud goodness news this week as well, with the announcement that in the U.S., Microsoft Azure Government now includes Power BI Pro and HDInsight, to empower government employees to visualize data and glean valuable insights and intelligence from their vast data resources, thus enabling them to take informed action to improve citizen services, reduce taxpayer costs and increase efficiency — all while adhering to the most stringent security requirements. Also announced: a preview of Cognitive Services in Azure Government, which enables natural and contextual interaction with tools that augment users’ experiences using the power of machine-based intelligence. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/981aee06f04e8c069ef72b6fd03fb19b.png Power BI and HDInsight are now part of Microsoft Azure Government in the U.S. Harry Potter much? You can own “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” before it’s out on Blu-ray – and save on your favorite Harry Potter movies by visiting the Movies & TV section of the Windows Store. You’ll find them on sale through March 17 (in the U.S.). Meanwhile, players who are eager to return to the evil-infested land of Mordor and raise their swords to strike back at Sauron in “Middle-earth: Shadow of War” can now pre-order it from the Xbox Store and Windows Store, and check out a new video showing a gameplay walkthrough. From Mordor to Minecraft — as a part of a free update to “Minecraft: Pocket Edition” and “Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition,” you can now trade with villagers, and The Strangers skin pack is also now available. And if you’re ready to rev your engines, the TAMO Racemo debuts at the 2017 Geneva International Motor Show this week. To coincide with India’s entrance into the sports car market, the Racemo is also arriving in “Forza Horizon 3.” All “Forza Horizon 3” players will receive the Racemo for free. Disney’s highly anticipated live-action adaptation “Beauty and the Beast” comes to theaters March 17, and Microsoft and Disney are offering fans of all ages fun experiences to bring the movie to life. At Microsoft Stores, get your photo taken with life-sized characters from the movie, like Beast or Lumiere, using augmented reality. Also, budding filmmakers can use the new Surface Studio and Moho Pro animation software to create movement and gestures on screen or build their own world with Paint 3D using lifelike images and scenes. Through March 30, you can get a $13 Fandango movie ticket to see the movie when you purchase any qualifying Disney film on Microsoft Movies & TV. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/99eff76c4d60b77a50c6b83228d753ee.jpeg Who will you decide to be? Dream, think and plan – after having a restful weekend first. And we’ll see you back here again next week! Posted by Suzanne Choney Microsoft News Center Staff The post A competitive snowshoer, ambitious girls and an artful fusionist – Weekend Reading: March 10 edition appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

FoodFutures, an exhibition addressing food production needs in the year 2050, melds the seemingly strange bedfellows of urban farming, machine learning, research engineering and design. Its self-sustaining hydroponic and aquaponic farm modules use computer vision analysis to maximize efficient yield and crop health. The retro-futurist aesthetics nod to 2050 while remaining approachable and inspiring discussion about the challenges of feeding a world facing increasing climate change and urbanization. “The project proves how a vision, guided by design, can bridge various technical and scientific disciplines to create solutions and showcase urgent issues like food security,” said Asta Roseway, principal research designer at Microsoft Research and co-founder of FoodFutures. “And the art infused throughout the project is what connects the technology back to the humanities in meaningful ways.” https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/b7215cf320e8be2ec58961693b57b6b3.jpg In her Redmond, Washington, office stuffed with research white papers, mannequins in high-tech haute couture and a vintage Ms. Pac-Man mini-arcade, Roseway said, “We are entering an era of design-driven collaboration where the designer’s role will be to act as the ‘fusion’ between art, research, science and engineering.” Roseway’s ability to think critically while collaborating across disciplines and combining their best aspects is not just the future of design careers. It will play a part in broader tech careers and, she believes, careers in general. She has coined this new role as “fusionism” and, whether the modest Roseway will admit it or not, she is one of Microsoft’s foremost fusionists. Read the full story. The post Fusionist Asta Roseway’s bold vision for the future of design, tech – and just about everything else appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

The last week of the year’s shortest month was a busy one at Microsoft, with an inspiring reflection on Microsoft Philanthropies’ first year, new insight into how the cloud could help fight disease, and the launch of a wealth of innovative new devices at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Microsoft Philanthropies was created to harness the promise and potential of technology for people worldwide. In 2016, its first year of operation, it made substantial progress toward its commitment to provide $1 billion in cloud services for nonprofits and researchers. Donations totaled $465 million to 71,000 organizations, providing connectivity to remote schools, health clinics and community centers; expanding access to computer science education in U.S. high schools; and giving more than $30 million in technology and cash donations to organizations serving refugees and displaced people. “I’m proud of what we achieved at Microsoft Philanthropies in our first year,” writes Mary Snapp, the organization’s corporate vice president, in a blog post detailing the work the funding is helping to support. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/3e6016744d5a21f67a843b9f61cd906c.jpg Determining which genomic variations are responsible for diseases and other medical conditions is a quintessential big-data problem — and the reason Microsoft scientists and researchers are increasingly turning to the cloud to speed up genetic sequencing and other analyses. A new feature story explores the potential of cloud genomics to create treatments based on a person’s specific DNA, which could provide more effective approaches and dramatically reduce health care costs. The burgeoning field of artificial intelligence is key to those efforts and is already being used in a range of applications, from 3-D visualizations of organs to physical therapy. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/44f583f9f97c67d36b1a92bcf94b0415.png Microsoft and its partners showcased a range of ingenious new products at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. Lenovo, Porsche Design, Samsung, HP, Panasonic and Alcatel introduced devices ranging from a detachable laptop that doubles as a tablet-on-the-go to Windows phones and a Windows 10 device that can serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to 15 other devices. Microsoft racked up six awards at the show, including Best Mobile Tablet for Surface Pro 3, Best of Mobile World Congress 2015 for Lumia 640, and Top Pick of Mobile World Congress for Lumia 640 XL. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/ece56d9283ab23d50a02ed09409cd890.jpg Marvellous Adewopo is just 18 years old, but he’s already living up to his auspicious moniker. Born Adewopo Marvellous Adedovin, the Nigerian teen won a silver medal in basketball in the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Los Angeles and is competing in floor hockey in this year’s World Winter Games in Austria. Beyond his prodigious athletic talents, he’s also a skilled artist, a technology whiz and a natural leader among his teammates and peers. Adewopo recently collaborated with respected Nigerian graffiti artist Osa Seven to create a large mural on a wall in Lagos. The project was part of the “We Are More” partnership between Microsoft and Special Olympics, which involves pairing athletes with people who share a passion with them outside of sports. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/8cb18fc4993b1252a77588cce8cc92bd.jpg Following an exhaustive search for the perfect RV, Corey Weathers’ daughter posed a fateful question. “Daddy,” she asked, “what if we built a treehouse on wheels?” That innocent inquiry prompted Weathers to launch a business, Homegrown Trailers, which builds cabin-style trailers made with sustainable materials that allow for comfortable living off the grid. Based in Kirkland, Washington, the company sells and rents trailers that combine the appeal and aesthetics of tiny houses with the mobility of campers. Microsoft technology has played a key role the company’s evolution. Watch a video and learn more in a post by Weathers. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/a3341a301cf2667bd084fb94252239d1.png While you’re awaiting the arrival of longer days perfect for road trips, entertain yourself with games featuring zombies, witches and warriors. Live the horror of a zombie apocalypse — and try to make it out alive — as you play convicted criminal Lee Everett in “The Walking Dead: Season 1.” Help Stella battle cute but mischievous Wilbur while discovering spellbinding new game modes and cute characters in “Bubble Witch 3 Saga.” Xbox Live Gold members on Xbox One can enjoy “Battlefield 1” for free from 9 a.m. Friday, March 3, through 11:59 pm. PT Sunday, March 5. They’ll get to experience World War I on an epic scale, with cavalry and brutal weaponry including airships, armored trains and the first tanks ever invented. Whether you’re in the mood for inspiration or entertainment, we hope you have a great weekend. Check back next Friday for another Weekend Reading. Posted by Deborah Bach Microsoft News Center Staff The post Microsoft Philanthropies inspires, the cloud holds disease-fighting promise and a marvelous athlete returns to Special Olympics – Weekend Reading: March 3 edition appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Adewopo Marvellous Adedovin — Marvellous, as he’s known — lives up to his auspicious moniker. The 18-year-old Nigerian athlete won a silver medal in basketball in the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Los Angeles and will compete in floor hockey in this year’s World Winter Games in Austria. Beyond his athletic talents, Adewopo is known as a natural leader who is widely respected by his teammates and peers. “He has this wonderful charisma that moves people to do more,” says Adeola Oladugba, the teen’s coach and the sports director for Special Olympics Nigeria. “He inspires his teammates. He’s a very good leader.” Adewopo is among several dozen athletes Microsoft is featuring through a multiyear partnership with Special Olympics. The initiative includes a campaign dubbed “We Are More,” which involves pairing Special Olympics athletes with people who share a passion with them outside of sports. Adewopo, who loves art, collaborated with highly regarded Nigerian graffiti artist Osa Seven to create a large mural in Nigeria. Watch a video about the project and read the full story at Microsoft News Center. Deborah Bach Microsoft News Center Staff The post Special Olympics athlete Adewopo Marvellous Adedovin is a born leader appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

We admire the future – from 3D operating rooms to a young athlete’s rise to a universe five centuries ahead – in the latest Weekend Reading. Let’s begin at the most distant milepost, the year 2559, when the UNSC warship Spirit of Fire has embarked on a new journey. Awaiting its human crew are a savage mob known as the Banished. If those sentences hit home, you’re undoubtedly immersed in “Halo Wars 2,” following its recent worldwide launch on “Xbox One and Windows 10 PC. The new version dropped eight years after “Halo Wars,” which prompted Dan Ayoub, studio head of Strategy Games at 343 Industries, to thank fans for their patience, as so many waited so long “to get their ‘ALL UNITS’ on again.” For those new to real-time strategy (RTS) games, the producers hope to entice you with strong characters, including an intriguing new female face for Halo, and another epic expedition in our universe as players turn Grunts into cheerfully exploding confetti https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/0890111b4788da34e003b409f83c8a42.jpg Virginia Wade at Snoqualmie Pass in Washington. On the slopes, young skier Virginia Wade works to sharpen her skills and never feels nervous during races. If she falls, she leans on a spirited philosophy that’s shaped her life: “I get back up.” Next month, she’ll travel from her home in Seattle to Austria to ski in one of her biggest events ever, the 2017 Special Olympics World Winter Games. Wade, who has Down syndrome, is one of 22 skiers chosen to represent the U.S. women’s alpine team in the world’s largest sports and humanitarian event. Hospitals must design operating rooms that accommodate the needs of myriad surgical disciplines that occupy the very same space – from general to orthopedic to cardiac and more. Within each category, medical teams need different lighting, tools and even patient orientation. That means the current model of OR design must evolve from 2D to 3D, writes Lorraine Bardeen, general manager of Microsoft HoloLens and Windows Experiences. Stryker, a leading global medical technology company, is using HoloLens to build the OR of the future. By tapping the mixed reality capabilities of HoloLens, surgical teams can work with holograms, at full size and scale, in the actual operating room – no bulky equipment required, just a headset. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/27531571a56e9da2236ad286e3aba5c5.jpg Priyanka Bali, right, with her husband and daughter at the Common Service Centre she operates in her native village. (Photo courtesy of RingMD) Three years ago, Justin Fulcher founded RingMD after the American entrepreneur was moved during a trip to Indonesia. There, he saw a man drinking water he’d scooped from the ground. Fulcher then spotted the man’s mobile phone and wondered if technology might help fill the obvious gap in health care. RingMD, his Singapore-based startup, now operates in nine languages across 10 countries, including India, Pakistan and Thailand. The RingMD platform, hosted in the , connects doctors not only to rural patients but also to urban residents around the world who lack time to go to clinics and wait for appointments. To learn more about RingMD’s work, head to the Microsoft Transform blog. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/fc9644ff6a713bdd609fcaa251c57112.jpg With support from Microsoft’s Affordable Access Initiative Grant Fund, African Renewable Energy Distributor (ARED) is further developing the SHIRIKI hub, a mobile solar kiosk that provides Wi-Fi connectivity and other mobile services in Rwanda. (Photo courtesy of ARED) By 2020, people around the world should have universal and affordable access to the internet, according to a new sustainable development agenda adopted by United Nations member states. This will help “end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all,” the agreement reads. But nearly 4 billion people still lack internet access, and time is running out to meet that goal. A new report authored by SSG Advisors, the United States Agency for International Development and the Digital Impact Alliance pinpoints actions that private and public sectors can take to quickly close the access gap, says Paul Garnett, director of the Affordable Access Initiative for Microsoft. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/60b28535fc4e7d1310a20322f690be5d.jpg Scene from the movie ’12 Years a Slave.’ As you look ahead on a more limited scale, say, to your weekend – including Hollywood’s biggest night Sunday – you can catch up on these award-winning movies for just $4.99 HD, and enjoy a $5 Windows Store gift card to spend on even more movies, games, apps or music. The offer ends Monday. Once you own these movies, you can watch across any Windows 10 device or Xbox console or download for offline viewing. For another helping of weekend entertainment, “Minecraft: Pocket Edition” on Windows 10 Mobile is now available, giving “Minecraft” players on Windows 10 Mobile features they love: Realms, The End, Texture Packs, Add-Ons and more. And to complete our digital trek into the future, we need the proper soundtrack. Who to turn to? Of course, the hip hop artist Future, whose beats are now streaming on Microsoft Groove. We now return you to today. But check back next Friday for another Weekend Reading. Posted by Bill Briggs Microsoft News Center Staff The post A gaze forward to tomorrow’s medicine, athletes, artists and internet – Weekend Reading: Feb. 24 edition appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Driven by strong customer demand for cloud computing, we continue to invest to deliver an intelligent, global and trusted cloud for our customers. In India, Flipkart – the country’s leading marketplace – and Tata Motors, as well as Korean companies LG Electronics, Asan Medical Center and Samsung Electronics, are all leveraging the scalability, availability and resiliency of the Microsoft cloud to enable their digital transformation. I’m pleased to share that Azure is generally available from two new cloud regions in Korea, part of 38 Azure regions announced across the globe – more than any major cloud provider. With 13 of those regions in Asia, customers across the region can take advantage of the Azure cloud platform’s global scale, reliability and advanced intelligent services. They can also benefit from local datacenters to achieve higher performance and support their requirements for data location and replication. In Korea, hundreds of companies are adopting local Azure services across industries including finance, manufacturing, retail, health care, gaming and telecommunications. For example, LG Electronics is sending real-time data and leveraging the scalability of virtual machines to gain insights and better serve thousands of customers. Asan Medical Center is driving an immense big-data collaboration with millions of anonymized clinical notes to provide industry and academia with opportunities to analyze medical data using Microsoft’s hybrid cloud as a critical foundation. Other Korean companies are leveraging the global scale of the cloud to power Internet of Things (IoT) solutions including Samsung Electronics, which is using its remote energy reduction solution, S-Net Cloud, to monitor energy use and deliver efficiencies to save its customers up to 30 percent in energy costs. In September of 2015, we opened datacenter regions in India, providing the massive computing power of the Microsoft cloud to fuel growth and innovation. Earlier this week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Flipkart has adopted Azure as its exclusive public cloud platform to enable its continued growth and expansion, and to scale quickly and to stay resilient, especially during peak seasons. The move marks a first step in a broad collaboration between the two companies to provide 100 million Flipkart customers with the best online shopping experience. Flipkart will use Azure Artificial Intelligence (AI) and analytics capabilities to optimize merchandising, advertising, marketing and customer service. This partnership comes on the heels of our cloud collaboration with Tata Motors – India’s leading auto manufacturer – to provide connected driving experiences with Azure. People and organizations across the globe are embracing the cloud to solve unique challenges. You can follow these links to learn more about the new regions in Korea, how Flipkart is using Azure, case studies of how people and organizations are using the cloud for innovation, and to learn more about Azure services and solutions. The post Companies in Korea and India choose Microsoft Azure to fuel their digital transformation appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

In this latest edition of Weekend Reading we have a lot to report, including news on the RSA Conference, an open source set of tools to help researchers and developers train and test drones and other gadgets, and how technology is transforming golf. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/a8697f8cfb1b4153e5cba405dea5142a.jpegThis year’s RSA Conference in San Francisco brought the world’s security professionals together to discuss cybersecurity at a critical time, writes Microsoft President Brad Smith. Just as the world’s governments came together in 1949 to adopt the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect civilians in times of war, “we now need a Digital Geneva Convention that will commit governments to protecting civilians from nation-state attacks in times of peace.” https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/9ff6c420700ba16326d9a5f909a72efe.jpg Microsoft researchers (from left): Shital Shah, Ashish Kapoor (holding drone) and Debadeepta Dey. (Photo credit: Scott Eklund, Red Box Pictures) Microsoft researchers are working on a new set of tools that other researchers and developers can use to train and test robots, drones and other gadgets for operating autonomously and safely in the real world. A beta version is available on GitHub via an open source license. It’s all part of a research project the team dubs Aerial Informatics and Robotics Platform. It includes software that allows researchers to quickly write code to control aerial robots and other gadgets and a highly realistic simulator to collect data for training an AI system and testing it in the virtual world before deploying it in the real world. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/81cfffcd7f92306b30be480a3cc7f3a0.jpg One of the oldest, most traditional sports in the world is well into a technological revolution, with every aspect of the game – a player’s swing and strategy, the equipment, course maintenance and even business models – transforming through scientific advances, data analysis, machine learning and the cloud. For more on how golf is changing through technology, including two videos on the latest advances, visit Microsoft’s Transform blog. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/612309def3c17d4c49cb8aeeaf457463.png Find messages faster with the Microsoft Garage’s latest release, Email Insights, an application that searches the inbox of your Outlook desktop application and Gmail and shows the results in the app’s window. Find out more on Fire Hose. “Halo Wars 2” fans can now check out an exclusive preview of the full soundtrack. To celebrate the game’s launch, there was also a livestream Thursday with big giveaways. As of December, the “Forza” franchise reached a major milestone, exceeding $1 billion in retail sales. Xbox Wire has the details on this and other big numbers for “Forza.” https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/5f19d16bc8742ad59d0269fa651210f0.jpg The Walking Dead season 7 In the depths of the coldest season of the year, the Undead of Winter collection has arrived in the Windows Store to fill your shorter days and darker nights with zombie-themed games, music and movies. Find out more on Fire Hose. And now through April 3, you’ll get a free download of the first two episodes of “The Walking Dead: A New Frontier” game for Windows 10 when you buy a season 7 pass to “The Walking Dead.” Also, listen to Prince’s greatest hits, now streaming on Microsoft Groove, check out the deals during Anime Month and buy “Doctor Strange” more than a week before it’s available on Blu-ray. That’s it for our round-up. See you next Friday for another Weekend Reading! Posted by Athima Chansanchai Microsoft News Center Staff The post Making drones safer, teeing off with high-tech golf and proposing a Digital Geneva Convention — Weekend Reading: Feb. 17 edition appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Today I’m thrilled to share that for the second year in a row, Microsoft has been positioned furthest to the right for completeness of vision within the Leaders quadrant of Gartner’s 2017 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms – the 10th consecutive year Microsoft has been positioned as a leader. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/f0cb2eda8af3abdde7ed07aaa4d96896.jpg We’re humbled by this recognition for the innovation we’ve delivered with Microsoft Power BI in the past year, including significant growth in both the vision axis and execution axis since the 2016 report. But, more importantly, we’re encouraged by the in executing against the ambitious goal set when Power BI was made generally available only a short time ago in July 2015: Provide BI to more people than ever before, across all roles and disciplines within organizations. Power BI is the modern business intelligence solution you can bet on. We will continue to deliver innovation and value with precision and speed. The mantra that drives us is “five minutes to wow” – our relentless focus to enable a user to sign up for Power BI within five seconds and get business value from the service within five minutes. Customers around the world are realizing this vision and capitalizing on the promise of self-service BI by making it a reality at massive scale. This customer-centric approach extends to the regular development and ship cycles for Power BI. Since general availability, we’ve delivered a fire hose of innovation with weekly updates to the service and monthly updates to the Power BI Desktop authoring tool. This cadence is driven by high-value community feedback – more than 200,000 active community participants who have submitted over 6,000 ideas since July 2015 that have directly influenced the evolution of our product. We listen, evaluate and deliver for our community and take pride in doing so. We couldn’t have reached these heights without the support and feedback from our loyal user base. With all this exciting innovation and incredible industry recognition behind us, we’re keeping our foot on the gas to continue delivering on our “five minutes to wow” promise and bring the value of data insights to even more users. Thanks for being a part of our journey. We look forward to breaking more boundaries and moving the needle even further in data visualization and exploration. If you’re already a fan or curious to learn more, I would like to invite you to join us in Seattle this June for the second annual Microsoft Data Insights Summit. We’re welcoming Power BI users from around the world to meet with the BI engineering team, attend sessions and network with fellow data enthusiasts. Find out more now and register on the Microsoft Data Insights Summit site. *The graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The post Microsoft breaks through in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Microsoft announces new health-focused initiatives and solutions, and emerging strategic research partnership with UPMC The goal is noble: Empower people to lead healthier lives. And yet, few industries in the world face more complex problems than health care. Disparate and disconnected information systems, the uncertainties within regulatory environments around the world and the inevitable disruptions in core business models all pose perplexing and interlocking challenges. As we look at some of the challenges in health care, a natural question we ask ourselves is, How can Microsoft bring its capabilities to bear to solve some of these problems? It’s a big challenge. But we believe technology – specifically the cloud, AI and collaboration and business optimization tools – will be central to health care transformation. Making a difference in health care will require all that Microsoft can bring, fused with the industry expertise and experience from our partners: leading health care organizations and the companies that serve them. We are incredibly energized about the opportunities to make a difference in health care. We’ve been listening carefully to our customers and partners within the health care sector, and we’ve heard their message: Let’s work together, innovate together and create solutions that can empower people to lead healthier lives. Today, we are expanding our commitment to building a healthier future with new initiatives and solutions, making it easier for health industry partners and organizations to use intelligent technology to improve the lives of people around the world. Healthcare NExT: Fusing research, AI and industry expertise through partners Healthcare NExT, a new initiative to dramatically transform health care, will deeply integrate greenfield research and health technology product development, as well as establish a new model at Microsoft for strategic health industry partnerships. Through these collaborations between health care partners and Microsoft’s AI and Research organization, our goal is to enable a new wave of innovation and impact using Microsoft’s deep AI expertise and global-scale cloud. This initiative includes investments in resources for our partners to capture new opportunities to apply AI to healthcare, such as the Microsoft AI in Health Partner Alliance, an expanding group of partners focused on advancing health technology. Alliance members will receive unique training and access to Microsoft technologies, engineering expertise and data sets. Transforming patient and clinician empowerment with UPMC The first planned strategic research partnership for Microsoft’s Healthcare NExT initiative is with UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center), one of the largest integrated health care delivery networks in the United States. The $13 billion Pittsburgh-based system, comprising more than 25 hospitals, a 3 million-member health plan and 3,600 physicians, will be a core partner in our efforts to improve health care delivery through a series of projects, beginning with a focus on transforming clinician empowerment and productivity. With UPMC’s long track record of clinical and commercial innovation and Microsoft’s expertise in advanced AI capabilities, the two organizations plan to work together to bring innovative new solutions to market, beginning with implementation at UPMC. “Despite UPMC’s efforts to stay on the leading edge of technology, too often our clinicians and patients feel as though they’re serving the technology rather than the other way around. With Microsoft, we have a shared vision of empowering clinicians by reducing the burden of electronic paperwork and allowing the doctor to focus on the sacred doctor-patient,” said Steven D. Shapiro, M.D., chief medical and scientific officer of UMPC and president of UPMC’s Health Services division. Additional collaborations from Healthcare NExT include partners applying the cloud, AI and research to some of the biggest problems in health care: HealthVault Insights is a new research-based project designed to allow partners to generate new insights about patient health, drive adherence to care plans and encourage patient engagement powered by the latest scientific advances in machine learning. Tribridge and System C & Graphnet Care Alliance are building on HealthVault Insights to create innovative solutions for patient adherence to provider care plans. Microsoft Genomics is making the sample-to-answer process fast and easy through an Azure-powered genome analysis pipeline and an orchestrated ecosystem of innovative partners including BC Platforms and DNAnexus. Microsoft’s AI health chatbot technology is also a research-based project that will enable partners to build AI-powered conversational health care tools. MDLIVE intends to use our health bot technology to help patients self-triage inquiries before they interact with a doctor via video. Premera Blue Cross, the largest health plan in the Pacific Northwest, plans to use our health bot technology to transform how members can look up information about their health benefits. Health Navigator’s system checker brings best practices to other customers and partners. Project InnerEye is a research-based, AI-powered software tool for radiotherapy planning. The goal of the project is to allow dosimetrists and radiation oncologists to achieve 3D contouring of patients’ planning scans in minutes rather than hours. The assistive AI technology gives experts full control of the output accuracy while enjoying high levels of consistency and potential cost savings. Enabling 21st-century house calls powered by the Microsoft cloud Microsoft Office 365 Virtual Health Templates provide new functionality to connect people and providers through voice, video and messaging in any interface or application, powered by Skype for Business. The open source templates make it easy for industry partners, developers and enterprises to build solutions to provide care wherever patients may be. RingMD, Careflow, Cambio and GE Healthcare have built from Office 365 Virtual Health Templates compelling and easy to use experiences. Addressing health care business optimization with SaaS apps New services from our partner ecosystem, powered by the Microsoft cloud, help address business process challenges outside of the clinic. Available today is CGI ProperPay for claims analytics. ProperPay provides predictive analytics, rules management and best practices for reducing health care claims fraud, waste and abuse, a $450 billion-plus problem driving up health care costs around the globe. CGI ProperPay for claims analytics joins a growing number of business and engagement applications in the Microsoft AppSource catalog like Tribridge’s Health360 Care Coordination. Looking to the future With any significant advance in technology it’s important to consider the unintended consequences, as well as the benefits. At Microsoft, we’re grounding our efforts in a set of core design principles that focus on the human benefit of AI, transparency and accountability. We believe that ethics and design go hand in hand. Further, we understand that security, privacy, and compliance remain a top priority for health organizations. Microsoft Chief Information Security Officer for Health Hector Rodriguez recently reinforced our commitment to customers highlighting key investments across these core principles of trust in technology. At the intersection of health, technology and people lies great promise. Our mission is to empower every person and organization to achieve more, and we’re excited to meet many of you next week at HIMSS17 and continue our close partnership in health care to achieve more together. If you’re at HIMSS17 next week in Orlando, Florida, be sure to stop by our booth No. 2509 to see our solutions in action. Follow our HIMSS17 story on @Health_IT to learn more. The post Microsoft and partners combine the cloud, AI, research and industry expertise to focus on transforming health care appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

For over 25 years Microsoft has been focused on bringing the developer community together with tech leaders like Bill Gates and Satya Nadella — at PDC and Build, from LA to San Francisco and now back to the clouds in Seattle. With more than 5,000 developers joining us in person and millions following via live stream, Build and Seattle will be the hub for what’s next. Build’s also the place to get deep technical dives into the great things we’re doing today to help developers build the next generation of intelligent apps and services. We’ve been “building” toward this for a while — for instance, Tuesday, we announced updates to our Cognitive Services that help developers build apps that understand people and the world around us. Wednesday, we announced the current preview SDK for the Windows Creators Update is feature complete. We also announced Azure Managed Disks and VM scale sets, which bring ease of use and scale benefits of PaaS to our IaaS developers. In the coming weeks, we’ll share more on the opportunity for developers to deliver experiences to people as they collaborate in Microsoft Teams. And on March 7, we’ll celebrate a new generation of Visual Studio 2017 designed to help developers build on any platform, for any platform, using nearly any language. Microsoft Build 2017, May 10-12 in Seattle, will be the place for developers to learn how to put these latest innovations — and what’s next — to work building: Mixed-reality experiences Cutting edge, intelligent cloud apps Simplified end-to-end dev ops experiences Mobile experiences for nearly any device Apps that make your customers more productive AI-powered apps we have yet to imagine Join us in person — or online — for keynotes, deep technical sessions, hackathons and opportunities to collaborate and code with your fellow technologists and Microsoft engineers. Tickets go on sale Feb. 14 at 9:00 a.m. PST at http://build.microsoft.com. There’s never been a more exciting time to be a developer, or a more exciting time to build with Microsoft’s products, tools and cloud services. We hope to see, connect and code with you — at Build 2017. The post Microsoft Build 2017 – come code with us appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Just over a year ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spelled out Microsoft’s unique approach to cybersecurity aimed at reducing an estimated $3 trillion dollars’ worth of potentially lost productivity and growth. The approach is based on a vision of individuals, companies, organizations and governments working together to address cybersecurity. It includes Microsoft’s commitment to provide a comprehensive security platform, build out an Intelligent Security Graph and partner broadly with the industry as part of a $1 billion annual investment in security. Today I’d like to share the progress we’ve made in our cybersecurity journey and highlight several new products and collaborations that further strengthen the security portfolio we offer our customers and bet our own business on every day. Over the past year we’ve bolstered our security platform with new services like Microsoft Cloud App Security, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (WDATP) and Office 365 Advanced Security Management. We’ve infused intelligence into security services, including Azure Security Center, Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics and WDATP. We’ve also forged tighter connections with the industry by adding FireEye Insight Threat Intelligence to WDATP and announcing collaborations across Enterprise Mobility + Security with both Lookout and Ping Identity. As a result of this work, there is a growing list of customers who are able to invest more time in transforming their businesses. Whole Foods Market rolled out Azure Active Directory Premium to all 91,000 employees, enabling single sign-on for the company’s 30 SaaS applications and eliminating the need for multiple passwords and different accounts – all while achieving 32 percent savings on its support contract. Merck was able to improve collaboration among its 50,000 employees while protecting its wealth of sensitive information using a combination of Azure Active Directory Premium and Office deploying Windows 10 to its more than 80,000 associates who work across 400 locations in 78 countries365. MARS is enabling a strong layer of security and authentication for its associates while on their smartphones, tablets or PCs from the office, at home or on the road. Today we are sharing several more security technologies and services developed as part of the unique approach to cybersecurity that Satya outlined a year ago. Comprehensive security platform Microsoft is building a security platform that looks holistically across all of the critical endpoints of today’s cloud-first, mobile-first world. Few security tools have the ability to work across platforms and complex environments from on-premises to cloud or mobile. Our platform integrates security products and features across Azure, Windows, Office 365, SQL Server and more to better protect identities, apps, data, devices and infrastructure. Today that platform is getting even better. More commercial-grade security in Windows 10 and Surface: Windows 10, Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book have been added to the NSA’s Commercial Solutions for Classified Programs (CSfC) list. Surface is also enabling enterprises to take ownership, modify, lock out and otherwise control hardware configuration, security and OS behaviors via Surface Enterprise Management Mode (SEMM). Windows is adding Windows Hello support for on-premises Active Directory only environments and introducing Dynamic Lock in the Windows 10 Creators Update to automatically lock a device when the customer is no longer within proximity. Read more from Rob Lefferts and the Windows & Devices Group here. Microsoft’s SQL platform continues to lead the market with advanced data security features. Today the team is announcing that Azure SQL Database Threat Detection will be generally available in April, providing a new layer of database security that uses machine learning to continuously monitor, profile and detect suspicious database activity to help customers detect and respond to potential threats. Read more here. Microsoft also announced the general availability of Enterprise Threat Detection, a managed security service that provides enterprises with state-of-the-art cyberattack detection and consulting capabilities. Using a combination of machine analytics, proprietary telemetry sources and dedicated human analysis, the service is uniquely positioned to continually monitor for advanced attacks in the rapidly evolving modern cyberthreat landscape. Learn more here. Azure Security Center and Operations Management Suite help organizations protect, detect and respond to sophisticated threats across cloud and datacenter resources. New capabilities in Azure Security Center available for preview include Just In Time network access to VMs, predictive application whitelisting and expanded Security Baselines with more than 100 recommended configurations defined by Microsoft and industry partners. Our research team continues to monitor the threat landscape and innovate on detection algorithms. Some new threat detections available to customers include Brute Force detections, outbound DDoS and Botnet detections, as well as new behavioral analytics for Windows and Linux VMs. Learn more about Azure Security Center and OMS enhancements here. Actionable intelligence Microsoft’s platform acts on the real-time intelligence from our network of global threat monitoring and insights. Every second Microsoft adds hundreds of GBs worth of telemetry to our Intelligent Security Graph. Customers authenticate with our services over 450 billion times every month, and we scan 200 billion emails for malware and phishing each month. Intelligence data enabled Microsoft to block an average of 200,000 exploit kit attempts per day over the last six months. We are making a number of announcements today that give customers greater visibility into their own security configuration and threats as well as insights into potentially redundant and unnecessary data. Today we are introducing Office 365 Secure Score, a new security analytics tool that helps IT pros assess the strength of their current Office 365 security configuration, and gives them the ability to model how incremental changes can enhance their security and reduce risk. Insurance leader The Hartford plans to consider our mutual customers’ Secure Score as a part of the cyber insurance underwriting process. We’re making Office 365 Threat Intelligence available in private preview. With general availability planned for later this quarter, Threat Intelligence provides near real-time insight into the global threat landscape to help customers stay ahead of cyberthreats. We’re now offering a public preview of Office 365 Advanced Data Governance, which applies machine learning to help customers find and eliminate unnecessary data that may be causing them needless risk. Read more about today’s Office news here. Partnerships Microsoft is fostering a vibrant ecosystem of partners across the industry who are committed to working together to combat security threats on behalf of customers worldwide. We are active within the security research community and collaborate with other security vendors to ensure that customers have the best solutions available. I’m happy to share a few more additions to the ecosystem today. SailPoint, a respected leader in identity governance, today announced a collaboration with Microsoft to extend the value of Microsoft Azure Active Directory. SailPoint will add its identity governance capabilities to Azure Active Directory’s unique access management and identity protection services. The combination of services will cover the compliance, enhanced security and identity management needs of modern organizations in demanding industries such as health care and financial services. We are announcing a new learning path, Cybersecurity Administration, for our cornerstone program Microsoft Software & Systems Academy (MSSA), which is part of the company’s commitment to help service members gain the critical technology skills required for today’s high-paying IT STEM careers prior to transitioning to civilian life. The new learning path is in coordination with curriculum from (ISC)² and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), both leaders in cybersecurity. Microsoft today published a new Enterprise Mobility + Security Playbook, which helps partners to keep customers secure on their favorite apps and devices – and to keep their company data protected. Microsoft and the industry are working hard to give people the trust and peace of mind they need to move their businesses forward in today’s cloud-based economy — helping customers navigate a rapidly evolving cyberthreat landscape. More than 3 billion customer data records were breached in high-profile attacks last year. DDoS attacks of 100 gigabits per second were rare just a few months ago. Today we’re seeing attacks of more than 600 gigabits per second. Customers are looking for affordable solutions that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their security programs. The good news is that there have never been more or better security solutions to choose from. Whether you choose to work with Microsoft and our partners or not, I encourage everyone to revisit your security posture – both at home and at work – to make sure you’re taking full advantage of the security resources available to you. You can hear more from Microsoft during the RSA Conference 2017 next week, when we’ll share additional details about our approach and our commitment to provide the platform, intelligence and partners that will help protect our customers now and into the future. The post New technologies and services enhance Microsoft’s unique approach to cybersecurity appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Valentine’s Day is coming up, and if ostentatious displays of affection aren’t your thing – or even if they are – new Skype Mojis and emoticons will help you spread a little love to friends and family. You can even a record a special Valentine’s message with floating hearts to share with your loved ones over social networks. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/4960283a0b686e7e5b1c9e3148efb25f.png Valentine’s Day also means candy, and that’s something for which the century-old, family-owned Mars company has found a recipe for success. With 60 brands including chocolate, food, drinks, gum and pet care, Mars has a workplace that encourages mutuality and open communication. Their future is looking a little sweeter now that Mars is deploying Windows 10, along with Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, to its more than 80,000 employees across 400 locations in 78 countries to digitally transform how they work with each other through services including Yammer and Skype for Business. You may not want to rely on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to tell someone how much they mean to you, but if you do, you can count on AI researchers to make sure their algorithms are trustworthy and up to the task. A decade ago it didn’t seem feasible for technology to do things like automatically translate conversations, identify objects in pictures, or even write a sentence describing those pictures. But now that those feats are reality and people are starting to rely on systems built with machine learning, AI researchers are working to ensure that the basis for these systems is accurate and as unbiased as possible. Microsoft researchers have written two research papers that aim to use a combination of algorithms and human expertise to weed out data and system imperfections, and they’ve also released a corpus that can help speech translation researchers test the accuracy and effectiveness of their bilingual conversational systems. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/8f65cb5cc0e26b5d5a85c9b2aacf9e03.jpg If Pebble Beach is on your mind this weekend, chances are you have a golf swing you’d like to improve, and Gregg Rogers’ Golf Performance Centers would love to help with that. Rogers focuses on the latest golf teaching technologies to give aspiring and advanced golfers more personalized and effective instruction. Rogers and his golf instructors and club fitters all use Windows 10 Pro-powered devices and Office 365, counting on the Microsoft Cloud to help them collaborate with each other and their students. And a Windows 10 Universal Windows Platform training app and student portal takes golf instruction to a whole new level. The frontman for French electro-pop band M83, Anthony Gonzalez, has been an avid gamer since he was a child, so it was a no-brainer for Microsoft to collaborate with him in creating an 8-bit remix of the band’s song “Go!” to accompany a web-based car chase game. The result, titled “Meet Me at Go!” takes fans on a chase through a retro-futuristic cityscape as two cars dodge obstacles and collect objects in pursuit of a lost love. Not that we’re fixated on candy during the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, or anything, but there’s some sweet news for “Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition” and “Minecraft: Pocket Edition.” The Candy Texture Pack is now available, offering an overabundance of dessert-themed textures such as jelly creepers, starlight mint skeletons, velvet cake cows and even entire floors made of cake. You can also celebrate anime this month with deals and rewards on movies and TV in the Windows Store. And take on the role of Overseer to create your own Fallout Vault and build an army of faithful dwellers with “Fallout Shelter,” now available on Xbox One and Windows 10. Or check out the Playseat Car Pack in “Forza Horizon 3,” which brings seven new vehicles to the wide, open roads of Australia. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/9f29da685fd1430203c0338627ee65e4.png This week on the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages we featured Stuart Pixley, Microsoft’s in-house legal counsel. He has become a key advisor to the Health, Artificial Intelligence & Research and Antitrust Compliance teams, but his work with diversity is equally important. Pixley has helped Microsoft navigate a future and lead the company in a direction that “does more than include diverse people – it empowers them.” https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/9992e413548b543b4387b84c9cddd070.png As long as we’re not stuck in a candy coma, we’ll see you next Friday for another edition of Weekend Reading! Posted by Susanna Ray Microsoft News Center Staff The post Virtual Valentine’s Day cards, trustworthy AI and French electro-pop – Weekend Reading: Feb. 10 edition appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Rapid advancements in cloud computing are creating new capabilities, insights and efficiencies, allowing businesses big and small to transform the way they deliver products and services. As this transformation accelerates, virtually every company in every sector of the economy is becoming in part a digital business. And as a digital business, it must master the new legal challenges that come with participation in the booming digital economy. One challenge that technology leaders such as Microsoft have long addressed is the risk of patent infringement. We have over two decades of experience and a broad legal infrastructure designed to manage these risks. We’ve thought about our role in promoting digital opportunities more broadly for companies across the economy. We’ve decided that we will use Microsoft’s patent portfolio to help protect our cloud customers. Today we are taking an important step to do just that. I am pleased to announce that we are launching Microsoft Azure IP Advantage program – the industry’s most comprehensive protection against intellectual property (IP) risks. Our goal is to help foster a community that values and protects innovation and investments in the cloud. We want software developers to be able to focus on coding, and businesses and enterprises to be able to respond to the changing needs of their customers with agility without worrying about lawsuits. It’s a goal that we believe deserves more attention than it has received to date. On the one hand, the cloud-based economic opportunity is enormous. This shift to the cloud will generate more than $1 trillion in IT spending by 2020, according to the research firm Gartner, representing an incredible economic opportunity for individuals and businesses around the world. But at the same time, it’s important to address the growing risk of intellectual property lawsuits in the cloud. According to Boston Consulting Group, there has been a 22 percent rise in cloud-based IP lawsuits over the last five years in the United States. And non-practicing entities (NPEs) have increased their acquisition of cloud-related patents by 35 percent over the same period. To address this growing challenge, the Microsoft Azure IP Advantage program will include the following benefits: 1) Our best-in-industry intellectual property protection with uncapped indemnification coverage will now also cover any open source technology that powers Microsoft Azure services, such as Hadoop used for Azure HD Insight. 2) We will make 10,000 Microsoft patents available to customers that use Azure services for the sole purpose of enabling them to better defend themselves against patent lawsuits against their services that run on top of Azure. These patents are broadly representative of Microsoft’s overall patent portfolio and are the result of years of cutting-edge innovation by our best engineers around the world. 3) We are pledging to Azure customers that if Microsoft transfers patents in the future to non-practicing entities, they can never be asserted against them. We do not have a practice of making such transfers, but we have learned that this is an extra protection that many customers value. With these changes, Microsoft now offers our customers industry-leading protection against intellectual property risk in the cloud. After previewing the program, our customer Shigeki Tomoyama, President of Toyota’s Connected Company, said, “With Azure IP Advantage we can operate and innovate more freely in the cloud while reducing our IP risk. Microsoft is uniquely able to provide such a comprehensive patent offering.” We take seriously our responsibility to make sure the cloud is used for good, and we stand with our customers to protect them against intellectual property risk. In partnership with our customers, we are committed to creating an ecosystem where developers, entrepreneurs, enterprises and customers can innovate with confidence. To learn more, hear about Microsoft Azure IP Advantage from some of our early preview customers and see how Azure IP Advantage works, see our . If you’re an Azure customer, you can learn more here. The post Protecting innovation in the cloud appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

We may be in the chilly depths of February, but there’s no winter hibernation going on at Microsoft. Join us for an overview of some of the big happenings over the past week. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/221b852bd4f4699a1003c3d84ed567b7.jpg New computing technologies like the cloud are making it possible to quickly respond to a disaster, to coordinate the response by governments and aid organizations, to provide analytics to better understand and track its impact, and to manage the aftermath. All of the same technologies and innovations that enable businesses to quickly respond to new opportunities and changing market conditions make the cloud an essential part of any disaster response. And artificial intelligence may even help us predict when and where the next emergency may occur. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/38f43178eb429bd8330bd9dc4255a0e8.png Microsoft and its partners aim to track mosquitos in order to identify where diseases come from and how they spread – and ultimately prevent outbreaks of new viruses – by using smart traps, drones and gene sequencing to capture mosquitoes and study the DNA they’ve collected. Moreover, trillions of genetic comparisons can now be completed in 12 hours, instead of the 30 days it took in the past, using the computing power of the Microsoft Cloud. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/619ca8e4c111bef7dab954e588be67ab.png A company that manufactures and sells home appliances needed to get a better idea of the spare parts it should have on hand. Another company that makes vending machines for drinks needed a better way of maintaining stock levels and accounting for changes in demand related to factors such as weather and holidays. A cruise ship line wanted to better predict how much water a ship will need for guests on a specific route. All three companies have found solutions to their challenges by using Microsoft’s artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning offerings, including Cortana Intelligence Suite, Azure Machine Learning, Power Bi and Azure IoT Suite. Microsoft Teams has picked up momentum since its launch late last year. In the last month alone, 30,000 organizations across 145 markets and 19 languages have actively used Microsoft Teams. For companies that haven’t tried it yet, Microsoft Teams is a new chat-based workspace in Office 365 that brings together people, conversations and content to facilitate collaboration. With the biggest game in pro football happening Sunday, Microsoft and the NFL have once again come together to bring the best experiences to loyal fans. There’s something for every NFL fan looking to score big, among them high-stakes “Madden NFL 17” tournaments, special appearances by NFL legends at select Microsoft Stores and exclusive hands-on activations at the NFL Experience in Houston. “Candleman” is now available on Xbox One. In this mythical adventure game, you control a lone candle as he travels through levels that become increasingly difficult to explore and navigate. This unexpected and beautiful game was selected by the ID@Xbox independent developer program. https://extremetechsupport.com/data/MetaMirrorCache/4e113adfdb7f26d8647ad9beff7f02da.jpg This week on the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages, we featured Steven Harrington, a cartoon artist whose colorful characters have been featured around the world on skateboards, screen prints, city walls and more. He and animator Andy Baker partnered with Surface to both communicate and create, bringing these animations to life. That covers it for this week. We hope to see you back here next Friday for another edition of Weekend Reading. Thomas Kohnstamm Microsoft News Center Staff The post The cloud comes through in crises, drones detect diseases and Cortana Intelligence elevates IoT — Weekend Reading, Feb. 3 appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...