Author: Microsoft Stories

Microsoft unveiled the Microsoft Launcher for Android in October, and the company is now rolling out a major update to app version 4.4, which comes with a lot of new features. The app is now live on Google Play Store and is available for Microsoft Launcher beta app for Android. It comes with several new features such as support for creating folders, improvements, bug fixes and more.

Technology giant Microsoft has started testing its much-awaited Windows 10’s ‘Timeline’ feature. ‘Timeline’ will let one effectively pick up where they left off if one is switching between Windows 10 devices. It is a quick way to move from one machine to another. In the present, ‘Timeline’ can be accessed through the usual Task View area in Windows 10.

Technology giant Microsoft, whose vision is to empower every student to achieve more, supports the ‘Digital India’ campaign. Its various education and skill development programs have benefited lakhs of teachers and youth across the country. For example, under Project Shiksha, Microsoft partnered with 12 state governments to build ICT skills in nearly 8 lakh government school teachers, thereby, impacting roughly 38 million students.

Microsoft will be focusing more on the government and the small business segment to grow its India revenues. “The SMB (Small and Medium Businesses) segment and the segments around digital India (and) government would be clear areas of focus for us in addition to all the work around enterprise and consumer that we have been doing,” said Microsoft India president Anant Maheshwari at a recently held event.

In partnership with Microsoft education, #disrupttheclassroom is a four-part ed-tech series that illustrates how technology is helping Indian educators go beyond linear, text-based instruction so that students can experience truly immersive learning. With Microsoft Office 365 for Education, students and teachers get all the convenience of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Microsoft Teams apps, but with the power of the cloud.

For most companies, GST may have been a disruption in the way they did business, but Microsoft India President Anant Maheshwari feels it has been a massive shift in the digital journey of India. Maheshwari says that while the growth for the company in India has been consistent with its global growth, customers and users are now dealing with a “new kind of Microsoft”. The company is increasingly doing is asking this segment of customers about their pain-points and then working with the partners to figure out a solution.

Armed with Intelligent Cloud and Edge capabilities, Microsoft will give a renewed thrust to nurturing unicorn firms and the startup community in India next year, said Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India.

New technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Machine Learning, Satellite Imagery and advanced analytics are empowering small-holder farmers in India to increase their income through higher crop yield and greater price control, Microsoft India said.

The Seeing AI app makes use of computer vision to help visually impaired and blind people using audio. The app will be able to recognise handwritten text with the printed one. Users will also have the ability to customise the voice coming from the app. Users can adjust its volume and can also control the how fast it can talk.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced a partnership with Microsoft at 13 December’s Everyday AI event. The main motive of this partnership is to use AI tools for integrating Reddit content in search results on Microsoft’s Bing search engine.