Author: Microsoft Stories

Kicking off on July 5th, the Microsoft Flagship Store in New York will host a free series of unique summer camp experiences called “Be an Inventor with littleBits”. This will be part of Microsoft Stores YouthSpark camps taking place throughout July and August in their New York retail location. The free four-day maker camps at the Microsoft Flagship Store located at 677 Fifth Ave. in New York will take place throughout July and August and will allow kids to explore their creativity through littleBits, a platform of easy to use electronic building blocks.

Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, announced a relationship with Microsoft to integrate its most widely used product lines with Microsoft’s Office 365. The integration makes it easier for students and researchers to download, email, share, and access their research content from anywhere using familiar tools. The products include All Gale In Context resources, Gale Researcher, Infotrac including Powersearch, Gale ebooks on GVRL, Contemporary Authors Online, LitFinder, MLA International Bibliography and more.

Microsoft’s Project Premonition is designed to assist entomologists to track mosquitoes that spread deadly diseases like Dengue fever, Chikungunya, West Nile virus, St. Louis encephalitis and Zika. To gather all this information, the traps use two small, battery-powered microprocessors, which gather data that can then be wirelessly downloaded and sent to the cloud. The latest advances in machine learning are also utilized for insights. “We’ll have a plethora of data we never had before about the behavior of the insects,” said Ethan Jackson, a Microsoft researcher who is leading Project Premonition.

As Microsoft hurtles towards the release of its major Windows 10 Anniversary Update, the company has introduced a tool that’s supposed to help PC owners resolve problems with activating the operating system on their computers. The new Activation Troubleshooter should make it easier for people to reactivate their computers after changing hardware, such as swapping out their motherboard or hard drive. Using the Activation Troubleshooter, users can associate a digital Windows 10 license with their Microsoft account. After that, they can change out hardware on their PC and re-activate Windows with the license that they associated with their account.

‘Mafia III’ is going to release on 7 October 2016, on Xbox One. Mafia III’s Family Kick Back trailer shows off the exclusive pre order onuses for the game that users can get their hands on. The Family Kick Back pre order bonus comes with ‘gifts’ to kick start criminal empire. The variety in weapons will help cater to three different play styles to give a little freedom in how users want to dispose of those who get in way.

Microsoft Accelerator in India and TCS Co-Innovation Network have announced a joint initiative to create a platform that provides a boost to the Indian start-up ecosystem.
Under the collaboration, an open innovation framework will be created to mentor and engage with start-ups to bring their innovative solutions to market. Ravi Narayan, Global Director, Microsoft Accelerator, said, “The progress India has made in IT and entrepreneurship over the past four decades, has radically changed the landscape offering new entrepreneurs unmatched opportunities.”

Microsoft launched the SharePoint mobile app for iOS devices on June 21. The app is designed to enable mobile users to carry their corporate intranet with them and access key materials from wherever they are. ‎Microsoft is also building SharePoint mobile apps for Android and Windows Universal, both of which it plans to launch by the end of 2016. ‎

Microsoft said mobile-phone owners using the Microsoft Wallet app can now pay at brick-and-mortar retail stores by tapping their handsets on terminals at checkout counters. The service will initially work in the U.S. with Microsoft’s Lumia 950, 950 XL and 650 devices at more than a million retail locations. The app, made available through the Windows Insider Program will also store reward and membership numbers which could be scanned or viewed from the phone.

Gareth Jones, the API architect for the Microsoft Graph, will present a timely keynote at All about The API on July 19th at Las Vegas. Jones is Microsoft’s leader of technical strategy and its most strategic API, a unified endpoint for accessing data and insights from across the company’s portfolio of cloud services. At All About the API, knowledge leaders who are already shaping the future economy around APIs will be presenting insight and perspective on how API’s are more than just code, and how they are part of an entirely new economy across all industries.