Author: Microsoft Stories

Microsoft has released a new research project called Checked C that extends the existing C language. The new offering emerges as an open source solution to detect and prevent common programming errors. Unlike developing an all new language for the developer world, Microsoft Research has modified the original C to offer programmers some new pointer and array types through its Checked C extension. The project itself is written in C language and is available under the MIT License.

Microsoft acquired California-based Wand Labs, a start-up which builds messaging technology for apps. It was founded in 2013 by IIT-Delhi alumnus Vishal Sharma. David Ku, Corporate Vice President, Information Platform Group, Microsoft, said, “This acquisition accelerates our vision and strategy for ‘Conversation as a Platform’ which Satya Nadella introduced at our Build 2016 conference.”

Xbox head, Phil Spencer spoke about the future of the console, gaming on Windows and the role that Steam plays on Windows. Speaking of Steam, Spencer said that Steam has seen incredible growth and that he foresees the growth of the platform even 5 years hence. When asked about publishing games on Steam however, he said that eventually, some more Microsoft games might end up on it.

Microsoft announced that it has acquired three-year-old messaging-app maker Wand Labs. The company said that the acquisition would “accelerate its vision and strategy for Conversation as a Platform.” Unveiled at the company’s Build 2016 conference in March, Conversation embeds AI bots into Cortana to let users access third-party services within a chat. Wand Labs would boost Microsoft’s ability to offer more in this space, given the former’s experience with “third-party developer integration and conversational interfaces”.

Microsoft is partnering with a startup that makes software for the booming legal cannabis industry. Los Angeles-based Kind Financial said that Microsoft will help it market its software to local and state government agencies that monitor marijuana growers or distributors for compliance with regulations governing pot production and sales. Kind’s software will run on Microsoft’s “Azure Government” cloud, a network that provides online services for public agencies.

At a White House event honoring clean energy innovators, Primus Power and Microsoft announced a program to advance energy storage at datacenters globally. The program will be carried out in collaboration with NRG Energy, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and battery technology providers, including Primus Power. Robert Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist, Microsoft, said, “Datacenters are the engine that drives the Microsoft Cloud, and we are committed to investing in innovation breakthroughs at our datacenters that can help improve energy efficiency. By using high performance batteries, we can improve both energy efficiency, as well as our ability to use variable energy sources like wind and solar power.”

According to a recent statement made by the Chief Experience Officer for Microsoft Office, Julie Larson-Green, the company wants users to spend more time accomplishing tasks than learning how the document creation tools work. She hinted at future versions of Office relying more on artificial intelligence and on ‘decomposable’ documents that make them easier to locate.

Microsoft has fixed more than 40 vulnerabilities in its products, including critical ones in Windows, Internet Explorer, Edge, and Office. The vulnerabilities are covered in 16 security bulletins, six of which are marked as critical and the rest as important. This puts the total number of Microsoft security bulletins for the past six months to more than 160, a six-month record during the past decade.

Microsoft’s latest Insider Preview for the lucky minority in the Fast Ring brings a whole slew of improvements and updates. The latest Insider Preview build, numbered 14367, has already started rolling out. The latest build brings support for handwriting recognition in 23 languages on PC and mobile. These languages include Malay, Swahili, Xhosa, Chinese and more.