Author: Microsoft Stories

Microsoft has published a roadmap for Windows 10 showing incoming features that will be of interest to businesses, and the average user as well. The roadmap shows features recently made available in Windows 10, as well as those which have been rolled out to preview versions. There are a number of security features, including improvements to Microsoft Passport aiming to enhance functionality in the enterprise arena, the ability to unlock Windows 10 PC either through smartphone or another device, ability to use ‘companion devices’ like the Microsoft Band 2 for authentication and more.

Microsoft had updated its Translator app to support offline translation on Android and has just added the same feature to the iOS version. Like the Android app, the translation works by way of deep learning. While Google’s Translate app for Android does offline translation of text, its iOS app is online-only. That makes Microsoft’s Translate app the first from a major company to offer the functionality, and the first ever on the platform to use a neural network to achieve it.

FromSoftware’s game Dark Souls 3 will be releasing on April 13, 2016. If played on Steam, the game will unlock across all time zones at once. Hence gamers, depending on their location around the world, can start playing it at the same time.

Microsoft says, after the invention of steam engine, electricity, IT and cloud computing, the fourth revolution, is Data. Srikanth Karnakota, Microsoft’s Server and Cloud Director, said, “After Satya Nadella has stepped in, there has been a big shift in the company culture – a marked focus on customer obsession. The real idea is not going after the Linux market. The customers have been asking for it and with SQL Server 2016, we have achieved that. Customers are already running SQL servers and Linux environments and running MySQL queries, but when they want to run advanced analytics, predictive intelligence or machine learning, they need to look at re-engineering their entire setup, which is not very feasible most of the times. This is where we thought of putting SQL running on Linux and help make it the most logical choice for companies.”

At Build 2016, Microsoft announced the Desktop App Converter, a tool that would allow developers to convert classic Windows programs into modern Universal Windows Platform apps. A preview version is now available for download. As expected, it supports both .NET and Win32 apps, which it can convert to AppX packages that support any UWP API.

Microsoft recently made an exciting announcement about finally lifting the decade plus long lockdown on their Xbox Live network. Opening it up would mean interaction with other networks and services, adding the potential from cross network and cross platform play, including, PS4. Microsoft say they have done their bit and now the onus lies on game developers and Sony.

Microsoft Garage Hub Keyboard is now available on iOS platform. Garage is the experimental apps division at Microsoft. The keyboard is proposed as a productivity boosting tool that incorporates information from various other apps into the keyboard. The keyboard integrates with Microsoft Office 365, giving easier access to files and contacts. The keyboard works on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and is only available in English in the US. Releases in other languages and countries are lined up.

Microsoft partners with HackerRank, a company that focuses on competitive programming challenges with an online community of over one million computer programmers. This partnership now allows Microsoft Bing to show code snippets right on its search result pages. Users can also search for things like “string concat C#” or ask for a particular algorithm for a language, and Bing will open the code editor. Another interesting feature is the ability to quickly switch between different programming languages.

Microsoft Outlook just announced Calendar Apps, a service that connects to third party apps so that user’s tasks, events and notes are all in one convenient place. The mobile app for Outlook, as of now, can import data from Facebook, Evernote and Wunderlist. Adding these features to Outlook is an effort to make it the most useful all round productivity app.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is committed to bring all kinds of new devices and apps to infuse computer-aided intelligence: A personal assistant (Cortana) to manage users’ calendar, chat bots to interact with people on the internet, and HoloLens’ virtual reality glasses to impose a 3D virtual world onto the real world. However, he doesn’t believe in work/life “balance” but in work/life harmony, “There’s no such thing as balance. It’s how do I harmonize my work and my life?” he said.