Author: Microsoft Stories

Microsoft’s new feature for Windows 10 will soon let Android phone users view their notifications and respond to text messages right from the desktop. The new feature was announced at a session at Microsoft Build Conference 2016. The feature will enable Cortana, Microsoft’s virtual assistant app for Android, to communicate with Windows 10, relaying Android notifications like missed calls, text messages, and the like.

Microsoft announced that it will give Windows developers using .NET, the native ability inside Visual Studio to write applications to Android and iOS. Using Xamarin’s SDK, developers can use C# to write applications that can run on Apple and Google’s mobile platform, despite the language’s history as a Microsoft product. Xamarin is a company that Microsoft acquired earlier this year.

Quantum Break seeks to mix gameplay and story at every level, marrying exploration, cut-scenes, live-action episodes, and a heady amount of player choice and replay ability via Junction sections. Watching its cast in-game and also in real video cut scenes is not jarring. Instead, it helps enhance players’ understanding of the background, motivations, and political machinations of the characters. With astounding production values, powerful story-telling, and rewarding combat, Quantum Break is a stellar game.

Microsoft Lumia 650 is said to be the only Lumia smartphone the software giant plans to launch this year. The smartphone, yet to be officially launched in India, has been spotted on Amazon India. The listing is created by a local retailer and the device will be shipped starting April 30. It is priced at Rs 16,700. Microsoft describes the Lumia 650 as “the best of Microsoft productivity and security, all wrapped in a beautiful slim package.” It comes preloaded with business apps such as Office 365 and third-party apps such as Uber.

Microsoft has unveiled new free development tools for its developers, including those in India, to help them easily build apps and reach the largest possible number of customers. On the second day of ‘Build 2016’, Microsoft announced the new free development tools which include new cloud services, developer tools and productivity extensions. “Microsoft is the only cloud vendor that supports the diverse needs of every organization and developer from core infrastructure services to platform services and tools to software-as-a-service for any language, across any platform,” said, Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise Group, Microsoft.

India’s growing and robust start-up culture, strong base of development partners and its large economy makes it an “incredibly unique and valuable” market for Microsoft. Aaron Woodman, Senior Director of Windows Product Marketing at Microsoft, said, “India is unique in a number of different ways. In India, (there is) such an embrace of technology in development as a whole. It is unbelievable the quality and diversity of development that is coming out of the country.” Underlining the importance of the Indian market from the perspective of Cloud computing, Julia White, General Manager, Microsoft’s Cloud Platform said that India is an “amazing and robust market”, particularly against the backdrop of the innovations coming from there and the growing start-up culture.

Microsoft is planning to introduce an in-built ad blocker into the next version of the Microsoft Edge web browser, reported by tech website ZDNet. Microsoft Edge has replaced Internet Explorer as the default browser in Windows 10. Faster-loading web pages, increased privacy and security and less intrusive web browsing are the key reasons for the growing demand for ad-blockers.

Microsoft Corporation announced that BMW AG was a customer of its cloud computing business. The relationship is particularly noteworthy because the German car maker has been a marquee customer of Amazon Web Services. At Microsoft, “enterprise is not an afterthought,” said Scott Guthrie, Executive vice President, Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise Group. Mr. Guthrie revealed that 85% of Fortune 500 companies use at least one Microsoft cloud service.

Swrve, a leader in mobile engagement, announced to bring its Mobile Engagement Platform to the Microsoft Windows 10 mobile application marketing and development community. Steven Guggenheimer, Corporate Vice President & Chief Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation, said, “Swrve’s support of Windows 10 allows us to provide our developer community an easy way to build and bring engaging apps to the platform that will drive new levels of retention, engagement, and loyalty.”

Zendesk Inc. announced the launch of its first customer support solution designed for Microsoft Office 365 groups. It will enable fluid conversations within an organization to resolve customer issues more efficiently. Building upon the existing Zendesk and Microsoft collaboration, the new Office 365 Connectors, empowers customer service reps, sales teams, product, finance and engineering departments to easily collaborate around customer inquiries with a new streamlined workflow. All this without ever leaving Office 365.