Author: Microsoft Stories

Microsoft has announced new features and Skype for Business integration for its Office 365 for Web suite. Users can now start an instant chat or voice/video conversation with their colleagues directly and without leaving the Inbox, OneDrive for Business, or Calendar applications. “Conversations will provide you with real-time, direct access to the information you need directly from your colleagues and will persist across applications,” said Nick Robinson, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Office 365 team.

Microsoft said Skype Translator Preview would now be reaching Skype for Windows desktop app by the “end of summer 2015”, roughly at the time of the Windows 10 launch on July 29. The firm announced that while Skype Translator Preview supports four spoken languages – English, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin, apart from 50 written instant messaging languages – it will “continue to expand the repertoire of languages” as soon as support meets its “quality standard”.

HP announced that its currently shipping portfolio of Windows-based PCs are expected to be able to upgrade to Windows 10 when available on July 29, 2015. “Working closely with Microsoft, we designed all our 2015 products to be ready for Windows 10,” said Mike Nash, vice president, portfolio strategy and customer experience, Personal Systems, HP. “As a result, customers who purchased or plan to buy a 2015 Windows PC from HP should have a smooth transition to Windows 10.”

Skype’s real-time language translator is impressive already. Later this summer, Skype Translator Preview will break out of the Windows Store and become a feature in Skype’s main desktop software. Skype Translator acts like a human interpreter for video calls, listening to words in one language and speaking them in another – albeit with a computerized voice. It also shows a text version of the translation in a chat window.

Mango Man, the makers of the recently launched Teewe 2, have announced the launch of Teewe app for Windows. The new Teewe app allows Windows users to stream their media content on their phone, tablet and PC. According to the company, the new app has already received over 7,000 downloads and features on the Windows store with an average rating of 4.5 stars.

BS Group Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. and D-Tools, Inc., worldwide leader in system integration software, announced the formation of a strategic partnership and the subsequent development of an integrated solution that combines the power of both the D-Tools System Integrator and Microsoft Dynamics SL ERP platforms. This integrated software platform will provide an enhanced end-to-end business process for systems integrators and the partnership serves to deliver this integrated solution to the Commercial Audio/Video and Security markets.

A new Microsoft service lets people upload a pair of photos to the web and get back a similarity score that ranges from ‘completely unrelated’ to “OMG, clones!!!” It’s powered by Microsoft’s Project Oxford Face API, which lets developers handle image recognition problems, like determining whether people are related, by using the company’s Azure cloud platform. This is another novel use of Microsoft’s image recognition technology.

Microsoft gave its privacy policy and service agreement a facelift and offered users a new central clearinghouse to manage privacy settings for all the data the company keeps about them. The newly-minted privacy dashboard gives users links to control data stored for personalizing their experience on Bing, what apps and services use their information. It’s part of a move by the company to unify and simplify most of its service agreements and privacy policies for various products under one document.

Mumbai based Web Werks India, a leading web hosting and Data center solutions provider, will open a cloud-ready data center in Navi-Mumbai. The company has also partnered with Microsoft Azure and vNext. Web Werks with Microsoft Azure and vNext sees breadth of opportunities for ISVs and SI in cloud as well as in the adapting Data Center industry.