In the News

Microsoft Corp. Executive Qi Lu, a key architect of Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella’s strategy for artificial intelligence and bots, is reportedly leaving the company due to health issues. Lu was a respected technologist who ran both the Office and search groups in his eight years at the company. With Lu’s departure in October, Microsoft is creating a new AI research group, to be led by company veteran Harry Shum, whose career has spanned leadership roles across research and Bing engineering.

Microsoft is finding new ways to become successful in mobile with business solutions before returning to consumers. In an interview with a local newspaper, Vahé Torossian, President of Microsoft France said that Redmond is now moving away from the consumer market in mobile, trying to concentrate more on businesses in the coming years. Microsoft is finding new ways to become successful in mobile with business solutions before returning to consumers.

Microsoft released a new version of Skype for the iPhone and iPad that lets you call any of your contacts without opening the app. Just like calling from your phone’s contacts, a simple command like ‘call Joe Smith’ will lead Siri to the Skype contact assuming it’s saved in your iOS device. After confirmation, the call is dialed just like you’re used to.

Microsoft’s popular blogging solution Open Live Writer is now available for Windows 10 users. Originally debuted as Windows Live Writer, Open Live Writer supports a majority of blogging platforms including Blogger and WordPress, and advanced features such as live tiles and Cortana integration. Its Windows 10 version is created using Project Centennial, and works only with PCs.

Microsoft revealed the next feature update for Windows 10 Redstone 2 at the Microsoft’s Ignite conference. The session called, ‘Discover what’s next for Windows 10 Mobile for phones and small tablets,’ consisted of a number of announcements especially regarding Redstone 2. The update brings along a new feature called Proximity Connect which, through the use of Bluetooth pairing will allow users to connect wirelessly to a dock without manually removing the phone out of their pockets.

Microsoft has expanded its existing bug bounty programme to cover open source .NET Core and ASRNET Core. To reach out to developers who dig into the RTM, beta and RC releases of the community-backed platforms, Microsoft is giving away bounty payouts from US$ 500 to US$ 15,000, based on the quality of the report.

Microsoft is forging partnerships with Salesforce, the market leader in Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions. The company recently bagged HP Software CRM deal where HP will move away from Salesforce and Oracle products to Microsoft Dynamics CRM for next six years as reported by Fortune.

Microsoft took a slightly different approach while releasing Forza Horizon 3 in India, co-hosting the event in Mumbai with partner, Lamborghini. Developed by Playground Games, this title has been published by Microsoft itself, and is the third entry to the Horizon sub-series and the ninth overall. Forza Horizon 3 can be purchased for both the Xbox One console as well as PC at a price of Rs 3999.

Microsoft, which very recently seeded a software update to users of its Lumia 550 and Lumia 650 smartphones, published the official changelog of the new firmware. Now, the Redmond-based company has issued a full list of new aspects that users of these handsets can check out after installation. A major USP of the new software update is that it brings the double tap to wake functionality to Lumia 650 smartphones, especially to those users who were left out during the first round of seeding of the update.

Microsoft has announced the Windows Defender Application Guard for Edge on Windows 10. The Windows Defender Application Guard uses virtualization technology to isolate the instances of Edge run on Windows machines. The feature is designed to give better security to enterprises. According to Microsoft, Edge has the lowest number of vulnerabilities compared to any other browser on the Windows platform.