In the News

Microsoft announced Bala Girisaballa as the Microsoft Accelerator India CEO-in-residence. Prior to this, he was with globalization and market expansion advisory Zinnov as partner and practice head helping MNC R&D companies. He took charge of Accelerator’s India operations with effect from August 1.

Microsoft has opened Halo’s level and game creation suite for free download on the Windows Store for Windows 10. The suite is called ‘Halo 5: Force’, and it lets developers and users create maps and play new levels across Xbox One and Windows 10 platforms. Microsoft has announced a partnership with SkyBox Labs that will bring Halo 5’s entire Forge level-creation experience to Windows 10 PCs. It will also bring features like support for keyboard and mouse, high-resolution display (including 4K), the ability to host and play custom online multiplayer with up to 16 players. It will also be possible for map creators to download levels from the Forge community to customize or redesign them.

Overall, the global software developer community and enterprises have given a positive response to Microsoft’s recent move to make its automation and scripting platform PowerShell available to Open source software Linux including Ubuntu, Centos, Red Hat and Mac OS X platforms. Though it was invented in 2002, it took Microsoft over 14 years to bring PowerShell to Open source platform. Microsoft Technical Fellow Jeffrey Snover said, “We wanted to do this from the very beginning. That was certainly the intent, but at the time that just wasn’t a possibility.”

Today, iPhone keyboard apps have become an important fighting ground. Whether you’re scrolling through Facebook or looking at your friends’ beautifully framed pictures on Instagram, the moment you hit the comment button, you’re not just calling upon a keyboard to type with, but an ecosystem in itself. The app you browse through may change, but the keyboard stays right with you. No wonder then that the world’s biggest technology companies want a share of the pie that was once the bastion of smaller developers such as SwiftKey (now owned by Microsoft), Swype, and many others. Microsoft launched Word Flow back in April, and it was followed by Google’s own keyboard app – Gboard in May.

When VMware gathers the faithful at VMWorld 2016 in Las Vegas this week, the company might keep a careful eye out for how many of its customers are looking over their shoulder for some alternate source of virtualization. Years ago, when VMware was winning the data center, raising prices and growing revenues by leaps and bounds, some observers concluded it had set itself up to be undermined by Microsoft, a skilled provider of mass market technologies at prices that tended to undermine the market leader. Here are six reasons why they might be cautious during the annual user group conference.

Microsoft has recently posted an image on Instagram that hints at a brand new Surface device with a completely redesigned hinge. It’s not known if this one will close flat. Windows Central has reported that the image is from an internal ‘sizzler-reel’ that’s been doing the rounds at Microsoft. That reel is apparently a compilation of ideas for the Surface Book 2. They also add that Microsoft prototypes are “usually” black, so we’re not necessarily going to see a black Surface Book 2.

Techaisle’s detailed survey on Hybrid Cloud Adoption trends covering small, midmarket and enterprise firms show that Microsoft Azure is quickly becoming the cloud platform of choice. Microsoft Azure, a public cloud computing platform, is a growing collection of integrated cloud services that includes analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage and web. Microsoft Azure initially focused strictly on PaaS but has now entered into IaaS market and launched a technical preview of Azure Stack, a platform designed to allow organizations deploy an on premise private cloud and manage a hybrid cloud environment.

Assetto Corsa, Italy’s answer to Polyphony’s critically acclaimed Gran Turismo simulation racer, is finally vrooming on to consoles. It’s now available on the PS4 and the Xbox One. It wasn’t easy porting the benchmark PC racing simulation to consoles for developer Kunos Simulazioni. But the trials, tribulations and the ultimate triumph only made the journey to the consoles all the more rewarding.

Microsoft is enhancing its Visual Studio Code editor this week with the capability to debug JavaScript code for iOS mobile devices. The iOS Web Debugger for Visual Studio Code is an extension supported on both Mac and Windows PCs that enables iOS developers to debug JavaScript code running in the Safari browser on iOS devices. Kenneth Auchenberg, Program Manager for dev tools and remote debugging, Microsoft, said, “Today, we’re enabling mobile web developers to debug JavaScript running on their iOS devices directly from their editor.”

The free games for September 2016 for Xbox Live Gold members has been announced. The two games for the Xbox One will include, Earthlock: Festival of Magic and Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China. For the Xbox 360 users, the games Forza Horizon and Mirror’s Edge will be on offer.