In the News

Microsoft’s virtual personal assistant, Cortana, can now perform its instant translation skills to and from more languages. If set to English or Chinese, ‘she’ could already serve as a handy virtual phrase book. As of now Cortana can translate in French, Italian, German and Spanish.

Soloinsight is chosen as one of the Red Carpet Program partners for the Microsoft Azure IoT (Internet of Things) Suite. The Red Carpet Program is a worldwide initiative in which Microsoft carefully selects partners to be the “go to” partners for the new cloud, mobility and IoT solutions. Microsoft helps the partners scale by connecting them to investors, strategic partners, customers and by funding pilots through their Business Incentive Fund.

Microsoft is making a hardware-based security feature called TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 2.0. It is a minimum requirement on most Windows 10 devices. The company will require device manufacturers shipping PCs, tablets and smartphones to include TPM 2.0 provides a hardware layer to safeguard user data by managing and storing cryptographic keys in a trusted container.

Microsoft has revealed a tool on their website called Windows 10 emulator. Instead of actually running Windows 10 on a virtual desktop, the portal lets users explore how the new OS looks and feels during everyday use. Users can use the tool to emulate Windows 10 on a PC, tablet, or smartphone. It walks through actions which users are most likely to run, including using Continuum across devices, accessing Cortana, managing reminders, using Skype, viewing photos, and even playing games.

The Xbox presentation at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2016 will take place on June 13, with “Gears of War 4,” “Crackdown 3” and a new “Halo” game. Two months out from one of the year’s biggest annual video game events, the E3, Xbox has started outlining its plans for the show. Tentpole release “Gears of War 4” now has its own date, the latest entry to a distinctive, action-oriented franchise closely associated to the Xbox consoles for ten years, since “Gears of War” arrived on Xbox 360 in 2006.

Microsoft’s Cortana will now support instant translations in four languages – German, Italian, French and Spanish. The feature has been available in English since September 2015. Only available on Windows 10, users interfacing with their machines in these languages can ask Cortana for a translation of a word or a phrase. Cortana provides translations of phrases based on text input as well, if it is typed in the Cortana Toolbar.

Microsoft’s Project Madeira shows how the lines continue to blur between an app and a service. The Project Madeira basic business apps for Windows, iOS, and Android exist within Outlook, so users can access them without ever leaving Microsoft’s email program. Technically, Microsoft defines Project Madeira as a public cloud service (or software as a service) for Windows, iOS or Android devices, running on top of Microsoft Azure. The app services are designed for small businesses with 10 to 100 employees, who neither have the incentive nor the funds to invest in an enterprise resource planning system.

After Microsoft unveiled new Windows 10 emojis last week, it’s reported that six new ninja cat emojis are exclusively available to Windows 10 users. Users who have the Windows 10 Anniversary Update can find the six new ninja cats by combining the existing cat emoji with other emojis. Further instructions on the combinations can be found on Emojipedia.

Microsoft is adding an additional layer of defense to help stop unsafe email warnings, if users subscribe to Office 365. The software giant said it will begin showing what it calls “Safety Tips” at the top of email: colored bars to let users know whether an email is safe, suspicious, or known to be fraudulent. Microsoft said Safety Tips will be managed by Exchange Online Protection, the back-end protection mechanism used to secure email sent through Office 365.

The Windows Blue Screen of Death isn’t known for being particularly descriptive, but that might change in a future version of Windows 10. A Reddit user posted a picture showing a new version of the blue screen, one with a QR code and a link where users can get more information about the error that caused their computer to crash. Right now, the code and the link take users to a webpage that discusses generic fixes for errors that might cause a crash. In the future, Microsoft could provide a QR code that leads to more specific information about what caused the computer freeze up.