In the News

The latest update to Windows 10’s Photos app allows users to upload an album directly into a new Sway project. Sway is the company’s simplified and web-friendly presentation app. Once uploaded, all the photos will be ready and waiting in Sway, with each one assigned to its own card. Then users can add captions and any other element they want to include in the project. The new Sway integration may also prompt some users to make better use of the Photos app in Windows 10.

Microsoft Corporation has agreed to provide support for top creators participating in One Spark, the crowdfunding festival. Microsoft General Manager of U.S. start-ups Jim Brisimitzis said, “Clearly as a software company we care deeply about where innovation is happening and a lot of that innovation clearly is coming from the start up ecosystem. One of the areas of partnership with One Spark is, for the event, we have pledged a number of our Biz Spark-plus offers.” He added that $120,000 will be offered to top creators from this year’s One Spark.

The new Lamborghini Centenario will feature on the front cover and within the next Forza racing game on Xbox. Lamborghini and Microsoft’s Turn 10 Studios announced the latest collaboration at Geneva Motor Show in March 2016. The new Xbox game will be revealed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June 2016. The Centenario will be available “First in Forza,” giving millions of fans around the world the exclusive opportunity to experience the virtual version of the car on Xbox before its road debut.

Microsoft’s latest Windows 10 update, seeded to Insiders on the “fast ring”, enhances the capabilities of Cortana. The digital personal assistant now supports three more languages, making it functional in 14 languages in total. The Windows 10 build 14279, among other things, adds support for Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil), and French (Canada) languages to Cortana. A new feature introduced to the build allows users to put reminders on Cortana without specifying a date.

Microsoft will begin automatically pushing new firmware to its Windows Mobile 10 Insider participants. Previously, users who wanted a firmware update had to shift their phone to the Production ring, then shift their phone back to their desired Windows 10 Insider ring. The auto-publish update will ease this issue. The company released Mobile Insider Build 10586.122 for the Slow and Release Preview rings of Windows 10 Mobile. Users on the Fast ring will have to switch back to one of the other two rings to receive the improvements.

Microsoft India along with its partners, HP and Intel, showcased a range of Windows 10 computing devices in Chennai. Mr. Priyadarshi Mohapatra, Country General Manager, Consumer Channel Group, Microsoft India, said, “At Microsoft we are working closely with our partners to help them unlock the device potential in India with Windows 10 ecosystem. We are excited to offer customers the Windows 10 experience across a range of partner devices such as laptops, tablets, 2-in-1s, projectors and PC-on-a-stick to enable them be more productive while enhancing their computing experience.”

Microsoft continues discussing the merits of releasing Xbox One exclusive titles for both the console and Windows 10, in light of Quantum Break heading to PC and Forza 6: Apex being announced. Aaron Greenberg, Marketing Executive, Xbox told, “Our business is not to prevent players to play the games we create. What we really intend to do is to make sure that our games are utilized by the greatest possible number of gamers.”

Microsoft Corporation and the NCAA announced a comprehensive partnership to provide college basketball fans the ultimate March Madness bracket experience along with a new Windows 10 NCAA app. Bing, Official Corporate Partner of the NCAA, will be the Official Bracketologist of the NCAA for the 2016 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship; leveraging over a decade of extensive NCAA statistical data to help create an immersive bracket experience complete with Bing Predicts data and matchup analysis.

Microsoft announced a Dynamics CRM update. Available to online users in the second quarter of this year, the new release focuses on the integration of FieldOne and Adxstudio technologies for new field-service and Web-portal capabilities. It will also introduce project service, an offering that’s designed to support complex, multi-day engagements and optimize resourcing with skills-based assignments.

Microsoft is offering a new feature that lets companies stretch their database tables from on-premises infrastructure to its Azure storage service. Microsoft launched its SQL Server Stretch Database Service along with the first release candidate beta of SQL Server 2016. The new feature will allow database administrators to set up certain tables to stretch from their on-premises infrastructure to Microsoft’s cloud, while still allowing applications to access all the data across both environments.