In the News

Microsoft Corp. announced a new commitment of $70 million in community investments over the next three years to increase access to computer science education for all youth, and especially for those from under-represented backgrounds. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, said, ” We’re proud to make this $70 million investment in computer science education to create new opportunities for students across the spectrum of diverse youth and help build a tech talent pipeline that will spark new innovations for the future.”

Microsoft Ventures has a unique program for the Indian start-up ecosystem: mentorship for late-stage start-ups. It has announced a list of 10 start-ups that made the cut from over 1,800 which applied for the winter batch of this programme. They comprise two series-A-funded start-ups and eight others that have raised over $1 million in funding. Three of them – TripHobo, VakilSearch, and VigyanLabs – are already well-established in the market. For them, there’s a special “Hi-Po” program of mentorship and access to new markets, partners, customers, and technology.

Skype has introduced a new feature called Mojis, which is a new option that allows users to send little clips of popular movies and TV shows to others in chats. The Mojis basically serves like GIF but they are very short videos created exclusively for the service from popular content. Skype says it has partnered with Universal Studios, Disney Muppets, BBC and other studios to bring high-quality clips to the messaging service at launch and more to be added in the future.

Tech giant Microsoft India said it is targeting small and medium businesses (SMBs) in Punjab and Haryana by offering them cloud-based solutions at cheaper rates. “Our solutions are developed to address SMBs needs and Punjab and Haryana have strong pool of businesses, which can benefit from cloud solutions Azure, Office 365 and CRM Online. The pay-as-you-go aspect of cloud specially benefits SMBs from a scalability and affordability perspective.” said Sudhir Nayar, Director – Partner Sales, Microsoft India.

Microsoft has announced that it is releasing updates for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook for ipad. If the users update to iOS 9 on an iPad Air 2 then they will be able to run apps like Word and Excel side-by-side. Also, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are all getting the ability to see keyboard shortcuts by tapping the cmd key from an external iPad keyboard. The users can use Outlook for iPad now for composing new email or tabbing between email, calendar, files, people and settings using keyboard shortcuts.

Microsoft Research is working on an open-source distributed analytics platform, codenamed Prajna, that is similar to Apache Spark, and meant for building distributed cloud services. Prajna is the main project in development by Microsoft Research’s Cloud Computing and Storage (CCS) group. The Microsoft team says that Prajna is pushing the distributed functional programming model further than Spark does by “enabling multi-cluster distributed programming, running both managed code and unmanaged code, in-memory data sharing across jobs, push data flow.

For Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the culture created inside the walls of any company isn’t just important, “it’s everything.” “At Microsoft, we’re aspiring to have a living, learning culture with a growth mindset that allows us to learn from ourselves and our customers,” he says. “These are the key attributes of the new culture at Microsoft, and I feel great about how it seems to be resonating and how it’s seen as empowering.”

The latest Window 10 Mobile preview build – dubbed 10536 – for Windows Phone handsets comes with an updated Photos app. The company said that it has added several of users’ most requested features to the app. The new additions include a folder view that makes it easier for a user to see OneDrive and PC folders from within the Photos app. In addition, users can now access files stored in an external storage media (SD card) right from the app.

Harisal, a tribal hamlet in Melghat, is all set to become the first digital village in India in the next 100 days. On the assurance given by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis during the latter’s US tour, the software giant has chosen Harisal for developing it as the first ideal digital village in India. Microsoft will offer skill development training to village youth, take care of computer literacy of anganwadi sevikas and teachers and more.

Microsoft and NATO have agreed to renew a longstanding partnership that will see the tech giant provide the intergovernmental treaty group’s Communications and Information Agency with details of Microsoft products and services, as well as new information about cybersecurity threats.