In the News

Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 10 has reached more than 75 million devices in almost a month since the operating system was released, according to Yusuf Mehdi, the company’s marketing chief for Windows and devices. More than 90,000 personal-computer and tablet models have upgraded to the new OS, which is running in 192 countries.

Last week was a big one for Microsoft’s Albert Greenberg: The networking expert delivered the keynote address at SIGCOMM 2015 in London AND received the annual SIGCOMM Award, recognizing lifetime contribution to the field of communication networks. Last year, the SIGCOMM Award went to George Varghese, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research whose expertise lies in the area of network algorithmics.

Microsoft has released the first technical previews of SharePoint Server 2016 and a new cloud hybrid search offering for SharePoint 2013 and 2016. “Since we’re building SharePoint Server 2016 on the same core platform for SharePoint Online, you won’t be surprised to see similarities between the two. For IT professionals, it delivers improved performance and scale with simplified management. And for developers, it offers an opportunity to build for cloud or on-premises,” Bill Baer, Senior Technical Product Manager for the SharePoint team.

Less than four weeks after its official release, Microsoft’s Windows 10 has come close to – the global usage share of Apple’s OS X, the only significant rival to Microsoft’s family of operating systems, new data shows. According to Irish analytics firm StatCounter, Windows 10’s worldwide usage share reached 7.3% on Sunday, a record since its July 29 launch.

Microsoft introduced the Nokia 222 and Nokia 222-dual SIM feature phones that promises to help users connect to the internet in the easiest of ways possible. Featured with apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Messenger and Skype, the Nokia 222 feature phone looks toward connecting people, each sharing their moments in the best way possible. The Nokia 222, along with the dual SIM, feature a 2.4-inch QVGA screen display and runs on Nokia Series 30+.

US technology giant Microsoft announced the availability of Xbox One, Xbox Live and Xbox One accessories at 27 Microsoft Priority Resellers spanning across eight cities and on online marketplace Amazon.in across the country starting September 1. Xbox One will be available at Rs 34,990 for the stand-alone unit and Rs 45,990 for the Xbox One with Kinect. The cities where the reseller service would be available are Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune and Chandigarh.

The Xbox One is becoming an increasingly important part of Microsoft MSFT – 3.26% broader plans for Windows 10 across platforms. Gamesindustry.biz had an interesting interview with Xbox executive Kudo Tsunoda, said, “It’s a really unique value that only we can offer. You still need very gamer-focused values, but there’s lots of things you can do with our technology. We’ve really got a lot more going on [than our competitors]. We’re doing things that can’t be done on any other console.”

Windows 10 is gaining currency among users with a majority of them particularly liking its star feature – digital assistant Cortana – a study said. The study by Brandwatch – a social media monitoring company based in England – analysed 7,000 posts on social media out of a pool of 1.2 million mentions of Windows 10 and showed that Cortana and the Edge web browser command the most “mention volume”, closely followed by the new Start menu and 80 percent of people were pleased with Cortana.

The practice of 3D printing may soon be a lot simpler. New technology from the Microsoft Research Lab allows 3D scanning to be done from your smartphone, with no additional hardware needed. Dubbed MobileFusion, the app allows you to walk around an object and scan it to your phone. It first captures the RGB data in an environment, then takes a stereo depth map as you make your way around an item.

Microsoft said today its Cortana virtual assistant software was available to users of Android mobile devices. The launch is part of an effort by Microsoft to expand its mobile presence despite a weak showing for its Windows Phone devices. “The Cortana app can do most of the things Cortana does on your PC or on a Windows phone,” Microsoft’s Susan Hendri said.