In the News

Microsoft’s search engine Bing has predicted which people, products and trends will win in 2015. Microsoft compiled its predictions across eight categories that include awards, designers, fashion, food, football, technology, travel, and wearables and in each, Bing picked the top ten winners, some of which varied by geographical regions. Bing had earlier predicted the winners of the 2014 World Cup correctly.

Microsoft’s Xim photo-sharing app, which was launched in October this year for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, has now been updated with new sharing features. Getting bumped up to version 1.3 from 1.0, the Xim app now includes the ability to share photos on big screens, such as televisions, via a variety of streaming media devices that include Chromecast, Apple TV, Xbox One and Amazon Fire TV.

Iron.io is pleased to offer IronWorker as an Application Service within the Azure Marketplace, providing a key infrastructure component that gives developers immediate access to highly scalable event-driven computing services. “Through our expansive ecosystem, we are providing customers with the solutions they need to deploy their critical applications seamlessly in the cloud and create hybrid connections with on-premises,” said Corey Sanders, Director, Program Management, Microsoft Azure.

Pricol, an auto component manufacturer for leading automobile brands, has deployed Microsoft Office 365 to secure its IP and sensitive data. Pravin Kumar Sadavisam, Group Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO), Pricol said: “Office 365 has addressed our concerns around reliability and security of our critical IP.” Tyler Bryson, General Manager- Marketing & Operations, Microsoft India explains: “By encrypting and applying intelligent policies, Office 365 secures data at all points – on-premise, in the cloud or in transit.”

Cloud computing has ushered in a new era of computing. They allow users to access data and programs over the Internet, through a cloud-based application platform. Among the many offerings out there, Microsoft’s Azure platform boasts of many excellent features.

The beta test of Microsoft’s web-publishing app, Sway, is no longer by invitation-only: the company said it’s open to all. Since Sway’s October debut, more than 175,000 people have requested an invitation to the trial preview, with thousands more submitting requests daily, Microsoft said in a blog post. Sway has been designed for use on mobile devices and in web browsers to publish web-based content.

Microsoft has added Yammer to Office 365 plans used by organizations with a fleets of shared PCs. “In an effort to bring enterprise social networking to desk-less workers, we’re excited to announce Yammer Enterprise is now included in the Office 365 [K1] kiosk plan,” wrote Microsoft’s Office 365 Team in a blog post.

Turtle Beach, the leading audio brand in the video games industry, announced that Superhuman Hearing and Mic Monitoring will be featured in two new officially licensed headset audio controllers for the Xbox One. The Ear Force Headset Audio Controller and Ear Force Headset Audio Controller Plus are designed to make a wide range of Turtle Beach headsets compatible with the Xbox One.

Google has revealed that Xbox One was the most searched gaming console in 2014. The listing comes under Consumer Electronics where the Xbox One was placed 7th behind iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy S5, Nexus 6, Moto G, Samsung Note 4 and LG G3. Google does not have a specific category for consoles and the PlayStation 4 was not in the top 10.

Taking the spirit of openness forward, Microsoft has announced that its Project Orleans cloud computing web framework will be open-sourced. The framework is been extensively used in Azure cloud, and is also known for powering Halo 4, the popular first-person shooter video game. “Orleans gives developers a virtual ‘actor space’ analogous to virtual memory, which allows them to invoke any actor in the system, whether or not it is present in memory,” Microsoft said in a blog post.