The following is a post from Frank X. Shaw, Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications at Microsoft.

It’s been another one of those weeks here in Redmond – equal parts exhausting and exhilarating, and one where I have to remind myself just how privileged I am to work with such amazing people.

If you haven’t had the opportunity, I encourage you to set aside some time this weekend to watch this great discussion about the making of Xbox One that Major Nelson hosted with Todd Holmdahl, corporate vice president of IEB hardware; Boyd Multerer, partner director of development for the Xbox; Nick Baker, distinguished engineer, Xbox; and Dan Greenawalt, creative director of Xbox Turn 10 Studios, the team that brings you Forza Motorsport.

The following is a post from Satya Nadella, President of the Server & Tools Business at Microsoft.

As the worldwide demand for cloud computing continues to grow, so does Windows Azure. Microsoft is the only at-scale global public cloud provider to deliver a hybrid cloud advantage and we’re excited to announce plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the Windows Azure footprint in Asia – specifically in China, Japan and Australia.

The following is a post from Frank X. Shaw, Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications at Microsoft.

Yesterday was a lot of fun. Watching the Xbox team put the new Xbox One through its paces, hearing the reaction in the room and on Twitter, seeing all the work that people put in come to life = just wow.

For some time now, we’ve been talking about Microsoft’s transformation to a devices and services company. Make no mistake, we’re still a software company at our core, but increasingly the value of that software is expressed through the devices and services we deliver to consumers and businesses.

That transformation came to 1080p HD life yesterday with our introduction of Xbox One. And it wasn’t just the fantastic device on center stage, it was the amazing content from our partners, the other Microsoft services lighting it up, and the other Microsoft devices making it work as one.

Microsoft and the National Football League have changed the way you will watch the most popular sport in North America through a new multi-year partnership that will deliver interactive television experiences for the next-generation Xbox One.

A new vision for the future was revealed today when Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One, an all-in-one gaming and entertainment system. The new system brings together games, TV, movies, music, sports and Skype. Use your voice to launch your personalized Xbox One Home screen, see what’s popular on TV or check out your friends’ latest gaming achievements.

In this edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got stories on the new Nokia Lumia 925, Telefónica choosing Office 365 and Yammer for its 130,000 employees, an update on "WindowsBlue" (now known as Windows 8.1) and a cross-company partnership with Paramount Pictures around the highly anticipated “Star Trek Into Darkness” film.

Something to behold: The Nokia Lumia 925. The folks at Nokia are not messing around. Less than a week after unveiling the Lumia 928 – the Windows Phone 8 device that became available on Verizon on Thursday – the Finnish phone maker on Tuesday lifted the curtain on the Lumia 925. The Lumia 925 makes its debut in June on Europe’s Vodafone network, then heads to China Mobile and China Unicom. It’s scheduled to launch on T-Mobile in the U.S. later this year, according to Nokia. The phone will cost around 469 euros before taxes and subsidies in Europe. Head on over to the Windows Phone Blog to get the rest of this story and to learn more about an update coming to Windows Phone 8 later this summer. Also, check out the video below that shows off some of the Lumia 925’s finer points. On the app front, we’d like to draw your attention to two new apps hit the Windows Phone Store this week - Angry Birds Rio and Zinio. Check ‘em out.

Xbox 360 maintained its position as the top console in the U.S. last month, selling more units than any other platform, according to new data from The NPD Group.

April also marked the 28th consecutive month that the Xbox 360 was the best-selling console in the U.S.

April highlights from NPD include:

· Holding 42 percent share of current-generation console sales, Xbox 360 sold 130,000 units in April, maintaining the number-one console spot in the U.S.

· Total retail spend on the Xbox 360 platform in April (hardware, software and accessories) reached $208 million, the most for any console in the U.S.

· During the month of April, Xbox 360 held six of the top 10 console game titles including: “NBA 2K13,” “Dead Island: Riptide,” “BioShock Infinite,” Defiance,” Injustice: Gods Among Us” and “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.”

The following is a post from Douglas Crets, Developer Evangelist, Strategic & Emerging Business Team, Microsoft.

More than 200 of San Francisco’s techies and startup founders put aside their work on mobile apps and the cloud last night and joined Microsoft, Bloomingdale’s and the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship for an epic fashion party that raised thousands of dollars for a good cause. Below is a photo of Microsoft's Dr. Mark Drapeau, founder of Geek2Chic, speaking with Colleen Taylor, Silicon Valley reporter for TechCrunch TV.

A star-studded evening of catwalks, storm trooper masks and breakdancing started in the Bloomingdale’s on Market Street and continued on till the early hours at Bubble Lounge.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the #Geek2chic event tonight in San Francisco!

— Microsoft (@Microsoft) May 16, 2013

It was all for a good cause.

The following post was originally published on The Fire Hose.

The Windows 8 update formerly known as “Windows Blue” will be called Windows 8.1, and consumers will be able to get it as a free update to Windows from the Windows Store, Tami Reller said at the JP Morgan Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in Boston today.

In this edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got stories on the YouTube and Foursquare apps for Windows Phone getting major updates, the  release of the Nokia Lumia 928 for Verizon Wireless customers, Microsoft naming corporate vice president Amy Hood the company’s chief financial officer and more.

Microsoft names Corporate Vice President Amy Hood as new Microsoft chief financial officer. Microsoft announced on Wednesday that Amy Hood was named Microsoft chief financial officer, succeeding outgoing CFO Peter Klein who will remain at Microsoft through the end of June to ensure a smooth transition. Hood becomes CFO effective immediately. Hood, 41, joined Microsoft in December 2002 and currently serves as CFO of MBD, overseeing all financial strategy, management and reporting for the $24.1 billion business. For the rest of this story, head on over to the Microsoft News Center.

YouTube and Foursquare apps for Windows Phone get major updates. Freshly enhanced versions of both Foursquare and YouTube arrived in the Windows Phone Store on Tuesday, bringing additional Windows Phone 8 features to the two popular apps. The updated YouTube app lets you pin channels, playlists and results directly to your Start Screen, redesigns the playlist experience as a touch-friendly filmstrip and allows you to limit what videos little ones can watch by pinning the app to Kid’s Corner and configuring your YouTube Safety Settings. Location-based social app Foursquare now incorporates voice commands, so you can use your voice to find and check-in at points of interest, and also brings notifications to your lock screen and lets you pin your favorite people and places on your Start screen. Below are screenshots from the updated YouTube app.

The following is a post from Frank X. Shaw, Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications at Microsoft.

There are many advantages to living in a world that is mostly connected. Feedback is immediate. Weak signals are easily amplified. Voices can be heard.

Of course, every benefit has a drawback.

In this world where everyone is a publisher, there is a trend to the extreme – where those who want to stand out opt for sensationalism and hyperbole over nuanced analysis. In this world where page views are currency, heat is often more valued than light. Stark black-and-white caricatures are sometimes more valued than shades-of-gray reality.

It’s been a week like that, from a couple of unlikely sources. :)

So let’s pause for a moment and consider the center.

Microsoft today announced that Amy Hood, who currently serves as chief financial officer of the Microsoft Business Division, was named Microsoft chief financial officer, succeeding outgoing CFO Peter Klein, who will remain at Microsoft through the end of June to ensure a smooth transition. Hood becomes CFO effective immediately.

“Amy brings the right talents and experiences to the role as we continue to strengthen our focus on devices and services,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive officer. “She has been an instrumental leader in the Microsoft Business Division (MBD), helping lead the transition to services with Office 365 and delivering strong financial and operational management throughout her time on the business.”

Freshly enhanced versions of both Foursquare and YouTube arrived in the Windows Phone Store today, bringing additional Windows Phone 8 features to the two popular apps.

Microsoft is home to amazing people who come to work every day determined to change the world with technology. And we have the awesome job of telling their stories. Whether showing off the Microsoft Envisioning Center or explaining how Microsoft technology is being used to fight tuberculosis in India or not letting our colleagues be so quiet about building the City of the Future, we have an incredibly rich topic to mine – our company.

Our goal is to tell stories big and small. And as the Microsoft News Center moves forward, we want to continue to become more responsive to the day’s news and tell those stories when people are interested – not after the news cycle has moved on. We want to be more aggressive about finding and breaking news, and more aggressive about lending our voice to the news of the day. We want to be seekers of information, not just receivers of it.

With that aim, News Center is launching a new blog called The Fire Hose. The purpose of the blog is to cover the latest developments across the company. We will leverage the great content on the vast number of company blogs by curating and linking to the best stuff of the day. This means short, iterative posts combined with a mix of solid, in-depth storytelling.

Microsoft sold more than 100 million Windows 8 licenses in the products first six months, announced Tami Reller, chief marketing officer and chief financial officer of Windows, in an interview on the Windows Blog posted Monday evening.

If you’re a fan of shows like “Modern Family,” “Family Guy” or “Community,” you’ll be happy to know that the Hulu Plus for Windows Phone 8 app is now available in the Windows Phone Store.

The app is free, but as Windows Phone Blog Editor Michael Stroh notes in his blog post today, “a Hulu Plus subscription will run you $8 a month.”

The following is a post by Shari Weisenberg, Marketing Brand Strategist, Microsoft Advertising.

 If you find yourself at a SoHo bar this week, and you spot a discarded napkin with scribbles on it, you might want to take a second look: The odds are slightly better than usual that those scribbles will be Madison Avenue’s next winning idea.

That’s because an eclectic group of creative professionals are meeting up in the New York City neighborhood for the 5^th annual Creative Week, a wide-ranging 5-day conversation about creativity in advertising, design, digital media and the arts. More pop-up think tank than standard conference, the event brings together creative types of all stripes, including some of Microsoft Advertising’s leading creative and marketing minds.

In this edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got stories on new features in Outlook.com, the release of the “Star Trek Into Darkness” app for Windows Phone (among a bevy of new apps made available this week), Bing Rewards expanding to MSN and a hilarious new Windows Phone ad. Check ‘em out!

Outlook.com: 400 million active accounts. On Thursday, we announced that we've completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com. Coupled with the growing organic excitement for Outlook.com, this has pushed us to more than 400 million active Outlook.com accounts, including 125 million that are accessing email, calendar and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync. We're also pleased to announce that we're adding two new features to Outlook.com: SMTP send, so it's easier to send mail from different email addresses, and deeper integration with SkyDrive. Read this post over on the Outlook Blog for the full story.

In this edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got stories on major Xbox news, new apps (Tumblr and Fidelity Investments) coming to Windows Phone, expanding Surface Pro and Surface RT availability and more. Don’t miss any of them!

#XboxReveal. Lots of Xbox news to talk about this week. First and foremost, we revealed that on May 21, we’ll mark the beginning of a new generation of games, TV and entertainment. On that day, we’ll be holding a special press event on the Xbox campus, and we invite you to join us via the live global stream that will be available on Xbox.com, Xbox LIVE and broadcast on Spike TV if you are in the U.S. or Canada. On that day, we’ll share our vision for Xbox, and give you a real taste of the future. Read this post over on Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson to get the full story. Also, on Tuesday, it was announced that Pizza Hut is launching the first-of-a-kind ordering app, allowing Xbox LIVE members in the U.S. to purchase pizza, wings, pasta and more from Xbox 360. The full menu, including new products, can be ordered from the Xbox LIVE dashboard and operated using an Xbox 360 controller or hand gestures and voices commands via Kinect for Xbox 360. And, last but not least, don’t miss this Tuesday announcement on the CW app coming to Xbox.

On May 21, we’ll mark the beginning of a new generation of games, TV and entertainment. On that day, we’ll be holding a special press event on the Xbox campus, and we invite you to join us via the live global stream that will be available on Xbox.com, Xbox LIVE and broadcast on Spike TV if you are in the U.S. or Canada.

On that day, we’ll share our vision for Xbox, and give you a real taste of the future. Then, 19 days later at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, we’ll continue the conversation and showcase our full lineup of blockbuster games.

Though concern for the environment is always top of mind at Microsoft, Earth Day is a good moment in time for taking a step back and reflecting on environmental initiatives and activities across the entire company.

To that end, I’ve put together a roundup of environmentally themed stories from across several different groups here at Microsoft.

New LiveANDES app helps citizens give endangered species a fighting chance. It’s easy to feel helpless when we hear about species falling into extinction in far-away lands. But now, thanks to a new app that Microsoft Research developed in partnership with researchers from two organizations in Latin America, hikers and other nature enthusiasts can play an important role in keeping endangered species alive. The app is called LiveANDES and is part of a system designed to collect, house and analyze data about Latin America’s wildlife. Watch the video below and then head on over to the Microsoft Research Connections Blog to get the rest of this great story.

In this edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got some great stories for you, including an in-depth and visually rich look at Microsoft’s 500-acre, 125-building campus and the small team of Microsoft facilities engineers that runs it.

How a scrappy team of Microsoft engineers quietly built the city of the future. In 1986, Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash. campus was still a grass- and forest-covered 88-acre plot of land in a sleepy, one-stoplight suburb of Seattle. Today, the campus spans 500 acres and 125 buildings. There’s a soccer field and cricket pitch, miles of wooded walking paths – and 14.9 million square feet of office space and labs that function as an interconnected “smart city” thanks to an “Internet of Things meets Big Data” software solution developed by a small team of Microsoft facilities engineers. Head on over to the Microsoft News Center and check out this visual piece of storytelling.

In March, Xbox 360 maintained its position as the number one console in the U.S., selling more units than any other console and marking the 27th consecutive month as the best-selling console.

March highlights from The NPD Group include:

· Xbox 360 sold 261,000 units, maintaining the number-one console spot in the U.S.

· Total retail spend on the Xbox 360 platform reached $402 million, (hardware, software and accessories), the most for any console in the U.S.

· During the month of March, Xbox 360 held six of the top 10 console game titles including: “Bioshock Infinite,” “NBA 2K13,” “Gears of War: Judgment,” “Tomb Raider,” “The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct” and “Call of Duty: Black Ops II.”

Four very cool apps for Windows 8 made their debut at DEMO Mobile2013 today as teams from as far away as Poland and Australia competed for attention in front of Silicon Valley’s leading mobile investors, developers and designers in San Francisco.

Two Windows 8 apps launched on stage. They were TouchMail, a modern, touch-first e-mail app that inspired tweets marveling at how easy it made visual e-mail look, and KinectHealth, a mobile-ready exercise solution created by Bob Summers. KinectHealth was demonstrated by his founding partner Amanda Russell, a fitness entrepreneur who has used the opportunity working with Microsoft and Summers to get her very own TV show.

Her workout videos currently run in the app, but the attention the app is receiving and the high quality she delivers have created a perfect collaboration between KinectHealth and a major TV network, she said.

Summers, who ­used KinectHealth to shed 30 pounds and 18 percent of his body mass in preparation for a marathon, says the app utilizes cameras and accelerometers to deliver fun workouts to the phone. It also makes fitness social, by using the camera to port in fitness fanatics with other members of the lifestyle community around the world.

Today, we announced several new customers who have adopted Microsoft Dynamics CRM to achieve cost savings, help preserve safety and security and streamline service delivery to improve constituent experiences.

Tomorrow, at the Microsoft Federal Forum event in Washington, D.C., customers like the Department of Veterans Affairs will showcase the way they have used Dynamics to transform their Veterans Relationship Management programs, driving immediate benefit to the time and way in which veterans receive healthcare, claims and business information.