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On March 26, Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President and Chief Evangelist, Developer & Platform Evangelism, announced Build 2013 will take place from June 26 to June 28 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
We have an update for you: Build 2013 is now sold out. However, we encourage those interested in the conference to join the waitlist. For those who are unable to join us in San Francisco, we will extend the Build experience online with live streams of the keynote, sessions, Channel 9 Live and more. Check out http://buildwindows.com for all the details.
If you’re a WWE fan, prepare to get happy: WWE launches on Xbox in the U.S. today.
Big news for developers today.
S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, announced via a blog post this morning that Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 has shipped.
“Just as with VS2012.1 (which is installed as part of VS2012.2 for those of you who don’t already have VS2012.1 installed), this release contains important fixes as well as a wealth of new functionality, addressing feedback we’ve received from the community and aligning with key software development trends in the market. The new functionality primarily spans (though is not limited to) five areas of investment: agile planning, quality enablement, Windows Store development, line-of-business development, and the general developer experience,” Somasegar writes.
Skype has hit a major milestone – Skype users are now spending 2 billion minutes per day connecting with one another!
Just how big is 2 billion minutes? Take a gander at the infographic below to find out.
2 billion minutes infographic by Skype
For the past 16 years, the Webby Awards have spotlighted beautiful website experiences and the best the online world has to offer.
Now, through a new partnership with Internet Explorer, the Webbys can showcase the last 16 years of winners in the new Winners Gallery + Archive. The new gallery makes use of the best of IE10’s capabilities and the latest Web standards.
Today, we released a fresh new interface for the Outlook.com Calendar service that is faster than ever, puts the focus on events, appointments and tasks and lets you take your Calendar with you on any device. Below is a screenshot of the new Calendar service.
Last November, Microsoft launched the Windows 8 Apps for Social Good Contest. The public voted for its favorite apps and our judges voted for theirs. A wide variety of apps were submitted covering a number of fields, including health care, nutrition and emergency response.
Below is a screenshot from YumvY, a cooking companion to help you prepare nutritious, healthy meals at home with the goal of addressing the obesity epidemic and related diseases like diabetes. YumvY was the People’s Choice Award Winner.
We recently released an updated version of Skype for Windows 8 that gives our users higher control over who can contact them by adding the ability to block contacts, as well as other performance improvements.
Today, Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the Server & Tools Business, announced the 10 new teams in the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure, powered by TechStars:
The following is a post from Frank X. Shaw, Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications at Microsoft.
One of the best parts of my job is getting the chance to see up close and personal some of the cool things moving from idea to reality. During one of our recent “underground tours” we showed off one project that I think has huge potential, and is super relevant today. This is a little different for us because when it goes on sale, you won’t find it in the electronics aisle, but on the runway. :)
Why runway? Well unlike most of Microsoft’s traditional products, this one is actually an item of clothing, so when it ships, you’ll probably see it at Nordstrom’s, not Fry’s. Now you’re probably thinking, “Clothing, from Microsoft? Really?” Yes, really. And no, this isn’t a line of designer pocket protectors.
The engineers that created it describe it as “a wearable computing appliance that enforces context specific privacy preferences in real world environments.” Let me translate into a better name – The Do Not Tracksuit.
Simply put, it blocks the wearer from being tagged, checked in, scanned, filmed, recorded, hashtagged or poked, in the real world and the virtual world. Because in today’s social media obsessed landscape, too often people can unwittingly become “content” in other people’s lifecasting schemes.
Earlier this week at the 2013 Game Developer Conference, we announced several cool game titles soon to hit the Windows Store.
Some – like “Bejeweled”, “Samurai v. Zombies” and “Shuffle Party” – will hit the Windows Store this weekend. Others – including “Temple Run Brave” from Disney and “Field & Stream Fishing” – fall under the “coming soon” to the Windows Store category.
In this week’s edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got stories on Build 2013, updates to the Mail, Calendar and People apps on Windows, a musical Skype masterpiece, the first WE Day in American history and more.
Announcing Build 2013. Earlier this week, Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president and chief evangelist, Developer Platform Evangelism, announced specifics around Build 2013: “To make sure everyone knows what we’re planning and can participate in this rapidly growing ecosystem, we’re pleased to announce and personally invite you to our next developer conference, Build 2013, which is taking place June 26 to 28 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It’s been a while since our last developer event in the Bay Area, and we’re looking forward to a fantastic gathering. Save the date and mark your calendar for the opening of registration next week at 9 a.m. PT on April 2 at www.buildwindows.com.” Read more about it in this Tuesday post on The Official Microsoft Blog.
The Mail, Calendar and People apps are getting better! On Monday, we announced an update for the Mail, Calendar, and People apps from the Windows Store.
Windows Phone Blogger Michael Stroh is reporting some news that should make all you game crazy Windows Phone fans out there happy: Temple Run has arrived in the Windows Phone Store.
“Swipe to turn, jump and slide as you race over obstacles and whip around corners on a pathway resembling China’s Great Wall, all on your way to capturing hidden treasure. Collect coins, buy power-ups, and see just how far your feet can take you, with the beat of native drums setting your pace,” Stroh writes.
Here’s a pretty cool story about kids helping kids by taking an active role in their communities:
Today, Microsoft helped bring We Act to the U.S. by sponsoring a We Day event at Seattle’s KeyArena. The support springs from the Microsoft YouthSpark initiative, which aims to create opportunities for 300 million young people around the world over the next three years.
Kids attending We Day Seattle explored how they can make a difference by turning their passions and talents into social action. They also got to rock out to live music, be inspired by celebrities and activists, and connect with one another around their common desire to change the world.
As part of the Seattle We Day event, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke to the audience of 15,000 youth about his passion for technology and how it can help change the world.
Microsoft announced a slew of Office 365 and Windows 8 education and government customer wins at the annual U.S. Public Sector CIO Summit today, reflecting a willingness of public sector organizations to use technology to get leaner and more efficient within a difficult budget environment.
On the Office 365 front, Microsoft announced that more than 1 million U.S. government workers are moving to the platform. The company’s rapidly expanding community of public sector Office 365 customers now includes the City of Kansas City, Mo.; the City of Seattle; the University of Miami; California State University, Sacramento (Sacramento State); the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority; Dupage County; and King County, Wash.
With the Game Developers Conference going on down in San Francisco, it’s only fitting that a raft of new games just hit the Windows Phone Store today.
“The highlight of the bunch is Gravity Guy 2, the eagerly anticipated sequel to the hugely popular platformer Gravity Guy. For the next month, the sequel is available only on Windows Phone. There’s also a bunch of great titles arriving today that are already proven hits on other platforms, like Chaos Rings, 6th Planet and Orcs Must Survive,” Windows Phone Blog Editor Michael Stroh reports.
The following is a post from Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President and Chief Evangelist, Developer & Platform Evangelism.
Editor's Update: Build 2013 is now sold out; however, we encourage those interested in the conference to join the waitlist. For those who are unable to join us in San Francisco, we will extend the Build experience online with live streams of the keynote, sessions, Channel 9 Live and more. Check out http://buildwindows.com for all the details.
In the past year, we’ve introduced an assortment of new opportunities to build incredible apps and experiences on Windows, and developers all over the world have taken advantage of it. Just look at the last few weeks - we’ve seen great apps like Twitter on Windows 8 and Pandora on Windows Phone 8 as great examples of developers really taking advantage of the platform in a way that users love. But we're also seeing users increasingly expect their experiences on multiple screens, and Skulls of the Shogun is a great example of how Windows is the best place for developers to capitalize on the opportunity.
And the opportunity is big: we saw more than 100 million downloads from the Windows Store in the first two months after GA, we crossed the 1 billion downloads mark in the Windows Phone Store, we saw a doubling of Windows Azure compute usage in just the last six months and much more. And developers are taking notice.
To make sure everyone knows what we’re planning and can participate in this rapidly growing ecosystem, I’m pleased to announce and personally invite you to our next developer conference, Build 2013, which is taking place June 26-28, 2013 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Last week was the official start of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere. While some folks were out doing “spring cleaning,” we used the opportunity to look back a bit at what has happened in the past season, and to look ahead at what we have coming. From where I sit, it’s busy both ways. Let’s take a look back.
First, we launched a wave of incredible devices and services to our business and consumer customers around the globe and saw growth across a number of businesses.
While we’re still in early days, the numbers are encouraging. There are new PCs and tablets in market and great apps in the Windows Store, with new ones coming every day. Windows Phone has reached 10 percent market share in a number of countries, and according to IDC’s latest report, has shipped more than Blackberry in 26 markets and more than iPhone in seven.
If you’re a power user of the Mail, Calendar and People apps on Windows like I am, then you’ll be excited to hear that, starting Tuesday, you’ll be able to download updates for each from the Windows Store.
“…This update will bring improvements to your Windows experience across your whole life - your personal communication and your work. You will see big improvements to performance and additional new features to make it easier to connect with friends and colleagues, manage your inboxes, create and send email, and manage your calendar,” Windows Blogger Brandon LeBlanc reports.
If there’s an equation for creating a virtual musical experience for the ages, then Grammy award winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre may have found it:
· One hundred live choir members made up of singers from choirs at California State University, Long Beach Campus, California State University, Fullerton Campus and Riverside City College +
· Thirty singers from 28 different countries connected via Skype video calls =
· A musical masterpiece.
At TED2013, Whitacre led a live global virtual choir performance of his piece “Cloudburst” that, for the first time, combined live and virtual choirs. Watch the behind-the-scenes documentary below to find out how Whitacre pulled off the performance. Then, head on over to The Big Blog to see the actual performance – it’s a thing of beauty and you won’t want to miss it!
In this week’s edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got stories on Microsoft Research being recognized by Computerworld, the arrival of Pandora on Windows Phone, an update to the Kinect for Windows SDK and a shark with a taste for ducks.
Pandora is here. Let there be rock. And punk, and blues and whatever else you groove to. Because Pandora, one of the world’s most famous Internet radio apps arrived Thursday to Windows Phone 8. The free Pandora app is not only ad-free through Dec. 31, but has features not found on any other smartphone. Pandora for Windows Phone is the only version with a Live Tile showing what’s playing at a glance. It’s also the only version that provides direct, one-tap access from the Start screen to your favorite personalized radio stations. Read the entire story on the Windows Phone Blog.
If you want a richer, deeper search experience that goes beyond a collection of blue links pointing to pages around the Web, you really should check out Bing Snapshot.
<a title="Understand Your World with Bing" href="http://video.msn.com/?vid=0b9ba0e8-e4d8-4731-9ba1-3ca4e7f36a26&mkt=en-us&src=SLPl:embed:syndication:uuids&from=shareembed-syndication" target="_new" data-mce-href="http://video.msn.com/?vid=0b9ba0e8-e4d8-4731-9ba1-3ca4e7f36a26&mkt=en-us&src=SLPl:embed:syndication:uuids&from=shareembed-syndication">Video: Understand Your World with Bing</a>
The following is a post from Brad Smith, General Counsel and Executive Vice President of Legal & Corporate Affairs at Microsoft. It was originally published on Microsoft on the Issues.
Today, we are releasing our 2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report. This is our first Law Enforcement Requests Report. It provides data on the number of requests we received from law enforcement agencies around the world relating to Microsoft online and cloud services and how we responded to those requests. All of our major online services are covered in this report, including, for example, Hotmail, Outlook.com; SkyDrive; Xbox LIVE; Microsoft Account; and Office 365. We’re also making available similar data relating to Skype, which Microsoft acquired in October 2011.
We will update this report every six months.
Our Perspective
In recent months, there has been broadening public interest in how often law enforcement agencies request customer data from technology companies and how our industry responds to these requests. Google, Twitter and others have made important and helpful contributions to this discussion by publishing some of their data. We’ve benefited from the opportunity to learn from them and their experience, and we seek to build further on the industry’s commitment to transparency by releasing our own data today.
Can’t get enough music from the Grunge Era? Is Motown more your style? Or maybe you want to close your eyes, sit back on the couch with a glass of wine and enjoy a little smooth jazz.
Whatever your musical tastes, the Pandora for Windows Phone app has you covered. It’s a music lover’s dream and the Microsoft News Center’s latest App of the Week.
Search for the name of one of your favorite artists, songs or classical composers and Pandora will create a custom "station" that plays similar music. You’ll hear many of your favorite tunes and discover previously undiscovered selections by artists that may be new to you.
The Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team has one of the fiercest fan bases and home court advantages in the NBA thanks to star players such as Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. On game nights, more than 18,000 fans descend upon Chesapeake Energy Arena to support their hometown team.
That’s pretty impressive considering the team only started playing in 2008. How did they do it? Well, having the likes of Durant and Westbrook helps, but the franchise also focused hard on building a great fan experience at the arena.
To help with the customer relationship management effort, the Thunder selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 over Salesforce.com because of its flexibility, ease of use, integration capabilities and lower total cost of ownership.