Earlier this year, Microsoft made some significant headway in bringing its Azure cloud solutions to regions in South Africa.

In March, Cape Town and Johannesburg became two South African locations newly imbued with Azure datacenters and the potential to host 112,000 new jobs over the next fours year, in large part due to that investment.

Just a mere five months later, Microsoft is already leveraging its presence in South Africa to provide another one of its cloud-based services in Office 365.

Office 365, delivered from local datacenters in South Africa, helps our customers enable the modern workplace and empower their employees with real-time collaboration and cloud-powered intelligence while maintaining security, compliance, and in-country customer data residency. The addition of South Africa as a new geography for Office 365 increases the options for secure, cloud productivity services combined with customer data residency in 16 geographies across the globe along with three additional geographies also announced.

To comply with regulatory requirements and avoid another lengthy court proceeding such as the Microsoft-Ireland case, the company plans to keep core customer data “store only in their data center geography (Geo)- in this case, the cloud datacenters within South Africa.”

Microsoft has also invested in its first African Development Center (ADC) in both Nairobi, Kenya and Lagos, Nigeria. The ADC is tasked with being the hotbed of world-class African talent creating solutions on a local and global scale.

Microsoft announced today the acquisition of BlueTalon, a leading provider of Unified Data Access Control for big data and new data initiatives. The company which has its headquarters in Redwood City, California, is now part of Microsoft’s Azure Data Governance group

BlueTalon was founded in 2013 and helped several Fortune 100 companies to eliminate security blind spots by giving them visibility and control over who has access to which data. The company’s data control solution currently works with various data systems such as Hadoop, RDBMS and big data environments

“The IP and talent acquired through BlueTalon brings a unique expertise at the apex of big data, security and governance,” said Rohan Kumar – Corporate Vice President, Azure Data. “This acquisition will enhance our ability to empower enterprises across industries to digitally transform while ensuring right use of data with centralized data governance at scale through Azure,” the exec added.

Microsoft news recap is a weekly feature highlighting the top Microsoft news stories of the past week. Sit back, grab some coffee, and enjoy the read!

Microsoft Outlook app updates on Android with suggested reply feature

The Outlook app on Android can now suggest replies to emails. The app won’t suggest replies for every email, but when it does give suggestions, just tapping it will input the reply and then you can tap to send it.

Microsoft is once again redesigning the Xbox One dashboard

Two years after the last redesign of the Xbox One dashboard, Microsoft is once again working on a redesigned dashboard. The new dashboard will be released to all Xbox One users later this Fall.

Microsoft is dropping “Online” naming for web version of Office

The web versions of the Office apps are to lose the “Online” suffix. Microsoft’s online Office suite, such as Office Online, Word Online, etc, are all to be renamed.

Mixer video game streaming service to let all streamers earn money on the platform

In what is an unexpected move, Microsoft’s video streaming service, Mixer, will be allowing all users to access monetisation features, regardless of their account stats, such as number of followers. This distances itself from YouTube’s partnership requirements, and Mixer’s previous partnership requirements.

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back next week with more Microsoft news.

Despite Microsoft pulling its digital assistant service from most of its consumer-facing products over the last two years, it seems the company still has a soft spot for Cortana in Windows 10.

As of Windows 10 Insider preview build 18945, users are getting a taste of what’s expected to be the new Cortana experience on desktops.

Introducing a new Cortana experience for Windows 10

We are beginning to roll out a new Cortana experience for Windows 10 as a Beta to Windows Insiders in the U.S. This new experience features a brand-new chat-based UI that gives you the ability to type or speak natural language queries.

According to the release notes, the new Cortana experience will retain much of the functionality of the old service but also incorporate new features such as light and dark theme support, a minimized queries prompt and updated speech and language models for improved performance and reliability.

As this is a beta and seems to be a from-the-ground-up redesign, Microsoft notes that not all of the features from the original Cortana app will be present in this build.

Microsoft’s seemingly recommitting itself to Cortana amid a handful of recent confusing moves regarding its digital assistant strategy as a whole.

Earlier this week, Microsoft acknowledged it has plans to remove Cortana from its Xbox One platform, the company has also, over the past year, been promoting cloud service provider rival Amazon’s Alexa as a substitute on Windows 10 PCs with its OEM partners bundling software specifically designed to replace the company’s efforts.

What Happened?

While Cortana had been previously promoted as the connective cloud-based digital tissue between Microsoft’s now-defunct Windows Phone platform and Windows 10 and a vibrant competitor to Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri, the reality is that it quickly became a me-too product without nearly the amount of bells and whistles as its competition.

Part of Cortana’s shortcomings falls on Microsoft’s lack of focus and overall conceptualization of how it would compete in the smartphone market where it originally intended to leverage devices that were becoming more personal than Personal Computers.

Before the bottom fell out for Windows Phone, Microsoft had already placed a huge bet on Cortana being big enough to carry its desktop and even gaming based users as well and baked it into its desktop and Xbox operating system, however, without the necessary “personal” information its smartphones weren’t picking up, the Windows 10 Cortana experienced seemed gimped out of the gate and only got worse over time.

As with many consumer-facing products from Microsoft, a faint stench of death caught industry observers nose regarding’s Cortana’s long term viability and a continuous flow of “near-death” reports began to flood the news. During this time, Microsoft did its Cortana department no favors with executives continuously being cagey about how its digital assistant would keep up with the industry leader in Google and up and coming, Amazon Alexa.

Eventually, Microsoft read the writing on the wall and pivoted to nurfing Cortana’s scope and seemingly transitioned it into its new role as an updated version of its Office Clippy assistant. Consumer-facing features began slowly disappearing from the app and its overall presence reduced both visually and functional synergies.

In a seemingly shrewd business decision, Microsoft began to favor the assistant that was making headway with its users in Alexa as Amazon’s digital assistant devices began to proliferate in consumer spaces.

And now?

All of that leads back to Microsoft’s decision to revamp and test a new Cortana experience in its latest Insider preview build. Microsoft has been signaling, that while Cortana may not be seen in new product commercials or have a significant marketing budget behind its product development, the company does intend for it to have a place in its ecosystem and today’s beta app is just another sign that it plans to evolve the digital assistant.

While Microsoft does not have the same sort of mobile presence as Apple, Google or Samsung, it’s apps and services continue to make significant gains on smartphones that include a dedicated launcher for Android as well as its Cortana app for both iOS and Android. In the case of Android, the Cortana experience is practically baked into the launcher which acts as its own sort of OS flow for end users.

There may not be the same sort of fanfare around for Cortana as there was at its launch, Microsoft has reorganized and seemingly refocused its efforts to make it a worthwhile tool for more specific tasks. It will be interesting to see what old features come back into the beta development as well as new skills that show up over time.

Following the accidental release of the internal Windows 10 build 18947 earlier this week, the Windows Insider team is ending this week on a more positive note by flighting the build 18945 today. This new 20H1 preview build introduces the new Cortana Beta app that was hidden in recent 20H1 builds, though be aware that it will only be available for Insiders in the US.

This new Cortana Beta app supports the conversational UI that’s already available on iOS and Android, though some features from the “old” Cortana are still missing for now. The app is still a work in progress, but decoupling Cortana from the OS will allow Microsoft to iterate faster on it.

The build 18945 also brings some improvements for the new Windows Subsystem for Linux, including the ability to connect connect to your WSL 2 Linux networking applications using localhost. The new File Explorer Search experience that debuted back in May with the build 18894 will also roll out to all Fast Ring Insiders, Microsoft said today.

Last but not least, those of you looking to try the new Phone screen feature in the Your Phone can now do so with more 9 new Android smartphones from Samsung. You can find the full list of what’s new in the build 18945 below.

What’s new in Build 18945

Introducing a new Cortana experience for Windows 10

We are beginning to roll out a new Cortana experience for Windows 10 as a Beta to Windows Insiders in the U.S. This new experience features a brand-new chat-based UI that gives you the ability to type or speak natural language queries.

It supports most of the Cortana features people enjoy using on Windows, such as Bing answers, Assistant conversations, opening apps, managing lists, and setting reminders, alarms, and timers. And we’ve added some new features we think people will enjoy:

• Cortana now supports both light and dark themes in Windows.
• We have created a new, less intrusive screen for “Hey Cortana” queries so you can stay in the flow while you work.
• We have updated Cortana with new speech and language models, and significantly improved performance – making it faster and more reliable than ever before.

Not all the features from the previous Cortana experience are available just yet. As a Beta, we plan to add more features over time with updates to Cortana from the Microsoft Store.

To get started, choose the Cortana icon on the taskbar next to the search box. You can also leverage the speed and convenience of voice with improved speech recognition by simply saying “Hey Cortana”*. You may need to sign-in with your account to get started.

*Note: This requires enabling this functionality in Settings > Voice activation privacy settings  – Talk to Cortana. 

If you’re an Insider in the U.S. and are not seeing the new experience, please be patient as we’re slowing rolling it out. Additional markets and languages will become available at a later date. You must be signed in to use Cortana. Historically, there were quite a few skills that could be used unauthenticated (Bing answers, open apps, Assistant conversations) but this is no longer the case. Only limited skills are currently supported in the new experience. Don’t worry we’ll be bringing back many skills over the coming months.

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) Improvements: Added connecting via localhost to WSL 2 Linux apps from Windows and global WSL configuration options

You’ll now be able to connect to your WSL 2 Linux networking applications using localhost. For example, the image below shows starting a NodeJS server in a WSL 2 distro, and then connecting to it in the Edge Browser with localhost.

Additionally, we’ve added global configuration options for WSL. These are options that will apply to each of your WSL distros. This also allows you to specify options that relate to the WSL 2 virtual machine (VM), as all your WSL 2 distros run inside of the same VM. The most exciting option that you’ll get access to in this build is being able to specify a custom Linux kernel!

For the full details on what’s new in this release, check out What’s new for WSL in Insiders Preview Build 18945 on the Windows command line blog.

Accessibility Improvements

Narrator now provides a more efficient reading experience when reading messages in Outlook or Windows Mail

When the message is opened, Scan Mode will turn on automatically. This allows the user to use their arrow keys to read the message in addition to all other Scan Mode hotkeys to jump through the text of the message.

Email messages like newsletters and marketing content are often formatted using tables to visually represent the look of the message. For a screen reader user, this information is not needed while reading the message. Narrator now recognizes some of these situations and will remove the information about the table to allow you to quickly move through the text contained in the message. This lets you to be much more efficient while reading these types of email messages.

Known issues

• The cursor may not move to the location last read as Narrator auto-reads when an Outlook message is opened while in Scan Mode.
• Narrator will start reading when replying to a message. Press the control key and move to the top of the message to write your reply.

Narrator’s Outlook folder reading has been enhanced for an optimal triaging experience

As you read through your emails in Outlook, such as the inbox, Narrator now reads the information more efficiently. Each line item now starts with the status of the email, such as unread, forwarded, etc., followed by the other columns, such as from, subject, etc. Column headers will be silenced and columns with no data or that have the default (expected value) will be silenced, such as normal importance or unflagged, etc. While in Outlook, headers can be turned back on by pressing Narrator + H which will toggle their reading on and off.

Text cursor indicator

Have you ever had an issue finding the text cursor in the middle of a large amount of text, during a presentation, or on the screen in an educational setting? The new Text cursor indicator will help you see and find the text cursor wherever you are at any time! Select from a range of sizes for the text cursor indicator and make it a color easy for you to see. Or, personalize the color of your text cursor indicator to your personal preference. In the Ease of Access settings, open the new Text cursor page, turn on the text cursor indicator, and never lose track of your text cursor ever again!

Known issues

• Text cursor indicator color and size might not persist when you sign in. To work around that, simply turn off and turn on the “Use text cursor indicator” setting again.
• Occasionally, you might see that the text cursor indicator stay on the screen or reappear after the app has been closed or the page contents have scrolled away.

Updated File Explorer search rolling out to all Insiders

Over the next few days, the new File Explorer search experience will be rolling out to all Insiders in the Fast ring! Thanks everyone who’s shared feedback so far and helped us to improve the experience. Please don’t hesitate to share any other comments – you can file feedback for this area under Files, Folders, and Storage > File Explorer in the Feedback Hub.

Your Phone app – Expanding phone model support for Phone screen

We are continuing to expand support for Phone screen. Today, we’re excited to announce the feature availability for these devices:

• Samsung Galaxy A6, Samsung Galaxy A7, Samsung Galaxy A9, Samsung Galaxy A10, Samsung Galaxy A20, Samsung Galaxy A30, Samsung Galaxy A50, Samsung Galaxy A70, and Samsung Galaxy S8 Active

If you have any of these devices, try out Phone screen and give us your feedback. We will continue to expand this list of devices over time.

As usual, this build also brings a list of bug fixes and general improvements, as well as a couple of known issues, and you can learn more details on our separate post. It’s nice to end the week with a new Windows 10 build, and we’re looking forward to seeing how this new Cortana Beta app will evolve over the coming weeks.

C++ is an incredibly fast and efficient programming language. Its versatility knows no bounds and its maturity ensures support and reliability are second to none. Code developed in C++ is also extremely portable, all major operating systems support it. Many developers begin their coding journey with the language, and this is no coincidence. Being object-oriented means it does a very good job of teaching concepts like classes, inheritance, abstraction, encapsulation and polymorphism. Its concepts and syntax can be found in modern languages like C#, Java and Rust. It provides a great foundation that serves as a high speed on ramp to the more popular, easier to use and modern alternatives.

Now it’s not all rosy. C++ has a very steep learning curve and requires developers to apply best practices to the letter or risk ending up with unsafe and/or poor performing code. The small footprint of the standard library, while most times considered a benefit, also adds to the level of difficulty. This means successfully using C++ to create useful complex libraries and applications can be challenging. There is also very little offered in terms of memory management, developers must do this themselves. Novice programmers could end up with debugging nightmares as their lack of experience leads to memory corruption and other sticky situations.  This last point has lead many companies to explore fast performing, safe and equally powerful alternatives to C++. For today’s Microsoft that means Rust.

The majority of vulnerabilities fixed and with a CVE [Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures] assigned are caused by developers inadvertently inserting memory corruption bugs into their C and C++ code.

Gavin Thomas, Microsoft Security Response Center

 

Rust began as a personal project by a Mozilla employee named Graydon Hoare sometime in 2006. This ambitious project was in pre-release development for almost a decade, finally launching version 1.0 in May 2015. In what seems to be the blink of an eye it has stolen the hearts of hordes of developers going as far as being voted the most loved language  four years straight since 2016 in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey.

The hard work has definitely paid off. The end result is very efficient language which is characteristically object oriented. The fact that it was designed to be syntactically similar to C++ makes it very easy to approach. But unlike the aforementioned it was also designed to be memory safe while also employing a form of memory management without the explicit use of garbage collection.

The ugly truth is software development is very much a trial and error endeavor. With that said Rust has gone above and beyond to help us debug our code. The compiler produces extremely intuitive and user friendly error messages along with great direct linking to relevant documentation to aid with troubleshooting. This means if the problem is not evident, most times the answer is a click away. I’ve found myself rarely having to fire up my browser to look for solutions outside of what the Rust compiler offers in terms of explanation and documentation.

Rust does not have a garbage collector but most times still allocates and release memory for you. It’s also designed to be memory safe, unlike C++ which very easily lets you get into trouble with dangling pointers and data races. In contrast Rust employs concepts which help you prevent and avoid such issues.

There are many other factors which have steered me away from C++ and onto Rust. But to be honest it has nothing to do with all the great stuff we’ve just explored. I came to Rust on a journey that began with WebAssembly. What started with me looking for a more efficient alternative to JavaScript for the web turned into figuring out just how powerful Rust turns out to be. From its seamless interop…

Automatically generate binding code between Rust, WebAssembly, and JavaScript APIs. Take advantage of libraries like web-sys that provide pre-packaged bindings for the entire web platform.

–  Rust website

 

To how fast and predictable its performance is. Everything in our lives evolves. Our smartphones, our cars, our home appliances, our own bodies. C++ while still incredibly powerful, fast and versatile can only take us so far. There is no harm in exploring alternatives, especially one as exceptional and with as much promise as Rust.

What do you guys think? Have you or would you give Rust a try? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Microsoft is continuing to revamp its note-taking experience across platforms with a new update to Microsoft To-Do rolling out to Fast Ring Insiders.

Today’s update introduces the “rich entry” bar which allows the modification of To-Do items inline with menus that pop up and drop down accordingly.

Are you a Windows Insider on the Fast Ring? If the answer is yes, then give our rich entry bar a try. Now you can pick a list, add due dates, and reminders, all while you type. pic.twitter.com/524FmIKPmQ

— Microsoft To Do (@MicrosoftToDo) July 25, 2019

The rich entry bar is being tested out with Fast Ring Insiders at the moment and a senior software engineer at Microsoft is hinting that additional subtle UI elements may be incorporated before the new feature is rolled out to the masses.

Microsoft has just announced another Free Play Days event for Xbox Live Gold subscribers, with no less than four games to play starting today at 12:01 a.m. PDT through Sunday at 11:59 p.m. PDT. One of them is the second Gears 5 Multiplayer Tech Test, which follows a first session last week for Xbox Game Pass members and people who pre-ordered the game.

We’re opening up this weekend’s #Gears5 Tech Test to ALL Xbox Live Gold Members with pre-download available right now!

Play between 5:30pm – 6:30pm PT tomorrow to help us stress test our servers and you'll also earn an exclusive #Gears5 Blood Spray! https://t.co/dpuf2frI6B pic.twitter.com/SVZaDVlRlq

— Gears of War (@GearsofWar) July 25, 2019

For those unfamiliar, Gears 5 is the next big Xbox Game Studios title shipping on Xbox One and Windows on September 10. As we’re nearing the end of this console generation, developer The Coalition may well have crafted another Unreal Engine 4 masterpiece as for the first time ever in the series, the Xbox One X version of Gears 5 will run in 4K at 60 FPS in all game modes including Campaign. If you didn’t check it out during the previous Tech Test, this new session includes the same multiplayer game modes including the new Boot Camp training experience.

In addition to the Gears 5 Tech Test, Xbox Live Gold members can also play the popular online shooter Overwatch this weekend, as well as Worms W.M.D and the fighting game Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker. All three games are also on sale during this new Free Play Days event.

Download
QR-Code

Gears 5 Tech Test

Developer:
Xbox Game Studios

Price:
Free

Download
QR-Code

Overwatch® 2

Developer:
Blizzard Entertainment

Price:
Free

Download
QR-Code

Worms W.M.D

Developer:
Team17 Digital Ltd

Price:
$5.99

Download
QR-Code

NARUTO TO BORUTO: SHINOBI STRIKER

Developer:
BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment

Price:
$9.99