When Microsoft acquired the business-oriented social networking site LinkedIn, economists and cynics alike wonder how it planned to monetize the new product.

Thus far, there haven’t been any glaring Microsoft inspired changes to the site aside from some Bing advertisement synergies, but it looks like the company may be leveraging its existing Adobe partnership to add value and financial incentive to LinkedIn users.

Earlier this week, Adobe, Microsoft and LinkedIn announced a new partnership amongst the three businesses that are intended to enhance account-based experiences (ABX) with new integrated marketing solutions.

“The ability to leverage the power of data to find the right opportunities and use insights helps marketing and sales to plan their next move with a member of the buying committee,” said Alysa Taylor, corporate vice president of Business Applications and Global Industry at Microsoft. “Together with Adobe and LinkedIn, Microsoft can help to deliver an end-to-end solution that ultimately accelerates lead conversion and can create opportunities for improved servicing and better cross-sell, resulting in the higher lifetime value of the account.”

The intended effect is that Microsoft and Adobe will work together to source key data points to create profiles in Adobe Experience Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales and Marketo Engage. The profiles created by this collective data will now be accessible to B2B platforms, to which LinkedIn will amongst the first to use in conjunction with its marketing platform.

According to a report from BusinessWire, the new partnership will offer at least three pillars of opportunity for marketing using LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions:

• Gain a deeper, real-time understanding of targeted accounts: Marketing and sales teams will be able to leverage data from Marketo Engage and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales to get a deeper, real-time understanding of targeted accounts, including insights into individual roles, influence, and preferences. By integrating LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences with Marketo Engage, the combined account-based targeting capabilities will help marketers identify the right contacts within an account to reach on LinkedIn.
• Target audiences more effectively by leveraging richer account profiles: To identify the best-fit accounts to pursue, Marketo Engage’s Account Profiling capability combines the power of intelligence-driven predictive modeling and automation in a single ABX solution, empowering marketers to identify these accounts out of 25 million companies within minutes.
• Power people-based campaigns with more precision than ever before: Adobe Audience Manager, the company’s Data Management Platform (DMP), on Azure, will enable brands to stitch together audience data to power contact-based campaigns on LinkedIn and other channels while informing media buys with more precision than ever before. Data governance and privacy controls help to ensure that customer data is kept secure and helps brands to comply with their privacy policies and data privacy compliance objectives.

As with most marketing efforts, Microsoft, Adobe and LinkedIn are trying to implement a more personalized ad experience by creating a platform layer of relevant data points used to ultimately deliver more meaningful content.

While this may seem like a hyper-niche audience of both Adobe and Microsoft users who also happen to be LinkedIn members, a cursory view of resumes and skills listed in profiles seem to overwhelmingly include intersections of Office and Adobe CC experts.

Pinterest, the popular social media service that lets you save content you find on the Internet and share it with your followers, now has a dedicated app on Windows 10 PCs (via MSPoweruser). The new Pinterest app in the Microsoft Store is actually a web app, and it doesn’t seem to offer much added value compared to the Pinterest website.

Unlike the well-made Twitter Progressive Web App (PWA), this new Pinterest app doesn’t support Live Tiles, Jump Lists, offline mode, and it also doesn’t appear in the Share Menu in Microsoft Edge. As a result, the app can’t replace yet the Pinterest Save button Edge extension that was released a couple of years ago.

Despite Microsoft wanting to make PWAs first-class citizens on Windows 10 thanks to support for service workers and other modern features, we have yet to see many high-quality PWAs appear in the Microsoft Store. A basic web app may be better than nothing, but we hope that more developers will follow Twitter’s lead and make their PWAs offer as much functionality as native apps.

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The propagation of the latest Windows 10 update is still quite slow according to AdDuplex’s latest data. The ad network once again surveyed more than 100,000 Windows 10 PCs running AdDuplex ads, and found out that only 26.4% of them were running Windows 10 version 1809 in March.

“Windows 10 October 2018 Update has added just a little over 5% to its market share this month, and it looks more and more likely that Microsoft seems to be giving up on it in favor of upgrading users straight to the next version,” noted AdDuplex.

It’s clear that current situation is pretty unique in the history of Windows 10 updates. We don’t have any official data about the Windows 10 ecosystem, except for the 800 million active Windows 10 devices that Microsoft announced earlier this month. However, after the software giant had to delay the public rollout of Windows 10 version 1809 to November, the company made pretty clear that it would check telemetry data very closely before pushing this update to all users. The result could be a situation where the next Windows 10 update (19H1) starts rolling out before the majority of Windows 10 users have already received the version 1809.

Did you also notice in your entourage that many Windows 10 version 1809 is rolling out at a slower pace compared to previous Windows 10 updates? Let us know in the comments below.

If Windows PCs can still be found in most classrooms around the world, Microsoft is well aware that Chromebooks have been on the rise since a couple of years. Chromebooks have pretty much taken over the K-12 mobile PC market in the US in recent years, and even though Windows PCs perform much better outside of the US, Microsoft may need a better answer than cheap Windows 10 PCs to remain relevant in the classroom.

According to the latest K-12 market report from Futuresource Consulting (via Digital Information World), Windows PCs accounted for 40% of total mobile PC shipments worldwide in 2018 (down 7% in unit volume YoY). Windows devices remained slightly ahead of Chromebooks, which represented 35% of mobile PC shipments in the global K-12 market last year.

The situation is much more worrying for Microsoft in the US, with Chromebooks representing 60% of total shipments in the last year. “The USA remains the largest Chromebook market worldwide, accounting for 85% of global Chrome OS shipments into the K-12 market during 2018,” noted Futuresource Consulting.

Microsoft’s latest response to the Chromebook threat has been the release of affordable PCs running Windows 10 in S mode, a streamlined version of Windows 10 providing better security and performance. However, Google has also been making good progress on its Chrome OS operating system, which can now run Android apps in addition to web apps. Chromebooks are no longer cheap PCs that can’t work offline, and they also remain very easy to manage and update for organizations that use them.

According to various reports, Microsoft is currently hard at work on “Windows Lite,” a new lightweight OS for PCs and mobile devices. Lite is reportedly one of the different shells that will be running on top of Windows Core OS (WCOS), the modular version of Windows that Microsoft created for new form factors and devices like HoloLens 2 and Surface Hub 2X.

Microsoft has yet to officially discuss this new Lite OS, but it’s expected to provide a fast and light platform for Chromebook-like devices. It’s still not clear if devices running Windows Lite will be able to run all existing Windows apps, but making these devices easy to manage for IT Pros will be key to make a dent in the K-12 market.

“Moving forward, as the penetration of mobile devices continues to expand, there will be increasing focus on what the OS supplier can offer beyond device functionality and price point,” said Ben Davis, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. “Consequently, there will be growing emphasis on the platform application ecosystem and how each OS can be incorporated within existing learning and IT management solutions. The future is converging on the amount of incremental value that a device can deliver within teaching environments,” the analyst added.

In a somber post on Microsoft’s On the Issues blog, company president Brad Smith spurs a conversation about the role of technology in very public tragedies and what, if any, are the accountable measures businesses can take to prevent all terrorists from spreading intolerable acts of violence on the Internet.

Words alone are not enough. Across the tech sector, we need to do more. Especially for those of us who operate social networks or digital communications tools or platforms that were used to amplify the violence, it’s clear that we need to learn from and take new action based on what happened in Christchurch.

In particular, Microsoft offers the case study of investigating how its own software and services were used in an attempt to spread video footage of the recent Christchurch killings, and motivate other companies to act in a similar fashion to identify improvements to the sector collectively.

Microsoft identified the distribution tunnels that worked in conjunction with its software and services and used employees and internal technologies to stop feeds. Microsoft also plans to preemptively broaden that effort by identifying and classifying extremist violent content, while also changing the processes that enable users to flag content to better improve identification, among other improvements.

Despite already taking its own preventative measures, Microsoft acknowledges that it doesn’t have all the answers, but as a collective the tech industry can do a lot to help save human lives while also protecting human rights. Here are some of the outlines Microsoft is proposing to the rest of the industry to try and adhere to a higher decency requirement.

Focus on prevention

We must work across the industry to continue advancing existing technologies, like PhotoDNA, that identify and apply digital hashes (a kind of digital identifier) to known violent content. We must also continue to improve upon newer, AI-based technologies that can detect whether brand-new content may contain violence. These technologies can enable us more granularly to improve the ability to remove violent video content.

Respond more effectively to moments of crisis

Even with better progress, we cannot afford to assume that there will never be another tragedy. The tech sector should consider creating a “major event” protocol, in which technology companies would work from a joint virtual command center during a major incident.

Foster a healthier online environment

In many ways, anonymity on the internet can free people to speak and behave in ways they never would in person. This is why we believe it’s important to continue to promote four tenets to live by when engaging online. Namely, we all need to treat others with respect and dignity, respect each other’s differences, pause before replying and stand up for ourselves and for others. This too is an area on which we can build further.

Smith concludes his appeal for action after the tragic events in New Zealand by broadening his message to include key partners outside of the technology industry to also step in and lend a hand. Presumably, Smith is referring to governments, local and state officials and first responders when explaining that “it requires us to expand and deepen industry wide groups focused on these issues, including key partners from outside of the industry.”

As with many in the tech industry, Microsoft is expanding its online decency requirements to address multiple issues prevalent in a collective world culture still adapting to the rapidly evolving landscape of communication and information. Hopefully, other companies will either follow suit or enact policies similar to or better than what Smith is proposing today.

The Microsoft Edge Insider addons webpage is back online today, making for a quick way to obtain new extensions for the upcoming Chromium-based browser. The web page was available for a brief period last week, although the Redmond giant was quick to remove it shortly after it was spotted.

Interestingly, Microsoft also appears to have expanded the list from when it was last available, which appeared to have totaled 82 extensions before it went offline. That number has grown to 113 by our more recent count, suggesting the company is hard at work to quickly bring the new browser to Insiders who signed up to preview it.

We’ve already seen the Microsoft Edge Insider extension make its way to the Microsoft Store, which allows users on the old Edge to easily stay up to date as far as announcements, issues, and updates for the three development channels (beta, dev, and canary) the browser will run on. Now that the Extensions page for the new Edge is back online, it seems the public preview should be out anytime now.

For those who are not quite sure what to expect, we also got our own hands on impressions for the new web browser, which is currently being rebuilt to support the same web rendering engine as the widely-adopted Google Chrome. If Microsoft can pull this off, it could give users less have a reason to download Chrome, as the new Edge will be held to the same web standards as that of Google’s browser.

Updated: It appears the rumors were derived from a mock that Microsoft Design intern Michael West post a few weeks ago. While it would be ideal for Microsoft to syphon design elements from West’s post, the idea that the company will act upon the inspiration anytime soon was misguided. 

Microsoft had been on a real Fluent Design push for the past several Windows 10 Update releases but thanks to a botched roll out of the 2018 October Update, the Windows team has seemingly yanked the reigns on pushing out any new features or massive design changes over the past couple of preview releases.

However, the level of design restraint the Windows team has held staunch for the past handful of Insider previews and ultimately official updates with incremental changes to the File Explorer may be coming to an end.

There are rumors surfacing that the Windows team intends to churn out a revamp to one of Windows most visually glaring UI elements in the File Explorer.

According to a posting from the Italian HTNovo site, Microsoft will be introducing Fluent Elements to the File Explorer quite possibly as soon as the company’s premier developer conference in May and could materialize for regular users by 2020.

A captured screenshot of the proposed UI change highlights a mix of Windows 10 Mail sidebar elements and the new right click menu present in Microsoft’s new Chromium Edge browser leaked download.

Aside from the Windowed aspects of Microsoft’s operating system the other corner-stone of the OS for many has been the File Explorer and its management of content, and until now it’s stayed relatively untouched by official Windows design teams.

As imagined by so many creative designer and artists over time, the (as of yet, unofficial) proposed overhaul looks to take several cues from the litany of fantasized reincarnations of the File Explorer and reintroduced Microsoft’s short-lived Sets platform.

We must keep in mind, nothing has been confirmed and the leaked image (if true) could be months if not years away. However, as Microsoft looks to revamp its Edge browsing experience and build a lighter OS to compete with Chrome, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that new File Explorer UI bits begin to make their way to Insiders sometime this year.

With Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Amazon in the headlines seemingly every week for another controversial business or ethical decision from their past, a Benjamin Franklin quote comes to mind.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Perhaps, in an effort to avoid the setbacks, complications and legal ramifications that rapid growth fueled by technological advancements has wrought, Harry Shum, Executive Vice President of Artificial Intelligence & Research at Microsoft, warns that people need to anticipate the risks involved with the growth of artificial intelligence.

In a piece published by the MIT Technology Review and originally addressed during EmTech Digital conference, Shum warns that now is the point in the development cycle where developers and engineers can build in safeguards to help mitigate the number of unbridled risks that come with AI that’s increasingly becoming capable of being more like human beings.

“This is the point in the cycle …  where we need to engineer responsibility into the very fabric of the technology,” 

Even with that being said, Shum also noted that most in the industry have already been derelict in their duties to anticipate technological flaws as well as the potential negative impact of current real-world applications of AI. Items such as facial recognition come to mind when reviewing Shum’s claims as the technology has been historically bad at recognition and attribution of darker skin tones while simultaneously being weaponized by countries as surveillance and suppression tools.

Neither application of facial recognition point to a concerted effort by the industry to corral and mindfully think of the potential outcomes of the technology before they were released to the public.

While it’s one thing to caution the industry with a wagging finger, Microsoft is also taking action to help address present and future AI predicaments, by improving its own facial recognition with the arduous tasks of adding multiple skin variations to its photo recognition algorithm.

Microsoft’s facial recognition improvements are incremental in comparison to the other major action the company is taking with its AI ethics committee and its presence in the Partnership on AI. Microsoft’s vision does not only add an AI ethics review step to its own checklist of privacy reviews and accessibility audits but that the entire industry adopts the same methods.

“We are working hard to get ahead of the challenges posed by AI creation. But these are hard problems that can’t be solved with technology alone, so we really need cooperation across academia and industry. We also need to educate consumers about where the content comes from that they are seeing and using.”

However, unlike the mess that Facebook, Google, the US Congress, and the European Union lawmakers find themselves in today, Microsoft would like government agencies to step in early to help sort out the gritty details of oversight and regulation of AI technology.

Only time will tell, how the industry prepares for the tidal wave of AI-related technologies and applications, but there does appear to be sensible fear of AI getting ahead of regulation, oversight, and accountability.

After a rather public rebuke from a gaming community more concerned with speeds and visual fidelity, Microsoft’s motion sensing Kinect technology efforts is finding a second life in more commercial endeavors. From hospitals to research labs, Microsoft’s Kinect technology has been retrofitted for a much broader use than the company’s original intent for the product.

Adding to the list of use cases for the Kinect outside of the home and gaming is a new finding by Redditer @WilliamCCT, who realized three days ago, that his airport was using the Kinect as a baggage scanner.

While becoming less surprising these days, it’s always interesting to see how Microsoft’s Kinect SDK and technology are being used by companies that have the furthest association with the gaming market. During MWC 2019, Microsoft introduced its Azure Kinect kit that would allow businesses to intergrate the Kinect technology into IoT devices and work in conjunction with Microsoft’s Azure cloud.

In the Reddit thread post by @WilliamCCT, many of the commentors seemed rather versed in the shifting landscape for Kinect offering nuanced replies speculating on the impetus of an airport using a Kinect for checking luggage.

The remainder of the Reddit conversation devolves into glowing recounts of anecdotal experiences with Kinect and the Xbox One’s version 2 release.

With Microsoft moving on from bundling the Kinect with its Xbox One consoles, ideally, the company will shift from using it as a purely motion tracking tool to a service that sit atop Microsoft’s Azure ambitions for creating a platform that collects and stores sensory data from around the world.

Intel has released a new app for Windows 10, titled Intel Graphics Command Center, to allow users to adjust the image settings for the various games and apps that they may have on their systems (via Windows Central). Many users with Intel-powered computers are likely already familiar with the Intel Graphics Control Center, however the new app brings most of its features in a more aesthetically appealing and intuitive interface.

One of the new features that Intel highlights on the store listing is the help option, which is said to “simplify” the “confusing ‘tongue twister’ features like tessellation and anisotropic filtering.” The company has also implemented a blur effect to the UI, giving it a somewhat of a Fluent-influenced design aspect.

As far as its feature set goes, users can optimize settings for games and videos, and make adjustments to their display configurations. It definitely serves as an easy way to make such, especially considering the limited options available from within Windows 10’s own Settings app.

Intel promises to provide continued updates to the app and will introduce “more features and functions in later phases and will keep the improvements coming.” For now, anyone with a PC running Windows 10 version 1709 or newer and an 6th generation or newer Intel CPU should be able to install the app straight from the Microsoft Store.

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Welcome back to our Windows 10 news recap, where we go over the top stories of the past week in the world of Microsoft’s flagship operating system.

Windows 10 Surface app now tells users when their warranty ends

To make it easier for Surface device owners to know when their warranty expires, Microsoft now lets you know when the warranty ends on your Surface device via the Surface companion app.

Microsoft releases patch to notify Windows 7 users about upcoming end of support

As support for Windows 7 nears its end, Microsoft is issuing a new patch to Windows 7 that notifies users of the upcoming end of support date, 14th January 2020.

Mozilla Firefox browser adds Windows Hello authentication support

Firefox’s latest version, 66.0, adds support for Windows Hello authentication. When browsing supported websites, users will be able to use their Windows Hello authentication method (fingerprint, face, etc) to log-in to the website.

Leonardo drawing app comes to the Windows 10 Microsoft Store

Graphics programs just seem to keep popping up in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10. The Leonardo drawing app is the latest app to arrive in the Microsoft Store, allowing you to unleash your creativity.

That’s it for this week – we’ll be back next week with more Windows 10 news!

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 plans two new data centres in Sweden

Microsoft is reportedly planning to build 2 new data centres in Sweden, following 130 hectares of land it acquired last year. A press release by the company stated that it plans to build them to meet “sustainable and environmentally-friendly” standards.

Bing Maps adds coloured traffic info to routes

Bing Maps users are now able to view traffic levels on routes using a new toggle, making it easier to see the level of traffic in areas at a glance, denoted by blue, orange and red markings. Additional visualisations will also be shown where routes traverse through different environments, such as rivers.

Advertisers can now target LinkedIn audiences using Bing Search data

LinkedIn advertisers will soon be able to target LinkedIn audiences by using Bing Search data. It will allow targeting of Lookalike Audiences, interest-based targeting, and more. The new targeting options are currently available on the Bing Data platform, but are heading to the LinkedIn advertising platform.

Microsoft launches Windows Virtual Desktop and Microsoft Defender ATP for macOS in public preview

Microsoft has spent the last few years branching out to third-party platforms outside of Windows. Now in public preview for macOS, Microsoft is bringing Windows Virtual Desktop and Microsoft Defender ATP to Apple’s desktop platform. Microsoft Defender ATP is only available for business users and offers anti-malware protection.

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

The ID@Xbox has just announced the upcoming launch of a new live show that will highlight new indie games coming soon to Xbox Game Pass. The debut episode of the ID@Xbox Game Pass show will be on Tuesday, March 26 at 9AM PDT, and here is what you can expect:

In our debut, we’ll dive into games previously shown at E3 and X018. Expect hits such as Afterparty, Void Bastards, and Supermarket Shriek to be highlighted. In addition to new game announcements, we’ll also share a visit to Night School Studio, the creative team behind the hit game Oxenfree, for a behind-the-scenes look at their upcoming game Afterparty.

Interestingly, the first episode will be live streamed exclusively on the YouTube Xbox channel, and not on Microsoft’s own Mixer service. The company already created many regular shows on Mixer including Major Nelson Radio or the weekly Mixer Green Show, so the decision to ignore the ID@Xbox channel on Mixer is a bit surprising.

Microsoft is reportedly building two new datacenters in Sweden, according to Swedish Newspaper Gefle Dagblad (via MSN). It was previously reported in December that the company had acquired 130 hectares of land in the municipalities of of Gävle and Sandviken, near the Swedish capital Stockholm.

“We intend to develop land areas for the establishment of world-class data centers that meet sustainable and environmentally friendly standards,” Microsoft said in a translated press release obtained by the Gefle Dagblad. The report mentions that there is still a legal dispute between the municipality of Gävle and some of its citizens who appealed the decision to sell the land to Microsoft, fearing that the new data centres could lead to a shortage of electricity in the area.

Microsoft’s new Swedish data centers are not visible yet on the company’s Azure website, though it’s worth noting that two Azure regions have also been announced in Norway. The Redmond giant currently has 54 Azure regions worldwide, more than any other cloud provider.

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The Surface companion app in the Microsoft Store is getting a new update rolled out that will now inform the time left on a device’s two-year warranty (via MSPU).

While most people keep a mental note of their device’s lifespan and where they are in the warranty cycle, it’s still a neat little convenience to have in a dedicated app where other Surface related customizations, features and services are all located.

Visiting the Microsoft Store should surface the new update but if it’s not there yet, retry later today.

One of the most-hyped video games of the year, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, is now live and ready to play on all Xbox One consoles.

The game is an action-adventure title set in Japan during the late-1500s. While launching today, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has already garnered a lot of buzz about its visuals, gameplay, and story with many speculating that it could be one of the biggest games of 2019.

Here’s the official game description and launch trailer:

In Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice you are the “one-armed wolf”, a disgraced and disfigured warrior rescued from the brink of death. Bound to protect a young lord who is the descendant of an ancient bloodline, you become the target of many vicious enemies, including the dangerous Ashina clan. When the young lord is captured, nothing will stop you on a perilous quest to regain your honor, not even death itself.

Explore late 1500s Sengoku Japan, a brutal period of constant life and death conflict, as you come face to face with larger than life foes in a dark and twisted world. Unleash an arsenal of deadly prosthetic tools and powerful ninja abilities while you blend stealth, vertical traversal, and visceral head to head combat in a bloody confrontation.

Take Revenge. Restore your honor. Kill Ingeniously.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is playable on any Xbox One console but does receive some visual improvements when played on an Xbox One X in addition to gaining HDR10.

Looking for a new Xbox One console to play Sekiro on? Earlier today, Microsoft announced a very rare Sekiro-themes Xbox One complete with its own sword. Check it out here.

Have you been looking forward to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice or are you feeling a little indifferent? Share your thoughts with the community in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Xbox gaming content.

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