Microsoft has just launched Microsoft Stream, a new business-oriented video sharing service. The new service aims to give businesses the ability to share internal videos in the same flexibility of which YouTube already offers, with the security benefits of Azure Active Directory, a recognized leader in identity management systems.

The service is currently available as a free preview, and all you need to sign up is a business email address. The user interface of Stream, meanwhile, is similar to that of preexisting streaming services and involves social features such as compatibility with various devices, uploads, a trending section, comments, and tags. There could also be many uses for this service, with video training and employee communications highlighting the possible uses. Regardless, the aim of the service is to enable business users to harness the power of video to achieve more at work.

Microsoft’s corporate VP of Business Intelligence Products Group compares the service to Office 365 Video and concludes:

Microsoft Stream builds upon the learnings success of Office 365 Video and over time the two experiences will converge with a seamless migration to ensure a consistent experience both within and outside of Office 365.”

Since the service is similar to Office 365 Video (which launched two years ago), it is worth noting that during the preview of Microsoft Stream there will be no changes to the Office 365 Video experience. Over time, however, the two experiences will converge, making Stream the de facto video experience in Office 365. Additionally, Microsoft is noting that more details on future enhancements and user updates closer to general availability of the Microsoft Stream service will be shared over time.

We would love to know how your business might use this service. Will it be used for employee training? Sharing important videos? Let us know your thoughts, comments, or suggestions on this latest Microsoft service by dropping us a comment below!

Summer is officially underway, and that means job hunting season has started for fresh out of college graduates. Luckily, for these folks, Microsoft has created a package of resources, inspiration, and advice to help college graduates stand out with recruiters and hiring managers in today’s job market. All the materials are available at office.com/dreamjob, and come after Microsoft commissioned a survey of 1,000 18 to 25-year-olds and asked for their thoughts on the job search process.

Overall, a few highlights of the data from the survey show that,

• More than one fifth (22%) of those who interviewed over Skype dress professionally on the top and
  casual on the bottom during their interviews – with 3% admitting they go pant-less altogether.
•  1 in 4 people surveyed think having a “plain resume” could hinder their job search.
• 43% of respondents are currently looking for a job or internship, but 45% of them aren’t confident.

Additionally, the survey also found that many new job seekers have high hopes of landing a job in hot markets like New York, San Francisco and Seattle.  Of course, those surveyed also expressed the fact that they wanted meaningful work where they could express themselves creatively.

However, as art of the package of resources, Microsoft worked with career expert and inspiration power-house Maxie McCoy to put together tips for how to design a show-stopping resume and how to have an unforgettable Skype interview. The Redmond giant also worked with print on demand company MOO to create new cover letter and resume templates for Word 2013 and higher (seen above.) Lastly, and because online presence is becoming more and more important, Microsoft also created free eye-catching blog post, portfolio and resume templates online templates in the app, Sway.

Will you be using any of these resources? What are your thoughts on these resources? Let us know your thoughts by dropping us a comment below!

Microsoft has announced that the company has chosen Michel van der Bel as the new Corporate Vice-President of Europe, Middle-East and Africa. In his new position, he will be leading Microsoft’s business across EMEA which includes 32 subsidiaries incorporating 134 markets and close to 20,000 Microsoft employees.

Additional responsibilities for van der Bel include overseeing the marketing, sales and operations across the company’s product and services portfolio in these markets. He also will lead the accelerated transformation of Microsoft into a leading productivity and platform provider for the cloud-first, mobile-first era in EMEA. Lastly, Microsoft is noting that van der Bel will help customers and partners be successful in accelerating their own digital transformation by harnessing the full potential of the Microsoft cloud.

In a statement seen in the official announcement, van der Bel expressed excitement for his new position. He is quoted as saying,

“I am very proud and excited to lead the areas in Europe Middle-East Africa at such a pivotal time in our company’s history. Ever since 1982, EMEA has a very strong Microsoft heritage in both developed and emerging markets and together, we have a great opportunity to accelerate digital transformation with our customers and partners and maximize growth across all aspects of our business”

With over 13 years of experience at Microsoft, Michel van der Bel has had prior leadership at the company. Since 2012 he was the the Area Vice President for Microsoft UK, and prior to that he served as the chief operating officer for Microsoft in Greater China. The company had previously announced that former Vodafone exec Cindy Rose will be taking over Microsoft UK, effective November 1st.

Dream Machine, an optical illusion puzzle game developed by GameDigits, has now been released on the Windows Store (via WindowsPhoneApps.es). The game was previously released on iOS and Android just a few months ago, and it’s always great when developers don’t leave the Windows platform behind. If you enjoyed playing critically-acclaimed puzzler Monument Valley, then you should probably give Dream Machine a try. Here is the official description below along with the launch trailer:

Escape a cold, inhumane factory and free yourself into a mind-blowing fantasy world. Manipulate fantastical machinery and solve the many mysterious optical illusions that lie in wait. Use all your ability to survive hazardous levels and fight epic boss battles. Guide your mechanical friend from an oppressive workplace and lead them to freedom.

Is it real or simply an illusion? Drift into the dream of the machine and find the truth.

– Visually Stunning & Pleasant to Play
Amazingly beautiful hand-crafted levels, containing 3D puzzles, impossible geometry and optical illusions. Dream Machine is easy to pick up and play but hard to put down.

– Boss Battles
Fight against your oppressors in daring boss battles. Use all your skill and brainpower to defeat the monsters from this mechanical dream.

– Replayability & Upgrades
Beat your best level completion times to earn Cogs. These allow you to upgrade your mechanical friend, achieve better times and climb Dream Machine’s competitive worldwide leaderboard.

– Hazardous Levels
Exercise your intellect to solve illusional puzzles and use your expertise to stay alive.

You can get the game from the download link below, it’s a $1.29 universal purchase and both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 are also supported. If you like puzzle games, let us know in the comments if you plan to get it.

Download
QR-Code

Dream Machine

Developer:
GameDigits Ltd

Price:
$1.29

Ever wondered what is happening over at Microsoft’s Surface Lab? Well, now you might have the chance to explore it. ExpertZone released a new video showcasing the Surface Lab featuring Microsoft’s Panos Panay and Ben Rudolph.

The video is roughly an hour long, very detailed and very interesting. It shows some prototype designing techniques and the backstory of many Surface-branded products we’ve come to love.

Panos Panay also mentioned some “confidential stuff,” that they didn’t want to talk about. Those were probably some unreleased prototypes of upcoming Microsoft products and it isn’t surprising that the Surface team didn’t want to ruin the surprise for us. He also mentioned a “hinge that is being prototyped right now,” which means that the Surface Book could come with an improved hinge, which could fix some issues with the previous one or we may see this new hinge embedded in future devices.

Welcome back to our weekly “Windows 10 news recap” series where we go over the top stories of the past week in the world of Microsoft’s latest operating system. Let’s get started.

Microsoft releases a firmware update for its Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 devices

In preparation of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft has released a firmware update for both its Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 devices. It brings new drivers and fixes that resolve many issues that customers were experiencing, from the touchpad to the audio. With these updates, the devices should be much more stable.

Windows 10 won’t hit its 1 billion devices target by 2018

Microsoft had envisioned hitting 1 billion devices running Windows 10 by 2018, however, in an updated announcement, the company has backtracked, saying that it no longer expects to reach that target as its mobile division has not been its focus this year, leading to less devices than they had anticipated running Windows 10.

NVIDIA releases new drivers for Windows 10, bringing Ansel support and VR improvements

For people running an NVIDIA GeForce GPU, the company has released new Game Ready drivers for its GPUs on Windows 10, which adds Ansel support and brings improvements for Virtual Reality, as well as bringing further performance enhancements for newly-released games and upcoming games.

Intel also releases new GPU driver updates for Windows 10

Following from NVIDIA releasing updates for its GPUs on Windows 10, Intel is also following suit with updates that resolve several graphics issues across Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 devices.

Microsoft will upgrade your laptop to Windows 10 for free or give you a free Dell Inspiron 15

In its continued efforts to get customers to upgrade to Windows 10, Microsoft is now making a bet with customers. You can take your compatible laptop into a Microsoft Store and they’ll upgrade it to Windows 10 free. If something goes wrong, they’ll give you a Dell Inspiron 15 for free.

The Chuwi Vi10 Plus adds to the growing Windows 10 2-in-1s

With the Windows 10 2-in-1 market seeing exponential growth, from both enterprises and consumers, the Chuwi Vi10 Plus will be adding another option to the mix, with it competing in the same arena as the Microsoft Surface Pro 3.

Roku arrives in the UK, Canada and Mexico on Windows 10

For those Roku users out there, its Windows 10 app is now open to users in the UK, Canada and Mexico, allowing a few more markets access to 3000 channels and over 300,000 movies.

Forrester Consulting believes Windows 10 cuts costs across various areas

A study ran by Forrester Consulting has found that Windows 10 cuts costs in a few areas of business, including IT, security and productivity, which shows how Windows 10 can help businesses and push them to upgrade to Microsoft’s latest operating system.

Huawei MateBook Windows 2-in-1 now available in the US

Huawei has made its MateBook Windows 10 2-in-1 available for purchase in the United States from the Microsoft Store, Amazon and Newegg, with prices starting at $699.

Tencent’s WeChat app for Windows 10 appears in the Windows Store

The new WeChat app for Windows 10 has appeared in the Windows Store, however, it appears to be lacking support for Windows 10 Mobile so far, with no word on when, or if, it will be made available for Microsoft’s mobile platform.

For builds and updates this week, we’ve seen quite a few:

• Windows 10 RTM gets its own July update, KB3163912, now at build 10240.17024
• Windows 10 for PC and mobile receives KB3172985, bringing non-Insiders to build 10586.494
• Microsoft releases Windows 10 build 14388 to Fast Ring Insiders for PC and Mobile
• Windows 10 Insider build 14388 has moved to the Slow Ring
• Windows 10 Insider build 14390 is available for download, get it now

That’s all for Windows 10 this week. Let us know how you’re feeling ahead of the Anniversary Update in the comments below!

Microsoft has been criticized for the consistency in its latest operating system, Windows 10. A way to feedback and make sure that Microsoft receives it is the Feedback Hub, and ironically the exact same app used to criticize, got criticized.

A Windows Insider submitted the request to make the Feedback Hub follow the system theme, that is either light or dark. Right now, only the former option is available and changing your theme won’t have any impact on the app.  The request got answered by a Microsoft engineer, and they confirmed that it is “on the radar”. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it will happen, but it is a strong indication that it will arrive in a future update.

The addition of a dark theme would be very welcome, especially for AMOLED screen users. Windows phone fans have been in love with the dark theme since its release in Windows Phone 7 and not following the tradition in Windows 10 Mobile upset quite a lot of users, however, this looks set to change in the future.

The hustle is real over at Redmond on Microsoft’s campus, with team members staying late and working extra days to get fixes out before the Anniversary Update next week. Today is no exception – and yes, it is a Saturday.

Jonathan Sampson, the Program Manager for Microsoft Edge, has sent out a tweet asking people to personally let him know of any issues they’re noticing with website rendering in Microsoft Edge – no matter how big or small the issue is. A simple tweet to let him know and he’ll look into it, as well as reply.

I'm in the office today, working exclusively on community issues. Slow/broken sites? Help with HTML, CSS, and/or JS? Ping me. Happy to help!

— Jonathan Sampson (@SampsonMSFT) July 16, 2016

So, go take a look at your favourite sites, and if you notice any problems with how the site looks in Edge vs. other browsers, let Sampson know. We’ll hopefully see many fixes for Microsoft Edge just before the Anniversary Update drops next week.

Microsoft Research has brought forth great ideas, innovations, and interesting research projects from a wide variety of participants. Over the past couple of years, we’ve reported on several researchers who have brought artificial intelligence, computational thinking and smart road projects to the public.

Among the highlighted researchers, we’ve noticed a growing trend of women who have led advanced exploration in computing and technology, and it seems Microsoft has also made the same observation.

Microsoft Research’s distinguished scientist Susan Dumais is highlighting the recent announcement of the company’s efforts to support women in computing through its fellowship program.

Women are woefully under-represented in computing-related fields.

At Microsoft Research, we’re committed to helping address this imbalance through the Microsoft Research Women’s Fellowship Program. The fellowships directly support female computer scientists as they pursue graduate studies, providing US$20,000 for tuition and conference travel. Also, the program connects recipients with a Microsoft mentor and researchers in their area of study and facilitates recipients to interact with each other in a collaborative peer community.”

In addition to supporting women in computing fields, Microsoft Research will also be supporting other diversity-related initiatives such as the NCWIT Academic Alliance Seed Fund. The NCWIT is a US-based academic institution designed to develop processes for recruiting and training women by enticing them with a financial investment of up to $10,000 per project. Another diversity program Microsoft Research is supporting is its DigiGirlz, a YouthSpark program intended to capture the interest of middle to high school aged girls exploring early computer science programs.

As for the fellowship program, Microsoft has already named ten winners of the $20,000 fellowship award for 2016. The ten ladies are all studying various emphasis of computer science that includes human-computer interaction, natural language processing, and computational biology among others.

The list of 2016 winners include:

• Alane Suhr, Cornell University
• Avanti Shrikumar, Stanford University
• Ellen Vitercik, Carnegie Mellon University
• Erin Grant, University of California Berkeley
• Helga Gudmundsdottir, University of Washington
• Jeevana Priya Inala, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• KatieAnna Wolf, Princeton University
• Lucia Marisol Villacres Falconi, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Natacha Crooks, University of Texas at Austin
• Rui Yang, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

For many, being associated with Microsoft Research in any way is an honor in and of itself, adding a financial incentive can be the cherry on top for women who may have been hesitant or inhibited in exploring computer science as a realistic outlet or career goal.

Microsoft’s executive vice president of technology and research Harry Shum is announcing the MSR Alumni Network today. The announcement comes during Shum and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates sit down to talk about Future Visions during a fireside chat at the company’s Research Faculty Summit this month.

The launch of the Microsoft Research Alumni Network happens to involve the company’s recently purchased property of LinkedIn as part of its 25^th Anniversary of Microsoft Research (MSR) announcement.

The LinkedIn group is dedicated to connecting the thousands of past MSR employees, postdoctoral researchers and interns with us. Together, our alumni and current Microsoft researchers have published more than 20,000 papers — much of it in open collaboration with leading universities around the world. The expertise and ground-breaking work from these researchers represent a rich legacy across many areas such as machine learning, computer vision, systems, theory, quantum computing, formal methods, robotics, networking, human-computer interaction, data visualization, security, privacy, cryptography, and multimedia.”

We’ve reported on several talented individuals who have spurred interesting takes on innovation, research and scientific education as a result of being part of MSR such as Jeannette M. Wing’s highly regarded Computational Thinking publication. Other know MSR leaders include Eric Horvitz’s looking into artificial intelligence, Wolfram Schulte’s work on software verification and Zuzana Kukelova’s take on advancements in computer vision.

The best part about being a part of the Alumni Network is the free membership. Members have access to Microsoft Researches who have become leaders and influencers in their fields, as well as an opportunity to connect via virtual or in-person communications. Connecting with a Microsoft Researcher, alone offers the potential for insights into developing trends and technological evolutions that have yet to be explored by the public.

For more information about the new Microsoft Research Alumni Network, visit Microsoft’s Research Blog or keep it here at WinBeta for developing news about the launch.

Microsoft announced the Project Islandwood last year, and a steady development has followed the iOS to Windows bridge. Today, the bridge gets new APIs for the UIKit implementation.

iOS user interfaces have always been tricky to bridge over to Windows. Microsoft want’s to let developers reuse as much code as possible and make sure that bridging Objective-C based application is easy and simple. The bridge also includes UIKit that is a framework with hundreds of classes and as the official blog post puts it “re-implementing the entire thing is simply not feasible – not to mention the fact that Windows already offers much of the same functionality in the form of XAML”. XAML has been a part of Windows, and all of its bridges from the beginning, but up until now, there hasn’t been a simple way of bringing UIKit and XAML together.

Microsoft want’s to change that, and will share  a series of technical design documents on GitHub outlining the solution to this problem, starting today.

As a result of these changes, the iOS bridge will be able to offer:

• Faster bring up of iOS controls, so more of UIKit is available to you
• An improved touch-input model for more performant event handling
• Much improved support for accessibility and localization
• Better test automation, resulting in more stable and high-quality controls
• Much improved integration with and leveraging of Windows’ UI framework, XAML

In short, UIKit will work on top of XAML from now on, and you can follow Project Islandwood’s development on the official GitHub page.

These days, Microsoft is enabling a public preview, beta, or technical preview for most of its services. Windows 10 and Xbox One users have the Insider program, Visual Studio and Azure offer technical previews, and now Office 365 Network users will be joining the early access train.

The Office team announced today the public preview of Office 365 Network that should allow even more IT Pros, technical experts, and product enthusiasts access to important Office 365 news, tips, tricks and best practices.

According to a post on the Office Blogs, changes to the current Office 365 Network include hosting of unauthenticated platforms resulting in internet searchable community post.

Currently, the Office 365 Network is hosted as an authenticated Yammer network, which requires registration and sign-in to participate in the community, and makes discussion content searchable and discoverable only by users who are registered and signed into the network. In an effort to make the community content accessible to anyone, the new Office 365 Network will be hosted on an unauthenticated platform, meaning community posts will appear in internet search results, and visitors won’t have to sign in to view content in the network.

Office 365 Network community members can look forward to these specific additions and benefits of the public preview as well:

• Personalize your home page so it displays community discussions and other content related to topics you select.
• Earn badges based on your activity in the community, which will be displayed on your profile page along with a summary of your activity—including latest posts, likes given and received, people you follow and community notifications.
• Search community content to uncover discussions, ideas and other information from across the Office 365 Network.
• View conversations as threaded conversations and hold private conversations with others using your community inbox.

Above all else, opening up a public preview to Office 365 Network means that new and current members have more access to Office-related material. Eventually, Microsoft would like to move everyone over to the new experience and has set a date to which the current members of Office 365 Network will be redirected to the public preview starting September 1, 2016.

For now, the more technical of the communities will remain hosted on Yammer due to NDA’s and the services ability to enforce authenticated experiences. Microsoft lists Office 365 MVP Network, invitation-only network for Office Server & Services MVPs, Microsoft product teams and Yammer Community Managers as still being hosted on Yammer.

As mentioned earlier, the public preview is rolling out currently, and Microsoft is encouraging those interested testing it out also to offer feedback and suggestions through the Community Ideas Exchange or to visit the Community Discussion Board for more information.

The Microsoft Lumia 650 XL was never released, but numerous leaks have been revealed to the public with some claiming it’s the Lumia 650 XL and some it’s the Lumia 850. The cancelled release of the phone didn’t stop hacker Calyx Hikari from successfully running Windows RT 8.1 PE on the device.

The video below (via WBitalia) clearly shows the device and the software (we recommend that you mute the video):

Aside from the software, this video shows one of the models of the Lumia 650 XL, in this case the RM-1157, that only has one SIM-slot and a non-removable battery. Otherwise, it seems like a bigger version of the Lumia 650, and that is exactly what it should be.

Reddit user CDragon00 was about to add a new card to their account yesterday when they realized that there was a new payment option on his Xbox One. The option to add a mobile phone and carrier listed Sprint as the only source. CDragon00 took a couple of screenshots of it to share, sharing that they were in fact in the latest preview update for Xbox One.

Mobile payment options are useful for consumers that do not wish to use or share their credit card information. The costs are instead added onto your monthly phone bill instead of being charged immediately.

It’s worth noting that the mobile payment option only appears to be in the United States for now. If it’s like other mobile payment options for other services, it will likely build partnerships with other carriers and countries. We should likely see more information soon about this feature now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

The latest preview build for Xbox One also gave gamers a choice between using Cortana or more traditional Xbox One commands.

What else have you found in the latest preview build for the Xbox One? Share them in the comments below!

Updates to the now decoupled core Windows apps have been rolling out abundantly over the past few months, many of which appear to be performance tweaks and bug squashes. However, as the Windows team prepares for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update release, some of the core apps are receiving functionality-boosting releases as well.

Take the Movies & TV for Windows 10; the app was updated for Fast Ring Insider participants with added Xbox One controls and tighter Windows Store integration.

The changelog for version update 3.6.2350.0 is as follows:

• You can now control the Movies & TV app on your console (Xbox Preview Only) using the Xbox app on your PC or phone.
• We changed the experience when you choose a movie or TV episode that you’ve already partially watched. The app now asks if you want to restart from the beginning or continue from where you stopped last time. This means you don’t have to use the transport controls to get back to the beginning if you’d like to start over again.
• When searching for content from the Movies & TV app, you can now see Store search results too. This gives easier access of Store content from the consumption app and is especially important for console users who are only using the Movies & TV app to Store playback content. You might notice that they search results aren’t as high quality as they have been in the past within the Store app…that issue is known and is being addressed.
• We added more telemetry to tell us which codecs you’re using so that we can better understand the types of files you have.

While the update is only rolling out for Insider devices right now, presumably the Windows team is working on getting this new functionality out to all Windows 10 users within the next month.

Fast Ring Insiders are encouraged to head over to the Windows Store or follow the link below to test out the new update.

Download
QR-Code

Movies & TV

Developer:
Microsoft Corporation

Price:
Free

Git is one of the most popular version control systems out there, allowing development teams to work in collaboration on a project – sharing code between each other seamlessly and providing a full history of all code changes, through the use of commits. Any software developer is well acquainted with the importance of version control with frequently-updating applications, and those who do their work on Mac have probably heard of Tower. This popular Mac Git client, however, is soon making its way onto Windows 10.

Tower is coming to Windows! https://t.co/FyA0WklLhr pic.twitter.com/KgmYhoRBeV

— Tower (@gittower) July 11, 2016

Apart from the fact that Tower is making its way to Windows 10, we don’t really know any details. We have no idea when the Git client will be sending out its beta invitations, much less when the full app is going to make its way onto the Windows store. We’ll be keeping an eye on Tower to see when things start to get a bit more exciting for fans of the client, but the promise of an eventual Windows app should be enough to get some people excited for the future.

For years now, companies have tried to do away with the seemingly antiquated form of communication that has become email. Services such as Slack, HipChat and even Microsoft’s own SharePoint have attempted to chip away at the necessity of email but most companies are ultimately augmenting their use of modern chat with support for email as well.

Perhaps the negative connotations surrounding email aren’t the fault of the medium but rather how it’s being managed, at least that is what the team behind Office believes.

The folks behind the Office Blog feel that building in analytics tracking into inboxes can help increase user efficiency when using email while also shedding poor performing behaviors that ultimately make navigating an inbox much less of an issue.

Most individual employees use email as an information dump and as such, managing a landfill of appointment request, attachments and carbon copy replies can often feel daunting and flat-out overwhelming. Thus the firm push for alternative forms of communication and information transfer that have created a multi-billion-dollar business whose sole purpose is to thwart the use of email.

Microsoft’s Office team would like email users to reconsider for just a moment, how they understand, control and reclaim their email inboxes.

Figuring out the best inbox

• You discover the long hours you spend thoughtfully composing regular updates are going to waste, as your contact isn’t even opening your emails. The takeaway? It’s probably better to limit yourself to vital points—and to communicate them through a different channel.
• Or maybe you learn that emails sent after 3 p.m. have a high average response time. This knowledge lets you establish precise email windows to maximize effectiveness. The less time you have to spend following up on your ignored messages, the better.

Better scheduling

• Time Analytics allows you to quickly see how often you experience uninterrupted periods of work time, how much you’re working outside of normal business hours, how many meetings you attend per week—the list goes on. Once you see the full picture, you’ll be able to make decisions about your work habits on a larger scale.

Use of network insights

• To fully optimize your workday, take advantage of other personal analytics tools. Network insights, for instance, allow you to take the pulse of your contacts. Who are you connecting with most frequently? And with whom do you risk losing touch? Access to this information could help you maintain relationships and keep lower priority projects from slipping through the cracks.
• Similarly, a meeting quality feature can provide insights that help you understand why certain meetings aren’t as effective as they could be. Too much multitasking? Too much time to fill? Not enough time? Maybe you’ll discover that weekly check-in meeting isn’t even necessary.

For some, it’s easy to throw up hands and seek out an alternative to email, but for others, simply knowing more about email may be the key to finally achieving the highly elusive, inbox-zero.

In the Cuyahoga County of Cleveland, Ohio, residents will be taking part in computer training skill courses that leverage a new partnership that will utilize resources provided by Microsoft. On a site that covers news around the North East Ohio aptly titled Cleveland.com, a new posting highlights the new details of Cuyahoga County’s alliance with Microsoft that includes four different programs that make up the company’s CityNext initiative that it has been pushing across the world.

In particular, Cuyahoga residents will have the following at their disposals:

• Microsoft’s Digital Literacy Curriculum – a “train the trainer” model on basic technology tools to help residents develop skills required for many entry-level jobs.  The county will partner with organizations such as the Cuyahoga County Public Library to identify and offer residents digital literacy training.
• Microsoft BizSpark – a program that focuses on start-up organizations by providing tailor-made software and services. The county will partner with entrepreneurial incubators to deliver the program to 300 local start-ups.
• Microsoft YouthSpark – an initiative that broadens access to science, technology, engineering and math opportunities for students. Hundreds of students will attend YouthSpark Live, where they will take on technology challenges through small-group work and learn more about technology-related careers. Microsoft currently offers YouthSpark events at its store in Beachwood Place.
• MyCuyahoga Mobile App – an app that will soon launch that will allow residents and visitors to identify issues such as graffiti, trash, and the need for safety escorts, car lockout and jump-start services. Users within the downtown Cleveland area will be able to upload photos and immediately send service requests directly to the Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

Recently, Microsoft elevated its view of competition in the educational sector as being greater than a one-to-one battle between company solutions but rather including competition against social and economic shifts in education. Microsoft appears to be aiming at creating a top-to-bottom stack of solutions for helping teachers and educators guide students and citizens into a competitive employment market.

If you’re running an NVIDIA GeFore GPU in your Windows 10 machine, then you’ll want to go look for a driver update. The company pushed an update today that provides the usual performance improvements along with some additional changes.

Here’s what’s new in version 368.81 of the GeForce Game Ready Driver:

VR Game Ready
Provides the optimal experience for new and upcoming Virtual Reality titles including NVIDIA VR Funhouse, Everest VR, Obduction, Raw Data, and The Assembly.

Ansel Support
Supports the new Ansel technology now available in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, which allows you to compose your shots from any angle, capture in 2D, 360° and adjust with post-process filters.

Virtual Reality
VR Ready GeForce GTX 1080, 1070, and 980 Ti customers can download NVIDIA VR Funhouse from Steam today!

Open up your NVIDIA GeForce Experience app and download the latest driver, or head over to the NVIDIA site. Either way, get that update installed and let us know in the comments if it’s fixed anything important for you.

Unity Technologies makes a popular cross-platform game development tool that makes it easier for developers two write a game once and publish it to multiple platforms. The tool maker is so popular, in fact, that they just announced receiving $181 million in Series C investing funds, meaning they’re now even better equipped to continue making great game development tools.

Microsoft supports game development on Windows machines with the Visual Studio Tools for Unity, which just received an update to version 2.3. VSTU 2.3 offers the following updates:

• VSTU no longer conflicts with the Xamarin tools, preventing you from debug your Unity game.
• You can now use the text, XML, HTML and JSON string visualizers when debugging.
• Support for function breakpoints in Visual Studio 2015 is now included.
• All of Unity’s MonoBehaviours are now available from our wizards.
• Multiple issues in the expression evaluation of the debugger have been resolved.

Microsoft recommends users update to Unity 5.3 for best support. More details are available at the blog post, and you can post suggestions at the relevant UserVoice.

For many, the app-to-customer paradigm might feel like throwing money into an empty void for services rendered. Purchase a new smartphone, load it up with your favorite and sometimes necessary apps, all the while pitching anywhere from 99 cents to $4.99 to unnamed developers for the privilege of a mobile-translated computing experience.

However, Microsoft believes the interaction between customer and app developer should be a bit more nuanced than users chucking a few rating stars to developers while they wait for their app to fix itself magically when its servers go down. In another installment of help tips, tricks and practices Microsoft is recommending its Windows developers take to heart, with the Windows team walking developers through the process of communicating with their users.

While a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app should be visually appealing, it should also project the voice of the original app creators from time to time. After all, a good user experience is ultimately a human-centric experience.

Communicating effectively with your users requires the following three virtues:

• be friendly (and compassionate)
• provide guidance
• project a gentle tone

Friendliness, helpfulness and a gentle tone should all combine to provide a smoother, more seamless experience for your users even in the toughest situations, such as an app meltdown or user confusion.

The Windows team uses several visual examples of how communication between app developer and the customer can be done by the mere tweaking of text, color, and placement of emphasis on particular parts of a message. Playful animations and drawings can also be used to help encourage and walk a customer through an experience such as applying credentials, adding accounts or submitting error reports, according to the Windows team.

Beyond closing the app gap by bringing names and filling the holes for life-focused necessary services to the Windows Store, the Windows team is also looking to raise the bar of customer experiences with providers. Sure, touting “2 million apps now available in the Windows Store” would be a great accomplishment in and of itself, but the Windows team would also like to encourage current and future developers to consider the quality of their apps rather than just contributing to the quantity of an app store.

App developers interested in the Windows teams notes, visit the Windows Developer blog for more insights, tutorials, and references. Let us know in the comments how you think developers can do a better job of communicating with users.

Microsoft Research has started their annual Faculty Summit for a series of talks on how technological innovation can benefit both business and society. The 17th meeting of the summit started with a fireside chat and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who spoke about the key role Microsoft Research has in continuing to deliver breakthroughs capable of making big impacts across multiple industries.

Over 600 leading academics and researchers are in attendance at the summit and they will be discussing ways to collaborate on the most pressing and important research questions in computer science and beyond. As noted by Microsoft in this official blog post, Daron Green, the managing director for Microsoft Research’s Outreach program, also opened the summit with a call for researchers to utilize the newest machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, all publicly and freely available to academia.

If you’re interested in all the details and news from the Faculty Research Summit, you can visit this official Microsoft Website. As always, though, we would love to hear your thoughts on the summit, and so be sure to drop us a comment below!