Yesterday, Microsoft officially announced the Creators Update will drop on April 11 for the first time. We had reported in February that the date had been fixed in place. Interestingly, Xbox One users got their Creators Update release today, bringing BEAM integration to the console. While the Creators Update will reach Windows 10 PCs on April 11, Windows 10 Mobile users will wait longer. Microsoft has yet to put an official date on a mobile roll out....

Available in preview, Windows Vision Skills is a suite of tools that allow AI-powered video and photo analytics. Currently there are three skills included in preview: Object Detector, Skeletal Detector, and Emotion Recognizer. As this is an ongoing development, expect more skills to be added as the tool moves to general release. “Implementing and integrating efficient machine learning and computer vision solutions is a hard task for developers. The industry is moving at a fast pace, and the amount of custom-tailored solutions coming out makes it strenuous for application developers to keep up,” wrote Microsoft developer writer Eliot Cowley in a blog post this week....

It now appears the company has applied similar tactics to YouTube, as it now reads, “This channel was closed and is no longer available.” It’s not quite clear when Microsoft made this change, but it was spotted thanks to Reddit user fastforward23. Unfortunately, the last Wayback Machine capture was in November of last year, so that doesn’t shed much light on the matter. However, I did some digging myself. SocialBlade last reported daily subscriber stats on August 13th, 2017....

With that in mind, the Xbox team has announced what we can expect to see at E3 2018 in Los Angeles this June. Knowing it is on a good run at the show, Microsoft is doubling down with an excellent show. Major Nelson has detailed what we can expect to see from the Xbox brand in just under two months. As normal, the company will kick off the festivities with the Xbox E3 briefing at the Microsoft Theater....

As well as building a new app for Windows 11, Microsoft will provide an overhaul of the app with a bunch of new features. It is worth noting we are talking about the OneNote for Windows 10 and not the desktop application. “After the in-app invitation is available, we recommend updating to the OneNote app by October 2025 when both Windows 10 and OneNote for Windows 10 will reach end-of-support,” Microsoft says....

OneZero reports a letter has been drafted and sent to Satya Nadella and executive vice president Kurt DelBene. With 250 signatures from employees, the letter asks the company to end contracts with the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and other LE agencies. Furthermore, the employees want Microsoft to publicly condemn police use of teargas against protestors, officially support the Black Lives Matter movement, and push for the resignation of Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan....

1 Coming Features2 Details Specifically, the company has announced some features are coming to the platform in the coming months. For example, Dynamics business applications will get a new tool called Finance Insights. Microsoft says this feature allows customers to see financial data more efficiently. Artificial Intelligence drivers the core of Finance Insights. Microsoft leverages AI to give organizations more control and information regarding their financial situation. With a more in-depth understanding of their financial health, managers can take proactive actions....

Windows has had support for color management APIs for years, decades in fact. These APIs would ass extra functionality to apps that wanted to boost their color output. Still, many developers simply used standard sRGB space without any help from Windows. In Windows 11, Auto Color Management (ACM) offers a more efficient version of the process by providing even more color management control. For any app not using HDR or other color gamuts, they can now be mapped to the sRGB color space at a system level with more consistency....

Microsoft says many businesses have requested to use HoloLens 2 Industrial Edition in situations where strict requirements are in place, or strong regulations. For example, the pharmaceutical industry. Within these more demanding industries, hardware must pass certain criteria, such as particle emissions. Microsoft says HoloLens 2 Industrial Edition now has the following standards and certifications: Microsoft has also initiated a Rapid Replacement Program and a two-year warranty for the devices....

Macro-based attacks are a fertile ground for attackers to initiate malware. Microsoft says this method has been used for decades but has emerged prominently in recent years. Social engineering attacks using VBA macros are replacing software-based exploits. “Macros are popular among attackers because of the rich capabilities that the VBA runtime exposes and the privileged context in which macros execute,” Microsoft explains. “Notably, as with all scripting languages, attackers have another advantage: they can hide malicious code through obfuscation....

In its post, Microsoft says the real-time co-authoring will leave preview and come to all Excel users soon. The introduction of this ability will be welcome amongst Windows 10 users. If you are familiar with co-authoring on Word and PowerPoint then you will be good to go. Just share a file from OneDrive, SharePoint Online, or OneDrive for Business. Any file that has been shared with a co-authoring exception can be edited across the shared contacts....

The introduction of the Office brings the full productivity suite to the Windows Store. This means users can download apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Outlook, and Access to their device. It is worth mentioning that the apps have been listed in the Store for some time. However, this is the first time they will be made available for download and updates. As these are Windows Store apps, they are 32-bit versions of Office services ported with Microsoft’s Desktop App Convertor....

According to Bloomberg, the Biden administration is concerned about the increasing number of attacks against government organizations and infrastructure. Biden has spoke about state-sponsored attacks, including telling Russian president Vladimir Putin that such attacks should be “off limits”. Microsoft Attacks As the leading enterprise software provider and the second biggest cloud service provider, Microsoft bears the brunt of cyber attacks. This year, Microsoft Exchange Server was successfully attacked through an exploit first used by the HAFNIUM group....

As mentioned, Journal was developed within Microsoft Garage. This is the company’s skunkworks division that allows employees from different Microsoft businesses to collaborate outside of their primary work. Last year, the Garage rolled out Journal with a demo. The app is a reimagining of the older Journal app. users get an ink-first experience that promotes the use of digital pens like Microsoft’s own Surface Pen. The new Microsoft Journal also uses AI to automatically categorize notes and enhance other features....

Azure Stack is a hybrid cloud solution launched by Microsoft last July. The cloud platform offers specifically designed for on-premises data centers. Microsoft points out that Stack customers access cloud services using on-premises data centers and hosted environments. Customers receive the full benefits of public cloud but protected within their own infrastructure. Microsoft says the introduction of Stack in Azure Government means cloud benefits within a controlled environment. “As a cornerstone of Microsoft’s hybrid cloud approach, consistency means government customers get the same infrastructure and services with Azure Stack as they do with Azure — the same APIs, DevOps tools, portal, and more,” says Natalia Mackevicius, Program Director, Microsoft Azure Stack....

Essentially, this is the first preview release since Microsoft launched Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server (version 1809). Windows Server Preview build 18282 is part of the latest development branch. Initially, Microsoft did not officially announce the build. We have seen this frequently with recent Windows Server builds. Microsoft is sending out the builds before publishing a blog of the changelog. Either way, the company has since published its changelog: “Symbols are available on the public symbol server – see Update on Microsoft’s Symbol Server blog post and Using the Microsoft Symbol Server....

Starting with the project designer, Microsoft says the tool works with .NET SDK projects. With the designer, Visual Studio 2022 users can create projects more easily. This is possible through a single columns of actionable tools that are more clearly defined. While previous VS 2022 previews have supported dark theme, Microsoft says Preview 3 is adding improvements. In fact, the company describes these improvements as “big changes”. For example, a new accent color provides a viewing experience that is easier on the eyes....

HoloLens leverages augmented reality to place virtual objects into a real-world environment. It is possible to “store” these objects in the environment and see them again when you return. Augmented reality works because the HoloLens technology creates a virtual map of an environment. The device stores this map with the object to be loaded in the future. According to a new 2017 patent, Microsoft wants to create an interconnected network of maps that could eventually span the globe....

With Project Denali, Microsoft has created a next generation specification that standardizes SSD storage in data centers. The platform delivers detection and recovery tools and hardware protection from attacks. Denali creates a standard firmware for data centers. Microsoft explains how the software can transform data center SSD storage and management: “Fundamentally, Project Denali standardizes the SSD firmware interfaces by disaggregating the functionality for software defined data layout and media management....

According to the Microsoft Ignite session list, this implementation could be announced at the conference. With machine-reading comprehension, search would understand text automatically. This is possible by leverage natural-language understand and computer vision. “In search applications, machine comprehension will give a precise answer rather than a URL that contains the answer somewhere within a lengthy web page. Moreover, machine comprehension models can understand specific knowledge embedded in articles that usually cover narrow and specific domains, where the search data that algorithms depend upon is sparse....