predicting traffic jams with Azure, Xbox game releases, and April Fools’ jokes

predicting traffic jams with Azure, Xbox game releases, and April Fools’ jokes.

After a break, today our section windows in short comes to life, to give you a review of the details of the news that took place this week in the world of Redmond.

And what more important news than the fulfillment of 40 years since the founding of Microsoft. As Javier Pastor says in SamaGame, it is incredible to think of how Redmond has managed to remain at the top of a highly changing sector for 4 decades, and even more so if we consider that, given its current reinvention process, it is likely that the leadership of Microsoft does not end here, but continues for a long time.

Own Bill Gates he makes this point in a letter sent to company employees, pointing out that the most important thing for Microsoft is not so much its past, but rather its future.

April Fools Day Jokes

Another milestone of the week, although much less important, was the classic “April Fool’s Day” (the Anglo-Saxon equivalent to our April Fool’s Day) that many Microsoft teams took advantage of to give free rein to their humor, making jokes related to the company’s products.

The most notable of these was the MS-DOS Mobile released by the mobile division (consisting of an actual application that can be downloaded and used). In turn, Bing announced its “Cute Cloud”, a search engine specialized in pretty photos of dogs and cats, and in OneDrive they presented “Shake to Cloud”, a function that would allow saving photos in the cloud by shaking the phone towards the clouds. , literally.

Introducing a new way to save files: Shake to Save. #AprilFools pic.twitter.com/5NvHDknetA

— OneDrive (@onedrive) April 1, 2015

As if that were not enough, Microsoft also released clippy code on GitHub, Bing UK introduced a palm-touch search system, and Outlook.com announced a ground mail delivery service.

For its part, the Skype team preferred to stay out of jokes, at least for this year:

Introducing Gluten-Free Skype. It’s a new way…Eh forget it. #AprilFools #NotDoingItThisYear pic.twitter.com/OMr0eQ2Ux1

— Skype (@Skype) April 1, 2015

Xbox and PC games: new releases and trailer for GTA V at 60fps

In the world of Xbox and PC gaming there were also many news during the week. Microsoft’s console saw quite a few new game releases and downloadable content, including:

• Dawn of the Rise of the Fallen Machinesa new downloadable content pack for the Xbox One game Sunset Overdrive. It is available for $9.99 from the Xbox Store.
• Tower of Gunsa new first-person-shooter, will be available for Xbox One from April 10 for 14.99 euros / dollars.
• Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved, an updated version of Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions and includes 40 additional levels. It is important to note that those who own the previous version of the game should not purchase the new title, as they will be able to enjoy the new levels as a free update. Otherwise, we can buy the game for 14.99 euros / dollars.
• Forza Horizon 2 presents Fast & Furious, is available since last Friday for Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and what’s better, it’s free for everyone who downloads it until April 10. In SamaGame they offer us this in-depth analysis of the game.

PC gamers, for their part, after having suffered a lot from the successive postponements of GTA V for PCthey can finally get an idea of ​​what awaits them next April 14 when the game finally hits stores thanks to this spectacular trailer at 60fps and 1080p (yes, pay attention to the minimum and recommended requirements).

Apps: Slack and PayPal Here come to Windows Phone, Outlook for iOS gets an update

In the troubled world of Windows Phone apps, we have 2 good news to share:

• slack, the famous collaborative-professional chat service, is making ever-increasing progress with its Windows Phone app. The last thing we know is that it already has a private beta in the store, and that it would only be a matter of time before the app is available to all users.

• PayPal launched its service this week PayPal Here as a Windows mobile app. Unfortunately, the app had to be temporarily removed from the store due to login issues, but those who have already downloaded it can continue to use it without any problems, and PayPal claims that it won’t take long for them to post it again.

• And in the meantime, Microsoft keeps updating Outlook for iOS and Android at an almost furious pace. The latest version of the app adds very useful features, such as support for Global Address List in the contact book (ie access to the Exchange contact list in an organization). The calendar view is also improved, especially to make better use of space on phablets, keywords are highlighted in search results, among other changes.

And more…

To close, we leave you with rather miscellaneous news from the Microsoft world.

• Microsoft Research is working with a Brazilian university to help predict traffic jams on streets, using official traffic data, information from security cameras, and social networks such as Waze, added to the cloud services provided by Azure. At this time, the developed model would be achieving a 80% accuracy in their traffic predictionswith a horizon of 15 minutes to 1 hour.

  

• Microsoft joins Apple’s actions against the controversial “religious freedom law” passed in Indiana.

• Goldman Sachs predicts that Microsoft stock will fall in the medium term. The consultant’s team of analysts recommends selling the company’s shares, since their price would fall from 41 to 38 dollars during the next 2 months. The pessimism would be based on the poor performance that the commercial licensing and consumer device divisions would be having. Obviously, this is just an opinion of the consultancy, and does not mean that the company’s profits will actually go down over the next few years (I remember well that when Microsoft’s stock was priced at $48, most financial analysts gave the “buy” recommendation.