Gaming has become a core part of helping combatants readjust following an injury. It can lessen the feeling of isolation and forge connections with people from within and outside service. Microsoft says it will supply Xbox Adaptive Controllers to 22 VA rehab centers across the United States. The company will collect data from the controllers to see where the gamepad is succeeding and what changes can be made in the future....

According to DigiTimes, that may change very soon. The publication’s sources report that the Surface Book 2 entered mass production. The next Microsoft laptop will be announced in March or April, with a core design change. This iteration will reportedly feature a clamshell design rather than a 2-in-1, further distancing it from the Surface Pro models. If true, this would be an interesting move by Microsoft. DigiTimes suggests the old design held back the laptop, resulting in the ship of only 500,000 devices last year....

Numbers for the third quarter of 2018, Gartner shows the gap between Microsoft in fifth and the top 4 is wide. Apple is in fourth place with 13.7 percent, Lenovo in third (15.4 percent), and Dell in second (25.9 percent). HP remains the dominant PC vendor in the United States with 30.7 percent of the market. In terms of other Windows OEMs, such as HP and Lenovo, Microsoft is gaining despite those companies having many more products....

The PC market has been a slow but clearly terminal decline for years, while the tablet market could also be heading that way if recent sales performance is indicative of a trend. However, the small niche in between those two form factors is starting thrive according to the latest data from IDC. Hybrid devices that marry the power of a PC into the portability and usability of a tablet were largely scoffed at when Microsoft launched the original Surface line....

Raspberry Pi OS is based on the foundation of Google Chrome and ships in SD cards to work on Raspberry Pi hardware. By making changes to Chromium 84, the dedicated development team has been able to bring support for video conferencing apps. Alongside support for Microsoft Teams and Zoom, users can also tap into Google Meet for chats and meetings. In some ways, the company is late to the party considering the rise in usage of these apps this year....

One of those is support for Remote Assist, a Mixed Reality preview app that’s free on the Microsoft Store. The functionality lets team users open a two-way call between the Teams desktop client and a HoloLens, proving a direct PoV of the headset wearer. You can then annotate, share images, and more to aid training scenarios. In that vein, Microsoft is also introducing a new general calling feature. You can now check in with colleagues to see if they’re ready before transferring a call, either by chat or audio call....

Thanks to this integration, users have tools to navigate documents and remain in meetings on Teams. Furthermore, it is also possible to carry on with individual workloads or link to others on a document. Excel Live presentations in Microsoft Teams are available via “Share” and then selecting “Excel Live”. Here Teams highlights spreadsheet files available or allows access to OneDrive to pull up files from storage. When a file is chosen, Team will ask the user if they want to share the file....

Over the last year, Microsoft has capitalized on Teams’ growth during the COVID-19 pandemic by adding an array of features. In fact, Microsoft Teams morphed from a workplace chat solution into a video chat platform and an all-round collaboration hub for enterprise and personal users. As Microsoft plans for deeper integration of Teams with Windows 11, the company is adding some security tools to the service. Due to its popularity, Teams is a frequent target of attacks from threat actors....

When Teams was announced last year, it was a closed shop. Despite Microsoft’s recent plays for the open source community, the Slack competitor was not playing the game. Little changed when Microsoft Teams was globally launched in March. However, since then, Microsoft has slowly been opening its enterprise communication and collaboration tool. This was first evidenced at Build 2017, when the company revealed it will allow developers to create Teams apps and place them in the Office Store....

Yes, Microsoft is officially returning to a platform it launched 23 years ago and has not supported for decades. The obvious question is what gives? Well, we don’t really know, but can speculate. Firstly, Microsoft sent out a tweet today saying it has a software theme announcement to make. The company says “Is this #thowback sparking your #90s nostalgia? Tune in tomorrow for a major “softwear” announcement.” Looking at the image in the tweet, it seems Microsoft is expanding its apparel line....

Microsoft tracks the Austrian provider as KNOTWEED, but the company’s official name is DSIRF. It seems the developer created spyware known as Subzero that is capable o spying on activity across a system. Customers who bought the spyware used it to target banks, law firms, and consultancy firms in the UK, Panama, and Austria. Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center says DSIRF was able to develop the spyware by taking advantage of a zero-day exploit in Windows and Adobe Reader....

It will do so through integration with Windows Defender Advanced Threat Detection, which uses AI-based automatic investigation. With Hexadite’s help, WDATP will expand to support endpoint security automated remediation. In essence, it identifies lesser problems, while flagging big issues for further investigation. All of it is built on a machine learning platform trained on distinguished cyber analysts. “This serves as validation of all the team has done to create something truly amazing in the market,” said Hexadite’s Marketing VP, Nathan Burke....

Those three Microsoft groups will shift their hiring strategy. Microsoft will now demand that any recruitment in Windows, Office, and Teams must be approved by the leadership team headed by Rajesh Jha. While all divisions are growing along with Microsoft’s huge success, the company wants to take more control over its recruitment. It is also worth noting Windows, Office, and Teams have recently added new employees. Recruitment Plans Speaking to Bloomberg, the company said the following about its change of hiring plans: “As Microsoft gets ready for the new fiscal year, it is making sure the right resources are aligned to the right opportunity....

At least to developers because Microsoft has announced Microsoft To Do Graph APIs. By leveraging APIs, developers can bake To Do into their applications. Specifically, create apps that connect directly into the task management application. With Microsoft To Do Graph APIs, developers can create workflows from their applications to the To Do app. Furthermore, they can sync application tasks to To Do for a single view. The services also function in business applications....

Specifically, when users access some websites, IE will not longer open the site. Instead, the URL will open in Microsoft Edge, automatically. Microsoft Edge is the company’s “new” web browser. It was initially released alongside Windows 10 in 2015. However, earlier this year a new version of Microsoft Edge launched, based on Google’s Chromium engine. In May, alongside Windows 10 version 2004, Microsoft made Edge a default on the platform....

Ping Identity Solutions delivers single sign-on services to internet applications. Azure Active Directory Premium customers will get a new feature that leverages the technology. The new preview service will be rolled out on March 24. The partnership will help users on Azure create single sign-on solutions within legacy web apps. Microsoft says the ability will be available within cloud-based services and on-premises. Microsoft has teamed with Ping Identity Solutions to uses its PingAccess technology....

By far the most important feature is the new mobile experience of work items. Users can now view and edit work items, as well as view basic lists of work items, in a mobile-optimized environment. Thanks to the new mobile navigation, users can reach any other mobile-ready part of VSTS. In addition, if users need to interact with other hubs, they can get back to the full desktop site and continue where they left off....

However, the iOS update for Yammer did add some more functionality to the app. Specifically, users can now add a cover photo to their community on the app. Furthermore, performance in the conversation feed was tweaked. Here’s the official release notes: NEW functionality: Brand your community with a cover photo. Increased performance of the user conversation feed. Yammer on iOS is available from the App Store here. On the Android side of the mobile platform market, Yammer received typical bug squashes and “cosmetic improvements”....

Employees within Microsoft have been against the partnership since day one. The main argument has been that Microsoft’s HoloLens tech will ultimately be used for the purpose of killing. While the US Army contract is to train soldiers for modern warfare, Microsoft snapped up the deal. Back in March, we reported on Microsoft’s concern that its $22bn HoloLens contract with the U.S. Army is not going to plan. Reports suggested the US Army was preparing to change the terms of the contract and take fewer devices....

Looking at some recent features to land on the Whiteboard application. In June, Microsoft updated the app with a new UI and also added several new shades, sticky notes support, reactions, note grids, and dozens of new templates. Other new features include new inking tools, intelligent ink, inking shortcuts, straight lines, and ink signals for the recently announced Surface Slim Pen 2. Microsoft also now allows Whiteboard users to insert, align and reposition shapes and images....