Pedro Hernandez

Azure IoT, an evolution of Microsoft’s Azure Intelligent Systems Service for organizations looking for a cloud-based foundation for their Internet of things (IoT) projects, is slated for a preview release later this year. Developers, however, can get a head start now with the company’s newly updated ConnectTheDots.io project. ConnectTheDots.io is an “open-source project aimed at […]

It’s a done deal. Microsoft on April 6 said it had closed on its acquisition of Revolution Analytics. The financial terms of the transaction, which was first announced in February, were not disclosed. Revolution Analytics is an R programming language specialist based in Mountain View, Calif. “R is the world’s most popular programming language for […]

Chatting on the Android flavor of the Skype app now more faithfully reproduces the PC and iPhone experience, courtesy of a new update from Microsoft. “With Skype 5.3 for Android, we’ve made some big changes to make the chat experience more consistent and more fun,” Eric Lin, Tom Huang and Lara Kingwell, Microsoft product marketing […]

Microsoft was founded on April 5, 1975, with the goal of putting a PC in every home. The company has been enormously influential in the 40 years since, but it’s the company’s future, not its past, that co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates focused on in an April 3 letter to Microsoft employees. “We have […]

The Windows-specific version of the Kinect sensor is being put out to pasture, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the company’s plans to popularize gesture-based computing. Microsoft has stopped producing Kinect for Windows v2 hardware, the PC edition of the Xbox One’s 3D motion-sensing peripheral, the company said in an April 2 announcement. […]

Microsoft is making it easier for Office Sway users to collaborate on their creations. Office Sway is a cloud-enabled application that can be used to build, publish and share mobile- and browser-friendly, interactive presentations. In January, Microsoft released Office Sway for iPhone in the United States and other English-speaking countries after first testing the app […]

Hewlett-Packard quietly unveiled three LaserJet Enterprise monochrome printers this week: the M604, M605 and M606. While designed for large workgroups (10-25 users) and rated for duty cycles of up to 20,000 pages per month, the printers do their part to help offices go green, according to Todd Brashear, worldwide product marketing manager for HP’s enterprise […]

Skype for Business will arrive in mid-April as an update to Lync, Microsoft’s enterprise communications software platform, the company announced April 1. Microsoft first revealed that Skype for Business would replace Lync back in November, a culmination of a two-year effort to bridge its consumer and corporate communications products. “In the first half of 2015, […]

Microsoft is changing the way customers are billed for Azure Backup, the company’s cloud-based data backup offering, in a move that can help lower the cost of protecting their data. “Today, we are announcing three key changes to Azure Backup that significantly decreases the [total cost of ownership] for customers storing backups in Azure,” Aashish […]

Microsoft’s cloud-based customer relationship management software, Dynamics CRM Online, and its Office 365 productivity platform are now available in Australia, a relatively new region in the software giant’s growing global cloud footprint. In October, the Redmond, Wash.-based company announced two new Azure cloud computing regions in Australia, each comprised of multiple data centers, bringing the […]

Windows Insiders, members of Microsoft’s beta testing program, can finally get some hands-on time with Project Spartan, the company’s next-generation Web browser. “Today, we’re excited to announce that Project Spartan is available for the first time for Windows Insiders to try out as part of the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview build for PCs,” said […]

Microsoft today took the wraps off the Surface 3, a 10.8-inch tablet that, unlike its Windows RT predecessors, runs the full x86 version of Windows 8.1 like its 12-inch stablemate, last year’s Surface Pro 3. Unlike the WiFi-only Surface Pro 3, however, the Surface 3 will be available with 4G cellular connectivity. Panos Panay, corporate […]