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Today’s topics include improvements to Microsoft’s Bing image search for Office and Edge, news that the Microsoft SQL server database is heading to Linux, Google’s new tool to help evaluate vendor security and Toyota’s effort to develop a wearable device to help the blind.
Microsoft gave Office’s integrated, Bing-powered image search a major overhaul this week. Now, when looking for images to include in PowerPoint, Outlook, Word, Excel, InfoPath, OneNote, Publisher and Visio, the Bing image-selection window displays a grid of thumbnail images, mimicking the search engine’s online image search results page on the Web.
The updated feature appears as Online Pictures under the familiar Insert menu.
Microsoft will release in 2017 a version of its SQL Server database software that runs on Linux, the Redmond, Wash., software giant announced March 17.
SQL Server, like most of the company’s business enterprise software offerings, traditionally has run on Windows and is a major a major pillar of Microsoft’s enterprise software and cloud services strategy.
Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise division, said the company hopes the new version will “deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud.”
Google has released to the open source community a framework that it uses internally to evaluate the security posture of the numerous vendors it works with for various services each year.
The company’s Vendor Security Assessment Questionnaire Framework is a collection of four templates with questions for evaluating the quality of a supplier’s security and privacy practices.
By releasing the framework to the open-source community, Google officials said they want to give other organizations an opportunity to do the same kind of evaluation that Google itself does when selecting vendors and suppliers.
Toyota engineers are working to develop a wearable device that could one day help blind and visually impaired people “see” their surroundings through the help of sensors, cameras and audible devices to improve their mobility.
The device, under development in Toyota’s partner robotics division, will be equipped with cameras that detect the user’s surroundings and communicate information to users through speakers and vibration motors, the company said in a March 7 statement.
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