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Slack Working with Microsoft to Integrate Office 365 Enterprise Tools to it

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Slack has been working really hard to gain more client base for its workplace messenger, and currently is serving more than 10 million daily active users. For that same matter, despite the rivalry between the two companies, Slack has joined its hands with Microsoft, to bring more enterprise productivity tools to it.

The company is working with Microsoft OneDrive and Outlook to get integrations to it, which it has been doing with other services too. Previously, it integrated the Azure Active Directory to it, and also, bought Astro to its messaging platform.

Slack
Image Source: thetechnews

Now with Microsoft 365, Slack will have integrations like Outlook Calendar Slack app, a new option in Outlook that enables the users to directly send messages to Slack, a new option in Slack for attaching files from Microsoft’s OneDrive storage, and the ability to preview Office files including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, directly in Slack.

“We want to break down walls that might otherwise exist between apps that should work together.” said Andy Pflaum, Slack’s director of product management for interoperability.

The calendar app integration in Slack will help the Outlook users to see and schedule events, directly on Slack without leaving it. Also, the users will get the events notifications and invite to new events, directly on Slack, and the users can respond to those notifications and invites from there only. The calendar will also update the user status depending upon the availability. This integration will also provide reminders to its users to join the WebEx, Skype for Business, or Zoom video calls.

For the Outlook users, the mail integration will allow them to send emails to the Slack Channel, attach files and send direct message alongside adding a note. The platform already has the options to attach files from Google Drive and Dropbox, and now, the users will have the option to get the attachments from Microsoft’s One Drive. The option will reflect under the import files menu in Slack.

Though the two companies are in the same race of competition, and even Microsoft had mentioned Slack’s name in the list of its rivals, in its annual 10-K report, the two companies know how to gain profits even from competitions.

Flipkart Tops the List of Best Company for Employees in India Third Time in a Row; Beats Amazon and Oyo

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LinkedIn has released the 4th edition of the ‘2019 Top Companies in India’, and Flipkart is the one that topped the list of the most preferred workplace for Indians. The Walmart acquired company Flipkart is a home for over 14000 employees and is one of the fastest growing companies in India.

flipkart
Image Source: amarujala.com

The list from LinkedIn has ranked Amazon and OYO at the second and the third places, and the parent company of PayTm, One97, got shifted to fourth place from the third place which it held in the last year’s list.

LinkedIn, with the help of its 54 million users in India, shortlists the companies for ranking in the list and take four major criteria into account – interest in the company, engagement with employees, job demand and employee retention. Also, another requirement for the companies to get ranked into the list was to have employed over 500 employees as of February 1, 2018.

The evaluation of the best company was among the private companies operating in India, and any non-profit firm, government institutions and the recruiting companies were excluded from the competition. Also, LinkedIn and its parent company, Microsoft, were also not included in the contest to keep it fair.

Though Flipkart has been winning this race for the past three years, consecutively, as it has made to the top of the same list in 2016 and 2017, it is a great achievement for any company to be in a list of the most loved company by the employees.

Flipkart is one of the most successful startups in India and houses major e-commerce service providers including Myntra, Jabong and PhonePe, in India. It was also credited for having the fairest in working conditions and wages for ‘gig economy’ workers by an Oxford Internet Institute study.

This annual survey of the companies is done globally to determine the top companies to work for in India, Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, the U.K, and the U.S., among others. Following is the list of top 25 companies to work with according to LinkedIn:

  1. Flipkart (Walmart) – Internet
  2. Amazon – Internet
  3. Oyo – Hospitality
  4. One97 Communications (Paytm) – Internet
  5. Uber – Internet
  6. Swiggy – Internet
  7. Tata Consultancy Services – Information technology and services
  8. Zomato – Consumer services
  9. Alphabet – Internet
  10. Reliance Industries – Oil and energy
  11. EY – Accounting
  12. Adobe – Computer software
  13. Boston Consulting Group – Management consulting
  14. Yes Bank – Banking
  15. IBM – Information
  16. Daimler AG – Automotive technology and services
  17. Freshworks – Information technology and services
  18. Accenture – Information technology and services
  19. Ola – Internet
  20. ICICI Bank – Banking
  21. PwC India – Management consulting
  22. KPMG India – Management consulting
  23. Larsen & Toubro – Construction
  24. Oracle – Information technology and services
  25. Qualcomm – Wireless

Microsoft Removes its Unpopular eBook Category; Will Payback the Users for Inconvenience

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Most of the people won’t be aware that Microsoft owned an eBook store, which the tech giant has announced will be closed down soon. The company announced the news of removing its eBook division from its Microsoft Store on Tuesday, 2 April.

microsoft ebook
Image Source: kryptomoney.com

Microsoft introduced its eBook store back in April 2017 as a part of Windows 10 Creators Update. Like every other eBook Store, the Microsoft eBook Store also offered free eBooks and paid eBooks. But unlike the other eBook Stores, this eBook Store did not have any standalone app.

The company made its entry into the eBook business quite late, and the eBook Store itself could not add any value to the business of Microsoft, which can be a reason that the company has decided to discontinue its eBook division.

“Starting April 2, 2019, the books category in Microsoft Store will be closing. Unfortunately, this means that starting July 2019 your ebooks will no longer be available to read, but you’ll get a full refund for all book purchases.” the company stated in a post on its support page.

Microsoft has disclosed a few details over its support page, where it has mentioned that the users will be able to keep their eBooks in their Microsoft library and read the books till July this year. After July, the library will be removed, and any annotations made on the eBooks, in their eBook account on Microsoft’s eBook store will also disappear.

The company has offered refunds on every purchase the eBook Store users have made or for their preorders to buy books. The amount will be directly deposited to the payment methods the users used for the purchases or the amount will be credited to the user’s Microsoft Store account, which they can use for other purchases on the same platform.

Microsoft has also offered a $25 refund for the users who had annotations stored at the platform earlier than 2 April as an apology for the data loss and the inconvenience for the users. According to Microsoft, the refunds will start rolling out at the beginning of July 2019.

Charles Simonyi : American Computer Businessman & the Genius Behind Microsoft’s Word-Excel

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Microsoft has a history of great inventors and developers to its credit. One of such inventors is Charles Simonyi, who is the no. 40 employee of Microsoft and is also the man behind Microsoft’s most profitable products, including Word and Excel. Though he is famous for his inventions in the programming and development industry, he is also known as the only space traveller who has been to space twice. He is a philanthropist and a supporter of arts and science initiatives, too.

Early Life

Simonyi was born on 10 September 1948, in Budapest Hungary. His father Károly Simonyi was a Hungarian physicist and writer, who also worked as a professor of electrical engineering at the Technical University of Budapest.

Charles Simonyi
Image Source: hungarytoday

It was during his high school when he started working part-time as a night watchman at a computer laboratory and developed an interest in computers and programming. One of the computer engineers, from the lab, also started teaching him the basics of computers and by the end of his school, Simonyi mastered a few programming languages.

When he was 17, he moved to Denmark with a short-term visa and started working for A/S Regnecentralen. As a result, he got his visa extended, and he never went back to Hungary.

Career

In 1968, Simonyi moved to the US and joined the University of California, Berkeley, to pursue a B.S. degree in Engineering Mathematics & Statistics. As soon he completed his education, he got the opportunity to work with the Xerox PARC, where he worked in the development of one of the first personal computers Xerox Alto. And eventually, ended up inventing the first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text editor named Bravo, along with his co-worker Lampson.

In 1977, while working at Xerox, he received a PhD in computer science from Stanford University.

In 1981, Simonyi left Xerox and was hired by Microsoft to start an applications group at Microsoft. The first application he built was a WYSIWYG word processor, and Microsoft’s most valuable applications Word and Excel are the outcomes of the same application. It was Simonyi who introduced Microsoft with the concept of metaprogramming and OOPs which he learnt at Xerox. He also developed the “Hungarian notation convention” for naming variables, which was the part of his doctoral thesis and has been widely used inside Microsoft.

In 2002, Simonyi left Microsft to found Intentional Software, a company marketing the intentional programming concepts, along with co-founder Gregor Kiczales. The company works on developing designs tools and platforms, which programmers focus on capturing the intent of users and designers.

Simonyi was awarded the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for the industry-wide impact of his innovative work in information technology, in 2004. Microsoft acquired Intentional Software in April 2017.

Personal Life

Simonyi married 32 years younger Lisa Persdotter, in November 2008, in a personal ceremony. He lives in Medina, Washington, in his modern design villa, Villa Simonyi. He is fond of collecting paintings.

During 2006, Simonyi became interested in becoming a space tourist and took proper training for that. He signed agreements with the space tourism company, Space Adventures, Ltd., for a ten-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and rode a Soyuz TMA-10, on 7 April 2007, along with two Russian cosmonauts. On 26 March 2009, he went on his second trip to space aboard Soyuz TMA-14, becoming the only space traveller to have gone into space twice.

Simonyi and his wife both actively participate in philanthropy works, and in 2003 started a charitable organisation The Charles and Lisa Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, to which Simonyi has donated over millions of dollars. In January 2004, Simonyi also started the Charles Simonyi Fund.

As an inventor, Simonyi currently holds 11 patents to his name.

The Disc-less Xbox One S All-Digital Edition to be Available for Preorders from Mid-April

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The rumours of Xbox launching the disc-less console were already making rounds, starting from November last year. Apparently, the company has also confirmed the news that it is planning to launch a new Xbox One S without a disc drive in the coming month.

xbox
Image Source: onmsft.com

It is expected that the console may be cheaper than its predecessors, as the company is removing the expensive Blu-ray drive from the console. The console will rely on the digital downloads and Microsoft’s services like Game Pass.

Microsoft had launched the game pass service in 2017, and if go with the company claims, it has registered millions of users for the same in the past two years. The monthly plan for the game pass costs a $9.99, under which the users get access to 100 different games, including Rocket League, the Halo series and Gears of War 4, etc.

Allegedly, Microsoft will also provide options to the users to have pre-installed games on the console. Even the buyers can choose on which games they want to have on their consoles.

In recent times, the company has been publishing all the new games digitally. Even the popular game Fornite has never been released physically. So the disc-less console maybe another lead to the digitization of the gaming industry.

As there are already speculations, that the new console will be cheaper, the cost of the console is estimated between $200 and $250. It is also expected that the Xbox One S may have a greater emphasis on Microsoft’s xCloud streaming service.

According to a report from Windows, Central reports, Microsoft’s All-Digital Edition Xbox One S will be available for preorders, starting from mid-April and will be launched widely to be available for purchases in the stores from the month of May, before Microsoft’s upcoming E3 show takes place in June.

The new console may prove to be a milestone for Microsoft, as Microsoft will be the first company to launch a non-physical media home console.

Microsoft Unveils its New $3,500 Second-gen Holographic Headset HoloLens 2 at MWC 2019

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Starting on Sunday, a few tech giants have already showcased their upcoming technologies, in the Mobile World Congress ( MWC) 2019 happening in Barcelona, Spain, including LG that introduced its forthcoming foldable phone in the same event.

HOLOLENS-2
Image Source: wired.com

On the same league, Microsoft also revealed its new second generation mixed reality headset, HoloLens 2, the successor to 2016’s groundbreaking holographic headset. The device is an AI-backed pair of goggles, integrated with the company’s Azure cloud services. The new HoloLens 2 is more efficient, more advanced and more improved version of its predecessor.

The HploLens 2 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 Compute Platform and also has its own custom-built processing unit. The device comes with an iris authentication technology, such that it is ready to use as soon as the user puts it on. It offers a double field view, approximating 2,000 pixels per eye, maintaining the holographic density of 47 pixels per degree of sight. The headset projects across a 100-degree swath, which is almost double as of its predecessor, projecting to a wider viewing area. It is built with the microelectromechanical system (MEMS) display technology, providing the 2K display for each eye.

The device boasts a 5-channel microphone array, and spatial built-in hardware is employed to the device, which controls the audio I/O of the device. The device is embedded with an advanced ToF sensor, through which the headset allows the users to interact with a hologram with their hands. Now the user does not need to use the virtual reality icons, rather they can simply move their hands to control the HoloLens. It also includes a 12-megapixel RGB camera, to facilitate video conferencing.

The device uses the USB-C for charging and includes a pretty generic 2×2 802.11ac wireless radio. It also offers Remote Rendering which processes the holograms of up to 100 million polygons, through the Azure-powered service, serving as the external GPU for the HoloLens 2.

The new HoloLens 2 is more immersive and more comfortable than its predecessor. The cost of the headset is set to be $3,500 (around Rs. 2,49,000), and currently, is only available on the Microsoft e-shop, for the citizens of United States, Japan, China, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Australia, and New Zealand. According to Kipman, Microsoft’s technical fellow for AI and mixed reality, the device is not for the gamers or the knowledge workers but is specially designed for the enterprise customers, workers who fix gear shifts and work on oil rigs, and the military personnel.