Kiran Upadhyay

Microsoft acquired the popular mobile to do list application Wunderlist back in 2015, and now it’s preparing users for its eventual demise with the release of its new application “To-Do,” announced today. The new app was built by the team behind Wunderlist, and will bring in the favorite elements of that app in the months ahead, Microsoft says. The company also added that it won’t shut down Wunderlist until it’s confident that it has “incorporated the best of Wunderlist into To-Do.” In case you’re hoping Wunderlist will get some sort of reprieve, Microsoft makes its forthcoming demise pretty clear. Stating its plans in black-and-white: “we will retire Wunderlist,” it says in a blog post. In the meantime, Microsoft is encouraging Wunderlist users to make the switch by offering an importer that will bring in your lists and to-dos from Wunderlist into To-Do, where those items will now be available in other Microsoft products, like Exchange and Outlook. Microsoft’s plans for To...

The Microsoft Office lineup is getting a new addition today: Microsoft Planner, team collaboration software that lets you visually organize plans, assign tasks, share files, chat and more. The new app, first introduced into testing last fall, enters a competitive space which includes pro software like Atlassian’s JIRA Core, as well as other easy-to-use tools from startups like Trello and Asana. Very much like Trello, Planner also utilizes the concept of “Boards” to keep work organized. Within each Board are individual Cards that can have their own due dates, attachments, categories and conversations. These Cards can have documents or photos attached to make it easier to see – at a glance – what that Card is about, and the cards can be organized into columns called “Buckets” which can also be color-coded and prioritized. Another key aspect to the software is the “Hub” where you can track the overall progress of the plans, see who’s on time and who’s behind, and filter down to see...

Air conditioning is one of the biggest costs in running data centers. Traditional data centers use as much electricity for cooling as they do for running the actual IT equipment. Accordingly, much of the innovation seen in the high-density cloud server space has been to develop data centers that are cheaper to cool and hence cheaper to run. With its much higher heat capacity than air, water has become the coolant of choice, pumped around and between the computers to transport their heat outside. Microsoft has demonstrated an experimental prototype of a new approach: instead of pumping water around the data center, put the data center in the water. Project Natick is a research project to build and run a data center that's submerged in the ocean. The company built an experimental vessel, named the Leona Philpot, and deployed it on the seafloor about 1 kilometer off the Pacific coast. It ran successfully from August to November last year. Read More

According to The Verge’s Tom Warren, Windows 10 is done, having reached RTM status with build number 10240. The timing is not surprising. Microsoft will release Windows 10 to its testing community on July 29, followed by volume partners and, after, the general public through an update process. RTM builds, in contrast, are designed for equipment manufacturers, who need the code ahead of time to prep new machines. Dell, for example, is committed to selling Windows 10 PCs on the very first day, the 29th, that the code is live. Windows 10 is a dramatic departure from prior Windows versions. The new operating system is designed for constant update, with Microsoft pushing the concept of it being more like a service than a discrete piece of software. The company is also offering free upgrades for a year to most PC users, in hopes of creating an updraft in use that can be leveraged into attracting more developer attention. Oddly enough we are both at the near end, and nearly at the ...

Microsoft just announced that Xbox One will soon be able to play Xbox 360 games, which gives it backwards compatibility with the previous generation hardware for the first time. Microsoft’s Phil Spencer announced the news on stage at the E3 2015 Xbox keynote today, and the crowd went wild. This will work with over 100 titles beginning this holiday season, with 100 more to follow later. “Our goal is to deliver the largest games library on Xbox One,” Spencer said. Microsoft is developing patches for individual games, and this will work both for online titles and retail discs (with a download). Backwards compatibility has been a top ask from Xbox One owners in the past, so it’s obviously great news to see this happening. It’ll also mean people won’t have to re-buy their old favorites, something which has been spurring many HD remakes. Today, there’s already an initial set of backwards compatible titles available for Xbox preview program members.

Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and the engineers on the WebKit project today announced that they have teamed up to launch WebAssembly, a new binary format for compiling applications for the web. The web thrives on standards and, for better or worse, JavaScript is its programming language. Over the years, however, we’ve seen more and more efforts that allow developers to work around some of the limitations of JavaScript by building compilers that transpile code in other languages to JavaScript. Some of these projects focus on adding new features to the language (like Microsoft’s TypeScript) or speeding up JavaScript (like Mozilla’s asm.js project). Now, many of these projects are starting to come together in the form of WebAssmbly. The new format is meant to allow programmers to compile their code for the browser (currently the focus is on C/C++, with other languages to follow), where it is then executed inside the JavaScript engine. Instead of having to parse the full code, though,...

Microsoft today announced that it is partnering with a consortium of telecom companies to build a new transpacific undersea cable that will connect a number of points in China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan with the U.S. West Coast (or beautiful Hillsboro, OR — the home of the Hillsboro Hops — to be precise). Microsoft says the New Cross Pacific (NCP) Cable Network will provide faster connections for its customers and help it compete on cloud cost. In addition, Microsoft also today announced deals with Hibernia to offer faster connectivity between Canada, Ireland and the U.K., and AcquaComms to use its upcoming AEConnect cable between Shirley, NY and the West Coast of Ireland (with backhaul connections to the U.K.). The Hibernia Express cable, the first new transatlantic cable in twelve years, will launch in September. It’s partly optimized for very low-latency operations (the promise is under 60 milliseconds between New York and London) and will be able to handle up to 10 Tbps ...

Microsoft is moving to a different kind of software model with Windows 10. A developer evangelist noted that Windows 10 would be the “last version of Windows” during the company’s Ignite conference this week, and a follow-up confirmation from an official Microsoft spokesperson revealed (via the Telegraph) that, indeed, updates to Windows after that release would follow an incremental path that would lead to ongoing improvements, instead of splashy, more occasional numbered launches. Arguably, it’s a change that has been progressively happening ever since the easy and affordable availability of Internet connectivity came to the personal computer. Software companies have been releasing continuous updates for their apps, operating systems and firmware via Internet connection gradually over time since it became practical to do so. But Microsoft’s decision to fully embrace this marks a big change in the way it conceives, markets and sells its desktop OS. Other companies have already fu...

We knew that Internet Explorer was dead. We knew a successor was coming. We just didn’t know the official name, beyond the “Project Spartan” placeholder. Now we do: Microsoft’s new browser is called Microsoft Edge. Just announced at the company’s build conference, Edge will be the primary/default browser built into Windows 10. Details are still light on of what’s unique to Edge, but here’s what we know: It has built-in Cortana support. It has built-in reader, note-taking and sharing features. The design focuses on simplicity and minimalism. The rendering engine is called EdgeHTML. While no full-size screenshots have been released yet, here’s what we could grab from the demo screen as it debuted:

Microsoft just demonstrated one of the intriguing possibilities from its single platform/multiple form factors approach for Windows 10: the ability to use your phone as your desktop computer. In contrast to Apple’s “Continuity,” which aims to make moving between phone, tablet and desktop seamless, Microsoft’s Continuum instead has the phone you’re using adapt its interface depending on the context you’re using it. In an on-stage demo, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore connected a phone to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, and instantly the UI he was using adapted to the new inputs and outputs. While the operating system interface we saw on screen didn’t look exactly like Windows 10 on a laptop or desktop computer, the applications shown (especially PowerPoint) did. Instead of making minor adjustments to a presentation using a 5-inch screen, you can simply connect to an HDMI-compatible monitor and have all the space and tools you would on a full PC. Belfiore pointed out that the feature re...

Microsoft today announced a new service in its Azure database lineup during its Build developer conference keynote today. The Azure SQL Data Warehouse, which will go into public preview in June, is meant to give businesses access to an elastic petabyte-scale, data warehouse-as-a-service offering that can scale according to their needs. With SQL Data Warehouse, enterprises can ensure that they only pay for the usage they need and when they need it, Microsoft’s corporate VP for its data platform T.K. “Ranga” Rengarajan told me earlier this week. Customers are billed for their Azure blob storage, as well as the hourly compute rates they incur while working with the data. Because it separates compute and storage, users only pay for the queries they need. This means a business can aggregate all of its data and only pays for storage until it needs to run a quarterly report over this information, for example. Via

Today as expected, Microsoft announced that developers will be able to more easily bring their Android applications to Windows devices. The company said developers will be able to “reuse nearly all the Java and C++ code from an Android phone app to create apps for phones running Windows 10.” Developers will also be able to recycle their Objective-C apps for iOS using new tools in Visual Studio. King, for example, used these tools to bring Candy Crush Saga to Windows Phone. During today’s demo, Microsoft was relatively light on the details of how this will work. Tomorrow’s Build keynote, which is traditionally heavy on on-stage coding, will likely provide us with more details. Microsoft has suffered from a chronic shortage of applications on its Windows Phone and Windows 8.x platforms. The issue has been built by negative reinforcement: A lack of apps in the early days of Windows 8 likely dissuaded users from frequenting the store, limiting downloads and, thus, developer attent...

Microsoft today launched Office Lens, a mobile document scanner app that works with OneNote, for iOS and Android smartphones. The app, which allows users to snap photos of paper documents, receipts, business cards, menus, whiteboards, sticky notes and more, was first launched a year ago as an application designed only for Windows Phone devices. But in conjunction with the company’s newer strategy to embrace other platforms outside its own, the app has now arrived on Apple’s App Store and on Android phones, where it will sit alongside dozens of other Microsoft applications, including Office and Outlook. Office Lens’ core functionality itself is not all that different from a number of document-scanning applications on the mobile app stores today, like Scanner Pro, TinyScan Pro, Scanbot and more. And much like Evernote’s Scannable app, for example, it exists more as an add-on or complement to a larger, more prominent product – in Microsoft’s case, OneNote. Like most scanner apps,...

Microsoft wasn’t kidding when it promised to ship Windows 10 builds more quickly. Today, less than two weeks after its last iteration, the company has kicked out a new build that contains an important new feature: Project Spartan. The new build’s number is 10047 10049, up a total of 6 from the preceding release. If you are currently on the “fast ring” of the Windows Insider program, say hello to the new code. For the rest of you on the more conservative build cycles, wait for the dust to settle. You can, of course, change your ring setting and get the new tools more quickly. (Note: This is not the upcoming build that will support a host more Windows Phone handsets. This build is nearly all about Project Spartan.) Project Spartan, the current, public codename of Microsoft’s new browser, will replace its venerable predecessor not all at once, but in steps. This fact has caused some confusion. What can Project Spartan do? It comes with Cortana, the company’s digital assistant th...

Here’s a partnership that may come as a surprise to many: Microsoft and Google are working together to help make Angular 2 — the next (and somewhat controversial) version of Google’s JavaScript web app framework — better. Angular has been using its own AtScript superset of Microsoft’s TypeScript for a while now. TypeScript is Microsoft’s attempt at extending JavaScript with features like type annotations, generics and modules. Going forward, the two languages will converge. Angular 2 will be written in TypeScript and developers will be able to write their Angular 2 applications in this language,too. The AtScript language made its debut last October, but it looks like the AtScript name will be retired in favor of TypeScript. Angular, at various times in its development, was written in plain JavaScript, Google’s own Dart language and AtScript (there are still separate Dart and JavaScript versions of Angular 1.x today). AtScript added features like introspection, as well as field...

Microsoft has a little problem and it’s time we all admitted it. We have to gather the family in the living room, sit down Microsoft in the comfy chair and have a little heart to heart. Everybody can see it, except Microsoft — and it could be time for an intervention. It’s the keyboard thing, Microsoft. Enough already. Design your software to take advantage of a touch screen. Let the keyboard go, dude. Steve Jobs once said, it was a mistake to think of the tablet as simply a ‘keyboardless laptop.’ What I think he meant by that is that you need to design software to take advantage of the fact it has a touch screen, to rethink the entire workflow, not simply move the same software to the tablet. Think. Be creative. Apparently, Microsoft missed that — or deliberately chose to ignore it. The key feature of the Surface tablet? It has a keyboard. Look at the Surface commercial with everyone snapping their keyboards to their Surface tablets. It was all about having a keyboard. If w...

Software giant Microsoft is in the process of trying to reinvent itself, and part of that reinvention evidently involves acquiring startups that have created products that compete with its own. The latest acquisition is calendar app maker Sunrise, which Microsoft shelled out at least $100 million for according to our sources. Sunrise has a suite of calendar products for mobile and desktop users that connects with and consolidates calendars from different providers. It’s available on the iPhone, iPad, Android devices, and on the Mac App Store, as well as offering a web client. Users can access their calendars from Google, iCloud, and Microsoft Exchange, as well as connecting to a wide range of other third-party apps. That cross-device and cross-platform support has helped it gain significant traction among users. The purchase furthers Microsoft’s push into supporting the platforms of rival technology firms. Microsoft made waves when it released a touch-friendly version of O...

Microsoft has just announced the first pricing information for Windows 10 at its preview event today. The biggest news is that the new OS will be completely free for current Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 users for its first year of availability—after that time period has expired, OS upgrades will presumably need to be paid for as they are currently (though Microsoft was less than clear on this point, it made no mention of a paid, Office 365-style subscription for Windows upgrades). The Windows 10 upgrade for Windows Phone 8.1 users will also be free. "Once a device is upgraded to Windows 10, we'll be keeping it current for the supported lifetime of the device," said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the Operating Systems Group. "With Windows 10, we think of Windows as a service... The question 'what version are you running' will cease to make sense." Windows 7 and Windows 8.x collectively run on well over half of the world's Windows PCs, ...

For the second time in as many months, I feel like I've taken a step into the world of science fiction—and for the second time in as many months, it's Microsoft who put me there. After locking away all my recording instruments and switching to the almost prehistoric pen and paper, I had a tantalizingly brief experience of Microsoft's HoloLens system, a headset that creates a fusion of virtual images and the real world. While production HoloLens systems will be self-contained and cord-free, the developer units we used had a large compute unit worn on a neck strap and an umbilical cord for power. Production hardware will automatically measure the interpupillary distance and calibrate itself accordingly; the dev kits need this to be measured manually and punched in. The dev kits were also heavy, unwieldy, fragile, and didn't really fit on or around my glasses, making them uncomfortable to boot. But even with this clumsy hardware, the experience was nothing short of ...

TechCrunch went hands-on with Windows 10 to show you the best of the latest build of Microsoft’s new operating system. To make it extra pure, we put Windows 10 through its paces on a Surface Pro 3 Windows 10 is Microsoft’s effort to build an operating system that can run on any screen size and accept various modes of input depending on where it is deployed. In the video, keep an eye out for the section discussing how the operating system flips between tablet mode and keyboard mode as an example of that work. Cortana, the company’s digital assistant tool, made a noisy entrance into the world of Windows, along with a new Xbox application that caters to the gamer set. If Windows 10 fails to attract developer interest, Microsoft may not be able to make a successful pitch to the current and coming generations of developers. And if it loses their attention, the company’s platform products will slowly deflate. The platform wars are existential after all.