VentureBeat spoke to Mohak Shroff, LinkedIn’s SVEP of engineering, about the switch to public cloud. Following Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016, a move to Azure has seemed a likely scenario for the company. However, Shroff insists it was never a part of original discussions between Microsoft and LinkedIn. He says Microsoft has lived up to its acquisition promise of allowing LinkedIn to operate independently. “We’ve had conversations with leaders on the Azure team....

Of course, Angry Birds is hardly anything new and is even a tired concept by now. However, the game is still a mobile giant and perhaps the most famous mobile game. It is also an ideal candidate for showcasing gaming on a new product. Rovio and Resolution Games announced their new mixed reality focused Angry Birds FPS: First Person Slingshot. The developers say their game will be launched later this fall....

In a blog post today, Microsoft has discussed the new partner for the first time. Stryker is known for selling surgical equipment such as drills, forceps, and hip replacement systems. However, the company also builds and sells equipment for operating rooms. By using HoloLens, the company will be able to help hospitals optimize the arrangement of rooms. Microsoft points out that this is traditionally not a simple task. Operating rooms are used by numerous medical practitioners....

The company points out ongoing ice phishing attacks highlight “the durability of these threats as well as the need for security fundamentals to be built into related future systems and frameworks.” According to the team, threat actors use various dynamic phishing techniques when targeting blockchain and Web3. For example, attacks often focus on access the cryptographic key for a wallet. If the attack fools the user and the actor gains access, they can take control of the victim’s digital assets....

If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft 365, it is a new platform that serves as a unified subscription service. Announced in July, it combines Office 365, Windows 10, and other Microsoft services into a single subscription package. At Ignite, Microsoft made 365 the focus of its keynote event. The company announced two new packages for the service, F1 and Education. Microsoft also announced new personalization features for the platform. The company says these features allow customers to “discover people and information from across your organization and beyond”....

Sharing is a major part of the Microsoft 365 experience. As more people work from home and businesses seek more fluidity between services, the Share dialog on Office apps is getting a lot of use. In fact, Microsoft says it is accessed around 400 million times per month. That means the upcoming updates Microsoft has planned extra important. According to the company, it will now be easier to choose and edit permissions, and users can access a new Share menu with more options....

Microsoft 365 Personal and Microsoft 365 Family were announced during a virtual event as Microsoft continues to avoid physical gatherings amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Unfortunately, the Surface Book 3 was not announced as many predicted it would be. During the event, Microsoft discussed some of the apps that are coming to the new plans. These are the tools and features that will differentiate Personal and Family from the enterprise versions of Microsoft 365....

“The addition of new features to AccountGuard provides new ways to protect online accounts for political parties, candidates and their staff, health care workers, human rights defenders, journalists and certain other customers who are at greatest risk from nation-state hackers.” AccountGuard was launched in August 2017. Available in Office 365, the service helps Microsoft Account holders running elections campaigns, in political committees, or politician staff. The tool provides more threat monitoring capabilities by regularly monitoring accounts for security breaches....

That is not the only new addition. Personal Shopping Assistant has new email and Facebook sharing options. Of course, Microsoft has also rolled out the obvious unnamed bug fixes and general improvements. A new Shopping Scenario of the Week feature shows users how to best use the Edge extension. Users can get the update or download the extension through the Windows Store. The addition of many more merchants is a welcome one....

Analyst firm Moody’s Investor Service made the prediction. The company says a push towards portable devices will harm the PC industry as a whole, but certain market segments will do well. Microsoft’s Surface devices fit nicely into that growth area. Moody’s points out the company’s Cloud business and Surface sales have been good during 2017. That is expected to be a trend heading into 2018 and will last throughout the year....

On paper, MAREA delivers reliable and super-fast connections for cloud and online services, giving its customers rapid data speeds. It is capable of data speeds of 160 terabits per second of bandwidth, which in perspective is around 16 million times faster than the average home connection. Or so it was believed. A recent experiment using 16QAM modulation resulted in record data transfer speeds of 26.2 Terabits per second. This was a 20 percent improvement compared to the 20Tbps the cable had previously achieved....

The introduction of Azure IoT Edge is Microsoft’s aiming to change the cloud. It is also a culmination of the company’s efforts to connect Azure directly with data from Internet of Things devices. Microsoft says these devices are important as individual computing resources, despite their small size. With that in mind, Azure IoT Edge allows Microsoft’s cloud application to use the compute power from IoT devices. This allows Azure Functions to be executed on IoT endpoints at the data collection store....

“As the cloud of choice for the enterprise, with over 95% of the Fortune 500 using Azure, we have always been first and foremost focused on helping our customers thrive on their digital transformation journeys,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and AI division. “With Oracle’s enterprise expertise, this alliance is a natural choice for us as we help our joint customers accelerate the migration of enterprise applications and databases to the public cloud....

We’ve heard the rumblings of this for a while, with reports in May that a version was in testing. It comes from a collaboration with CETC and is aimed at state-run enterprises and local government. Enhanced Security in Windows 10 China Government Edition As you would expect, there are several tweaks to make it suitable for that audience. Microsoft is letting China use its own encryption and turning off its controversial telemetry....

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the event will continue Microsoft’s recent output by being all virtual. The company says the What’s Next for Windows will take place on June 24 at 11am ET: “Save the date for June 24, where you will hear from Microsoft executives, including CEO Satya Nadella and Chief Product Officer Panos Panay.” With Nadella and Panay leading the event, this is going to be a big show with some major announcements....

Microsoft Bing now provides in-depth travel information thanks to AI technology directly integrated into the search engine. When a user searches a travel location or destination, the AI-driven results highlight information on areas of interest, flights, hotels, car rentals, and available vacations for the area. This is shown in an overview page that provides descriptions of the locations. There are also travel stories from other users and similar destinations, as well as things to see and do....

If you are unfamiliar with Windows Indexer (you’re not alone), it acts as the inner workings for File Explorer. Most of us are probably fairly untidy with our folder management on Windows 10. A folder is created, it may go into another folder, and slowly folders spread. Indeed, there are files all over the OS, from different explorer locations to the desktop. While these files are many and spread around, Windows search function needs to be able to surface them quickly....

In its announcement, Microsoft says it will make the offer available for Cloud Solution Providers. From September, customers purchasing Windows 10 Enterprise will get a subscription offering for virtualization. For customers who do not need virtual offerings, Microsoft will continue to sell Windows 10 Enterprise E3. “For some business customers, Windows virtualization is the solution that best meets their productivity, security, and IT infrastructure needs,” Microsoft explains. “This may mean PCs connecting to Windows client VMs running on dedicated or multi-tenant hardware enabling users to freely move from device to device, through to scenarios where a particular app or data set requires an additional layer of separation from the end-user device achieved through virtualization....

Smart cards are not efficient in authenticating on mobile devices. With enterprise moving towards more mobility, high security for users when accessing mobile hardware is important. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed guidelines for Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials within Special Publication (SP) 800-157. Essentially, this is a document that offers technical standards on how customers with physical smart cards can gain certification on mobile devices, including S/MIME signing and encryption....

A new ability to “Make your device passwordless” has been added as a sing-in options in the Windows Settings app. Insiders can head to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in to see the new options, which allows users to switch Microsoft Account logins to Fingerprint, PIN only, or Windows Hello Face recognition. Microsoft says the feature is currently only available to a “small portion” of Windows Insiders. More users will receive the functionality in a week’s time....