As location data grows, Microsoft partners with mapping companies to build next world graph

- Kevin Dallas - Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Business Development
Company leaders speak from the stage

Location is essential in understanding the world around us, and making sense of complex location data has enormous potential to transform lives, cities and industries. The journey starts with an ecosystem that leverages the heritage and first-class expertise and technologies of our partners. As a step in this direction, TomTom, HERE and Esri — all titans in mapping technology — joined us Wednesday at the Microsoft Technology Center in Detroit … Read more »

Artificial intelligence takes on machine reading, Christmas carols and eye disease – Weekend Reading: Dec. 30 edition

- Susanna Ray
Rangan Majumder, partner group program manager with Microsoft’s Bing search engine division.

Artificial intelligence (AI) made incredible strides in 2016, and the growth appears set to accelerate as we enter the New Year. A team of Microsoft researchers has released a dataset of 100,000 questions and answers that other AI researchers can use – for free – in their quest to create systems that can read and answer questions as well as a human. The MS MARCO dataset is based on anonymized … Read more »

Advancing AI on several fronts, building the next world graph with mapping companies and making the perfect match for your new 4K TV — Weekend Reading: Dec. 16 edition

- Athima Chansanchai
Microsoft employee Nitish Kumar guides a kayak across the water toward a sunset

We’re getting closer to the end of the year, but the news has yet to slow down at Microsoft. In this edition of Weekend Reading, we share big developments in artificial intelligence, a new ecosystem of intelligent location-based services and how compatible Xbox One S is with 4K TV. On Tuesday, Microsoft introduced Zo, the next evolution in chatbots; shared how Cortana, in partnership with Harman Kardon, will be present … Read more »

Microsoft and AI: Introducing social chatbot Zo, Cortana takes on new roles and more

- Microsoft Corporate Blogs
microsoft-ai

On Tuesday, Microsoft introduced Zo, the next evolution in chatbots; shared how Cortana, in partnership with Harman Kardon, will be present in a new way in your home; and announced that more than 67,000 developers are now using Microsoft’s Bot Framework and Cognitive Services. “We’re really moving from a world where we have to understand computers to a world where they will understand us and our intent, from machine-centric to … Read more »

Microsoft Ventures: Making the long bet on AI + people

- Nagraj Kashyap - Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Ventures

Today, I’m excited to share another significant commitment by Microsoft to democratize AI: a new Microsoft Ventures fund for investment in AI companies focused on inclusive growth and positive impact on society. I also have an update about the growth of our overall portfolio of companies. AI holds great promise to augment human capabilities and improve society by tackling some of the world’s biggest problems. Our recently announced partnership with … Read more »

Celebrating Computer Science Education Week, sharing predictions and empowering professionals — Weekend Reading: Dec. 9 edition

- Vanessa Ho
Black-and-white portraits of 17 female Microsoft researchers

It was an exciting week at Microsoft, with STEM education support, LinkedIn news, WinHEC in China and predictions for the new year. Let’s catch up. To celebrate Computer Science Education Week and counteract the dearth of women in computing fields, 17 female researchers at Microsoft shared their predictions for 2017 and 2027. They included Kalika Bali in India, who says speech and language technology applications will become more multilingual next … Read more »

Microsoft and LinkedIn begin journey to empower professionals around the world to achieve more

- Microsoft Corporate Blogs
Satya Nadella and Jeff Weiner

On Thursday, Microsoft announced it has completed the acquisition of LinkedIn, the world’s largest and most valuable professional network. Plans for the acquisition were announced last June. The acquisition brings together “the world’s leading professional cloud and the world’s leading professional network to deliver more connected, productive and intelligent experiences for our members and customers,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an Influencer article on LinkedIn. “I’m more confident than … Read more »

Microsoft 2017 event lineup

- Chris Capossela - Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

2016 has been a year of exciting growth and innovation here at Microsoft and for our customers. Business leaders, IT professionals, developers and our partners are embracing the cloud and new technologies like artificial intelligence, IoT and mixed reality to drive digital transformation. As we look toward 2017, I’d like to share an update on Microsoft’s premier conferences for the year ahead. As always, our goal is to provide high-quality … Read more »

Microsoft-LinkedIn deal cleared by regulators, opening new doors for people around the world

- Brad Smith - President and Chief Legal Officer

It was roughly six months ago, on June 13, that we announced that Microsoft would acquire LinkedIn.  At that time, we said that we aimed to close the deal by the end of the year. Today, the European Commission announced that it has cleared the acquisition. As a result, we’ve now obtained all of the regulatory approvals needed to complete the acquisition, and the deal will close in the coming … Read more »

Helping efforts to shelter homeless families, address world hunger and recycle used grease into fine soaps — Weekend Reading: Dec. 2 edition

- Athima Chansanchai
Amber and Chris stand on Aurora with their three children, –including a 17 day-old baby (in stroller) –after they were told Mary's Place did not have space for them. They were later allowed into the shelter after staff shuffled around people between their facilities. (Photo by Joshua Trujillo, Starbucks)

After the Thanksgiving holiday, we came back to work to discover news about Microsoft’s participation in a $3 million fundraising effort to shelter homeless families, how quantum computing can help end world hunger and how one couple has figured out how to convert used cooking oil into soap. Microsoft joined The Starbucks Foundation, the Schultz Family Foundation and many other businesses to support the annual No Child Sleeps Outside campaign by Mary’s Place. They’re part of … Read more »

Talking DevOps, hardcore air hockey and more with Donovan Brown

- Vanessa Ho
Spoof movie poster for "The Man in the Black Shirt" starring Donovan Brown

Donovan Brown was a new technical seller at Microsoft struggling with a demo when he sent the email that changed his life. “I had completely hosed the VM [virtual machine] I was using,” Brown recalled. He sent a desperate, cold-call email to a technical evangelist for help, which led to an invite for Brown to demo on stage, which led to a meteoric career rise. Three years later, the once-unknown … Read more »