Developers can now download preview versions of Visual Studio 2013 and the next release of the .NET Framework. Microsoft unveiled the new software today at its Build conference, along with the preview of Windows 8.1.

As we reported earlier this month, "Visual Studio 2013 will have even more application life-cycle management features, including cloud-based load testing and the display of information such as unit test failures and recent changes directly within the code editor. Git support will be built-in." The Visual Studio downloads page was updated today with a preview version of this major release.

In addition, the third update to Visual Studio 2012 was released. This is mostly focused on bug fixes, but it's an important update "if you need to be able to 'round-trip' projects between Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2013, or if you want to run Visual Studio 2012 on the Windows 8.1 Preview," Microsoft Developer Division VP S. Somasegar wrote in a blog post.

Microsoft also said at its Build keynote that there are thousands of new APIs in Windows 8.1.

A preview version of .NET 4.5.1 is available now as part of the Visual Studio 2013 download. ".NET 4.5.1 is a highly-compatible, in-place update for .NET 4.5 that ships as part of Windows 8.1," Somasegar wrote. "The .NET 4.5.1 Preview installs as part of Visual Studio 2013 Preview, is included in all installations of Windows 8.1 Preview, and is also available for separate installation into Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and the corresponding Windows Server releases."

In Microsoft's .NET Framework blog, the company explained that the release focuses on developer productivity and application performance. Under the developer productivity category, improvements include "x64 edit and continue; Async-aware debugging; Managed return value inspection; ADO.NET idle connection resiliency; [and] improvements in Windows Store app development." Application performance improvements include "ASP.NET app suspension; On-demand large object heap compaction; Multi-core JIT improvements; [and] consistent performance before and after servicing the .NET Framework."

The new Edit and Continue feature lets developers change running .NET code in 64-bit processes even when stopped at a breakpoint in the debugger. They can do this without having to restart the process and start the debugging experience over again, Somasegar wrote.

"Much of our work in this release of .NET is on improving the debugging and general diagnostics experience for developers," Somasegar continued. "As just one example, .NET developers have been asking for a feature that’s been available to C++ developers for a while: viewing method return values in the debugger, even if those values are never stored into any declared variable. With .NET 4.5.1 and Visual Studio 2013, this capability is now built-in."

At E3 last week, Microsoft packed a basketball arena full of journalists and fans to talk about its next-gen console, the Xbox One. So, today’s announcement that the company is reversing its DRM policies for the One was a bit puzzling. Why couldn’t it say this then?

Apparently, it was a very recent decision. Xbox Chief Product Officer Mark Whitten toldAllThingsD that the company had been listening to consumer feedback since the product’s unveiling in May, but that the E3 presentation was “the first time we had a chance to really lay out our program.”

“E3 was the first time when we felt like we’d had a chance to tell our complete story and have people see what they liked and what they didn’t like,” Whitten said.

Put another way: Despite all the non-gaming home media features baked into the Xbox One, Microsoft knows that gamers still butter its bread. That E3 presentation was actuallyless “complete” than the unveiling event because it was all about games, games, games.

Microsoft catered to gamers and ignored big features like the bundled Kinect and TV integration in its onstage E3 presentation, but the fans were still angry. Today’s announcement doesn’t make Redmond look good in the short term, but it cuts its losses before those fans have a chance to sway publishers’ minds or avoid the Xbox One on store shelves.

In other words, if this policy change had to happen at some point, it’s probably smarter for Microsoft to pull the trigger and take the hit now, rather than endangering the One’s launch by dawdling as the anti-DRM winds consistently blew in its face.

Whitten promised that both new DRM policies — the removal of online “check-ins” every 24 hours and the restrictions on physical disc sharing — will not change again. However, third-party developers will still have to choose for themselves if and how much their games will require constant Internet connectivity.

Interestingly, an anonymous (and unverified) forum post, allegedly by an Xbox engineer, predicted a policy change last week. Mandatory online check-ins, the supposed engineer wrote, were “the PoR (plan of record), but I expect it to change after the e3 clusterfuck.”

Microsoft previously declined to comment on the post.

Turns out that Microsoft’s Windows in the Classroom Surface Experience Project, a 10,000 Surface RT giveaway targeted at educators, was just the beginning of the company’s efforts to push its new tablet into the education market. The company is now offering significant discounts on Surface RT to schools around the world.

On Monday Microsoft said it would cut the price of the 32GB Surface RT in half for any school that purchases the tablet between June 17 and August 31, 2013. So for the next few months, K-12 and higher education institutions can purchase the $499 Surface RT for just $199, the $599 Surface RT with Touch Cover for $249, and the $629 Surface RT with Type Cover for $289. With no minimum order requirement, that’s a potentially compelling promotion for a tablet that ships with Office — particularly for schools dealing with death-by-a-thousand-cuts budget crisis.

According to Microsoft, the rationale for the discount is its “long tradition of offering special pricing to education customers,” and a “mission in education … to help schools, students and educators realize their full potential.”

But more practically, it’s an easy way to juice sales and whittle down inventory of a tablet that’s been slow to gain traction in the consumer market. According to research firm IDC, Microsoft shipped about 900,000 Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets in the first quarter of this year.

That’s a piddling amount. And if Microsoft’s first Surface RT production runs were as large as rumors say — three million to five million in the fourth quarter — then the company may be sitting on some serious inventory. That alone may be enough to justify offering a fire-sale discount like this to the education market, particularly if there are some next-generation Surface tablets in the pipeline.

But there’s likely another rationale at work here as well. To compete with a products like the iPad, Surface needs evangelists, people who will use it daily. People who will travel with it, take it to cafes and parks. People who will bring it out into the world. And the education market is potentially a wellspring of such folk.

If Microsoft’s new education promotion works as intended, we’ll see more Surface units in the wild. And that’s important. Because it’s hard to accept Surface as an alternative to the iPad or Galaxy Tab if you don’t see other people using it. Microsoft’s new Surface ads poking fun at Siri and the iPad are great. But they’re sticks and rags in a world in which you board a flight from San Francisco to New York and there are dozens of passengers with their faces obscured by iPads and Kindles and nary a Surface in site.

Marketing only goes so far. Microsoft desperately needs to put Surface in more hands. Maybe this new initiative will help it to do that.

When Microsoft and Best Buy this week announced the forthcoming launch of 600 Windows Stores within its retail locations, much of the initial analysis centered around what this means for Microsoft’s retail strategy. As fellow AllThingsD editor John Paczkowski explained, the partnership for Microsoft “is a savvy move — an easy way to dramatically increase its retail footprint via an established big-box player.”

But what about Best Buy, the retail giant looking hard for a turnaround, as it tries to fend off Amazon and other online-only electronics sellers?

First, from a financial point of view, it seems to be a no-brainer.

“If you offer a retailer some money, they typically will take it,” Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at The NPD Group, said in an interview.

The two companies did not release any financial details of the deal, but it’s a safe bet that Microsoft is spending handsomely to help redesign Best Buy’s PC departments into Windows Stores and train 1,200 Best Buy employees to man the new outlets.

Second, the appearance of the new stores appears to be fresher, a bit of an upgrade from the current Best Buy experience. The devices sold within them might be the same, but new wrapping won’t hurt.

Third, adding Microsoft to a roster of mini-stores that already includes Apple and Samsung may push other consumer electronics manufacturers to pursue a similar deal with Best Buy. A brand like Sony, for example, has the breadth of devices that could make sense for a mini-store, Baker told me.

Fourth, it’s a vote of confidence — albeit from a company with its own issues — that brick-and-mortar retail still matters. If you want to take a customer away from a competitor, you do it in the real, physical world.

With these moves, Best Buy is starting to look a little bit more like a tech mall within a store — a setup not uncommon overseas in cases where retailers essentially lease out part of the store to a manufacturer. The difference here, according to Baker, is that Best Buy is still maintaining most of the control, such as deciding how their floors are stocked, making it less likely that the new arrangements will hurt the Best Buy brand.

Will the branded stores within Best Buy alone lead to that massive turnaround? Of course not. As it is, we already know the company has work to do when it comes to its digital presence.

But the new look of the mini-stores — the Windows Store being the most recent example — brings some necessary excitement to a company desperately in need of some. And that certainly counts for something.

Microsoft today announced a number of updates to its Azure Mobile Services that include support for Git source control, custom APIs and Android push notifications through Google Cloud Messaging to its mobile backend service. Azure users now also get a free 20MB SQL database for mobile services and web sites for 12 months.

The highlight of today’s update is clearly support for Android push notifications in Azure Mobile Service’s Notification Hubs. The Notifications Hubs, which Microsoft launched earlier this year, previously allowed developers to send push notifications to their apps on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and iOS, but with the help of MS Open Tech, the platform now also supports broadcasting notifications to Android devices via Google Cloud Messaging. With this update, Azure’s Notification Hubs now support all the major smartphone platforms and, according to Microsoft, allow developers to push notifications to millions of devices with low latency.

The other update developers will surely appreciate is the addition of source control integration with Git. As Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie notes, this now allows developers to cone their git repository on a local machine, work on their scripts and then “”easily deploy the mobile service to production using Git.” It’s worth noting that Microsoft also recently added Git support to Visual Studio and its Team Foundation Server and Service.

Developers can also now create and expose custom APIs with Azure Mobile Services. This, Guthrie says, will allow developers to work with data sources other than SQL databases and broker calls to third-party APIs. The custom APIs can be written using Node.js and can use Node’s NPM packages.

The free 20MB SQL database is unlikely to be large enough for a popular mobile app or web site in production, but as Microsoft rightly notes, it should be enough to help developers develop and test their apps.

You can find a full list of today’s updates (and a few code examples) here.

After rumor upon leak that Microsoft was cooking up a release of Office for iOS, you'd think its arrival would be celebrated with streamers and cake. Requiring an Office 365 subscription, the app is now available, and allows you to view and edit Powerpoint, Excel and Word files stored in the cloud, or attached to emails. Recently tweaked files can also be manipulated offline, and Excel and Word files can be created from scratch on your small-screen iOS device. You'll need an iPhone or iPod Touch running iOS 6.1 (there's no iPad version just yet), and the app is limited to the US at the moment, but head to the iTunes Store source link for the full feature list.

Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) first came with Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS, and later opened for Windows 7. The browser was a big boost in performance compared to earlier web browsers from Microsoft. Based on a Fraunhofer USA study, Microsoft claims that its new browser is the most energy efficient in the market.

Citing a study done by Fraunhofer Institute’s Center for Sustainable Energy Systems, Microsoft claimed that IE10 consumes 18% less energy compared to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. If all of Chrome and Firefox’s U.S. users switch to IE10, then the saved energy can be used to power up 10,000 households.

However, the energy savings aren’t realized across all browsing activities. In general browsing activities, power consumption across all three major browsers are close. While viewing Flash video, IE10 leads in power savings.

Below are the graphs showing the energy consumption and savings across IE10, Chrome and Firefox on laptops and desktops.

The moment many Windows fans have been waiting for has arrived — sort of. We now have a video of Windows 8.1′s new Start button in action. In a video filmed this week at Computex 2013 in Taipei by IDG News, a Microsoft representative showed off how the new Start button will work on the Windows 8.1 desktop mode. Anyone who was hoping for a return of the traditional Start button in its entirety is bound to be disappointed, however: The new Start button brings up the same Live Tiles interface that users see when they exit the desktop screen. The difference, though, is that bringing up the Live Tiles menu doesn’t boot you out of the desktop screen now, acting instead as an overlay. It’s still not a traditional Start button, but a free app is available for those seeking a more traditional Windows experience. The video demonstration showing the new Start button is posted below.

In the two weeks since Microsoft unveiled the  Xbox One, gamers have raised some questions about its latest-generation console: will the Xbox One remain “always” connected to the internet? Will the console work with used games? And how much information can the console glean on any one user at any given time?

Those concerns turned into anxiety, as Microsoft continued to be vague about its policies.It said these questions would be clarified “at a later time.”

Yesterday, the company set up a landing page to address the most important concerns gamers have with the console. But Microsoft’s announcement has only further incited gamers. One meme on Reddit likened the Xbox One to the maniacal AI Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The biggest blow many gamers believe Microsoft has dealt is with game ownership. Right now, you can bring your copy of a game to any buddy’s house, load it up and play on his console — and even bring along your game if you have it on a transportable memory card — with no extra interference. When you’re done, you can hand it off to him to play or trade it in at an outlet like GameStop.

Not so with the Xbox One, which will continue to sell discs in stores but, according to Microsoft, “after signing in and installing, you can play any of your games from any Xbox One because a digital copy of your game is stored on your console and in the cloud.”

In effect, Microsoft plans to use the cloud as a licensing system for games, verifying ownership via an internet connection every 24 hours of gameplay (or every hour on a friend’s console). Users can “share” their games with up to 10 people via Xbox Live, but the same game cannot be played simultaneously. Loaning and renting games will not be possible at launch, and game publishers get to decide if you can resell that license or even give it away to a friend.

While practically confirming gamers’ fears about Xbox One’s DRM system, Microsoft also laid bare the privacy limits of the system. Users will have a strict opt-in when the Kinect has the ability to read and store certain data — including automatic facial recognition and more abstract concepts like recognizing a player’s heart rate — but would withhold some gameplay features if they don’t opt in.

In short, it’s a small win for privacy in a major loss for ownership. Gamers are angry at Microsoft’s decision, which isn’t going to help the console’s image right before E3.

Microsoft today launched its Bing Translator app for Windows (including Windows RT). We don’t usually write all that much about Windows apps and translation apps aren’t exactly new, either, but it’s nice to see that Microsoft has finally brought virtually all of the features of its mobile translator app for Windows Phone, including camera-based translations for 7 input languages, to the desktop. Bing Translator, which is only available in Windows’ Modern UI/Metro mode, supports a total of 40 languages and also allows you to download language packs for offline usage.

For the most part, of course, this is par for the course for language translation apps these days. Google’s Translate for Android app also features all of these tools and supports 70 languages.

Here are the languages the Bing app currently supports:

• The 7 camera input languages include: Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
• The app can translate to: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong Daw, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Klingon, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.

Microsoft’s implementation of the camera-based “augmented reality” translation mode is a bit smoother, however, as it will just overlay a translation over the camera image (and you can tap to save the caption). Google Translate, on the other hand, makes you tap on the words you want to translate. Admittedly, that’s not exactly hard, but Microsoft’s approach feels a bit easier and more like what iPhone users are accustomed to from tools like Word Lens.

Heavy Windows 8 users (there must be some…) will also appreciate that the app integrates with the Windows 8 “Share” charm to give you easy access to the translation tools.

AMD continues to soldier forward in the PC market, but CEO Rory Read wants the company to get at least 20 percent of its revenue from other sources by the end of this year. Some of this money will come in from next-generation game consoles like the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox One. And some of it, according to a report from PC World, will soon be coming from Android tablets and Chromebooks.

"We are very committed to Windows 8; we think it's a great operating system, but we also see a market for Android and Chrome developing as well," AMD Senior Vice President and General Manager Lisa Su said at this week's Computex trade show. This runs counter to her statements from earlier this year, when the company was "betting heavily on Windows 8" and had no immediate plans to support Android.

Su didn't give a timeframe for when either Chrome OS or Android versions compatible with AMD chips would be available. However, the company did recently announce some low-voltage APUs (codenamed Temash) with TDPs of as little as 3.9 watts that could easily fit into this type of device. Those chips will supposedly be shipping soon, if they aren't already.

Moving to support other operating systems is a smart move for AMD, if one that they're a bit late with. Undercutting Intel on price has long been part of the company's business strategy, and both Chromebooks and Android tablets are continually trying to push prices lower. Current sub-$249 Chromebooks are powered by both ARM and Intel, and ARM-based Android tablets under $199 are also plentiful (and Intel is reportedly aiming for that price point with its forthcoming Bay Trail Atoms). At the right price, AMD's OK-CPU-good-integrated-GPU combination could be just what these devices are looking for.

During today's Computex keynote, Microsoft Windows chief Tami Reller just announced that new x86 Windows 8 tablets will include Office in the box. The executive didn't detail the software offering, beyond mentioning that Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will all be included. Windows RT devices, for their part, will now also include pre-installed Outlook, beginning with the Windows 8.1 update, which is due to arrive as a preview version later this month.

Around nine years ago, Ubuntu was launched by Canonical founder, Mark Shuttleworth. Since then, the platform has existed for nearly a decade now. When Ubuntu was first launched, Shuttleworth cited his ambition that the platform was meant to overtake Windows. On May 30, however, he admitted that Ubuntu has been unable to do so.

Shuttleworth stopped short of crediting Windows with a victory. Rather, he pointed out that instead of Ubuntu taking the top crown, Windows has been overtaken by the likes of iOS and Android. And in saying so, he is absolutely right.

Mobile computing is the holy grail of today’s era. And in this arena, Windows has taken a backseat to both Android and iOS, which are relatively recent and yet command hundreds of millions of users. Although Ubuntu originally set out to challenge the ‘closed’ platform of Windows, it is now conceding defeat to yet another closed platform, the iOS. Nonetheless, Android is certainly a silver lining for open-source advocates.

In a post written on May 30, Shuttleworth noted, “Personal computing today is a broader proposition than it was in 2004: phones, tablets, wearables, and other devices are all part of the mix for our digital lives. From a competitive perspective, that broader market has healthy competition with iOS and Android representing a meaningful share.”

He also wrote, “Android may not be my or your first choice of Linux, but it is without doubt an open source platform that offers both practical and economic benefits to users and industry. So we have both competition, and good representation for open source, in personal computing.”

At the time of Ubuntu’s launch, Shuttleworth had titled Windows’ dominance as ‘Bug #1′, something which the new platform aimed to resolve. Now, he has stated that the time for fixing the bug is over and that, “It’s better for us to focus our intent on excellence in our own right rather than our impact on someone else’s product.”

Source: Shuttleworth

Courtesy: Arstechnica

Acer on Sunday announced what is expected to be the first of many smaller tablets from PC makers running the full version of Windows 8.

The Taiwanese computer maker announced the Iconia W3, a 1.1-pound Intel-powered tablet that also comes pre-loaded with the home and student version of Office.

“With the Iconia W3, Acer is giving those who create, read, work and play in the Windows environment a device they can hold in one hand that does it all,” Acer Chief Marketing Officer Michael Birkin said in a statement.

The device will come in 32GB and 64GB versions and will be available for pre-order starting Tuesday. The 32GB version carries a $379 suggested price and the 64GB version has a $429 sticker price, but even lower prices may be out there when the devices go up for order on Tuesday.

The Iconia W3 debuted at a press conference at the start of the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan. Acer also introduced the Aspire S7 and S3 Ultrabooks an the Liquid S1 phablet.

The S1, due to start selling in the third quarter, is Acer’s first entry into the phablet space and packs a quad-core processor and a 1280-pixel-by-720-pixel screen onto a 5.7-inch display. Among its features is the ability to multitask with one app, such as Caller ID, floating above another.

The social media has virtually exploded in recent years, acquiring an audience of more than a billion world over. However, most social tools are usually banned in workplaces simply because executives tend to think these tools are a waste of time. A new Microsoft study suggests that these tools actually enhance the productivity of the employees.

Social tools are very significant in that they are developing into increasingly sophisticated collaboration tools. So employees within a workplace can easily connect with each other, share data and collaborate in real-time through these tools.

The Microsoft study, conducted by Ipsos, reveals that some 50% employees are of the opinion that social tools can greatly enhance their performance. In fact, so convinced were these employees of the significance of social tools that 31% of them stated that they were ready to spend money on buying some of these tools.

Sadly, however, the top executives at most organizations tend to think otherwise. Many of these employers do not allow the use of social tools in workplaces, believing that such tools are a distraction and take a toll on employee productivity. It is for this reason that some 30% companies restrict or discourage the use of social tools.

Employers naturally want to implement such a policy because they want more controlled and predictable work outcomes. And since most of them are not aware of the exact potential of social tools, they treat it as an alien concept and tend to shy away from it. The reluctance to use these tools is simply for the fear of unpredictable productivity measures and outcomes.

However, given the increasingly greater role of technology in our lives, the use of social tools will eventually become absolutely pertinent in the coming days. A detailed infographic, citing the findings of the Microsoft study, can be viewed here.

Source: Microsoft

On the fence about buying a Microsoft Surface RT tablet? A new incentive may help push you over the side, or at least that’s what Microsoft is hoping. Starting Friday and all throughout the month of June, Microsoft is offering a free Touch or Type Cover keyboard with the purchase of any Surface RT model in the U.S. and Canada either through Microsoft’s online store or participating retailers.

Surface RT starts at $499 without these attachable keyboard covers and a bundle with keyboard starts at $599. So this works out to be a $100 savings on the bundle.

I think that’s exactly what Microsoft is trying to accomplish with this limited offer: Reduce the net cost of Surface RT because at $599 with keyboard, it’s a bit pricey for what it offers. I only say that because an Intel Atom powered Windows 8 tablet with similar battery life and without the RT restriction of running legacy Windows apps can be had for about the same price. Microsoft clearly knows this, and given that we haven’t seen evidence of Surface RT as a hot seller — some of Microsoft’s partners have even limited their participation in Windows RT — this deal is meant to move more hardware.

Does this make Surface RT more attractive? We all likely have different answers to that question, as well as reasons for that answer. For some, Surface RT is already meeting their needs while others find it too limiting.

I actually like the hardware very much: It’s well designed, works in various settings, is easy to carry around and provides solid battery life. But again, I can get most of that from a similarly priced Windows 8 tablet for $500 to $700. For me — and I suspect many of you — it comes down to the available applications for Windows RT. It’s been a while since I last checked, but with the new keyboard incentive, I plan to look again at the app catalog over the next 30 days.

Bear in mind that Microsoft is holding its annual developer event next month and some rumors suggest that new Surface devices could be introduced. Even if that doesn’t happen, I wouldn’t be surprised to see hardware refreshes for the Surface line within the next 3 to 6 months as there are newer chips and components available to improve the devices. If you want Surface RT now, however, this is a decent deal.