Daily Archives: May 14, 2020

Microsoft is working on a new text prediction feature for Outlook thats similar to Gmails Smart Compose. The text predictions will allow Outlook.com and Outlook on the web to write emails for people using predictive tech that offers up suggestions while you type. A support document reveals that Outlook users will be able to accept suggestions with tab or right arrow on a keyboard, or just keep typing to ignore them.

Microsoft is currently planning to roll this out later this month, and its marked as in development on the companys Microsoft 365 feature roadmap. Microsoft is also working on a send later feature for Outlook on the web that will allow users to schedule when to send an email message.

Thats particularly useful if you wake up from a deep sleep at 5AM and remember you need to email your boss, but dont want it to look like youre eagerly sending emails at early hours of the morning. Microsoft says the send later feature should arrive before the end of June, and text predictions will appear in May.

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Microsofts Outlook on the web is getting a Gmail-like text prediction feature - The Verge

WASHINGTON In an effort to free up space in your inbox and stop you from slowly going mad, Microsoft is introducing a new feature to curb those annoying reply-all email threads.

Microsoft says a new Office 365 feature will focus on those massive company email threads to try and block reply-all messages that are sent to large distribution lists. The company is calling the feature Reply-All Storm Protection.

Microsoft says that if a sender tries to send 10 reply-all emails to over 5,000 recipients within a 60-minute time frame, the feature will block any subsequent replies to that thread for the next four hours. Your co-workers who try to respond will then see a message telling them their email was not sent because the exchange has become too busy.

The company announced the feature last year and has now begun to roll it out to Office 365.

The feature, which is trying to keep those annoying reply-all emails from angering your co-workers, will suggest that they try and reply to a smaller group of people. It comes during the massive paradigm shift that is seeing teams around the world working from home amid the global coronavirus pandemic.

Popular advice is that one really should only hit the reply-all button if you're sure everyone on that distribution list needs to see the email. Business Insider found that in 2019 over 11,000 workers said they were caught in what Microsoft is calling a "reply-all storm."

Google's Gmail service also has a feature that will allow users to keep their reply-all anxiety down. The feature allows users to mute conversations that they no longer find relevant to them. When a user mutes the conversation, it is removed from the inbox and archived.

Microsoft says the feature is still in beta and they plan to keep fine tuning it in the coming weeks and months.

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New Microsoft feature may save you from 'Reply All' anxiety - WTHR

New Delhi, May 12, 2020: Microsoft has announced the launch of the Back2Business Solution Boxes for helping Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) maintain business continuity and embark on their cloud adoption journeys. Curated for specific scenarios in different organization sizes, they bring together offerings across Azure and Modern Workplace.

Indian SMBs are facing multiple challenges in running their operations seamlessly during the current crisis, including access to remote working solutions in a secure and scalable environment, disaster recovery, and advanced security with device management and threat protection. To provide support in keeping businesses running through any outages and reducing on-premise infrastructure management costs, these offerings are tailored to boost employee productivity and improve customer engagement.

Small and medium enterprises are an integral part of the Indian economy. Weve witnessed their resilience and entrepreneurial energy in action as we build the new normal in these difficult times. In our efforts to support these businesses operate today without constraints and be future-ready with the best-in-class technological platform and solutions, the Back2Business Solution Boxes offer speed in deployment and usage and flexibility with pay-as-you-go pricing, along with our commitment to privacy and security, said Harish Vellat, Senior Director, Small and Mid-Corporate Business, Microsoft India.

Besides catering to near-term challenges through COVID-19 offerings around Windows Virtual Desktop and Microsoft Teams, there are solution packages designed to accelerate the cloud adoption journeys of SMBs. These are curated to help ramp up legacy systems, migrate workloads to Azure or modernize apps and websites. Standard yet easy to customize according to requirements of customers, the solution boxes come in four variants.

Microsoft partners have the additional flexibility of customizing the boxed packages with their own value offerings for migration and deployment. Microsofts partner ecosystem is at the center of delivering technologies and driving business transformation for its customers. Together with its partners, Microsoft is committed to helping the small and medium business community in India navigate the current challenges and scale up their operations seamlessly.

About Microsoft India:

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq MSFT @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Microsoft set up its India operations in 1990. Today, Microsoft entities in India have over 11,000 employees, engaged in sales and marketing, research, development and customer services and support, across 11 Indian cities Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune. Microsoft offers its global cloud services from local data centers to accelerate digital transformation across Indian start-ups, businesses, and government organizations.

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Microsoft introduces Back2Business Solution Boxes for small and medium businesses in India - Microsoft News Center India - Microsoft

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft and Intel have recently collaborated on a new research project that explored a new approach to detecting and classifying malware.

Called STAMINA (STAtic Malware-as-Image Network Analysis), the project relies on a new technique that converts malware samples into grayscale images and then scans the image for textural and structural patterns specific to malware samples.

The Intel-Microsoft research team said the entire process followed a few simple steps. The first consisted of taking an input file and converting its binary form into a stream of raw pixel data.

Researchers then took this one-dimensional (1D) pixel stream and converted it into a 2D photo so that normal image analysis algorithms can analyze it.

The width of the image was selected based on the input file's size, using the table below. The height was dynamic, and resulted from dividing the raw pixel stream by the chosen width value.

After assembling the raw pixel stream into a normal-looking 2D image, researchers then resized the resulting photo to a smaller dimension.

The Intel and Microsoft team said that resizing the raw image did not "negatively impact the classification result," and this was a necessary step so that the computational resources won't have to work with images consisting of billions of pixels, which would most likely slow down processing.

The resized images were then fed into a pre-trained deep neural network (DNN) that scanned the image (2D representation of the malware strain) and classified it as clean or infected.

Microsoft says it provided a sample of 2.2 million infected PE (Portable Executable) file hashes to serve as a base for the research.

Researchers used 60% of the known malware samples to train the original DNN algorithm, 20% of the files to validate the DNN, and the other 20% for the actual testing process.

The research team said STAMINA achieved an accuracy of 99.07% in identifying and classifying malware samples, with a false positives rate of 2.58%.

"The results certainly encourage the use of deep transfer learning for the purpose of malware classification," said Jugal Parikh and Marc Marino, the two Microsoft researchers who participated in the research on behalf of the Microsoft Threat Protection Intelligence Team.

The research is part of Microsoft's recent efforts of improving malware detection using machine learning techniques.

STAMINA used a technique called deep learning. Deep learning is a subset of machine learning (ML), a branch of artificial intelligence (AI), which refers to intelligent computer networks that are capable of learning on their own from input data that is stored in an unstructured or unlabeled format -- in this case, a random malware binary.

Microsoft said that while STAMINA was accurate and fast when working with smaller files, it faultered with larger ones.

"For bigger size applications, STAMINA becomes less effective due to limitations in converting billions of pixels into JPEG images and then resizing them," Microsoft said in a blog post last week.

However, this most likely doesn't matter, as the project could be used for small files only, with excellent results.

In an interview with ZDNet earlier this month, Tanmay Ganacharya, Director for Security Research of Microsoft Threat Protection, said that Microsoft now heavily relies on machine learning for detecting emerging threats, and this system uses a different machine learning modules that are being deployed on customer systems or Microsoft servers.

Microsoft now uses client-side machine learning model engines, cloud-side machine learning model engines, machine learning modules for capturing sequences of behaviors or capturing the content of the file itself, Ganacharya said.

Based on the reported results, STAMINA could be very well one of those ML modules that we may soon see implemented at Microsoft as a way to spot malware.

Currently, Microsoft can make this approach work better than other companies primarily because of the sheer data it possesses from the hundreds of millions of Windows Defender installs.

"Anybody can build a model, but the labeled data and the quantity of it and the quality of it, really helps train the machine learning models appropriately and hence defines how effective they are going to be," Ganacharya said.

"And we, at Microsoft, have that as an advantage because we do have sensors that are bringing us lots of interesting signals through email, through identity, through the endpoint, and being able to combine them."

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Microsoft and Intel project converts malware into images before analyzing it - ZDNet

Yammer connects people across departments and across the organization, enabling you to build communities, share knowledge and engage employees. At Microsoft Ignite, we announced an entirely redesigned Yammer experience, with new capabilities and integrations that drive employee engagement throughout Microsoft 365. Now, the new Yammer is available to organizations in public preview. Heres a quick look at whats new and how to get access to the new Yammer.

Yammer powers leadership engagement, corporate communications and knowledge sharing in Microsoft 365. Here are some of the new capabilities were introducing to make communities and conversations more impactful:

Add a custom cover photo, avatar, and name to your All Company

Engage with Q&A in live events across devices

The Feed showing company branding and a variety of conversations in their new styling

There are even more new features and integrations coming to Yammer as we approach general availability, such as suggested communities, bookmarks, and additional admin and user controls. We will update this article as we launch new features and post on the Admin Message Center whenever we have any majorannouncements.

Microsoft 365 Global Admins canconfigureaccess to the new Yammer previewthroughtheYammer admin portal.Admins can enable the preview toggle in the suite header and choosethe default experience for their network: classic Yammer the new Yammer.Learn more about enabling the new Yammer preview for your organization.

Once enabled by an admin, users will access the new Yammer or switch back to classic using the toggle in the navigation bar.

Once enabled by a Microsoft 365 Global Admin, people in your organization will be able to view thetoggle to opt-in to thenew experience. This will be available for canonical (home) networks only. You will still see the classic Yammer experience in external networks. If your organization wants to remove all access to the new Yammer during the preview phase,youwillneed tocontactMicrosoft support.

The new Yammer is available worldwide on mobile, for iOS and Android. The new Yammer app for Teams lets you stay connected to company communications, live events and communities inside the hub for teamwork. And in Outlook on the web, you can now engage with Yammer conversations directly from your Outlook inbox. Soon, well be bringing inbox integration to Outlook desktop and mobile apps, and well bring the new Yammer experience to SharePoint, with an updated web part.

Feature requests and feedback on the product during preview should be submitted through the in-product feedback dialogboxes.Feedback can also beprovided with peersthroughthe new Yammer preview community on the Microsoft Tech Community.

Q: When will the new Yammer come out of preview and be generally available?

A: We are continuing to test and improve the new Yammer to ensure it delivers the experience our customers expect. We are currently targeting worldwide availability in July.

Q:Can we opt out of the preview at any time?

A:You can remove the preview toggle for your entire network through the new Yammer preview setting in the Yammer admin portal. Any users who have selected the new Yammer experience will remain in that experience until they choose to go back to the classic experience. For more information about the available options, see opt-in settings.

Q: Do SLAs apply to the new Yammer preview?

A: The Service Level Agreement for Microsoft Online Services does not apply to this preview.

Q:How do I open a support case?

A: Please see the help page in the for general information. Your organization may have specific guidance for opening support cases, so you may need to talk with your IT team.

Q:Is the new experience available forcustomers that have Yammer networks with data stored in the EU geo?

A:Yes!

Q:We have Yammer embedded in various places in our Intranet (i.e.Yammer tab in Microsoft Teams,Yammer web part for SharePoint, Yammer embed). How will those be impacted by the new Yammer?

A:Initially there will not be any change to these experiences. Eventually,these experiences will have the samedesign as the new Yammer.

Q:What aboutguestusersin external groups?

A:Users will see the new Yammer or the classicYammer experience depending on the state of theirhomenetwork. If your network hosts an external group, people within your network that are opted-in to the new experience in their home network will see that group in the new Yammer experience.Any guest users within the external group will seethe classicYammer experience if their network is not yet enabled for the new experience.

Q:What aboutexternal networks?

A:Users can continue to access external networks using the NetworkSwitchericonavailable on the integrated tool bar at the top of every page. On switching, users will see these external networks in the classic experience.

Q:Are all languages supported in the new Yammer?

A:All languages available in classic Yammer are available in the public preview.

Q:Can users get to the new Yammer previewwithoutadministrator changes?

A:YourMicrosoft 365 admin controls whetherusers seethetoggleto switch to the new Yammerexperience.Butusers will always be able to access web.yammer.comwhile the new Yammer is inthe public preview phase.If your organization wants to remove all access to the new Yammer during the preview phase,youwill needtocontactMicrosoft support. More details on this can be foundhere.

Q:I dont want to enable the next experience for my production Yammer network yet. How can I test out thenewtoggle?

A:You can try out theopt-intoggles in your test tenant. If you dont have a test environment, create a new trial tenantfor testing and enable thetogglethere.

-Murali Sitaram

Murali is the General Manager for Yammer and Microsoft 365 Groups

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Get your hands on the new Yammer. - Microsoft

FILE PHOTO: A Microsoft logo is seen next to a cloud in Los Angeles, California, U.S. on June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

MILAN (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Friday it would create its first datacentre region in Italy under a $1.5 billion investment plan as the U.S. company expands its cloud computing services to more locations across the world.

Microsofts rival Amazon Web Services last week opened a datacentre region in Milan, while in March Googles Inc sealed a partnership with former phone monopoly Telecom Italia to expand cloud business operations in Italy.

Analysts expect the Italian cloud market to grow at a double digit pace in the next few years as companies, which have embraced smartworking during the coronavirus crisis, will increasingly rely on digital processes for their business.

Jean-Philippe Courtois, Microsofts head of global sales, marketing and operations, said the company saw enormous potential to accelerate innovation through cloud services.

The new datacentre region will be based in the Milan area, joining Microsofts other 60 regions announced globally.

In February, Microsoft announced plans to open a new datacentre region in Spain and earlier this week the company said it would invest $1 billion in Poland as part of plans to open a data centre to provide cloud services to businesses and institutions.

Also in Italy, Microsoft, under a five-year plan, will provide access to local cloud services and launch digital skilling and smart-working and artificial intelligence programs for small and medium enterprises.

The company will also expand its technology partnership with state-controlled postal operator Poste Italiane, helping the company to accelerate its digital transformation.

Reporting by Elvira Pollina. Editing by Jane Merriman

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Microsoft to invest $1.5 billion in Italian cloud business - Reuters

Twitter has added a new way to see how many people have retweeted a tweet and added a comment, the company announced today but its only available on the iOS version of the app.

The new feature organizes all of the retweets with comments into a handy list. To access it, tap on a tweet and then tap on the word Retweets. Youll see retweets broken out into two columns ones commenting on the retweet (or a quote tweet) and a list of retweets with no comment.

Heres a video from Twitter showing off the feature:

You can already see quote tweets, but you have to copy and paste a tweets URL into Twitters search box to do so. (Heres what that looks like when searching for the above embedded tweet, for example.) The feature rolled out today seems to be a much easier way to see retweets with comments in one spot.

The feature doesnt appear to be available for me just yet, but Twitter tells The Verge that most iOS users should see the update today. Twitter also tells The Verge it will be coming to the web app and Android in the coming weeks.

Read more here:

Twitter will now make it easier to see quote tweets on iOS - The Verge

The global coronavirus pandemic has forced many industries to adopt work-from-home operating models, but could this continue when social distancing rules are eased?

Social media giant Twitter believes so, and has taken the extraordinary step of allowing staff to work from home indefnitiely, if they decide they do not want to return to the office.

There have been several unexpected working patterns emerging in the communications industry, including anecdotal evidence of teams bonding more closely since lockdown began.

But is there an appetite for agencies to go down down the path of working from home indfinitely, which is how only a small handful of agencies, including The PR Network, currently operate.

PRWeek ran a Twitter poll (below) to get feedback on the idea. 60 per cent said 'yes', but strong reasons why it might not work include 'how do younger PR pros gain experience and simply that comms is an industry that 'needs' face to face.

Matt Cartmell, whose agency Carta Communications is running a survey on PR industry attitudes to returning to work, told PRWeek: "From conversations with contacts, my anecdotal sense is that few in the industry expect to be blowing the dust off their screens until October.

"Even then, it wouldn't be surprising if many in particular smaller agencies remain in virtual, remote-working mode indefinitely. But, for the sake of their employer brand, internal culture and client proposition, they would be wise to pick a side rather than stay in limbo."

This period of social distancing and lockdown is likely to make several agency leaders pause and redesign how their businesses operate, and it is likely that remote working could become more common and certaily more socially acceptable.

However, a lack of on-the-job interaction, guidance and the social benefits of working in an office environment are likely to prevent any radical shifts towards working from home indefinitely.

Read more from the original source:

WFH 'forever' could the PR industry follow Twitter's lead? - PRWeek

TOPLINE

Jeff Bezos wealth suddenly caught the Twitter's attention on Wednesday amid claims that the worlds richest man is set to become a trillionaire, in part thanks to pandemic-driven demand that has sent Amazon stock soaring.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $143 billion

Bezos was trending on Twitter on Wednesday after a months-old study by small business advice platform, Comparisun, resurfaced, claiming that Bezos net worth could reach $1 trillion by 2026.

The company analyzed the market cap of the highest valued firms on the New York Stock Exchange, as well as Forbes 25 richest people. Chinese real estate billionaire Xu Jiayin is second on the studys list.

But Bezos has a long way to go to become the worlds first trillionaire. At the time of publication, Forbes values the 56-year-olds net worth to be $143 billion. He owns a 11.2% stake in Amazon, and his wealth has surged upwards from around $125 billion in March.

Amazon is predicted to be one of the winners of the pandemic as demand for online shopping, streaming and delivery services flies.

Sales in the first three months of the year topped $75 billion, up from $60 billion in 2019. The potential for a second wave of the virus and further lockdowns could keep that demand high.

Bezos joined Forbes list of 400 richest Americans in 1998, four years after he founded Amazon, and had a net worth of $1.6 billion at the time.

Amazon AMZN shares are up more than 28% so far this year. But the company is now up against the hardest time it has ever faced, Bezos said in April. The company predicted operating profits of $4 billion in the three months to June, but is now committing that entire amount to COVID-related expenses such as higher wages for hourly teams, buying up personal protective equipment for staff, and developing coronavirus testing facilities.

The company has been under fire from former employeesboth office staff and warehouse workersfor allegedly silencing them after they spoke out about a lack of protection against the virus. Amazon has let go a number of employees, claiming that they breached company policy.

In February, Bezos pocketed $3.1 billion after selling $4 billion worth of Amazon shares since January.

Jeff Bezos Gets $6.4 Billion Richer As Amazon Stock Hits A New Record High (Forbes)

Jeff Bezos Has Now Sold Over $4 Billion Worth Of Amazon Shares In The Past Week (Forbes)

Amazon Worker Who Was Fired After Coronavirus Walkout Says He Is Being Silenced (Forbes)

Jeff Bezos Announces $100 Million Gift To Nonprofit Feeding America (Forbes)

Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus

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Jeff Bezos Trillionaire Is Trending On Twitter. Heres Why - Forbes

The worlds richest man will be even richer in a few years the first trillionaire and a global pandemic may only be speeding up that process.

Jeff Bezoss name was trending on Twitter as an admittedly dated study made the rounds that projected the future wealth of the Amazon.com CEO.

Amazon.coms AMZN, +0.88% sales topped $75 billion in the first quarter, driven by demand during the pandemic that has kept people at home and depending on at-home delivery services of everything from food to exercise equipment.

According to Bloombergs Billionaires Index, the net worth of Bezos has risen from $125 billion on April 12 to $143 billion on May 5, though that hasnt been a straight line higher as the below chart shows.

He also had to relinquish much of his wealth to his wife from a divorce proceeding last July.

Shares of Amazon are up about 28% year to date, though the road ahead could be a bit rocky ahead as the company has pledged to spend $4 billion or more to develop testing capabilities for all of its employees for COVID-19, enhanced cleaning of its facilities, and higher wages for hourly teams. Extra spending to cope with the pandemic may wipe out the companys second-quarter profit.

Read:Amazon executive says he quit to protest firings of workers who spoke out

But Amazon will likely remain a favorite among investors as the potential for a second wave of the virus and more lockdowns, cant be ruled out. And thats not bad news at all for Bezos.

According to a survey making the rounds Comparisun, a content and comparison platform for small and medium-sized businesses, Bezos could reach status as the worlds first trillionaire by 2026. Well, that was the survey from 2019. Updated data sent to MarketWatch by the company shows that Bezos will have to wait until 2030, and 66 years old, to reach trillionaire status.

Heres last years chart of the worlds richest people and how close they are to the trillion-dollar wealth circle.

Explaining their methodology, Comparisun said it analyzed market capitalization of the 25 highest valued companies on the New York Stock Exchange according to Macrotrends, and the net worth of the worlds 25 wealthiest people, according to Forbes, in both cases taking the last five years of data (as of September 16th, 2019).

They then calculated average yearly percentage growth over the last five years, applying that growth rate for future years to come up with an idea of how that value would change.

Talk of Bezos impending trillionaire status was making the rounds on Twitter on Thursday, and lets just say there was plenty of ire, as well an element of respect:

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What pandemic? Amazons Jeff Bezos is a prime candidate for becoming the worlds first trillionaire - MarketWatch