Frederic Lardinois
Writer
The Latest from Frederic Lardinois
Cortana wants to be your personal executive assistant and read your emails to you, too
Only a few years ago, Microsoft hoped that Cortana could become a viable competitor to the Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri . Over time, as Cortana failed to make a dent in the marketplace (do you eve
You can now try Microsoft’s web-based version of Visual Studio
Earlier this year, at its Build developers conference, Microsoft announced that it was working on a web-based version of its Visual Studio IDE. At the time, Visual Studio Online went into a private
Adobe launches Aero, its AR authoring app
Adobe’s ambitions around augmented reality (AR) are no secret — there’s plenty of potential for building the right design tools for AR developers, after all. At last year’s Max
Microsoft Teams gets Yammer integration, secure private channels and more
You’re forgiven if you thought Yammer — Microsoft’s proto-Slack, not quite real-time chat application — was dead. It’s actually still alive (and well) — and still s
You can now ask Excel questions about your data
Microsoft today announced an update to Excel that brings natural language queries to the venerable spreadsheet tool. Available now to Office Insiders, this new feature allows you to talk to Excel like
Microsoft launches Power Virtual Agents, its no-code bot builder
Microsoft today announced the public preview of its Power Virtual Agents tool, a new no-code tool for building chatbots that’s part of the company’s Power Platform, which also includes the
Adobe is bringing real-time collaboration to its XD design tool
It’s Adobe Max this week, Adobe’s annual Creative Cloud event, and like every year, the company is announcing a slew of updates across its products. Sometimes these are only small tweaks a
Microsoft launches managed meeting rooms as a service
Whether you love them or hate them (and you probably hate them), meetings are a fact of corporate life. And how many meetings have you attended that didn’t start on time because of technical dif
Microsoft launches Project Cortex, a knowledge network for your company
At its annual Ignite IT conference in Orlando, Fla., Microsoft today announced Project Cortex, its first new commercial product since the launch of Teams. The general idea here is to allow employees t
Microsoft’s Azure Synapse Analytics bridges the gap between data lakes and warehouses
At its annual Ignite conference in Orlando, Fla., Microsoft today announced a major new Azure service for enterprises: Azure Synapse Analytics, which Microsoft describes as “the next evolution o
You can now use Azure to manage resources anywhere, including on AWS and Google Cloud
With the preview of Azure Arc, Microsoft today announced a major step in the evolution of its hybrid cloud story. Azure Arc takes the work the company has done on projects like Azure Stack, throws in
Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser gets new privacy features, will be generally available January 15
Microsoft today announced that its Chromium-based Edge browser will be generally available on January 15 and that the release candidate for Windows and macOS is now available for download (and that it
Adobe’s Fresco drawing app is now available on Windows
In September, Adobe launched Fresco, its next-gen drawing and painting app, for the iPad. Today, Fresco is also coming to Windows, starting with Microsoft’s Surface line (starting with the Surfa
Microsoft launched Endpoint Manager to modernize device management
Ever since the days of Windows NT, the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (better known as ConfigMgr) has allowed companies to manage the increasingly large number of devices they issue to
Microsoft Azure gets into ag tech with the preview of FarmBeats
At its annual Ignite event in Orlando, Fla., Microsoft today announced that Azure FarmBeats, a project that until now was mostly a research effort, will be available as a public preview and in the A
With Garmin Autoland, small planes can land themselves if the pilot becomes incapacitated
Here’s a horror scenario for you: You’re flying in a small plane and suddenly the single pilot who knows how to fly passes out. In the movies, somebody would probably talk one of the passe
Samsung ramps up its B2B partner and developer efforts
Chances are you mostly think of Samsung as a consumer-focused electronics company, but it actually has a very sizable B2B business as well, which serves more than 15,000 large enterprises and hundreds
Google launches TensorFlow Enterprise with long-term support and managed services
Google open-sourced its TensorFlow machine learning framework back in 2015 and it quickly became one of the most popular platforms of its kind. Enterprises that wanted to use it, however, had to eithe
Google reportedly in talks to acquire Fitbit
According to Reuters, Google parent Alphabet is looking to acquire publicly traded wearables company Fitbit. Reuters says the deal is still being negotiated and could still fall apart, but if it came
In a victory over Amazon, Microsoft wins $10B Pentagon JEDI cloud contract
The U.S. Department of Defense today announced that Microsoft has won its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, worth up to $10 billion over a period of 10 years. With this, M