Software News, Features, and Interviews

• Gartner’s 10 strategic predictions for 2017….and beyond

  Claiming a 78% accuracy rate based on prior years’ results, chief of research Daryl Plummer delivered Gartner’s 10 strategic predictions for the next 3-5 years at the company’s Symposium/ITExpo yesterday.

• How machine data helps Shazam remain 'app store royalty'

  ​Shazam is one of the most popular mobile apps in the world. The company earlier this month announced it had reached a billion downloads – half of which came in the last two years –​ and, for the first time, turned a profit. And it's the data that did it.

• Microsoft morphs Office 365 UI into Windows 10 Start menu look-a-like

  Microsoft today outlined a new Windows 10-like interface for corporate users of Office 365.

• Financial sector expands use of blockchain databases

  Banks and financial markets are adopting blockchain distributed database software for payments and lending services at a faster pace than once expected.

• Mozilla-backed selfie stunt challenges Europe’s copyright laws

  Stiff EU copyright proposals that theoretically ban memes, gifs and even pictures of some landmarks are the target of a campaign backed by Firefox browser maker Mozilla, which has encouraged a campaign of digital civil disobedience it’s calling Post Crimes.

• Asana's new feature lets users 'track anything'

  Asana is making it easier for users to adapt its work tracking software to way more purposes than just task tracking, with a new custom fields feature that it launched on Thursday.

• This new imaging system can read closed books

  They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but a new imaging system from MIT can see right through the cover and read the book while it's still closed.

• Ubuntu 16.04 kisses the cloud, disses the desktop

  Latest version of popular OS offers long-term support, beefed up features for OpenStack deployments.

• Microsoft adds options to Office testing program

  Microsoft has added cadence choices for beta testers in its Office Insider preview program, mimicking a practice it has used for Windows 10.

• Google is using AI to compress images better than JPEG

  Small is beautiful, as the old saying goes, and nowhere is that more true than in media files. Compressed images are considerably easier to transmit and store than uncompressed ones are, and now Google is using neural networks to beat JPEG at the compression game.

• Microsoft acquires intelligent scheduling startup Genee

  Microsoft announced Tuesday that it has acquired Genee, a startup that provided a virtual assistant for scheduling appointments.

• HipChat beats Slack to the punch with group video calling

  It just became easier for HipChat customers to get some face time with each another whenever they want it. The company launched new group video calling functionality on Thursday that lets up to 10 other people share a virtual face-to-face meeting.

• White House software code sharing policy gains steam

  The White House has released its Federal Source Code policy that promotes reuse of new source code developed by government agencies across the federal government.

• Artificial Intelligence vs. Intelligence Augmentation

  Both conceived in the 1950s, which has greater relevance today?

• A look at Oracle’s 10 biggest acquisitions

  Larry Ellison isn’t afraid to make big splashes in the M&A market. This week’s purchase of SaaS/ERP platform NetSuite is the second largest in company history. Here’s a look back at some of Oracle’s other big deals.

• Consumer Office 365 subscription growth slows

  Microsoft said that consumer subscriptions to Office 365 topped 23 million, signaling that the segment's once rapid growth had slowed significantly.

• Browser fingerprinting: Online anonymity elusive, Australian researcher finds

  A project from University of Adelaide post-grad Lachlan Kang aims to find the most powerful fingerprint techniques and build better defences against them.

• Microsoft wants to help small businesses book appointments online

  Small business owners are getting a new feature tailored just for them in Microsoft Office 365 -- a full service system for scheduling appointments for their services on the internet.

• For Your Reading List: Re-Imagining Productive Work with Office 365 by Michael Sampson

  Michael Sampson’s latest book, Re-Imagining Productive Work with Office 365, is a “must read” if you are currently using or planning to use Office 365. Michael is a brilliant author and approaches his overview of Office 365 not from the perspective of the individual technology elements, but from the perspective of the activities that “information workers” do every day.

• Microsoft finally moves Mac Office apps to 64-bit

  At the same time, Microsoft issued updates to the Office 2016 applications -- Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word -- to users registered with the Insider program.