Weekend Reading: Sept. 28th Edition – Nokia’s Bloomberg App Comes to Windows Phone & Bing Teams Up With Klout

In this edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got stories on the new Bloomberg app for Windows Phone from Nokia, helping the next generation of Americans compete and Bing partnering with Klout.

Bloomberg arrives on Windows Phone with Nokia. Last Wednesday, Steve Clayton highlighted the new Bloomberg app for Windows Phone he’s been enjoying. “It’s exclusively for Nokia Lumia phones and is free to users of those phones,” Clayton said, “That’s impressive given the amount of work that appears to have gone in to this app. It’s a comprehensive tool for the business professional on the go but also the savvy consumer who wants to keep up with the latest news and track the markets. Though I haven’t had chance to explore, the app also includes audio and video content from Bloomberg TV and Bloomberg Radio – which means Charlie Rose on the go!” Check out the rest of Steve’s summary on Next at Microsoft. Below is a screenshot of the Bloomberg app.

6472_bloomberg_lg_78EF0D53

Microsoft expands New England campus, unveils state-of-the-art Tech Center. On Thursday, Microsoft announced the expansion of its New England campus in Cambridge, Mass., including a new, state-of-the-art Microsoft Technology Center (MTC), during an event featuring Governor Deval L. Patrick, Cambridge Mayor Henrietta Davis, Microsoft Northeast General Manager Craig Hodges, partners, customers and employees. Head on over to the Microsoft News Center to take a look at a slideshow of the new Tech Center. Below, Massachusetts Gov. Patrick plays with the “Skeleton” app, which displays a virtual wire model of the person in front of the Kinect.

09-27Patrick_Web

Bing and Klout partner to strengthen social search and online influence. Since we introduced the Bing sidebar last May, we’ve added new partners and expanded our social data to include the top social networks on the Web like Facebook, Twitter, foursquare and Quora – and we’re not done yet! On Thursday, Bing Corporate Vice President Derrick Connell announced on the Search Blog that Bing and Klout are partnering to help enrich the discovery and recognition of influencers across our platforms. Connell said “This is an alliance based on a shared belief that people are at the center of task completion. To help you find the right person we need to determine who is influential and trusted on different topics on the Web.” Get the rest of the story and test out this cool new feature on the Bing Search Blog.

Xbox LIVE: Fox Broadcast app launch. Starting last Tuesday, Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers who are also Dish or Verizon FiOS customers have access to the FOX Broadcast app on Xbox 360. Fox Broadcast on Xbox LIVE offers next-day access to your favorite FOX shows and the latest content from the FOX Broadcast programming network. You can keep up with all of this season’s newest episodes including “Family Guy” and “Fringe.” Or kick back with past seasons of your favorite shows, like “House” or “24.” Head over to Major Nelson’s blog for details and more Xbox news.

Strengthening American competitiveness and creating opportunity for the next generation. “The United States faces a growing economic challenge – a substantial and increasing shortage of individuals with the skills needed to fill the new jobs the private sector is creating,” said Microsoft’s General Counsel & Executive Vice President, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Brad Smith. In this Microsoft on the Issues blog post, Smith outlined our nation’s urgent demand for workers trained in the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — and shared ideas and solutions to meet this shortage in his speech at the Brookings Institution and in this National Talent Strategy whitepaper.

‘12 campaign: predicting the US election. It’s a presidential election year in the United States, and that, we’ve learned, means that pollsters are on the prowl. The electorate for the forthcoming balloting will be sampled, questioned, categorized, sliced, and diced a zillion different ways between now and Nov. 6, so if you’re interested in gender polling by age bracket in Wirt County, W.Va., for the time being, you’re in luck. So is David Rothschild, an economist at Microsoft Research New York City, who has gained renown this year for his work using prediction markets to harness big data in its many and varied forms to calculate and disseminate his prediction for who will be elected president. Learn about Rothschild’s forecasts and his techniques in this Microsoft Research article.

Moving data forward into Access 2013. Access 2013 is all about enabling you to build data-centric business apps on the Web. Frequently, the data you care about—a customer list, a product spreadsheet, or a legacy Access database—already exists somewhere else. How can you get this data into your Access Web app? Obviously, copying each record would take a long time. Learn how to import data into Access 2013 in this Access Blog post and video tutorial. While you’re there, check out how to move and back up your Access 2013 Web apps, too.

That’s it for this edition of Weekend Reading! Thanks for stopping by The Official Microsoft Blog!

Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog

Leave a Reply