"Microsoft Monday" is a weekly column that focuses on all things Microsoft. This week, “Microsoft Monday” features news about the new Surface Book 2, 500 patents getting donated to startups, a bug on Skype for Android that answers calls getting fixed and more!
New Surface Book 2
Microsoft has announced a new version of the Surface Book 2 with the latest quad-core processor from Intel. This means the new 13-inch Surface Book 2 model has Intel’s latest 8th Gen quad-core i5 processor. And the existing Surface Book 2 with a dual-core 7th Gen process will remain at a price of $1,299. The Surface Book 2 with the quad-core processor is priced at $1,499. The new Surface Book 2 also has 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM.
On April 17th, Microsoft will be hosting a Surface event in New York City. At the event, Microsoft is reportedly going to unveil pricing and availability for its Surface Hub 2 hardware and office furniture made in collaboration with Steelcase according to The Verge.
500 Patents Donated To Startups
Last week, Microsoft announced a big expansion of the Azure IP Advantage program, which helps Azure users that are dealing with intellectual property lawsuits. This program also provides users who are building applications that connect to Azure with access to 10,000 patents. Plus Microsoft is also donating 500 patents to startups in the LOT Network.
The LOT Network is a nonprofit organization that was created to combat patent trolls. Some of the LOT members include Microsoft, Google, Red Hat, Uber, Ford, Facebook, Netflix, SAP, Dropbox, Mazda, General Motors, Honda, JPMorgan Chase, CBS, and Epic Games. There are nearly 400 members in the organization.
And qualified startups who join the LOT Network can buy Microsoft patents to own them outright. These startups have to meet a $1,000 per month Azure spend. The patents cover a wide range of technologies and geographies.
“We want to help the LOT Network grow its network of startups,” said Microsoft CVP and Deputy General Counsel Erich Andersen via TechCrunch. “To provide an incentive, we are going to provide these patents to them.”
Windows 10 October 2018 Broad Deployment Begins
The Windows 10 October 2018 update is now ready for broad deployment, according to a company blog post. Also known as version 1809, Windows 10 October 2018 will be launching next month.
"Based on the data and the feedback we’ve received from consumers, OEMs, ISVs, partners, and commercial customers, Windows 10, version 1809 has transitioned to broad deployment. With this, the Windows 10 release information page will now reflect Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) for version 1809. We will continue to communicate for future releases the transition from targeted to broad deployment status,” said Microsoft’s John Wilcox.
Version 1809 was unveiled at IFA in August 2018 as the replacement for version 1803. Version 1809 included screenshot improvements, SwiftKey keyboard for Windows 10 and the Your Phone app.
Microsoft ended up having to pull the update due to files getting deleted spontaneously. And then Microsoft quickly patched that bug and attempted to roll out another fix, but there were other bugs that surfaced.
Skype For Android Bug May Answer Phone Calls
According to Android Police, Skype is working on fixing a bug that automatically answers incoming calls under certain circumstances. This problem first started surfacing on Microsoft’s support forums in January.
Skype for Android has an option to automatically pick up phone calls in the Settings, but the bug is causing the app to still answer even while this feature is off. A number of users said that the Skype app for Android stop picking up calls automatically after they disconnected their smartwatches from their devices. However, Android users without smartwatches are still experiencing this issue.
Microsoft acknowledged the bug and a fix is being worked on now.
Disrupting Iranian Hacker Group
Last week, court documents were unsealed detailing the work that Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit conducted to disrupt cyberattacks from an Iran-based threat group called Phosphorus — which is also known as APT 35, Charming Kitten and Ajax Security Team. Microsoft’s CVP of Customer Security & Trust Tom Burt said that the court case against Phosphorus filed in the U.S. District Court for Washington D.C. resulted in a court order that enabled the company to take control of 99 websites that the group uses to conduct its hacking operations so that it can no longer be used for executing attacks.
The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) and Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) divisions have been tracking Phosphorus since 2013. The activity that Phosphorus conducts is usually designed for gaining access to the computer systems of businesses and government agencies for stealing sensitive information. And they also target activists and journalists especially the ones involved in reporting on issues related to the Middle East.
“Phosphorus typically attempts to compromise the personal accounts of individuals through a technique known as spear-phishing, using social engineering to entice someone to click on a link, sometimes sent through fake social media accounts that appear to belong to friendly contacts. The link contains malicious software that enables Phosphorus to access computer systems,” wrote Burt. "Phosphorus also uses a technique whereby it sends people an email that makes it seem as if there’s a security risk to their accounts, prompting them to enter their credentials into a web form that enables the group to capture their passwords and gain access to their systems.”
These attack methods use websites that incorporate the names of big name brands in order to appear authentic. Some of the websites used by Phosphorus include outlook-verify.net, yahoo-verify.net and verification-live.com.
Microsoft worked with Yahoo to share threat information and the two companies jointly stopped attacks. And Microsoft worked with each domain listing company listed in its suit prior to filing it.
This case is similar to the cases that Microsoft filed against another hacker group called Strontium. This approach was used 15 times to take control of 91 fake websites that were associated with Strontium.
New Microsoft 365 Features
Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365 Kirk Koenigsbauer published a blog post highlighting all the new features that were added to Microsoft 365 in March. Here is an overview of the new features:
There are new intelligent inking features in the Microsoft Whiteboard Windows 10 app for improving the collaborative ideation experience. You can take a picture of a physical whiteboard and it gets converted to digital ink in the Whiteboard app using ink grab. And the ink beautification feature helps to increase the readability of jotted notes by analyzing handwriting and automatically replacing it with more legible strokes. These features are now available in the Whiteboard Windows 10 app.
When you securely connect your LinkedIn account with your Office 365 account, you can work seamlessly with first-degree LinkedIn connections and view others’ LinkedIn profiles in Outlook on the web, and in OneDrive and SharePoint in Office 365. And you can see relevant insights about the people you are working with, both inside and outside your organization. Target Release customers can now send emails to and coauthor documents with many of their first-degree LinkedIn connections. You can get started by typing a connection’s name in the To or Cc field when composing a new message or sharing a document in Outlook on the web, Word Online, PowerPoint Online, Excel Online, SharePoint and OneDrive.
And there are new features for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook on the web. You can make presentations stand out with 3D objects and animations on the Mac and create stunning visuals on Word, Excel and PowerPoint. And this improves comprehension and retention and increases engagement. You can insert scenes and 3D models from a library of free content and rotate 3D objects at every angle. The 3D objects feature on Mac is going to become available for Insiders next month.
Outlook on the web has new intelligent features to prepare for and schedule meetings faster. For example, Outlook on the web helps you prepare for meetings by showing you relevant information you might need. And it will also automatically suggest that you create a meeting directly from an email conversation and show you available days and times for people you include in a meeting invite. These features are going to start rolling out to Outlook on the web users in the next few weeks.
And now you can manage your Microsoft 365 services with the next Microsoft 365 admin center. Recently, Microsoft announced that the Microsoft 365 admin center will start rolling out as the default experience for all Microsoft 365 and Office 365 admins. The Microsoft 365 admin center is designed to serve as a single entry point for managing services across Windows 10, Office 365, and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS).
Some of the additional updates include a Yammer tab option for a Teams channel, an option to open Office 365 documents directly in the desktop apps, Microsoft Forms Pro arriving in public preview, support for syncing edits of files embedded in your notebooks on OneNote and the custom policies feature in Azure Active Directory B2C becoming generally available — which gives you more control over identity experiences to help you deliver personalized user journeys in customer-facing applications.
