A onetime top 10-ranked “Halo” player, Alex Hebert-Ruiz is now at Microsoft, where she advocates for Xbox LIVE Arcade games when she’s not playing “Halo 4.”
REDMOND, Wash. — Nov. 26, 2012 — Alex Hebert-Ruiz remembers the day she got her start as a gamer.
It was the Christmas she got a Barbie house and her brother got a Nintendo. She was 6, and she was hooked – on her brother’s gift.
“Don’t get me wrong, I loved my Barbie house,” she says, “but beating him at Duck Hunt was one of the great challenges of my young life.” (more…)
States in need of best practices and flexible IT solutions that improve access, quality and efficiency in the financing and delivery of health and human services programs.
REDMOND, Wash., and WASHINGTON — Nov. 13, 2012 — The American Public Human Services Association (APHSA), in coordination with Microsoft Corp., today released the results of a new survey of health and human services departments and agencies nationwide. The report, “A Promising Future for HHS Transformation — The Real Impact of IT System Modernization,” includes survey findings that identify the expectations, strategies and practices that health and human services (HHS) agencies use for the planning, acquisition and implementation of their information technology (IT) systems.
APHSA and Microsoft surveyed 67 agency program leaders from 35 states at various stages of modernizing their HHS IT systems, from those who have implemented solutions for eligibility determination and benefit issuance, case management, and online self-service to those who had not yet modernized. The survey focuses on capturing the agencies’ experience with organizational transformation planning efforts, the agencies’ system life-cycle challenges, and the impact and benefits the agencies experienced from IT modernization. The results revealed that with dynamic executive leadership, due diligence and solid program management practices, departments are seeing incremental benefits expected of IT modernization, but a number of challenges remain. With those challenges, a bright path exists to achieve the desired business benefits for transformation through the promise of today’s technology. (more…)
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was in Europe and Israel last week to showcase Microsoft’s wave of newly updated products, including Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Surface with Windows RT. He reinforced to customers, developers, students and others that the company is moving into a new era.
REDMOND, Wash. – Nov. 13, 2012 – World, meet Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Surface. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week took Microsoft’s wave of new products on the road, visiting Europe and Israel.
He said the launch of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, an upcoming new version Office, and updates to the company’s Xbox platform—all part of the biggest wave of updates in the company’s history—signify that Microsoft has entered a new era. (more…)
New software and services enable businesses to create and enhance mobile strategies
ARMONK, N.Y. – 09 Nov 2012: IBM today unveiled a suite of new software and services that enables global organizations to build a comprehensive mobile computing strategy – from securing and managing devices, to creating mobile applications and analyzing data. These new offerings are part of a move by IBM to capitalize on the growing market opportunity for mobile that is expected to drive $130B in revenue for the IT industry by 2015, according to a recent study.[i]
As organizations increasingly view mobile computing as the next platform to conduct business, the market is evolving beyond just the device. Business leaders including the chief information officers (CIOs) and increasingly chief marketing officers (CMOs) of global organizations such as airlines, retailers, governments and healthcare providers are among the businesses turning to IBM to ensure mobile services and solutions are readily available to constituents and in full compliance with IT strategies. They need solutions that can be applied across any mobile environment and device — whether a laptop, smartphone or tablet — and can provide an underlying IT infrastructure that is always available, secure, effectively manages data, and integrates both front and back-end systems. (more…)
Members of 343 Industries talk to the Microsoft News Center about the infrastructure behind the “Halo 4” Infinity Multiplayer suite and the video game industry’s shift to a world of 24/7 live services.
REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 31, 2012 — Meet Jerry Hook and Tamir Melamed, the hardest-working plumbers in the video game world not named Mario or Luigi.
Hook and Melamed lead the engineering team laying the subterranean IT structures that will power every pixel of the multiplayer experience in “Halo 4.” Everything fans experience online – stats, screenshots, the simple joy of blasting a friend or stranger to smithereens – depends on the infrastructure they’ve built over the past year and half. That infrastructure is supported by Windows Azure, which provides the team with the affordable scalability they need to keep a game like “Halo 4” running smoothly for fans. (more…)
Xbox Music is Microsoft’s brand new all-in-one music service that enables users to listen to music how, when, where and on what device they want. It is included in a rolling update to Xbox LIVE that starts Tuesday and will be expanded when Windows 8 launches.
REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 14, 2012 — If music makes the people come together, as Madonna says, the new Xbox Music gives people all the music they love, every way they want it.
Xbox Music, Microsoft’s new all-in-one music service, specially designed to let users listen to music in exactly the way they want, begins rolling out to millions of people around the world Oct. 16 on the Xbox 360, then to the masses with Windows 8 on Oct. 26. (more…)
RESTON, VA, October 2, 2012 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending August 2012. The study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 25.7 percent market share. Google Android led among smartphone platforms, accounting for 52.6 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Apple accounted for 34.3 percent. (more…)
Study suggests people prefer Bing’s Web search results nearly 2-to-1 over Google.
REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 6, 2012 — Beginning today, America can click and choose which Web search results it prefers by participating in the Bing It On Challenge, available at Bing.com. Based on research that indicates people prefer Bing Web search results over Google, Bing is inviting consumers to come and see for themselves with an online test designed to show that the quality of Bing’s Web search results has surpassed Google’s.
Although most people identify themselves as Google searchers, an independent study commissioned by Microsoft Corp. shows people chose Bing Web search results over Google nearly 2-to-1 in blind comparison tests.* Given those findings, Bing decided it is time to let people see for themselves that there is a better option in search. (more…)
