Windows 10's Cortana Has Already Told Over Half a Million Jokes: Microsoft

It hasn't even been a month since the release of Windows 10, Microsoft's newest desktop operating system, and more than 75 million devices are already running on it, the company announced on Wednesday. At the sidelines, Microsoft also shed light on several other interesting Windows 10 statistics.

Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President of Marketing for Windows and Devices, took to Twitter to offer several other interesting statistics. Mehdi revealed that the Windows Store, the official application store for Windows applications, is witnessing a big drive in usage. Launched with Windows 8, the Windows Store for Windows 10 has seen six times more app downloads per device than on Windows 8.

Cortana, the digital voice assistant which Microsoft introduced to the desktop platform with Windows 10, is garnering interest as well. Mehdi noted that since launch on Windows 10, it has shared over half a million jokes in response to "tell me a joke" query which apparently people love to ask it.

Additionally, Microsoft Solitaire Collection, which Microsoft released in Windows 10 replacing the good ol' Solitaire title, and recently launched Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta, have seen users unlock over 10 million achievements.

Mehdi further revealed that over 2,000 organisations are competing to win the global partner slot in its "Upgrade Your World" program. For those unfamiliar, through Upgrade Your World, Microsoft offers cash support to non-profit organisations. The company also provides such organisations with its products and services for free. He also thanked Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, and Dwayne Johnson, for helping the the Upgrade Your World program.

Source: NDTV

Microsoft Releases Photo Story App for Windows Phone 8.1

Microsoft has launched a new photo app for its Windows Phone (also Windows 10 Mobile) mobile operating system. Called Photo Story, the app automatically arranges the best representative photos of an event together and makes a themed video album featuring them. Photo Story is a product of Microsoft Garage Project.

Photo Story is a full-fledged app, which in addition to creating video albums, also offers editing and sharing tools apart a plethora of transition effects to allow users to do everything without ever needing another app. It also lets users add stylised music to the videos.

How the app categorises the images is just as interesting as the features it comes with. Microsoft says that the app uses machine learning in the selection process. It's worth pointing out that a similar feature was introduced by Google in its Photos app at its developer conference I/O in May.

The app will get better at recognising and sorting similar photos over time, Microsoft said. "Photo Story's algorithm isn't just looking for technical quality, such as whether or not it's blurry or the exposure is correct," the company noted in a blog post. It looks for something called "interestingness" instead.

But how speedy is the app? Microsoft insists that the app won't take much time as it does all the processing on the device itself cutting the waiting period wasted in uploads and downloads. Photo Story supports voice commands via Cortana, so for instance, saying "Story from today" will make the app start sorting the photos you took today. You can download it from the Windows Store.

Source: NDTV