How to get more by doing less? With Microsoft products and tons of new services. This is how CEO Satya Nadella introduces himself, as it is this year’s motto of Ignite, which is taking place personally for the first time: “Doing more with less”. Microsoft’s in-house trade fair runs through Friday. Nadella delivered the inaugural address on Wednesday evening, in which he detailed more than 100 innovations. Each of them is designed to help you save – in terms of energy, manpower and effort.
Announcements included an expansion of the Edge browser, a new designer application with artificial intelligence, new partnerships with Cisco and Meta, and an improved team.
Image generator Dall-E 2 comes to Bing
Dall-E 2, currently the much talked about image generator that is not yet freely available, is entering the Azure OpenAI service. According to Microsoft, it “expands the range of deployment scenarios available to users of Azure OpenAI with the security, compliance and AI standards of Microsoft Azure”. This means that: with the Dell-E2, the images, content and code must be generated by talking to the AI. Nadella also talks about low-code alternatives elsewhere. With PowerApps the code should be able to be written on its own. Power-Automate turns everyday language into low-code commands so that automation and other small tools can be developed easily. GitHub will play an increasingly important role in this.
The Dell-E2 Image Generator is also being made available to more people by integrating with Bing’s Image Creator and Microsoft Designer, a new designer software that allows almost anyone to become a designer in no time. still have only one access waiting list; When Microsoft Designer Will be widely available is unknown.
Browser Edge becomes a workspace
Microsoft Edge is already the best browser, Nadella explains. But it’s even better now and it gets the suffix workspace. To support and shape change in hybrid working, Microsoft wants to “turn rooms into places.” Microsoft Places is the name of an announced app that can be used to, among other things, make appointments and share dashboards and book rooms.
Edge Workspace is also initially only available as a preview. It should enable groups to view a website together and work on a shared document in the browser. The content is accessible via link. Regular Edge gets additional security features; Among other things, an automatic typo correction so you don’t end up on fake pages.
Avatars for Virtual Universes
Not only this, Mark Zuckerberg can present a beautiful avatar. Satya Nadella, who appeared on Meta on the eve of Ignite at Connect and announced a collaboration, is also introducing a new avatar for his mixed reality world Mesh. They’ll soon be available in Microsoft Teams, so you no longer need to show yourself, even an image, to listen to the conferences. Zuckerberg offered legs for his avatars – which are not so easy to reproduce with information from a headset – and the faces were filmed using the newly introduced Meta Quest Pro to give the avatars the correct facial expressions. Is. It looks like Microsoft hasn’t been able to do this with the Hololens yet. You can create up to three of your avatars at the same time – perhaps to suit certain dress codes such as business casual, black tie and casual. Avatars are still only available in a private preview, but all come in Teams versions.
Features for Teams and Outlook
There is also a new Team Premium, which will be previewed from December and will be available to everyone in early 2023. It should be smarter, safer and more comprehensive. There are meeting guides, ways to present your brand in meetings, AI-enabled information and support for users, automatic translators and, to increase security, watermarks for information exchanged in meetings.
Teams comes to Metaverse and its basic version gets minor modifications and new functions like Excel Live, Cameo to add camera images to powerpoint presentations.
With Outlook you can quickly reply to e-mails with responses, as we know it from online meetings. Context-IQ is available to direct people to suitable positions. And because swearing isn’t a good idea, the Microsoft editor on the web will in the future recognize if you’re writing too colloquially and suggest more elegant threads.
(EMW)
