Daily Update, Dec. 4th – Imagine Cup Grants Announced

At the Social Innovation Summit today, Microsoft announced the winners of the second annual Microsoft Imagine Cup Grants program, a three-year, $3 million competitive grant program that provides students with funding and support to help transform their projects into social enterprises or nonprofits that will address a specific social issue. The Imagine Cup Grants program is part of the Microsoft YouthSpark initiative, which aims to create opportunities for 300 million youth during the next three years. Check out this feature story on the Microsoft News Center and this post on the Microsoft Corporate Citizenship Blog. Below is a photo of Team Cipher256 of Uganda, (left to right) David Musinguzi, Aaron Tushabe, Joshua Okello, Josiah Kavuma and Joseph Kaizzi. The team received an honorable mention prize for WinSenga, a mobile application that aids midwives as they assist expectant mothers.

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Also, six days ago, we launched the “Scroogled” campaign to let you know that, just in time for the holiday rush, Google has made some unprecedented changes to Google Shopping. How did Google respond? They distributed a statement praising their service. They highlighted how great products look on Google Shopping without really explaining how the products get there in the first place. They did not contradict or argue any of the facts and information we laid out. The silence is disappointing given how important this issue is to consumers and the online industry as a whole. Read more about Bing’s commitment to trust and transparency over on The Bing Search Blog.

And, as part of the company’s unprecedented period of product launches, Microsoft today announced that significant updates to three core Microsoft Dynamics business solutions are available in December, delivering new capabilities and value to help customers transform their businesses. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 is available to customers now and additional product refreshes will be available later this month, including Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 (planned for Dec. 19) and Microsoft Dynamics December 2012 CRM Service update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (beginning mid-December).

Finally, Thomson Reuters announced the world’s 100 most innovative organizations today and Microsoft made the list. According to this press release, “the Thomson Reuters 2011 Top 100 Global Innovator(SM) program is an initiative that analyzes patent data and related metrics in a proprietary methodology to identify the companies and institutions that lead the world in innovation activity.”

Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog

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