Weekend Reading: March 28th Edition—Office for iPad is one of many mobile-first, cloud-first releases

In this edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got stories on the release of Office for iPad (as well as the Enterprise Mobility Suite and other mobile-first, cloud-first products), and Microsoft Azure being made available in China.

Office arrives on the iPad. In San Francisco Thursday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made several announcements, including the release of Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the iPad. Built from the ground up for touch, it’s still unmistakably Office. You can read Word documents, use Excel data and present with PowerPoint for free. With an Office 365 subscription, you can edit and create new documents.

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Nadella also spoke about the strategy and investments Microsoft is making to deliver a cloud for everyone and every device. Prominent in that goal are the release of the new Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite and the upcoming availability in April of the Azure Active Directory (AD) Premium identity and access management service. And, you can find Miranda Luna, a product marketing manager for the services in Microsoft Azure that help with mobile app development, jamming on that corner of cloud and mobile.

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Updated visual design for self-service group management experience

Microsoft Azure is now is now generally available in China through 21Vianet. This significant milestone makes Microsoft the first global company to make onshore public cloud services available to customers in China, where IDC reports a sustained growth rate of more than 40 percent in the public cloud service market since 2012. In the UK, blinkbox used Microsoft Azure to encode and catalog its vast library for the streaming service’s million monthly users.

Get to know James Mickens, “The Galactic Viceroy of Research Excellence.” To talk to this researcher is to step into a Technicolor world saturated with humor, absurdity and profound intelligence. Find out why Mickens considers an ability to connect with people – more so than even raw intelligence – to be the key to his success as a researcher.

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New apps bring more gaming, sports and movies to Xbox One and Xbox 360. On Monday, the Major League Gaming (MLG) app launched on Xbox 360. With the MLG app, Xbox Live Gold members can watch all of MLG.tv’s programming, like the upcoming “Call of Duty” Championship. Fans can indulge in spring fever with Major League Baseball games on Xbox One. Or, kick back with movies and TV shows on Encore Play and Movieplex Play from Starz. Over in the Windows Phone Store and Windows Store, we saw prime picks in the App of the Week: Office Lens, as well as Staff App Pick: Pradux. If you’re looking for love, check out eHarmony. If crazy go-kart racing is more for you, then “Angry Birds Go!” should be in your wheelhouse. World Cup fans can kick up their heels with “FIFA 14” from the Windows Store, and it’s also available in the Windows Phone Store.

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Microsoft sponsors We Day Seattle and We Day California 2014 and helps inspire more young people to make changes in their communities and the world. Over the past week, Microsoft participated in We Day Seattle and We Day California, part of the company’s three-year commitment to sponsor Free the Children’s signature We Day event and the We Act yearlong, in-school community service program in Washington and California. Through their community service, more than 30,000 youth earned their way to We Day Seattle March 21 and We Day California March 26. Check out photos of the events in this slideshow.

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This week on the Microsoft Facebook page, we introduced you to David Zivot, whose app helps people bake like it’s 1869. Check out his secret recipe, and tell us your story using #ICreatedThis.

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Thanks for checking out this edition of Weekend Reading. Hope you’re enjoying spring, wherever you are! See you next week!

Posted by Athima Chansanchai
Microsoft News Center Staff

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