Weekend Reading: June 27th Edition – More free storage is on the way with OneDrive

In this edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got stories on the greatly increased OneDrive storage space coming in the next month for those who have free or subscription accounts, Xbox One’s holiday lineup of exclusive games winning awards and nominations, and how you can now use Bing to search for tweets from your favorite folks and celebs.

Office 365 subscribers are going to get 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage, way up from the current 20 GB. That’s great news for a service that works across Windows, iOS, OS X and Android, and for those of us who need to securely offload our stuff from our computers and other devices. Individuals who use OneDrive only will also get a nice storage bump, for free, from 7 GB to 15 GB. If you don’t need an Office 365 subscription, but do need more storage space, there are monthly subscription options, which will see price cuts.

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Xbox One’s exclusive holiday lineup already has more than 25 awards and 60 nominations. Seven of the nominations are for the prestigious Game Critics Best of E3 2014 Awards, leading the industry for 2014 games. Among the exclusive fare coming for the holidays: “Halo: The Master Chief Collection,” “Sunset Overdrive,” and “Forza Horizon 2.” And coming very soon for football fans: “Madden NFL 15,” due out Aug. 26 for Xbox One, will make defense fun again. There are also four new indie games for Xbox One out this week, developed through the ID@Xbox program.

You can now use Bing to search for your favorite tweets and favorites on Twitter. Bing is rolling out a fast and intuitive way to discover tweets directly in its search results, through an exclusive partnership with Twitter. Now when you search for a trending hashtag, Bing will show you the most relevant tweets directly in the search results. To help you keep up with your favorite celebs, Bing can distinguish between their official Twitter accounts and the fakers. In the image below, you see that just typing in “@ap” yields @aplusk as the official handle for Ashton Kutcher, who has more than 16 million followers. Clicking on the main result reveals top tweets about Kutcher, as well as news relevant to him.

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In Tallahassee, Florida’s state capital, the Leon County School District is using Windows 8 and Office 365 for its 1:1 digital learning initiative for its 34,000 students. Choosing Windows 8 aligns with the district’s focus on using the existing curriculum and applications. The district joins others in the U.S. that are forging 1:1 mobile learning paths using Windows 8, including the Miami-Dade Public School District, West Virginia Department of Education, Chester County School District, Fresno Unified School District, Baltimore County School District and Houston Independent School District.

Microsoft’s Year Up youth internship program will be expanded. At the Clinton Global Initiative America event in Denver, Colorado this week, Microsoft announced a commitment to increase the company’s Year Up internship program, which gives youths a 12-month course of study that includes an internship in Microsoft’s IT department. Microsoft is also expanding its Job Shadow partnership program with Junior Achievement and expanding the availability of YouthSpark Summer Camps at Microsoft retail stores across the U.S.

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Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, center, and Lori Forte Harnick, Microsoft Citizenship & Public Affairs General Manager, fourth from left, on stage during the commitment announcement.

We have lots of apps that will make your summer fun.MY LITTLE PONY – Friendship is Magic” (also for Windows Phone ) takes tykes to Ponyville for fun and strategy challenges. For those extra hot days, stay inside and catch up on your favorite A&E, Lifetime and HISTORY shows and movies on your Windows Phone device. Or peruse four magazine apps now available in the Windows Store – Smithsonian Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Stuff Magazine and Forbes Media. Install Zappos.com on your Windows Phone and when you order through the mobile app, you’ll get free next-business-day shipping. Too lazy or hungry to cook? Order in using the Pizza Hut app from the Windows Store. And don’t forget staff app pick Vivino Wine Scanner for Windows Phone that lets you snap a photo of any wine label and then link to pricing, ratings and reviews, all from a community of more than 4.5 million wine lovers. Feel free to crop, apply filters, and enhance all your photos using Adobe Photoshop Express for Windows Phone. And be sure not to miss this week’s Red Stripe Deals, with 50 percent savings off six games and apps in the Windows Phone Store.

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Adobe Photoshop Express for Windows Phone.

In this week’s installment of Snaps, Microsoft Stories’ digital photo album, Office exec Julia White introduces the world to Office for iPad. Watch for a profile of White, coming soon.

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Julia White.

This week on the Microsoft Facebook page, we introduced you to Matt Fisher, who made dinosaurs roar with the help of Kinect. Tell us what you’ve created using the #ICreatedThis hashtag.

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Thanks for checking out this edition of Weekend Reading. See you next week!

Posted by Suzanne Choney
Microsoft News Center Staff

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