items tagged with Microsoft

In a ongoing commitment to the world community to help the  engage in recovery Microsoft Corp. today stepped up its commitment to prepare people of all ages with the technology skills and tools to succeed in today’s challenging economic climate. While at the  the Government Leaders Forum Microsoft announced the expansion of the successful Microsoft DreamSpark student program to include high school students worldwide. DreamSpark, originally available only to university students, makes professional-level developer and designer tools as well as training available to students at no charge to support and advance their learning and skills through technical design, technology, math, science and engineering activities.

"Expressed through its investments in a variety of initiatives, including DreamSpark, the Microsoft BizSpark program, Elevate America and Imagine Cup, Microsoft believes that giving people the right technology skills and the tools to translate their talent into business success is critical to stimulating the future growth of local and global economies. These programs are supported through the Microsoft Unlimited Potential program, the company’s commitment to help create sustained social and economic opportunity for communities worldwide."

“Today, despite the economic crisis, it’s as important as ever to focus on investing in innovation so we can continue to make real progress in solving big problems and creating social and economic opportunity,” said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. “In particular, I believe investment in education is essential. Education is the starting point for success for individuals and the prerequisite for economic growth and prosperity for communities. It’s vital that we support efforts to provide children with access to a high-quality education and adults with access to ongoing technology skills training.”

“As a university student, access to the software tools available on DreamSpark has already provided substantial benefits to my studies and overall academic success,” said Sina Chenari, a computer science student at George Washington University. “The experience and skills that I’ve developed using the same professional technology tools have helped me secure valuable internships and will give me a tremendous head start for a career after graduation. I think all students should take advantage of this opportunity before they enter the workforce.”

By increasing the teh out reach to the world education market microsoft  as well as start ups microsoft is making a stroing case for their product line. It will be interesting to see if schools react with education in the classroom that takes advantage of these tools.

Microsoft debuted Microsoft Recite at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. Recite is a note taking and search application for Windows Mobile phones that lets you record a voice message, then retrieve the messages later using pattern recognition technology (see video below).

The main problem with voice notes has always been retrieval. If you label your notes you may as well have written them out, and don’t label them you will never be able to find what you recorded.

Microsoft Recite uses voice recognition to record, search and retrieve voice notes without navigating menus or tapping out text.  You just speak your mental note to store it. Later, when you need the information just search and retrieve the remembrance using your voice.

“The new MSN City Guides puts city life at your fingertips,” said Scott Moore, U.S. executive producer, MSN. “All the information you need about a city or neighborhood is there — easy to find, easy to use, easy to share. Our goal is to deliver the best resource for navigating U.S. cities, whether you’re a die-hard local or just visiting.”

Key enhancements of MSN City Guides include the following:

MSN Investing in Growing Local Category

With the changing dynamics of the media industry, more people are getting the majority of their information online. People are craving more interaction with their community, and online local information is still a major growth opportunity. According to Forrester Research, only 31 percent of online consumers use an Internet directory to find local businesses today and 34 percent of online consumers use search engines as a resource for local business listings.¹

The new launch of MSN City Guides and recent hiring of Cyrus Krohn, who is responsible for leading the programming strategy for MSN local efforts, reflect important steps toward a deep investment in localized Web offerings.

“We believe the industry has only scratched the surface of this key category, which is relevant to everyone online,” Moore said. “Delivering a rich, relevant and compelling local offering that consumers care deeply about is a great opportunity for MSN. People want this information, and we’re going to keep working on new and innovative ways to give it to them.”

In the end i think that this whole thing is rip on yelp or for that matter city search. I think the layout is a little better then both of them but it will be hard to top there market.

Microsoft has developed a groups of solutions that are intended to help customers with technology priorities outlined by the Obama administration, including a more transparent and connected government, or what many are calling “Gov 2.0.” The concept of Gov 2.0 is about opening up two-way communication within and between government agencies and between government agencies and citizens. Microsoft’s Public Sector On-Demand Solutions help organizations improve communication and citizen services through a full-service, constituent relationship management service, hosted by one of Microsoft’s certified partners. The cloud-computing, browser-based service provides public sector organizations with off-the-shelf tools that aggregate a 360-degree view of critical data, enterprise-class reporting and analytics, all with virtually no ramp-up time.

Here are the offerings

Public Records Tracker. Public Records Tracker organizes and automates the public records request process for state, local and federal government organizations that must respond to Public Records Act and Freedom of Information Act requests. Public Records Tracker’s easy-to-use interface allows public employees to enter a new public records request, track all communication and activities associated with the requester, and deliver a response — all from a single screen. In addition, Public Records Tracker sends alerts when the request is approaching its mandatory due date to ensure that the agency maintains compliance with regulations and provides executives with the key reports they need for measuring results.

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FastTrackGov Citizen Service Solutions. FastTrackGov is a hosted subscription-based system that provides a full suite of automated community development applications for licensing, permitting, code enforcement and inspection management. Serving a variety of organizations, including county and municipal governments, government agencies, special districts, and taxing authorities, the system enables users throughout a public agency to manage a broad array of revenue sources from a single, security-enhanced, integrated system. By dramatically improving control over processes, organizations hope to increase productivity and efficiency, expedite revenue collection efforts, and enhance citizen satisfaction.

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Agenda Builder. The Agenda Builder on-demand solution provides organizations with electronic review and approval capability for agenda items, resulting in significant time and paper savings. Through workflows and tight integration with Microsoft Office, users, managers, elected officials and their staff members can monitor progress on agenda preparation to prevent unnecessary delays. Agenda Builder can be used to streamline agenda preparation for city council meetings, county commissioner meetings, hearings and other types of formal meetings that require preapproval of agenda items while helping organizations achieve their “green” initiative goals through reduced paper usage.

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Constituent Issue Manager. The Constituent Issue Manager on-demand solution provides elected officials and their staffs with case management tools that facilitate timely responses to constituent requests. Requests for assistance or information can be captured through a number of sources and are recorded through the easy-to-use interface, which provides an address validation capability and duplicate detection logic. Constituent Issue Manager provides the tools necessary to deliver improved constituent service at a lower cost than paper-based alternatives.

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Inspection Manager. The Inspection Manager on-demand offering provides organizations with a Web-based case management solution that gives field inspectors and inside office staff the tools needed to schedule and perform field inspections and manage the abatement process when violations are found and citations are issued. With Inspection Manager, organizations can plan and perform inspections more efficiently with an easy-to-use case management tool for resolving cases where violations are found.

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Backpack 2008 Student Information System (SIS). Backpack is the first on-demand social student information system of its kind, designed to revolutionize SIS technology and provide the ability to centrally manage all aspects of an entire school district. Backpack has two components:

--Backpack SIS. This interface allows administrators, staff and teachers to manage all aspects of the district down to individual classes and students. With Backpack SIS, teachers and staff can easily manage attendance, grade book information, courses, students, master scheduling, state reporting and assessments. By automating tasks that otherwise consume time or cause frustration, stress is reduced while freeing more time up for teachers to teach.

--Backpack Community. This Web portal provides parents and students with full, real-time transparency, interactivity and communication with teachers and each other. Backpack Community brings parents, students and teachers together through a safe and secure online community, promoting information transparency, accountability and family involvement in an environment geared for how today’s students want to interact online with their education and each other. Parents can see in real-time how their child is doing and even set up alert e-mails or text messages for specific updates. More information is available at http://www.backpacksis.com.

More information on these six solutions can be viewed at Microsoft’s new public sector on-demand community, Public Sector Idea Bank (http://www.publicsectorondemand.com/), created with the help of Neighborhood America’s social network platform.

Microsoft Corp. today announced a new initiative, Elevate America, which will provide up to 2 million people over the next three years with the technology training needed to succeed in the 21st-century economy.

Microsoft has worked for years with other businesses and community-based partners to broaden access to job opportunities through information technology education and training. Elevate America expands these efforts and provides immediate support in response to the current economic crisis in partnership with others in the public and private sector.

Elevate America has two main offerings, one available immediately and one that will be provided in partnership with state governments including those of Florida, New York and Washington.

A new online resource, located at http://www.microsoft.com/ElevateAmerica

Some of the basics offered

• Expanded access to basic technology literacy and skills training
• Basic-level information technology training resources through Microsoft Unlimited Potential and Digital Literacy curricula
• Intermediate technology skills training courses, online and instructor-led, plus selected certification exams
• Vouchers for eLearning course collections offered by Microsoft
• Vouchers for certification exams leading to Microsoft business certification
• Grants of cash and software to community partners to build in-classroom training capacity
• Discounted membership rates for institutions participating in the Microsoft IT Academy program
• Access to a new Web portal that will help guide individuals to training and resources that position them for success in the economy today, and tomorrow