When Bill Gates stepped down as Microsoft chairman last year, he vowed to “substantially” increase the time he spends at the company, with a particular focus on “ambitious scenarios,” though he didn’t reveal what exactly he would be doing. However, in an Ask Me Anything question and answer session on Reddit yesterday, Gates revealed that he is currently working on a project dubbed Personal Agent.

“One project I am working on with Microsoft is the Personal Agent which will remember everything and help you go back and find things and help you pick what things to pay attention to,” he said. “The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model – the agent will help solve this.” Read more »

The Sygic GPS navigation app that’s apparently amassed more than 75 million users on iOS and Android is now finally available for Windows Phone too. The app will provide some interesting competition for Nokia’s own solutions, now licensed to Microsoft for use in its mobile OS.

Sygic for Windows Phone comes with “forever free” GPS use, offline maps by TomTom, points of interest, route planning, and map updates. Read more »

Last week all eyes were on Microsoft and the announcement-rich event, held on January 21. A lot of groundbreaking and game-changing plans were unveiled to make the next installment of the OS a truly revolutionary experience. But perhaps the thing that excites us the most is the future of Windows on mobile devices.

Microsoft has made it clear that it will spare no resource in following its One Windows strategy and unifying the user experience across all devices. This, of course includes the unification of the app ecosystem, allowing developers to write code that works seamlessly across PCs, smartphones, tables and even Xbox consoles. Read more »

Cortana’s location-based reminders, that trigger notifications when you arrive at specific geographic locations, have now started working even in unsupported regions – they are now available in Jordan, as well as Russia.

According to a Geeks on Gadgets report, the feature now works perfectly in Jordan. “Navigation commands also work, bringing a list of nearby locations and approximate distances (in miles however), with the option to navigate to the through HERE drive,” the report notes. Read more »

As most of you surely know Microsoft organized an event on January 21 to showcase the progress and innovations in Windows 10 and beyond. The conference was quite interesting and gave answers to a lot of pressing questions, especially regarding the new OS on mobile device and the new unified application ecosystem. After a few encouragements from the speakers apparently a lot more people got excited about the new insider program and Microsoft was happy to announce that over 170 000 new registrations were received for the program in the two days after the event.

Windows 10 is truly a major upgrade over previous versions and Microsoft made that abundantly clear not only through the wide array of exciting new announcements and the emerging One Windows ideology, but also through the new open development process with in-depth user-engagement along the way. A big part of that is Microsoft’s new “Insider program”. Read more »

Microsoft has confirmed that its Lumia Camera will be the stock camera app on the upcoming Windows 10.

This means that all Windows Phone 8.1 devices are going to be using the camera suite when the Windows 10 update launches for their phones – and that’s not a bad thing at all. Read more »

In order to showcase the newly acquired 4K capture credentials of Nokia Lumia 930, Microsoft handed the device to the National Geographic photographer Stephen Alvarez. The cameraman has been tasked with capturing the seven wonders of the world with Victoria Falls being one of the stops in his journey.

Nokia Lumia 930 can shoot 2160p video at 24fps after the Denim update. Read more »

The Skype app for Windows Phone is getting a new update today, which should be live soon in Microsoft’s app store. Aside from the usual bug fixes and unspecified improvements, the new version of the app comes with one feature that’s been much requested by Windows Phone users: a compact mode.

Simply put, this makes fonts and messages smaller inside Skype. So, whereas before you could see a maximum of five contacts at a time, from now on you’ll get at least six on one screen. Read more »

Microsoft’s latest smartphone carries the model name RM-1099 and has successfully passed certification in Indonesia. However, unlike other certification processes like TENAA in China and FCC in the US, the Indonesian authorities don’t reveal any details regarding the product.

This means that there are neither specifications, nor photos of the phone in question. Not too long ago, the RM-1110 and RM-1069 also passed Indonesian certification. Read more »

The Microsoft Band got treated to its first major update. The new firmware brings a new feature to the wearable called Guided Workouts.

As the name kindly suggests, Guided Workouts will deliver exercise feedback straight from the Microsoft Band. Read more »

The Microsoft Lumia 435 and Lumia 532 are enjoying their first official moments. To better familiarize users with the two new smartphones, the company has outed a promo video for each one.

The Lumia 435 is presented as more leisure-oriented, but can still get a lot done, whereas Microsoft puts work as the accent of the Lumia 532. But since the two are almost identical (chipsets aside), you’ll be safe to assume you can do either on both. Check out the two videos below. Read more »

The champagne is popping over at the Microsoft headquarters as the company is now boasting 560,000 apps in its Windows Phone and Windows stores combined.

The number of combined apps back in November, 2014 was 525,000. The Windows Phone Store had 340,000, while the Windows Store was rocking 187,000. Currently, there’s no data how the newly added 35,000 apps are distributed. Read more »

If you’re in the UK or Ireland and are looking to purchase a Lumia-branded Windows Phone in the near future, this might interest you. Microsoft has started a promotion today which gives you a free Fitbit Flex wristband if you buy one of three Lumia devices.

The handsets in question are the Lumia 735, Lumia 830, and Lumia 930. You’ll have to grab them from one of the participating retailers, though. Read more »

Microsoft is listening to suggestions over at the User Voice forums on how to improve its products and one commenter mentioned how offline access to files in OneDrive will be great to have. In comes Casey Penk (a program manager at Microsoft) who reveals that the team is already on it.

Keeping offline copies from OneDrive is possible on a desktop Windows 8.1, but not on the phone. Competing services like Dropbox and Google Drive have file pinning as well (on Android and iOS at least). Read more »

Last year we saw Microsoft release updated and free versions of Office on both iOS as well as Android. But while most people saw this as a great decision, it left a small group of people miffed. Particularly those using Windows Phone.

As it happens, Office on Windows Phone, which has always been advertised as one of its main features, hasn’t been updated in ages and lags considerably behind Office on iOS and Android. People have been starting to wonder why Microsoft is ignoring its own platform, until Joe Belfiore had to come out and assure everyone that they are not. Read more »