Thurrott Daily: May 2

Tech tidbits from around the web.

5/2/2016 3:41:59 PM

De Icaza: Microsoft is a different company now

The Register reports.

What is it like coming to Microsoft, once perceived as a staunch opponent of the open source movement?

“It is a different organization,” says de Icaza. “The press, around early 2000, said this is the end of Microsoft, Windows is dead, open source is going to destroy them. Their immediate reaction was like an allergic reaction, very negative, and it created a culture that damaged for many years. Microsoft by being so opposed to open source ended up rebuilding things that the community was building, and meanwhile Google, Apple, Facebook, they were able to have their engineers solve different problems and just reuse solutions that existed. So yes, 15 years ago they were not very open source friendly, but the people that are now there are a different crowd.”

Despite these issues, de Icaza says that “The .NET team was always very supportive. We always had questions like, how does this work in .NET, and they said, it works this way, so they were always helpful.”

Interesting read. And Miguel is amazing.

Get Office 365 Home Premium for just $76

I just renewed my Office 365 Small Business Premium account, and it was in turn upgraded to a new Office 365 Business Premium account. But in doing so, someone on Twitter told me about a couple of deals you should know about if you face a similar upgrade:

Office 365 Home Premium for $76 – normally $99

and…

Microsoft Office 365 Small Business Premium for $96 – normally $150

Thanks to @lhavenst.

Buy an Xbox One, get a $50 gift card

It seems the Xbox One deals know no bounds, though I guess I’d advise anyone interested in Microsoft’s latest console to wait until the June E3 show to see whether a new, more efficient version is introduced. But in the wake of its latest deal, Microsoft is offering yet another way to save money on an Xbox One: Now, when you buy the console from the Microsoft Store, you get a $50 gift card.

Score a $50 Microsoft Store gift code and a free game with select Xbox One consoles

PBS Video app is now available on Windows 10

Since we’re always on the lookout for high-quality Windows 10 UWP apps, here’s a quick peek at the new PBS Video app for Windows 10.

Accessing your favorite video content from PBS is easier than ever before no matter the device you’re using whether it’s a PC, tablet or phone.

You can access thousands of hours of free PBS video content and programming on-demand directly through the PBS Video app, including some of your favorite PBS shows like Downton Abbey and Mercy Street. You can also take advantage of personalization features we built into the app. With Cortana integration you can launch the app with your voice by asking Cortana to open the PBS app for you. You can also say things like, “What’s playing today on PBS Video?” and Cortana will open PBS Video to the day’s scheduled programming. If you want to see what’s new just say, “What’s new on PBS Video?” and Cortana will open the app to the new video section.

You can download the PBS Video app for free from the Windows Store.

SQL Server 2016 coming on June 1st

I don’t really cover Microsoft’s increasingly legacy server products here on Thurrott.com, of course, but this milestone is worth at least mentioning.

SQL Server 2016 will be generally available on June 1, 2016.

This will allow you to build mission-critical, and business critical intelligent applications with the most secure database, the highest performance data warehouse, end-to-end mobile BI on any device, in-database advanced analytics, in-memory capabilities optimized for all workloads, and a consistent experience from on-premises to cloud. These capabilities are built-in to SQL Server for industry-leading low cost of ownership.