Here's everything you need to know as you go into the weekend: Microsoft's overhauling its Windows App stores; you'll have to work harder to avoid the cloud; your next dog may exist only in your holographic dreams.
ON OUR SITES
Security Sense: Most Websites Already Tell Everyone You Have an Account
Fair Warning: Microsoft's Continuing Enterprise Price Hikes Will Make it Harder to Avoid the Cloud
Is Microsoft Azure Stack really WAPv2?
What is disk quorum with Storage Spaces?
What is the SQL Server 2016 Query Data Store?
Using cloud storage and premium features with Office for iOS
Using the HP Active Pen with the HP Spectre x360
Windows Phone Gets OneDrive Update for Cortana Image Searches
*
MEET THE NEW AND IMPROVED WINDOWS STORE
Yesterday, Bernardo Zamora outlined Microsoft's plans to clean up the Windows Store app catalog, focusing on streamlining and decluttering the store, eliminating apps "that do not offer unique content, creative value or utility" and making sure titles and keywords made sense. Today, he's followed up with Windows Store payout reform. Developers can expect a better accounting for what they've earned and when they can expect to get paid (the payout threshold is now reduced to $25), and there will be a single, combined payout for Windows and Windows Phone apps. Yet one reporter thinks this won't be enough, opining the store won't improve so long as there is "the prevalence of substandard apps, but the absence of the big names."
*
FIRST THE HOLOPET, THEN THE HOLOALLERGIES
Microsoft's filed a trademark on the word "Holopet," with the description "Computer software; operating system software; virtual reality software; software for setting up, operating, configuring, and controlling wearable hardware and wearable computer peripherals" So why should you care? There's some speculation that this technology could tie into a virtual-reality pet, based on the appearance of a dog in a demo at the 1:20 mark (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AADEqLIALk).
*
DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS FOR THIS WEEKEND? ALLOW US TO SUGGEST SOME: AZURE FOUNDRY
The public preview of the open source platform as a service dropped today, so why not spend a weekend afternoon setting up an Azure environment, then deploying Cloud Foundry? It doesn't hurt to check out the tech in the early stages. As senior program manager Ning Kuang writes, "We are working to ensure that Azure CPI will in work in a private cloud environment running on Azure Stack and we will have more on that to come in the near future."
