After an angry social media stinkfest brought on by Office 2013 licensing terms, Microsoft reviewed customer feedback and today announced a change in the EULA that will allow Office 2013 users to transfer the software from one computer to another once every 90 days.
"This means customers can transfer Office 2013 to a different computer if their device fails or they get a new one. Previously, customers could only transfer their Office 2013 software to a new device if their PC failed under warranty," wrote Jevon Fark from the Microsoft Office Team. "While the license agreement accompanying Office 2013 software will be updated in a future release, this change is effective immediately and applies to Office Home and Student 2013, Office Home and Business 2013, Office Professional 2013 and the standalone Office 2013 applications. These transferability options are equivalent to those found in the Office 2010 retail license terms."
The updated transferability agreement for Microsoft Office 2013 desktop software now states:
Can I transfer the software to another computer or user? You may transfer the software to another computer that belongs to you, but not more than one time every 90 days (except due to hardware failure, in which case you may transfer sooner). If you transfer the software to another computer, that other computer becomes the "licensed computer." You may also transfer the software (together with the license) to a computer owned by someone else if a) you are the first licensed user of the software and b) the new user agrees to the terms of this agreement before the transfer. Any time you transfer the software to a new computer, you must remove the software from the prior computer and you may not retain any copies.
That will likely make you smile. Microsoft Research is another area where people tend to be happy with Microsoft as it is interesting and sometimes exciting to see what future tech innovation Microsoft is working on behind the scenes. Getting that glimpse into the future of research and development is what TechFest provides. This year, the technology showcase event included 154 demos and displays from Microsoft researchers around the world. Jim Oker, director of program management for Microsoft Research, said "TechFest helps build an understanding of 'where the state of the art is'."
Intelligent technology, big data and more natural interfaces were three big themes at TechFest 2013 this year.
Are large augmented displays coming to an office near you? The video suggests options for interacting with the massive office displays such as having "interaction menus appear next to a pen-holding hand. Another option is to use a mobile phone to navigate through and select the options we want to use."
SketchInsight allows for interactive whiteboard storytelling via freeform sketching: "The presenter simply sketches an example, and SketchInsight automatically completes the chart by synthesizing from example sketches."
Teaching Kinect to Read Your Hands: Researcher Cem Keskin showed how a new Kinect camera can tell the difference between an open or closed hand, which allows a person to simulating touch events "mid-air."
Microsoft has provided numerous TechFest Demo Highlights, including the nine slides below:
TechFest Demo Highlights
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New Experiences in Search
New Experiences in Search explores ways for people to experience search that are complementary to fast, relevant search in response to queries. This project component includes an organic kind of search that presents results that grow over time, drawing attention to the things about which you are most passionate.
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Gesture Recognition with Next-Generation Webcam
This project presents next-generation webcam hardware and software prototypes. The new prototype webcam has an extremely wider view angle than traditional webcams and can capture stereo movie and high-accuracy depth images simultaneously.
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FetchClimate! Building a Geographical Web Service
FetchClimate!, an intelligent, scalable, Windows Azure-based climate-data-retrieval service, can be used through a Silverlight Web interface or from inside any .NET program, and can provide climate information, data set location, negotiate permissions, download huge files, make sense of file formats, filter, interpolate and regrid.
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Automatic Text Pop-Up for Web Images
The Bing home page provides teaser captions for an interesting image in the form of Bing “cherries.” This project for Web Images application automatically generates similar text descriptions for a large fraction of the most popular images on the Web.
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A Natural User Interface for Polling Students in a Classroom
This project delivers a new, low-cost technique for instantly polling students in the classroom. Initial trials in schools in Bangalore, India, show the system is as accurate as a written test, as fast as a show of hands, and at least 10 times cheaper than alternative electronic solutions.
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Bing-Enabled Azure Data Services for Enterprises
Bing-Enabled Azure Data Services for Enterprises showcases two data services: An entity–synonym service that uses search-query logs to discover different ways people refer to any given entity, and an entity–augmentation service that uses search-crawled data to discover important attributes of a given set of entities and to auto-fill their values on those attributes.
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Machine Translator Hub
Microsoft Translator Hub enables language communities and others to create automatic translation systems. By enabling translation to languages that aren’t supported by today’s mainstream translation engines, this keeps less widely spoken languages vibrant and in use for future generations.
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Holoflector
With Holoflector, a project by Microsoft Research's Andy Wilson (shown here with Craig Mundie), graphics are superimposed on your reflection to enable an augmented-reality experience.
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ChronoZoom
A big problem for history teachers is conveying the vast stretches of time. ChronoZoom will enable transitioning effortlessly between scales of one year to billions of years, putting historical episodes in context, comparing vast amounts of time-related data across different fields and disciplines, and more.
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