Microsoft is releasing a new version of Office this week, designed for people that don’t want to subscribe to Microsoft 365. The standalone Microsoft Office 2024 release is now available for both consumers and small businesses, and includes locked-in-time versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook across both Mac and PC.
Technology
Return Entertainment reports good results from cloud-based Samsung smart TVs
GamesBeat Next is almost here! GB Next is the premier event for product leaders and leadership in the gaming industry. Coming up October 28th and 29th, join fellow leaders and amazing speakers like Matthew Bromberg (CEO Unity), Amy Hennig (Co-President of New Media Skydance Games), Laura Naviaux Sturr (GM Operations Amazon Games), Amir Satvat (Business Development Director Tencent), and so many others. See the full speaker list and register here.
Return Entertainment, a Finland game developer making cloud games for Samsung smart TVs, has reported positive early success with its titles in the U.S.
Available exclusively on Samsung smart TVs in the United States, Return Entertainment launched its Rivals Arena trivia game in May. The title let players engage in multiplayer experiences using a smartphone or just a remote control to operate games on the TV, with new content coming in via the cloud.
Return Entertainment said the smart TV gaming platform is not just another way to play—it’s a leap
forward in home entertainment technology. By simply scanning a QR code, users can dive into
cinematic games on their Samsung smart TVs, all while using their smartphones as intuitive
and responsive controllers.
A survey conducted by Return Entertainment within the game found that 85% of players reported that the mobile controller was easy to use. Additionally, 88% of players said they were able to start the game quickly. This platform is designed to blur the lines between casual TV viewing and interactive gaming, making it easier than ever to engage in gaming from the comfort of their living rooms.
Join us for GamesBeat Next!
GamesBeat Next is almost here! GB Next is the premier event for product leaders and leadership in the gaming industry. Coming up October 28th and 29th, join fellow leaders and amazing speakers like Matthew Bromberg (CEO Unity), Amy Hennig (Co-President of New Media Skydance Games), Laura Naviaux Sturr (GM Operations Amazon Games), Amir Satvat (Business Development Director Tencent), and so many others. See the full speaker list and register here.
Vesa Jutila, CEO of Return Entertainment, said in a statement, “Our platform is capturing the attention of
mainstream TV viewers who have never considered themselves gamers before. With 44% of our users playing on their TV for the first time, we’re seeing the untapped potential of smart TV gaming. Our groundbreaking technology is transforming TV screens into interactive entertainment hubs, opening new possibilities for how people experience games in their homes.”
“Samsung is committed to providing players with more ways to discover and enjoy the games they love,” said Mike Lucero, head of gaming at Samsung Electronics America, in a statement. “With our latest gaming initiative, Rivals Arena, Samsung Smart TV owners interact with gaming content in an entirely new way. We’ve seen high engagement from our community with this initiative, and will continue to listen to our audience and build on what we learn to offer more value for our players.”
Operating at an efficient bitrate of just below 4Mbps, the smart TV gaming platform ensures smooth, high-quality gameplay even under challenging network conditions. With 95% of players experiencing less than 1% of skipped frames and a remarkable 95% enjoying flawless streams.
This platform takes advantage of Samsung Smart TV’s AI upscaling capabilities, elevating the visual experience by effortlessly converting full HD 1080p streams into 4K resolution. The combination of low-latency streaming and high-quality visuals sets a new standard in the industry, offering players an unmatched gaming experience that is both accessible and visually spectacular.
Adding in-game ads
For the first time in smart TV gaming, Return Entertainment’s platform has seamlessly integrated in-game video ads, including both unskippable video interstitials and optional rewarded ads. This approach provides a new revenue stream for game developers and TV manufacturers and improves player engagement by offering rewards for watching ads. The inclusion of rewarded video ads marks a significant milestone, introducing a proven mobile gaming monetization strategy to the smart TV landscape.
Return Entertainment continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the smart TV gaming space. With plans to introduce more games and features, the platform is poised to become a cornerstone of entertainment in households across the globe attracting players of all ages and skill levels.
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Traditional retailers have a pressing problem. Fast-moving like Shein and Temu are eating their lunch by leveraging purpose-built, end-to-end supply chains. Meanwhile, incumbent retailers are still stuck on legacy platforms, juggling a myriad number of data sets, and struggling to respond to a punishingly fast market.
A London-based startup thinks it has the solution to this problem. Ameba claims to be able to the unstructured data in a retailer’s supply chain systems, sprinkle in some generative AI, and make the whole thing more efficient.
The startup has now raised a $7.1 million seed round led by London-based VC firm Hedosophia, which has gained a reputation for rarely revealing which companies it invests in. TechCrunch reached out to the latter for further comment, but did not receive a response before publication.
Ameba’s platform uses generative AI on top of existing supply chain software to give retailers insights into their global supply chains, extracting data from a wide range of sources in order to predict disruptions and react to bottlenecks. The company claims it can reduce manual data input by 30%.
“In supply chains, particularly in the fashion consumer space, a lot of very important data is currently not being captured,” Ameba’s founder, Cedrik Hoffmann, told TechCrunch. “A lot of times, the things that are in the shops are sold at the wrong cost or they’re out of stock, or whatever.”
He said Ameba captures these unstructured data points that cost systems don’t: “We release that information from the information silos, bring them to a central source and surface the insights that are developed from them to the relevant parties within your organization.”
Co-founder Craig Massie said their underlying AI mixes a range of foundational models, including Open AI’s: “It changes depending on the task at hand and what performs best in our benchmarks for that task. The underlying constant across our AI usage is our multi-step agents — they can take actions, explore your ontology and its connections, read your supplier emails, WhatsApps and attachments.”
So far, British interior hardware and lighting company Plank has used Ameba to generate 140 alerts highlighting critical production and delivery delays that would have previously been missed or overlooked.
Before Ameba, Hoffman was the former supply chain director and co-founder of e-commerce company VALOREO, while Massie is a former Palantir engineer.
Also participating in the funding round were Visionaries Club, which previously led Ameba’s pre-seed round, and Anamcara Capital.
Isabella Yamamoto, principal at Visionaries Club, said in a statement, “After speaking to many supply chain owners, we were convinced that Cedrik and Craig had the experience to build a disruptive business using AI to eliminate fragmentation in supply chains and unlock competitive advantage for brands.”
Office 2024 includes a lot of the updates that Microsoft has been delivering to Microsoft 365 subscribers over the past few years. Microsoft last released a standalone version of Office in 2021, and this new Office 2024 release includes improvements to the core apps, as well as accessibility and UI changes.
Office 2024 has a new default theme, with Microsoft’s latest Fluent Design principles that match the visual changes to Windows 11. Microsoft has also added accessibility-focused improvements to help Office users find potential accessibility issues in documents, slideshows, workbooks, and emails.
The biggest changes in Office 2024 can be found in Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Microsoft has added new functions in Excel to use text and arrays in worksheets, alongside a new IMAGE function that can pull pictures from the web. Excel 2024 can also now reference Dynamic Arrays in charts, which can automatically update rather than being fixed to set data points. Microsoft claims the overall speed and stability of Excel 2024 should also be improved.
In PowerPoint Microsoft has added the cameo feature, allowing you to insert a live camera feed into slides. PowerPoint also has a new recording studio feature that includes recording features for narration, animations, transitions, and inking. You can also add closed captions or subtitles to videos and audio files in slides, making presentations a lot more accessible.
Outlook 2024 includes improvements to search so you get more relevant results for messages, attachments, contacts, and calendar entries. This latest Outlook release also includes more options for meetings, including the ability to automatically shorten them. Mac users can also customize swipe left and right gestures in Outlook.
In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint you can now insert a picture easily from an Android mobile device, and Microsoft is also supporting version 1.4 of the OpenDocument format (ODF) which includes a variety of new improvements. Word and PowerPoint also include the ability to like and react to comments in documents.
Word 2024 users will also be able to recover a session if your PC crashes. Word will automatically open all the documents you had open before your PC crashed, you lost power, or Word simply closed unexpectedly. OneNote 2024 users will also get access to the new inking and drawing experience.
Microsoft says Office 2024 will require a Microsoft account and an internet connection, but if it’s anything like Office 2021 then you’ll only need an internet connection to install the suite, activate it, and get any security updates. Office 2024 will run on Windows 10 and 11 as well as the three most recent releases of macOS.
Office 2024 will be available in two different editions. Office Home 2024, priced at $149.99, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for PC or Mac. If you want Outlook, you’ll need to purchase the $249.99 Office Home and Business 2024 version, which also includes the rights to use the apps for commercial purposes.
Despite ongoing interest surrounding artificial intelligence technologies embedded into work environments, UK businesses are still prioritizing hiring workers with basic technical skills.
New research by Indeed found only 2.6% of job postings in the UK mentioned AI skills, with basic skills like Microsoft Office and generic IT expertise coming up more frequently.
According to the report, the most common technical skills sought by UK employers include generic IT skills (10%), Microsoft Office (6%) and Microsoft Excel (5%). Moreover, demand for basic IT skills has remained pretty consistent over the past five years, both in the UK and in other markets like the US.
UK businesses need basic IT skills more than AI
Besides tech skills, Indeed found that UK employers are also prioritizing human skills like communication (30%), leadership (9%) and organization (7%).
Moreover, Indeed’s research into the current state of the UK jobs market tackles ongoing concern that AI could replace human workers. The analysis of over 2,800 work skills found that two-thirds (68.7%) are ‘very unlikely’ or ‘unlikely’ to be replaced by generative AI.
“While AI and other advanced technologies are likely to shape the future labour market, the current reality is that many employers are simply seeking workers with basic computer skills,” commented Indeed Senior Economist Jack Kennedy.
“While AI may eventually necessitate a broad upskilling across the workforce to embrace advanced technologies, there remains a more pressing concern around closing basic digital skills gaps and allowing everyone to fully engage with work in the digital age.”
This is despite Britain’s Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer’s ambitions to make the UK a global AI hub.
Despite the Prime Minister’s efforts, the current jobs market suggests businesses are not yet aligned with the vision, with employers still seeking fundamental tech skills and human competencies.
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