A random summary of news, Announcements and other interesting stuff 
Good bye, Windows XP!
As already many times posted and announced, the Support for Windows XP will end on April 8, 2014!
If you still haven't migrated yet to windows 7 or higher, then you are really in trouble
So what does that mean?
Technical assistance for Windows XP will no longer be available, including automatic updates that help protect your PC from harmful viruses, spyware, and other malicious software, which can steal your personal information.
This also impacts the known Microsoft Security Essentials for download. The Antivirus software signatures will continue until 14th July 2015
but will NOT extend any updates for XP!
This applies to Microsoft Security Essentials, System Center Endpoint Protection, Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection and Windows Intune running on Windows XP"
See more Info here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2014/01/15/microsoft-antimalware-support-for-windows-xp.aspx
For other related products, see also the Support Lifecycle policy here: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=Windows+XP&Filter=FilterNO
Will XP stop running on my PC?
Even if you have an unsupported version of Windows XP or Windows Vista without any service packs, Windows will continue to start and run. But as stated above, no more updates, security or hotfixes will be developed/released and therefore your PC might be potentially unprotected at that point.
How can I migrate to a higher version?
Microsoft provides a Free Windows XP Migration Tool that helps you migrating your data.
Please find all help and Info on the Windows XP Help site
You can find additional information and helpful Links here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftservices/xp_end_of_life.aspx
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/end-support-help
Other products also running out of Support soon:
- Internet Explorer 6
- Exchange Server 2003
- SharePoint Server 2003
- Project Server 2003, Project Standard and Professional 2003 Editions.
- Windows Server 2003 – End of Support: July, 14th, 2015
Our Self-help and additional content will be available for 12 months after the product reaches the end of support date.
Self-Help Online Support includes public Knowledge Base articles, FAQs and Troubleshooting tools that is provided via http://support.microsoft.com and the Microsoft Download Center.
A little gimmick: Windows XP End Of Life Countdown App (download)
SP1 available for SharePoint Server 2013, Project Server 2013, Project 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013
See more details on my other post her about this
Some of the new stuff is shortly copied here:
- Compatibility fixes for Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11.
- Better support for modern hardware, such as high DPI devices and the precision touchpad.
- New apps for Office capabilities and APIs for developers.
- Power Map for Excel, a 3D visualization tool for mapping, exploring, and interacting with geographical and temporal data in Excel, is now available to Office 365 ProPlus subscription customers. You can learn more about Power Map general availability on the Power BI Blog.
- Improvements to the Click-to-Run virtualization technology that installs and updates Office 365 desktop applications.
- SkyDrive Pro is now OneDrive for Business.
InfoPath and SharePoint Forms will be retired!
As announced on the InfoPath Team Blog and latest from the SharePoint Conference 2014 in Las Vegas,
InfoPath 2013 is the last release of the desktop client, and InfoPath Forms Services in SharePoint Server 2013 is the last release of InfoPath Forms Services. The InfoPath Forms Services technology within Office 365 will be maintained and it will function until further notice.
What does that mean?
- The InfoPath 2013 client and InfoPath Forms Services for SharePoint Server 2013 will be still supported until April 2023 as part of our Lifecycle support policy!
- InfoPath Forms Services in Office 365 will be supported until further notice! – please review also our Online Services Support Lifecycle Policy.
Will Microsoft be shipping another version of InfoPath?
No, there will not be another version of the InfoPath desktop client or InfoPath Forms Services. But there will be investments on new intelligent, integrated forms experiences across Office technology.
Will there be a migration tool or process for the next generation of forms technology?
We’ll provide more details on migration scenarios and guidance as announced on the SharePoint Conference 2014
The session can be seen here: http://www.sharepointconference.com/content/sessions/SPC348
Please find a lot more Information here: http://blogs.office.com/2014/01/31/update-on-infopath-and-sharepoint-forms/
SharePoint Conference 2014
There were some public announcements at the conference which will be shortly copied here with a link to more details on it
SharePoint 2013 Service Pack 1
In addition to the normal performance, reliability and security fixes SP1 should make OneDrive for business integration much easier. We also made Yammer integration much more seamless. You can find more information about SP1 here
Office Graph
Office Graph has taken the Yammer Enterprise Graph and extended this with content. This will allow organizations discover content related to the people in their network. Office Graph has caused a lot of buzz in the media and should prove to be a key differentiator in the collaboration space. You can find more info on Office Graph here
Unified Groups
The Unified Groups approach will make it seamless to work in a group regardless of using Yammer or your inbox. Creating a group anywhere in Office 365 will automatically provision an inbox, social feed, calendar, and document library to support the group. You can read more about Groups here.
OneDrive for Business
There is a new standalone subscription plan that includes Office Online and SharePoint 2013 SP1. We have also introduced API’s in the service that help with OneDrive adaption. You can find more information here.
Developer Story
Using Web Standards and providing cross-platform access was a key message, we introduced a new set of APIs that span Office 365 – the goal being to move away from product specific APIs to service APIs. We also announced the Android SDK for Office 365. For more information check Arpan’s blog here.
Improved BCM capabilities
We announced that we are supporting Always on Async replication for Service Application Databases. This will simplify our BCM messaging, with this capability we can support most of the SharePoint databases in this mode. The main exceptions here are Search databases and the databases that are Farm specific.
Related Links:
Technology is enabling new ways of working
Introducing codename Oslo and the Office Graph
SharePoint Server 2013 Service Pack 1 now available
The Office 365 platform —new opportunities for developers
Announcing support for SAML 2.0 federation with Office 365
Try Power BI for Office 365 for a better reporting experience
And a lot of video content can be found on Channel 9: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014
Office 365: Yammer Enterprise for Academic Plans for free!
With the 1st of April, all customers with Office 365 Academic plans (A2, A3, A4…) will be able to activate Yammer Enterprise within their subscription.
Please find more information here (in german): http://www.edu365.de/Dienste/Kommunikation/1954_Yammer_Enterprise.htm
SharePoint mysteries and more... 