Microsoft has rolled out a suite of new features to help its Teams software compete with workplace communication competitors Slack and Zoom.
Video conferencing tools have surged since the COVID-19 pandemic began. As companies shifted to all-remote setups, in order to avoid in-office interaction, they began to employ tools like Teams to maintain face-to-face communication.
"We believe that the future of work is being shaped right now," Jared Spataro, a corporate vice president of Microsoft 365, told Cheddar on Thursday.
Courtesy of Microsoft
Spataro says that while some of the new Teams features incorporate emojis and Microsoft's AI voice assistant Cortana, the headline add-on is "Together Mode." It gives users the ability to hold meetings in virtual rooms — that actually look like rooms
"It essentially takes AI technology and allows you to cut out people who are in a meeting and put them into the same background," Spataro said. "Our research shows us that even though that sounds very simple, it actually makes a really big difference when it comes to meeting fatigue."
While the only available setting now is a simple auditorium, Spataro says Microsoft is working on building different environments like conference rooms and even a 'virtual cafe.'
Umbilical cord blood banking platform Anja Health raised $4.5 million dollars in a seed round led by Seven Seven Six, a venture capital firm founded by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Anja Health offers a personalized, doctor-backed cord blood bank, which lets new parents freeze stem cells from their child's umbilical cord so they can be used to treat diseases in the future. It's a process Anja has called 'Hollywood's best-kept secret,' as celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Serena Williams, and more have all banked their umbilical cord blood. Kathryn Cross, the founder of Anja Health, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Catching you up on what you missed in today's news. Elon Musk has increased his commitment to purchase Twitter to $33.5 billion, Apple is raising its hourly wages for retail stores to compete for talent, and Roblox has announced that it will be partnering with the medically prescribed video game ‘Endeavor’ to help treat patients with ADHD.
After learning that the suspect in the Uvalde school shooting posted about his intentions on Facebook, activists are urging social networks to make changes. Lena Derhally, a licensed psychotherapist and author of "The Facebook Narcissist," joined Cheddar News to discuss the role social media plays in school shootings. "They're not really invested in taking down hateful content," she said about social platforms."In regards to the shooting, it was 15 minutes before that actual threat. It would be pretty hard for a social media company to trace that threat that quickly. But what they can do better is take down threats and hateful content much faster and more than they're doing now."
Esper Bionics CEO Dima Gazda breaks down how they're creating a mind-controlled bionic hand that guest smarter the more you use it, and what this innovation means for the future of the prosthetics industry.
On this episode of Cheddar Innovates: Brightseed Co-Founder breaks down what plant bioactives are, and how they're using the latest technology to study human's biological connections with plants; Esper Bionics CEO breaks down how they re creating a mind-controlled bionic hand that guest smarter the more you use it; Cheddar gets a look at Curiosity Stream's 'Capturing A Black Hole In Our Milky Way.'
