Microsoft's new Picturesque lock screen brings Bing homepage photos to Android

Microsoft has released yet another Android-exclusive app, Pictureseque, as part of its Microsoft Garage program that it first launched in October. The app, now available on the Google Play Store, is a lock screen that offers users access to the many terrific images that the company has posted on its Bing.com homepage.

The new lock screen offers more than just some pretty pictures. Here are the main features of Picturesque:

• Beautiful Bing Homepage images: Your lock screen will be updated with the beautiful daily Bing image; you could swipe through the images from past 6 days or shake your phone to change the image on your lock screen.
• Search on the lock screen: You could search for anything on the web directly from the lock screen and read all the linked pages without having to unlock your phone.
• Latest news: Keep yourself updated with the latest news headlines and tap through to read the full articles.
• Weather: Find out what the weather is at your current location; long tap through on the icons to get the detailed weather predictions for the week.
• Notifications on Screen: See your missed calls and Messages quickly from your lockscreen. Quick call or reply from the notification from Home screen itself.
• Regional Calendars & Muhurats (Only for Indian users): Personalize the lock screen to access your favorite regional calendars and Muhurat. Now you can figure out what festival is on for the day, rahu kalam, chogadiya/hora timings all from the lock screen itself.
• Camera & Phone controls: Access your phone camera from the lock screen; Change your WiFi, Bluetooth, volume, brightness settings; also use your phone as a torch from the lock screen.

Microsoft already has Next Lock Screen for Android, which was developed for business users. Picturesque seems to be aimed more for the regular smartphone consumer.

Microsoft reportedly invests in Cyanogen Inc., world predictably freaks out

The Wall Street Journal today on its Digits blog dropped word that Microsoft is "putting money into Cyanogen." No dollar amount figures were listed by the Journal's anonymous sources, thought it is noted that Microsoft "would be a minority investor in a roughly $70 million round of equity financing."

This, of course, means that Google is doomed and Android as we know it is over. The Internet said so shortly after the rumor broke.

Except that's not what it means at all.

Android truly is becoming a commodity. And the future is all about services. Google's gotten it right. Or, more correctly, it's gotten a lot of things right as it continues to build out new services. (And it's not like Google's ceased development.) Other companies either have their own services — say, Amazon and its Prime Instant Video — or license other services, such as maps. Microsoft half-heartedly attempted to do the same thing with Nokia X in emerging markets in 2014 — Android underneath, and Microsoft services on top.Never mind the talk of the 50 million CyanogenMod users. Or 9,000 volunteer developers. That's rhetoric and a good bit of fuzzy math (and, editorially speaking, a whole lot of padding out a little bit of news), especially when you consider just how many Android devices are out there in the world. (Something like 1 billion alone in 2014, to say nothing of the boom years before it.) And never mind that (excellently worded and predictably misused) "we're attempting to take Android away from Google" quote from Cyanogen CEO Kirt McMaster that opened his Q&A with The Information. (paywall)

And Bloomberg chimed in as well with its own anonymous source with more of the same, saying this investment is "about creating a version of the Android mobile-operating system that's more friendly to Microsoft services."