Microsoft news – Page 168

Posted on August 30, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Teachers: Check out back to school how-to videos and innovative classroom tools

As you say goodbye to summer and hello to your students, we’re grateful that so many of you see us as a resource for bringing continuous improvement and innovation into the classroom.

We’ve packed a lot of news into this month’s What’s New in EDU to help you get the year off to a great start. From short videos answering your top questions to free professional learning opportunities and big updates on classroom tools, we’re confident there is something here for you.

You Can in :90 videos

First, we hope you check out the video above—hosted by the most enthusiastic and adorable team of video journalists in the world: Amiyah, Soren, Estelle and Jorian. They’ve taken over this month’s What’s New in EDU, and we have a feeling you’ll want to see more of this crew in the future.

As Jorian explains, we have a new “You Can in :90” video series ready for you to view. The series features 90-second “how-to” videos based on your most-requested tips for using Microsoft Education tools. Check out a few of the videos below.

Professional learning and collaboration

Also just in, as reported by Soren: we’re announcing the new class of Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts and are inspired by the 9,600+ passionate educators joining our team. If you’re interested in checking out the program for next year, please note that we’ll begin accepting nominations between April 15 and July 15, 2020. Congratulations to all our MIE Experts for 2019-2020! You can see the names of them here: http://aka.ms/mieexpertlist

And there are plenty of other ways to get involved in our educator community:

Discover the power of networked learning through our Minecraft Mentors program by connecting with other teachers using Minecraft with their students. Mentors are selected monthly. You can apply here.
The Student Voice Ambassador community is made up of educators working together and with the Flipgrid team to exchange ideas and further develop the tool that’s done wonders to amplify student voice. New classes are announced quarterly, and we’ll be putting together another group this fall. You can apply here.
And please check out our Skype Master Teacher program if you’re looking for ways to broaden your students’ horizons. We just welcomed a new class, but find out how to get involved next year here.

Schoolwide programs include:

Our Microsoft Schools If you’re part of a school community working to integrate technology effectively and transform learning, this could be a perfect fit.
The Microsoft Showcase Schools program in which participating schools use the Microsoft K12 Education Transformation Framework to bring about innovation with an emphasis on personalized learning.
And the Microsoft Flagship School program, a collaborative effort to transform education from the ground up by designing and delivering amazing new places to learn. You can read more about it in our recent blog post.

You can also get started anytime on free training tailored to your individual needs through the Microsoft Educator Center. You’ll find courses to help you use Microsoft tools, develop new skills and build on existing knowledge.

New Tools and Resources

As you can tell from the kids’ enthusiasm in the What’s New in EDU video above, we’ve also rolled out some new tools and updates that we think your students will love and benefit from academically.

Immersive Reader has been integrated into Minecraft: Education Edition to help learners read and decode in-game text.

If you’re a fan of the Mystery Skype game, in which students from different classrooms around the world guess where each group is located, you can download new activity plans here.

And we’ve got a new graphics feature for Word, Excel and PowerPoint that students will find useful when working on diagrams and models. It’s an outline style with a sketch-like quality that allows you to convey that a work is in progress and not finished. You can read more about it in this recent post.

We also have a new feature for storing work. It allows documents created in Word, Excel or PowerPoint to automatically be stored on OneDrive.

Microsoft Teams has some updates too. We redesigned the Assignments tab, making it easier for you to track existing assignments and create new ones. When creating an assignment, you can now add resources from any team and even set a close date to ensure no submissions will be accepted after that date. Once created, you can preview the assignment as students see it and students can use Immersive Reader to read assignment instructions and feedback Check out these and more Assignments updates here!

With the help of educator feedback, we rolled out a host of new Flipgrid features earlier this month. Every Flipgrid response video is now transcribed and delivered through an updated closed-captioning experience. Plus, full response video transcripts are now available. We’ve also enhanced storytelling capabilities with the Shorts Camera, allowing students to stitch together unlimited segments into one simple video. Finally, Flipgrid videos can now be viewed in augmented reality with FlipgridAR.

Whew. That was a lot for one month! We hope the start of the year goes well for you and your students and that you’re able to put these new resources to good use. Keep in touch, and let us know what you’d like to see more of and how we can continue to partner with you to amplify student voice and engage all learners.

Posted on August 29, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

New Skype features boost your productivity, enrich your chat experience

We recently introduced several features that help you boost your productivity when sending messages in Skype* and enrich your overall chat experience. New features include draft messages, the ability to bookmark messages and preview media and files before sending, as well as a new approach to display multiple photos or videos. We also launched split window, so you never mix up conversations again!

Message drafts

Now you’ll never forget about messages that didn’t get sent. Any message that you typed, but didn’t send, is saved in the corresponding conversation and marked with the [draft] tag—so you can easily recognize, finish, and send it later. Messages saved as drafts are even available when you leave and come back to your Skype app.

Message bookmarks

You can now bookmark any message in Skype—whether it’s work related or family photos—and come back to it with one click or tap anytime! Just right click or long press the message and click or tap Add bookmark. The message is added to the Bookmarks screen and is saved with your other bookmarked messages.

Preview media and files before sending

You can now preview photos, videos, and files that you’ve selected to share before sending. Once you select media and files to share, they’re displayed in the message panel, so you can ensure they’re the ones you want to share with your contact. You can also remove ones added by mistake or add new ones right from the panel. In addition, should you want to write an explanation or description for what you’re sending, you can add a message that will be sent along with the files.

New approach for displaying multiple photos or videos sent at once

If you want to share a bunch of photos with your friends or family after great vacation or nice event—just do it and Skype will make sure they’re nicely presented in a conversation. You’ll see a nice album in the chat history with all the photos combined. And you can see each one by navigating and clicking between the photos or videos in an album.

Never mix up conversations in Skype again with split window

A few months back, we announced the launch of split window for Windows 10, which lets you put your contact list in one window, and each conversation you open in separate windows. We’re pleased to say that this feature is now available for all versions of Windows, Mac, and Linux on the latest version of Skype.* To learn more about how to use the split window view, visit our FAQs.

Let us know what you think

At Skype we’re driven by the opportunity to connect our global community of hundreds of millions, empowering them to feel closer and achieve more together. As we pursue these goals, we’re always looking for new ways to enhance the experience and improve quality and reliability. We listen to your feedback and are wholly committed to improving the Skype experience based on what you tell us. We’re passionate about bringing you closer to the people in your life—so if we can do that better, please let us know.

*These new features are available on the latest version of Skype across all platforms, except for split window, which is currently only available on desktop.

Posted on August 29, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

ID@Xbox launches new YouTube channel to show off independent games coming to Xbox One and Windows PC

Today marks the launch of the ID@Xbox YouTube channel! Click here to give it a visit. With this channel, we are going to present the very best in Independent games coming to Xbox One and Windows PC, and maybe even some fun original programming along the way. ID@Xbox has been around since 2013 (ed – holy cow has it been that long?). The very first ID@Xbox game, Strike Suit Zero, shipped on April 4, 2014, and since then we’ve helped Independent developers, both big and small, launch nearly 1,500 games on Xbox.

We know there’s a community out there that’s passionate about Independent gaming – we interact with them every day on social media, at shows and events, on Mixer, and in games. And we’re extremely passionate about Independent games ourselves, if you hadn’t guessed! With this channel we simply want to share stuff that we think is awesome and see what you think. Please feel free to jump in the comments and let us know what you like and want to see more of, and what games you’re excited about.

We’ve created a video to celebrate the launch – check it out to meet some members of the ID@Xbox and hear what some of our favorite games are. The ID@Xbox YouTube channel is live now and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss any of the amazing content from Independent games going forward.

Posted on August 29, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

7 ways tech is helping people who are blind or have low vision

It’s estimated that there are about 36 million people in the world who are blind, and a further 216 million who live with moderate to severe visual impairments. Although the World Health Organization points out that up to 80% of vision impairment around the world is avoidable with better access to treatment, the number of people who are blind or have low vision is rising as the global population ages.

But technology is playing a vital role in tearing down barriers, and artificial intelligence is making real inroads into improving accessibility.

Here are seven examples of how smart technology can be a game-changer, allowing everyone to interact with the world in new ways.

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The eye in AI

As we’ve reported, Microsoft’s Seeing AI is an app designed to help people with low vision or who are blind. It enhances the world around the user with rich audio descriptions. It can read a handwritten note or scan a barcode and then tell the user what the product is. Point a camera at something and the app will describe how many people it can see and where they are in the image – center, top left and so on.

3-D Sound Maps

For a sighted person, walking along the street can mean taking in every detail that surrounds them. Microsoft Soundscape replicates that behavior by building a detailed audio map that relates what’s taking place around a person with visual impairment.

It creates layers of context and detail by drawing on location data, sound beacons and synthesized 3-D stereo sound to build a constantly updating 3-D sound map of the surrounding world.

Knowledge at your fingertips

Braille has been used for nearly 200 years as a tactile way of reading with fingertips. It has now jumped from the page to the screen with the updated version of Narrator, the screen-reader for Microsoft Windows, supporting digital Braille displays and keyboards.

Outside of Microsoft’s efforts, Braille touchscreens that work in the same way as tablets have already proved popular among students and teachers. At the Assistive Technology Industry Association’s 2019 conference in Orlando, Florida, innovations on display included the BraiBook, a Braille e-reader that fits into the palm of a hand, and even an electronic toy called the Braille Buzz, designed to teach Braille to preschoolers.

Beacons of change

Bluetooth beacons, such as those being used by the company Foresight Augmented Reality, act like highly precise, personalized guides for people who are blind or partially sighted. While basic GPS technology can take users to a location, beacons mounted in a store, restaurant or public building can guide them to the entrance of the building in question. And when the user is inside, other beacons can direct them to the bathroom or other important facilities.

Electric vehicles

The European Union is taking no chances with people’s safety. New legislation means electric vehicles have to be audible at low speeds and while reversing. Some manufacturers are already incorporating artificial noise into their electric vehicles.

Smart Glasses

Researchers at Ajman University in the United Arab Emirates are working on the development of a set of smart glasses that can use AI to read, provide navigation information and potentially identify faces. Glasses are connected to a smartphone through a processing unit, allowing the system to function without an internet connection.

These smart glasses are still in the early stages of development but are said to work with a reading accuracy rate of 95%.

AI for Accessibility

Microsoft’s AI for Accessibility program was launched last year, with a $25 million commitment to put Microsoft technology in the hands of start-ups, developers, researchers and non-profits in order to drive innovation and amplify human capability for people with disabilities. The program is continuously looking at new projects to support.

For more on these innovations and accessibility initiatives at Microsoft, visit microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility and follow @MSFTIssues on Twitter.

Posted on August 28, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

How we’re crafting Dark Mode experiences across Microsoft 365 that adapt to your daily flow

People often think of Dark Mode as a choice between a black or white screen, but this feature involves a wide spectrum of both grayscale and color gradients.

It’s an apt metaphor for why we love Dark Mode: human needs unfold across an equally broad spectrum. Whether you want to reduce eye strain, improve battery life, or it just has aesthetic appeal, Dark Mode exemplifies our ability to craft simple and powerful Microsoft 365 experiences that give you choice and flexibility.

Customer choice was why we first brought a darker UI theme to desktop apps in Office 2010, and we’ve brought it to more Microsoft experiences ever since due to its popularity.

A cross-company design collaboration propels us to seamlessly bring Dark Mode to the broader M365 product suite, and today marks the initial rollout of Dark Mode on Outlook for iOS and Android, as well as Office.com! The upcoming launch of iOS 13 will then extend this rollout to Word, Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneDrive, Planner, and To-Do on mobile.

Today’s fast and fluid world constantly blurs the lines between work and life, and we believe in meeting people where they are. Our tools are used to keep up to speed on everything from work communication, to personal events that include friends and family, to changes in shared documents. This often means viewing email, calendars, or files in places where the default white mode may be less suitable, like darkened airplanes, movie theaters, or in bed at night.

Our design research specifically focused on these contexts where folks would want to use Dark Mode, and the response was very positive. While some Dark Mode experiences can be neon or overly bright, people felt that Outlook mobile kept the kind of relaxed feeling you might want in a dimly lit living room or bedroom. They described the experience as comfortable, crisp, clear, and aesthetically pleasing, a nod to how Dark Mode can reduce eye strain.

Dark Mode experiences on iOS. The colors pop for legibility without overwhelming the darker feel.

Dark Mode may also save battery life when you’re traveling or on the go for long stretches of time. We’re building in capabilities so following the next round of OS releases on iOS and Android, Outlook will automatically switch to Dark Mode depending on the preference you set. In the meantime, Outlook for Android automatically switches to Dark Mode when you choose Battery Saver. These perks all hold true for Dark Mode on Office.com.

Dark Mode experiences on web.

The seamlessness and flexibility that we’re building into Microsoft 365 design systems mirrors our own fluid creative process. We brought designers together from across the company to create a common Dark Mode experience for all our mobile and web apps. The creative energy that came from exchanging ideas and collaborating with new peers was one of the most fun parts of this entire effort.

Starting from the ground up and using the new gray palette for Fluent, our app teams began by aligning to the single palette. This included increasing contrast, brand color saturation, and consistency among details like how and when we use shadows when in Dark Mode.

We explored hundreds of color options against various backgrounds before selecting these muted color categories.

We’re excited to bring Dark Mode to even more of the Microsoft 365 product suite, starting with additional mobile experiences. Dark Mode comes to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for mobile with the launch of iOS 13, as well as iPad, where we know many people choose to use those apps. That same launch will also bring Dark Mode to SharePoint, OneDrive, OneNote, Planner, and To-Do on mobile.

There will be more experiences to follow — Dark Mode for Planner and OneDrive on web are coming down the pipe — so stay tuned for those rollout dates. Meanwhile, we’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback in the comments below!

Posted on August 28, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Check out the latest updates to Microsoft 365, including Dark Mode in Outlook mobile and Office.com

This month, we’re rolling out improvements to help you build a more productive, collaborative, and secure work environment for you and your organization. The new XLOOKUP formula for Excel helps you find data and improve calculation time. OneNote and Yammer mobile updates help you work on the go and find the answers you need more quickly. And the new FastTrack guidance will help ensure seamless Windows 10 migrations.

As always, every Microsoft 365 update reflects our commitment to improving the experience for you—so if you have feedback or ideas on ways we can improve, please let us know. Let’s look at what’s new in August.

Make work faster and easier

New features simplify data searches and calculation times and help you quickly visualize information.

Find and retrieve data quickly in Excel—We heard your feedback about the VLOOKUP formula for working with data in Excel—that it requires sorted data, fails to discover results on left-hand columns, and takes wildcards by default. So this month, we introduced XLOOKUP, our successor to the VLOOKUP, and HLOOKUP formulas. XLOOKUP addresses our most common user feedback and takes advantage of recent backend changes to improve calculation time. It‘s available today to Office Insiders, with general availability coming later this year.

Create work-in-progress diagrams and slides—Because we know it can be hard to express work-in-progress diagrams and models without stamping “DRAFT” on top of them, we built Sketched Shapes. With this new Office style, you can transform standard shapes in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel into rough outlines that look handdrawn and convey a sense of in-progress work. Sketched Shapes is perfect for building wireframes, drafting designs, or adding an artistic touch. You can also easily move between sketched and standard shapes. Sketched Shapes is currently rolling out to Windows Insiders and Office Insiders for Mac. To get started, insert a shape into your document and select your favorite sketched outline. You can also download the PowerPoint Wireframe toolkit for more information.

New for PowerPoint on the web: Subscript, Superscript, and Change Case—Up to this point, users needed the PowerPoint Desktop App to add subscript, superscript, or change text casing in their slides. That made it tricky for professionals, educators, and students to communicate their equations and information in PowerPoint for the web. Now, you can simply select your text and click the new Subscript, Superscript, or Change Case buttons on the Home tab of the ribbon. This feature is rolling out to PowerPoint for the web.

Work on the go

We introduced updates to OneNote, Yammer, and Office to help you find answers more quickly and stay in your workflow.

Add shapes, graphs, and Outlook meeting details to Microsoft OneNote for iPad—You can now insert shapes in OneNote for iPad, including straight lines, basic shapes, and graphs. Whether you want a straight line to keep things aligned, an arrow to point to information, or a graph to show a trend, you’ll find it under the Draw tab in OneNote. You can also add Outlook meeting details to OneNote for iPad and OneNote for Mac—including attendees, time, subject, and more.

Annotate your notes with ink in OneNote for iPhone—We also added Ink in OneNote for iPhone, so you can easily use your finger or a stylus to annotate with the natural feel of ink—even when you’re on the go. To get started, just tap on the squiggle symbol in the upper right-hand corner of your OneNote page and use the red pen and yellow highlighter to mark up, annotate, and highlight key information in your notebooks.

Stay connected and get answers with an enhanced Yammer mobile experience—Today’s employees need to be empowered while on the go. With this in mind, we recently announced a new Yammer mobile experience that brings live events, group search, updated feed and conversations views, enhanced encryption, and more to iOS and Android devices. Highlights include a modernized feed experience that reduces visual clutter and delivers improved readability, live events, and townhalls that you can view on the go; Seen Counts to let you know how many people have viewed your messages; and group search to cut down on search time and find the information you need. These features have rolled out to customers running the current Yammer for iOS and Android apps.

Use Dark Mode in more of your favorite Microsoft apps—Today’s fast and fluid world constantly blurs the lines between work and life, and we understand you need experiences that adapt to your needs. We’re happy to announce this month that we’re starting to roll out Dark Mode to Outlook mobile and Office.com. Dark Mode is not only easier on the eyes and may extend battery life, it also enables you to comfortably continue using your device in places where the default bright mode isn’t appropriate, like darkened airplanes and movie theaters. Dark Mode is rolling out over the next couple of weeks to Outlook mobile and Office.com.

Streamline IT management

New tools and capabilities streamline Windows 10 migrations and meet data residency needs.

Migrate to Windows 10 with new FastTrack guidance—We know upgrading and updating complex technology environments is no small task. To support you through every step of your Windows 10 deployment, we introduced new FastTrack deployment guidance. This guidance helps customers upgrade from Windows 7 and Office 2010 to Windows 10 Enterprise and Office 365 ProPlus. FastTrack guidance is available to all eligible commercial customers. To learn more, watch our mechanics video or jump right in by signing in to microsoft.com/FastTrack and requesting assistance.

Meet data residency needs with new Microsoft datacenter capabilities—Now, new Microsoft Teams customers in South Korea will have their data stored in an in-country datacenter, helping organizations with data residency requirements meet their obligations. Additionally, Multi-Geo Capabilities is now available to customers in South Africa and United Arab Emirates with a minimum of 500 Office 365 services subscriptions. Multi-Geo Capabilities enables you to easily move users and data between Microsoft cloud geos to address data residency needs. Contact your Microsoft representative for details.

Also new this month

We also announced the following updates in August:

Have ideas or feedback on how to improve Microsoft 365? We look forward to hearing from you.

Posted on August 28, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

exFAT in the Linux kernel? Yes!

Microsoft ♥ Linux – we say that a lot, and we mean it! Today we’re pleased to announce that Microsoft is supporting the addition of Microsoft’s exFAT technology to the Linux kernel.

exFAT is the Microsoft-developed file system that’s used in Windows and in many types of storage devices like SD Cards and USB flash drives. It’s why hundreds of millions of storage devices that are formatted using exFAT “just work” when you plug them into your laptop, camera, and car.

It’s important to us that the Linux community can make use of exFAT included in the Linux kernel with confidence. To this end, we will be making Microsoft’s technical specification for exFAT publicly available to facilitate development of conformant, interoperable implementations. We also support the eventual inclusion of a Linux kernel with exFAT support in a future revision of the Open Invention Network’s Linux System Definition, where, once accepted, the code will benefit from the defensive patent commitments of OIN’s 3040+ members and licensees.

For more information, please see the Microsoft technical specification for exFAT at https://docs.microsoft.com/windows/win32/fileio/exfat-specification.

Posted on August 28, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

South Africa-based Nedbank speeds toward a digital future

As the chief information officer for South Africa-based Nedbank Group, Fred Swanepoel recognizes that today’s consumers expect immediate responses to their needs in a 24/7 online world.

“Clients have experiences in other industries that they bring across, and they develop those kinds of expectations of their banks and financial services providers,” he says. “So, if a bank does not innovate along with the speed that clients expect, you will risk becoming irrelevant.”

Technology is at the heart of banking today and is moving Nedbank from being a bank to becoming a digital financial services provider. To make that shift and better serve its diverse client base, the 188-year-old company, which operates in seven African countries (plus 33 more through its Ecobank alliance), is partnering with Microsoft to migrate various operations to the cloud.

The company is using Azure-based compliance technologies to increase data privacy and security in a highly regulated industry. In addition, Microsoft Dynamics applications play a key role in managing customer relationships for the bank.

Nedbank also worked with Microsoft to develop a chatbot named EVA (Electronic Virtual Assistant), an app first used in South Africa that can understand the context of clients’ questions, then answer those questions, provide investment advice and prepopulate forms for investor clients.

“In thinking about banking in the future, we are reimagining client needs and how they will consume banking services,” Swanepoel says.

“Our investment in world-class digital technologies and talent means that we have established an innovative and streamlined IT operating platform that is secure and stable, but most importantly, delivers a convenient and seamless client experience in support of becoming more client focused, more digital, more agile and more competitive.”

Posted on August 28, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft Garage fan favorite Dictate graduates to Office and Windows

Today, we’re excited to graduate Dictate, a Microsoft Garage project, 2 years after its initial launch. The Office add-in for Microsoft Office released in June 2017, enabling Office users to be more productive with the power of dictation. Upon positive reception from users, Dictate’s approach to dictation was increasingly integrated across Office and Windows products. The feature sets are staffed by two dedicated teams and continue to improve over time.

Doing one thing really well

Dictate got its start as a Hackathon project in 2016 when a small team saw there was demand for enhanced dictation features integrated into tasks we handle everyday–drafting emails and documents, recording notes for ourselves and others, and even translating content. Anand Desai, a Software Engineer on the Speech and Language team in Microsoft’s Cloud and AI group and one of the hack project leads saw an opportunity to translate his team’s work in speech recognition to a simple tool for dictation. After building a prototype, the team reached out to Derik Stenerson, a Principle Program Manager on the Office team who was spearheading an initiative to bring dictation to Office. Together, they realized they could create a focused Office add-in that could help them zero in on the best experience before incorporating that approach into Office on a broad scale.

Dictate team image — The Dictate team pictured from left to right: Anirudh Koul, Anand Desai, Derik Stenerson, Eren Song, Prabhav Agrawal, Ayush Sharma, Cem Aksoylar

When Dictate launched, hundreds of users emailed in feedback. “It was invaluable to have a deeper conversation with the people who use this to make their lives more productive,” shares Derik. More importantly, the engagement from users confirmed they were on to something. “The thing that gave us the most encouragement to go forward was the reception,” continues Derik. We confirmed that there’s a huge gap and a really strong need, and more some users it’s incredibly impactful. It’s not just that the project enabled users to get more done in less time–we heard that from information workers and journalists. But the feedback we heard from people with challenges with hand dexterity issues and dyslexia about the impact in their lives really motivated our team.” The team began integrating confirmed features into Office and Windows shortly after launch and has maintained the Garage project as a way to continue to get detailed feedback from fans.

“The Garage afforded us the freedom to experiment and learn quickly.” –Derik Stenerson

We asked Derik about this unique strategy of creating a Garage project that focuses on doing one thing well to unearth insights for an integrated feature set. “We can do something really lightweight, really fast and confirm that we’re on the right track. That’s what the spirit of this was for me.” Since Dictate launched in 2017, the Office team has built a state-of-the-art testing experimentation platform that allows teams to flight new experiences and rapidly collect customer feedback right within Office.

For Anand, the Dictate launch and now graduation struck an even deeper chord, bringing memories of his first experiences with technology growing up in India. “Personally, if Microsoft had not reached the parts of the world I grew up in, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Specifically Office 97 inspired a sense of passion for software development in me–it’s so fulfilling to have had the opportunity to contribute to this same product and potentially inspire others in a similar way all these years later.”

Continue enjoying dictation on Office and Windows

The project will formally sunset on October 15, 2019. We recommend users who love Dictate leverage the dictation feature sets in Windows 10 and Office 365 that the project inspired. Full un-installation details are documented in an FAQ on the project website.

This effort would not have been possible without the users who tried the project and gave feedback–thank you for your time and passion. The teams are still working to improve these features. If you’d like to offer additional feedback on dictation features moving forward, you can do so through in-product feedback channels outlined here.

Posted on August 27, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

There’s power in the ‘Location of Things’ – find it with Azure Maps

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the beginning of accessing planetary-scale insights. With the mass adoption of IoT and the very near future explosion of sensors, connectivity, and computing, humanity is on the cusp of a fully connected, intelligent world. We will be part of the generation that realizes the data-rich, algorithmically deterministic lifestyle the world has never seen. The inherent value of this interconnectedness lies within the constructs of human nature to thrive. Bringing all of this information together with spatial intelligence has been challenging to say the least. Until today.

Today, we’re unveiling a cross-Azure IoT collaboration simplifying the use of location and spatial intelligence used in conjunction with IoT messaging. The result is the means for customers to use Azure IoT services to stay better informed about their “things” in terms of space. Azure IoT customers can now implement IoT spatial analytics using Azure Maps. Providing spatial intelligence to IoT devices means greater insights into not just what’s happening, but where it’s happening.

Azure Maps provides geographic context for information and, as it pertains to IoT, thus geographic insights based on IoT information. Customers are using Azure Maps and Azure IoT for monitoring movement of assets and cross reference the “things” with their location. For example, assume a truck is delivering refrigerated goods from New York City to Washington DC. A route is calculated to determine the path and duration the truck should take to deliver the goods. From the route, a geofence can be created and stored in Azure Maps. The black box on the truck tracking the vehicle would provide Azure IoT Hub to determine if the truck ever leaves the predetermined path. If it does, this could signal that something is wrong—a detour could be disastrous for refrigerated goods. Notifications of detours could be setup and communicated through Azure Event Grid and sent over email, text, or a myriad of other communication mediums.

When we talk about Azure IoT, we often talk about data (from sensors) which leads to insights (when computed) which leads to actions (a result of insights). With The Location of Things, we’re now talking about data from sensors which leads to insights which leads to actions and where they are needed. Knowing where to take actions has massive implications in terms of cost efficacy and time management. When you know where you have issues or opportunities, you can then make informed decisions of where to deploy resources, where to deploy inventory, or where to withdraw them. Run this over time and with enough data and you have artificial intelligence you could deploy at the edge to help with real-time decision making. Have enough data coming in fast enough and you’d be making decisions fast enough to predict future opportunities and issues—and where to deploy resources before you need them.

Location is a powerful component of providing insights. If you have a means of providing location via your IoT messages you can start doing so immediately. If you don’t have location natively, you’d be surprised at how you can get location associated with your sensors and device location. RevIP, Wi-Fi, and cell tower triangulation all provide a means of getting location into your IoT messages. Get that location data into the cloud and start gaining spatial insights today.