Microsoft news – Page 190

Posted on May 31, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft celebrates Pride, takes action for equity and visibility

Fifty years ago, on June 28, LGBTQI+ patrons and allies at New York City’s Stonewall Inn stood up for justice demanding an equal life free of persecution. This year, as more than 4,000 Microsoft employees march in Pride parades in more than 60 cities and 30 countries around the world, we invite you to join us in pushing inclusion forward.

To commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, we’re taking action for equity by donating to LGBTQI+ nonprofits. Plus, we’re releasing limited-edition products designed with and by the LGBTQI+ community.

Microsoft has a history of LGBTQI+ inclusion

For us, Pride is an opportunity to reflect on our past and galvanize for action. We started our inclusion journey early in the company’s history, introducing sexual orientation in our non-discrimination policies in 1989. In 1993, we were one of the first companies in the world to offer employee benefits to same-sex domestic partners. In 2004, we added gender identity to our Equal Employment Opportunity statement and started providing gender affirming healthcare services. Since 2005, Microsoft has attained a top score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, which indicates that Microsoft is establishing and applying policies to protect the LGBTQI+ community.

Our journey is just beginning

Today, Microsoft operates in over 120 countries, most of which still don’t provide legal protections for LGBTQI+ individuals. This year, Microsoft’s Pride campaign is all about the actions that our employees and customers are taking to advance inclusion. GLEAM (Global LGBTQI+ Employees and Allies at Microsoft), our LGBTQI+ resource group, worked with many of our teams to develop products to create visibility into the LGBTQI+ community.

In designing this year’s Pride campaign, LGBTQI+ designers and allies at Microsoft reflected on the LGBTQI+ rights movement of the 1970s. Dozens of LGBTQI+ community members and their allies submitted designs for campaign buttons displaying everything from personal statements to political slogans. These buttons reflect actions that people at Microsoft are taking and are encouraging others to take.

Microsoft is releasing all the button designs as a downloadable archive so everyone can use them, add to them and share their Pride with everyone, wherever they are.

For the first time, we’ve also created limited-edition products and curated content to show our continued support for the LGBTQI+ community.

Surface – Inspired by the rich and varied tapestry of the LGBTQI+ community, make a more colorful impact with the limited-edition Surface Pro Pride Type Cover and Pride Skin available in the US, Canada, Australia, and the U.K. (only Type Cover).

Windows – This Windows 10 special-edition theme was inspired by the many LGBTQI+ flags. Download the Windows Pride theme pack from the Microsoft Store.
Mixer – Discover Pride on Mixer with dedicated streams from select partners, unique stickers, and exclusive programs. Tune in on June 30^th to live stream the Seattle Pride Parade!
Bing – Learn more about Stonewall on Bing with uniquely curated content featuring LGBTQI+ activism dating back to 1969 with this quiz. And see Pride take over the Bing homepage in select countries around the world.
Office – Show your Pride colors with the exclusive Office theme and unique Pride templates for PowerPoint.
Skype – Celebrate Pride with Skype’s new LGBTQI+ flag emoticons, stickers, and more.
Xbox – Show your colors and celebrate your love of gaming with the Xbox Pride Sphere Pin available at xbox.com.
Microsoft Rewards – Support LGBTQI+ youth in crisis by donating to The Trevor Project in June, and we’ll match it. Not a Microsoft Rewards member? Join today and we’ll give you $1 free to donate.
Microsoft Store – Visit your local Microsoft Store to take part in a Pride celebration, march with us, or learn more at educational workshops, events, and other activities.

Actions speak louder than words!

We’re donating $100,000 to the following nonprofits in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States to celebrate and support their work on LGBTQI+ equity:

Established in 1985, ACON is Australia’s largest health promotion organization specializing in HIV prevention, HIV support and LGBTQ health.
Egale works to improve the lives of LGBTQI2S people in Canada and to enhance the global response to LGBTQI2S issues. They do this by informing public policy, inspiring cultural change, and promoting human rights and inclusion.
Mermaids is the only U.K.-wide charity working to support transgender or gender non-conforming children, young people, and their families. Their goal is to create a world where gender-diverse children and young people can be themselves and thrive. Mermaids promotes education and awareness, and offers information, support, friendship and shared experiences to those in need.
The Trevor Project is the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning young people under 25.

We’re also happy to announce that LGBTQI+ nonprofit, Destination Tomorrow, was awarded a grant from the Microsoft Store to support their inclusion efforts for people of color. See what happened when we took action to help them thrive.

We invite everyone to join us in taking action for equality. Microsoft Pride 2019 products launch today! Follow along with our stories all month and learn more about actions you can take for equality by joining the social conversation using #MicrosoftPride.

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

First grads of Global Innovation Exchange tackle local and worldwide challenges

High mortality rates in chickens; loss of biodiversity; and the feeling of loneliness. These and other challenges are being addressed by the first graduates of the Global Innovation Exchange, or GIX.

GIX is a partnership between the University of Washington and Tsinghua University in Beijing, with foundational support from Microsoft. This project- and team-based program offers a 15-month Master of Science in Technology Innovation and a 21-month Dual Degree.

Most of the projects are sponsored by industry partners, including Microsoft, Boeing, T-Mobile, AT&T and Baidu. Leaders from the industry partner companies pitch loosely defined projects to GIX students, and then mentor the teams as the projects develop.

In this way, students tackle both local and global challenges, drawing on the expertise and technology of their project partners.

The first class, which included students from Seattle, Estonia, India and Paraguay, graduated in December 2019. Here’s a taste of what the students came up with.

CluckAI

Eggs are a critical source of food around the world.

But many poultry farmers must contend with a significant loss of flock, especially in egg-laying hens, because of disease, animal predators, heat and theft.

To help solve this problem, GIX students built a machine–learning program, CluckAI, that can identify when chickens are in distress. Listening devices placed around the flock monitor sounds, while algorithms analyze those sounds and alert the farmer, who can take action.

One team member, Padraic Casserly, likened it to a baby monitor for poultry farmers.

This project was developed in collaboration with Microsoft FarmBeats, which is helping farmers increase productivity and lower costs through employing a more data-driven approach to farming.

Diversita
As people encroach on the habitats of wildlife, there is a risk of losing species and reducing biodiversity. According to a recent study from the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, a sixth mass extinction is already underway. But what if we could train cameras to help protect wildlife?

A GIX student team created a motion-sensor camera called Diversita that uses machine-learning to identify up to 5,000 species of wildlife. Data captured by the camera is analyzed in real time.

This can save hours of work poring over photographs to spot animals. It can also be used to detect invasive species and study shrinking icebergs and other environmental changes.

This technology was built on research already carried out through Microsoft’s AI for Earth program, which uses artificial intelligence to address areas vital for building a sustainable future.

SparkEd

Parents sometimes need to leave their children in the care of relatives while pursuing educational or employment opportunities abroad.

This was the case for one of the GIX students studying in Seattle, who had a 10-month-old son in China. The separation made him think about how he could contribute meaningfully to his son’s development from afar.

It inspired SparkEd, an app that allows parents to customize and remotely guide their children’s learning.

This app is designed for children ages 4 to 8, and was built around a picture book, “The Stray Dog.”

As the child reads the story on the app, the parent can build in a question for them to answer.

For example, when the stray dog appears, the child is presented with a choice: should it shoo the dog away, or feed it, because it looks hungry?

The parent decides which answer is the most appropriate based on the beliefs and values they want their child to learn. In this way, the app helps parents teach their children how to react in everyday situations.

PlayerX
Many people move to a new city to take a up a new job or to study, without knowing a soul. Seattle is one of the fastest–growing cities in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of newcomers has increased by 20% in the last eight years.

Knowing this, a team of GIX students designed and developed PlayerX – an app that helps connect people in offline interactions.

The app “strategically connects people that frequent the same places and engage in similar activities,” according to its description. The more two users have in common, the more interaction is available through the app. Users can then decide whether to add people as a friend on the app, opening the possibility of meeting in person.

The goal is to help people make new, lasting friendships, and the app is aimed not just at newcomers but at locals too.

UbiRight

The process of getting legal copyright on content can be complex. One group of students used blockchain technology to remove the traditional barriers to getting copyright protection for a piece of work.

The platform, UbiRight, allows creators of written or visual content to instantly receive copyright protection when they post the content online. When users create a new piece of content and post it to the platform, UbiRight provides a tamper-proof timestamp to prove the copy is original.

With a focus on design thinking, entrepreneurship and technology development, the GIX program is appreciated by the students as the perfect grounding for careers as innovators.

Some of the students hope to launch start-ups and bring their projects into the real world.

Others have already received job offers from companies including Alibaba, Baidu, Electronic Arts and AMINO Capital, companies that recognize the key skills the students have learned in the program.

GIX is designed to train students to think globally and locally in an era of rapid change and increasingly short business and technology cycles. At the same time, they are bringing forth a raft of projects that show how technology can be used for good.

Lead photo credit: Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures

To learn about what Microsoft is doing follow @MSFTIssues on Twitter.

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

UCLA Health adopts Microsoft Azure to accelerate medical research and improve patient care

Cloud computing will help enable the delivery of more personalized health care for UCLA patients

LOS ANGELES and REDMOND, Wash. — May 30, 2019 — UCLA Health is deploying Microsoft cloud computing services to enable UCLA Health and the David Geffen School of Medicine to synthesize vast amounts of clinical and research data to speed medical discoveries and improve patient care.

Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing service, will provide UCLA Health with a standard platform through which disparate clinical information and research tools can be secured and managed by the health system. The solution will provide UCLA Health with advanced computing tools to more rapidly interpret and mobilize insights from such data and to enhance collaboration among researchers.

“Our data capabilities with Microsoft Azure will bring more medical discoveries and effective therapies to patients faster,” said Michael Pfeffer, M.D., assistant vice chancellor and chief information officer for UCLA Health Sciences. “The integration of information from structured data, like lab results and medication information, with unstructured data, like documentation, genomics and medical images, creates an incredibly powerful big-data learning platform for discovery.”

UCLA scientists will use the cloud computing tools to more efficiently analyze a variety of data sources. The artificial intelligence (AI) embedded in the tools enables speedy processing of data to glean insights for use by physicians and researchers. Machine learning enables software to recognize and act on important data patterns without the need for human instruction, producing discoveries as never before.

“Analyzing large data sets to make scientific discoveries is a race against time,” said Mohammed Mahbouba, M.D., chief data officer for UCLA Health Sciences. “Using machine learning to analyze a combination of clinical and genomics data can provide critical insights, but doing so with a traditional computing infrastructure can require significant processing time. Azure enables us to quickly deploy and scale high-performance computing environments that can reduce the required processing time — sometimes from months to days — to make discoveries.”

UCLA Health’s move to cloud computing is intended to advance the health system’s delivery of precision health, or the use of data and a patient’s individual circumstances, to tailor a more effective treatment. In 2017, UCLA Health and the David Geffen School of Medicine launched the UCLA Institute for Precision Health, led by Daniel Geschwind, M.D., Ph.D., to bring together faculty across multiple disciplines to make large-scale genetic and genomic research actionable for patient care. The David Geffen School of Medicine also partnered with the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering to establish a department of computational medicine, chaired by Eleazar Eskin, Ph.D., to leverage scholarship in data sciences to discover new approaches to analyzing health data.

“We are committed to creating better patient outcomes by providing UCLA Health with Microsoft Azure cloud and AI solutions to improve treatments and lives,” said Peter Lee, corporate vice president, Microsoft Healthcare. “By connecting health data and systems in the cloud in an interoperable way, we’re excited we can help advance health care data for more efficient and personalized care.”

The Azure platform employs industry-leading technology to help protect and secure sensitive data, allowing UCLA Health to continue to ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. Patient data in UCLA Health’s platform will not be shared with Microsoft as part of this agreement.

“Another advantage of cloud computing is the way it enables UCLA researchers to more efficiently and securely work with their peers,” said Paul Boutros, Ph.D., director of Cancer Data Science at UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“Cloud computing will allow researchers from different fields and institutions to collaborate, joining data sets and software from different formats that could not previously be integrated in a simple way,” Boutros said. “We’re bringing together new communities of experts — including computer scientists, engineers, material scientists and others — to solve the biggest health care questions. This platform allows us to provide our research collaborators with secure access to important data in one place, without moving sensitive, private health information.”

The platform’s capabilities will also enable UCLA Health to use predictive analytics, or the analysis of historical data to model and assess what might happen in the future, to aid in disease prevention.

More about UCLA Health’s efforts in precision health can be found at https://www.uclahealth.org/precision-health/.

About UCLA Health

UCLA Health is among the world’s most comprehensive academic health systems, with a mission to provide state-of-the-art patient care, train top medical professionals and support pioneering research and discovery. UCLA Health includes four hospitals on two campuses — Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center; UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica; UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital, and the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA — as well as the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. UCLA Health also offers an array of primary and specialty services at more than 170 clinics throughout Southern California. UCLA Health hospitals in Westwood and Santa Monica ranked No. 1 in Los Angeles and No. 7 nationally in the 2018-19 U.S. News & World Report assessment.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

For more information, press only:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com

Ryan Hatoum, UCLA Health, (310) 267-8304, rhatoum@mednet.ucla.edu

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.

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

‘Crackdown 3’ updates available for free now

It’s been an exciting few months since we first saw Agents band together to take on the cruel and corrupt TerraNova Corporation in Crackdown 3 with Xbox Game Pass and on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, and today we’re excited to release, for free, the Crackdown 3 Extra Edition with boomtastic updates to Campaign and Wrecking Zone!

First up: Keys to the City, a deep menu of Campaign tools and cheats that gives you control of the world and access to a wide variety of overpowered abilities. Throw down with Elemental Fists, become invincible with God Mode or hit the jets with Super Speed! But why stop there? On your quest to reclaim New Providence, invite a co-op friend and create your own Faction Retaliations, or Lockdown the city and fight your way out with unlimited ammo and gadgets. Get creative by spawning enemies, vehicles, explosive barrels and other props wherever you’d like. When you have Keys to the City, the possibilities are endless!

But that’s not all… It wouldn’t be extra unless we talked about Wrecking Zone, Crackdown 3’s fully-destructible multiplayer battle arena. Today’s update brings a new vanity progression system to Wrecking Zone, with 100 tiers of items to customize your Agent! Earn Agency Points during matches to unlock holographic ‘LENS’ adornments, helmets, weapon skins—and more! We’ve also given the overall experience a fresh coat of paint, adding Agent customization screens, six different types of ‘Overdrive’ Skill boosts, and a host of other user interface updates. There’s never been a better time to jump into the cloud-powered destruction of Wrecking Zone!

On behalf of the whole Crackdown 3 team, thank you for playing, and we hope you enjoy this free Extra Edition update. You can read the complete list of update features here. Crackdown 3 is available now with Xbox Game Pass on Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs. For the latest news stay tuned to Xbox Wire.

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

Head of Xbox Phil Spencer shares 3 steps we’re taking to contribute to the thriving PC gaming ecosystem

We believe the player should be at the center of their gaming experience and be able to harness the unique benefits of the devices they choose to play on.

Nowhere is that belief more important than on the PC. As the creators of Windows, we have a unique responsibility to ensure we’re investing in experiences that benefit players everywhere, while respecting the PC community’s preference for an open, highly customizable platform.

We’ve not always lived up to our aspiration of keeping gamers at the center of everything we do when it comes to the experience they’ve had on Windows.

Today I’d like to share three steps we are taking to contribute to the thriving PC gaming ecosystem:

Introducing Xbox Game Pass Designed for PC Players

Two years ago, we launched Xbox Game Pass on Xbox One, and since then we’ve seen how valuable a curated library of high-quality games can be for players and game developers alike. It offers a great way to discover and play your next favorite game. We researched whether a similar opportunity exists for PC players and PC game developers, and we believe that it does. We also considered the importance of bringing something new and additive to the PC gaming ecosystem, and we believe that we can. So, we designed a service specifically for the needs of PC gamers and PC game developers. It’s called Xbox Game Pass, just like the original, but it’s a new experience that we are building together with the PC community.

Xbox Game Pass for PC will give players unlimited access to a curated library of over 100 high-quality PC games on Windows 10, from well-known PC game developers and publishers such as Bethesda, Deep Silver, Devolver Digital, Paradox Interactive, SEGA, and more. And just as we committed on the console, it is our intent to include new games from Xbox Game Studios in Xbox Game Pass for PC the same day as their global release, including titles from newly acquired studios like Obsidian and inXile. We’re working with over 75 developers and publishers to bring PC content to the service and we’ll ensure the library remains curated and full of great PC titles across a variety of genres, with new games added every month.

Xbox Game Pass for PC members will also receive discounts in the Microsoft Store on Windows of up to 20% on games currently in the library and up to 10% off related game DLC and add-ons.

We look forward to sharing more at E3, including the great games coming to the library, as well as more details on when and how you’ll experience the new Xbox Game Pass service for PC gamers.

More Choice in Where to Buy Xbox Game Studios Titles

Enabling gamers to play together, through cross-platform play and cross-network play across Windows 10 PCs and console, is vitally important. Building communities across all of those players, regardless of the store or platform they’ve chosen (console or PC), is also vitally important because it helps bring players together, allows games to find their largest audience and allows gaming to deliver its true potential of uniting people around the power of play.

With that in mind, our intent is to make our Xbox Game Studios PC games available in multiple stores, including our own Microsoft Store on Windows, at their launch. We believe you should have choice in where you buy your PC games.

In March, we announced that Halo: The Master Chief Collection will come to PC later this year, launching on Steam in addition to the Microsoft Store on Windows. We will continue to add to the more than 20 Xbox Game Studios titles on Steam, starting with Gears 5 and all Age of Empires I, II & III: Definitive Editions. We know millions of PC gamers trust Steam as a great source to buy PC games and we’ve heard the feedback that PC gamers would like choice. We also know that there are other stores on PC, and we are working to enable more choice in which store you can find our Xbox Game Studios titles in the future.

We want to bring players together to create a shared player community regardless of where they play, so it’s our intent that new Xbox Game Studios titles include features such as voice and text chat, LFG, friends lists and cross-play across PC and console. On Windows 10 you’ll find this functionality in the Xbox Game Bar, which we’ll continue to evolve and expand.

Supporting Win32 Games on Windows 10

We want creators to be inspired to bring their best content to Windows 10, and we want Windows 10 to be the place where gamers come to discover their next favorite PC game. We recognize that Win32 is the app format that game developers love to use and gamers love to play, so we are excited to share that we will be enabling full support for native Win32 games to the Microsoft Store on Windows. This will unlock more options for developers and gamers alike, allowing for the customization and control they’ve come to expect from the open Windows gaming ecosystem.

When I think about the role we play as a company to support and evolve gaming on Windows, it’s critical that we make decisions that reinforce the open nature of the PC, focusing on how best to unite players on all devices around the games they love. That philosophy will guide us as we introduce new ways to discover and play games on WThese are just a few of our steps in a journey to contribute to gaming on Windows 10. We know that PC gamers want to see games, so I hope you’ll join us at our annual Xbox E3 2019 Briefing on Sunday, June 9 to hear more, including the amazing lineup of new games and offers coming to PC players.

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

Microsoft unveils details of London flagship store opening July 11

This first physical retail store for Microsoft in the U.K. will open to the general public on July 11, joining other world-class Microsoft Store locations all over the world, including flagships in New York and Sydney and stores across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico and online in more than 190 countries.

This store is the latest step in our almost 40-year investment in the U.K., including recently doubling the size of Microsoft’s Azure regions to help more organizations digitally transform. We’re also committed to supporting the growth of digital skills in the U.K. in partnership with computing education and youth communities.

The flagship Microsoft Store in London will be located on Oxford Circus and covers 21,932 square feet over three floors. It will feature an Answer Desk, offering a dedicated area for customers to get tech support, trainings, repairs and advice from trusted advisors on Microsoft products and services, no matter where the device was purchased, the brand or operating system. A community theater, a space for tech, coding and STEM learning, will run free, year-round workshops and programs for customers. So if you are a business owner looking for the latest tech to grow your business, a gamer who wants to join a community or show your skills in a tournament, a student wanting to brush up on coding or a teacher looking to bring Minecraft alive in the classroom, customers of all ages and abilities will be able to learn and develop their digital skills.

Those who work, live, shop in or visit the U.K. will also be able to test and experience the latest technology, products and services from Microsoft and its partners. Interactive zones, surrounded by immersive video walls running throughout the store will make this the best place to get hands-on with Surface, Windows, Office, Xbox and PC gaming, HoloLens mixed-reality and more.

The site also adds to the growing list of innovative facilities Microsoft runs in the region, including three gaming studios, the start-up hub Reactor London and the global center of excellence for the development of artificial intelligence and other computing disciplines in the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge.

Designed to build connections with the local community, customers and businesses, this store represents a unique way to deliver on our mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. A flagship store in London has long been part of our vision for our physical and digital store presence, and this opening represents another step in our journey to meet our customers – from consumers to businesses – wherever they are and deepen our connection with them. London is one of the world’s most exciting shopping destinations, and we look forward to empowering customers to explore all that is possible with Microsoft.

For more information and to keep up to date with the latest information on the U.K. store opening, please follow us @MicrosoftStoreUK on Instagram and Facebook and visit us online at www.microsoft.com.

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

How Moovit improved its app to help people with disabilities ride transit with confidence

Alexandr Epaneshnikov, a 19-year-old Russian student who is legally blind, recently decided he wanted to be more independent by commuting on his own and relying less on his mom for rides to school. It meant taking a streetcar to a subway to his high school in Moscow, a 30-minute trip that Epaneshnikov assuredly navigates with a cane and Moovit, an urban mobility app optimized for screen readers.

“I am very happy that Moovit is accessible and offers a good amount of information about Moscow public transportation,” says Epaneshnikov, who wants to study information technology at a university. The app has helped him meet friends at cafes and restaurants, and take a train to an unfamiliar city outside Moscow to visit his girlfriend’s family.

“I feel it adds more confidence and independence,” he says.

Launched seven years ago in Israel, Moovit has become the world’s most popular transit-planning and navigation app, with more than 400 million users and service in 2,700 cities across 90 countries. The company is also a leader in inclusive technology, with innovative work that helps people across the disability spectrum use buses, trains, subways, ride-hailing services and other modes of public transit.

In addition to offering a consumer app in 45 languages, Moovit has partnered with Microsoft to provide its multi-modal transit data to developers who use Azure Maps, and a set of mobility-as-a-service solutions to cities, governments and organizations. The partnership will enable the creation of more inclusive, smart cities and more accessible transit apps.

Yovav Meydad, Moovit chief growth and marketing officer. (Photo courtesy of Moovit)

“Our mission is to simplify urban mobility and make it accessible, because mobility is really a basic human right,” says Yovav Meydad, Moovit chief growth and marketing officer. “Efficient mobility opens a lot of opportunities for employment, education and a better life, and we want to help all users make their journey as easy as possible.”

For Moovit, the work means not only helping rural residents reach cities for work and school, but also helping people with any disability travel. Of the hundreds of daily emails sent to Moovit, emails from people with low vision are some of the most profound pieces of feedback.

“Sometimes, it’s very emotional,” says Meydad. “They say, ‘Thanks to Moovit, I’m more independent. I can now leave home on my own.’ It’s very, very important for us to make Moovit accessible for everyone.”

The company’s accessibility work began in earnest in 2015, when Meydad and other leading app developers met a focus group of people who are blind or low-vision to see how they used their apps.

“Honestly, I was shocked,” says Meydad, who wrote about the experience twice in Medium. “I saw people trying to use our product, but couldn’t do it efficiently or at all, because screens were not properly labeled or meaningful [for screen readers].” In one case, Moovit’s search button – a major feature to start a trip plan – had the unhelpful audio label of “Button 56.”

Meydad took notes and promised big changes. He worked with Moovit’s team and a developer who is blind to optimize the app for the mobile screen readers TalkBack on Android and VoiceOver on iOS. The team scrutinized every screen for accessibility, added useful labels and condensed intricate data – routes, trip duration, start and end times, entry and exit stops – into clear sentences for audio. They incorporated feedback from users around the world with low vision.

“After one quarter, we released a major version upgrade that completely changed their experience,” says Meydad.

The accessibility work didn’t stop there. To ease public transit for people who use a wheelchair, Moovit asked its “Mooviters” – 550,000 local contributors who help map transit systems for the app – to identify wheelchair-accessible stations in their cities. That enabled the company to add a feature that shows only routes with stations with ramps and elevators.

“This means the entire journey can be fully accessible,” says Meydad.

For users with hand motor disabilities, Moovit redesigned menus and buttons for easier use with one hand, especially on larger phones. For people who are colorblind and use color-coded transit systems, such as “the green line,” Moovit includes the name of the line, instead of just a colored dot or symbol, a space-saving practice in many maps.

The company also ensures no broken or overlapped text when a user needs to magnify the font. It partnered with Be My Eyes, an app that connects sighted volunteers with people who are blind or low-vision. It’s studying how to use a phone’s vibration and flashlight to serve users with hearing loss. And it continually works with people with a disability to improve or customize the app.

Man in wheelchair on a street uses Moovit app on his phone — A Moovit user in a wheelchair uses the app. (Photo courtesy of Moovit)

For Microsoft, working with Moovit, who has developed accessible features such as screen readers and global data on wheelchair-friendly routes, is part of a deep commitment to accessibility and inclusion in its products and services. Developers who use Azure Maps will soon have access to Moovit’s trip planner and rich transit data to help build innovative, accessible tools.

“What I love most about Moovit is how they’re empowering other companies to build inclusion into their solutions,” says Megan Lawrence, senior accessibility evangelist at Microsoft. “Our partnership can help people across the disability spectrum use technology to move more freely and independently, a key metric for improving quality of life.”

The clarity of Moovit’s live audio navigation also helps people with an intellectual disability who want extra guidance, such as alerts for when a bus is coming, when to transfer and when to get off. The features are a main reason why Community Living Toronto, an organization that supports people with an intellectual or developmental disability, chose Moovit as the platform for their branded transit app, Discover My Route.

“We tested many apps and Moovit was the full package,” says Angela Bradley, director of resource development and marketing at Community Living Toronto.

“It’s not just an app for riding transit. It’s almost like a coaching tool. It gives people the confidence to take transit and open up their world, which can mean seeing friends, getting a job, going to college or joining a dance class.”

Top photo: Alexandr Epaneshnikov in Moscow. (Photo courtesy of Epaneshnikov)

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

Building for the future: Microsoft’s new Swedish datacenters have sustainability firmly in mind

Viewed as a highly sustainable country, Sweden has made strong commitments to reduce environmental impact and the government is pursuing a progressive Fossil Free Sweden initiative. Microsoft is similarly committed to sustainability, and with the development of new world-class datacentres in Sweden, intends to create some of their most advanced and sustainable to date based on their design, power from 100 percent renewable energy sources, and plans for zero-waste operations.

Microsoft has operated as a carbon neutral company since 2012 and is continuously increasing the amount of energy the company uses from renewable sources – wind, solar, and hydropower. Earlier this year, Microsoft President Brad Smith confirmed that, by the end of this year, the company will achieve its target of powering its datacentres with 60 percent renewable energy, and will aim to reach 70 percent renewable energy by 2023, on the path to 100 percent.

“We intend for our datacentres in Sweden to be among the most sustainably designed and operated in the world with the ultimate ambition of achieving zero-carbon operations. The datacentre design we’re developing will further Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to transition to a sustainable, low-carbon future,” said Noelle Walsh, CVP, Cloud Operations & Innovation, Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft will collaborate with Vattenfall, one of Europe’s largest producers and retailers of electricity and heat with support from its Node Pole team, on the sourcing and supply of renewable energy for the future datacentres. The two companies will also collaborate to develop solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of the datacentres and construct new power infrastructure to provide stable power for the facilities and the surrounding areas in Sweden in the coming years. Over time, the new power infrastructure will help further reduce the carbon footprint of the datacentres.

Microsoft and Vattenfall previously announced the largest wind energy deal in the Netherlands in 2017. Microsoft purchased 100 percent of the wind energy generated from a 180-megawatt wind farm that is adjacent to its local datacentre operations in the Netherlands. The wind farm is being constructed and operated by Vattenfall in the Wieringermeer Polder, north of Amsterdam.

“Vattenfall is fully committed to help our customers make fossil free living possible within one generation, so this partnership fits very well with our overall strategy. In collaboration with Microsoft, Vattenfall will develop new energy infrastructure to support this datacentre development in Sweden to ensure ample and reliable power for the facilities and improved reliability to the region,” said Andreas Regnell, Senior Vice President, Strategic Development, Vattenfall. “We will support Microsoft on the sourcing and supply of renewable energy for the future datacentres and help provide innovative solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of the datacentres. Vattenfall Distribution as the regional network owner will construct and build the distribution infrastructure required to connect the large-scale facilities. Over time, the new infrastructure will help further reduce the carbon footprint of the datacentres, while at the same time reinforce an already strong electricity grid in Gävle and Sandviken to the benefit of the people who live there.”

Growing demand for the cloud

The proposed Microsoft datacentres in Sweden are in anticipation of future needs for cloud and internet services as demand in Europe continues to grow. In its recent Q3 2019 earnings report, Microsoft shared that demand for its cloud offerings drove commercial cloud revenue to $9.6 billion in its most recent quarter, up 41 percent year-over-year.

The datacentres in Sweden will add to Microsoft’s existing European datacentre footprint, joining the ranks of its other planned datacentres in Norway and Switzerland, and available datacentres in Austria, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

Microsoft continues to focus on research and development for even greater efficiency and increased renewable energy across its global infrastructure. As part of this process, it also plans to launch a new data-driven circular cloud initiative using the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor performance and streamline the reuse, resale and recycling of datacentre assets, including servers. With other innovations such as Project Natick, the world’s first underwater datacentre, and the award-winning Advanced Energy Lab, Microsoft continues to push the boundaries of datacenter innovation and sustainability for both new and existing projects.

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

Computex 2019: Keynote showcases how Microsoft enables innovation and opportunity on the intelligent edge

Today, at Computex in Taipei, Microsoft executives Roanne Sones, CVP OS Platforms and Rodney Clark, VP IoT Sales, shared the keynote stage with me to showcase Microsoft 365, Windows platform and Azure IoT technologies and services that device partners can use to deliver innovative modern PC experiences and build a new generation of connected devices and IoT solutions. In addition, they provided perspective as to how intelligent edge ecosystem partners can fuel business transformation by working together to build edge to cloud IoT solutions.

Microsoft 365 and Windows

The PC ecosystem continues to innovate and build modern Windows PCs that deliver breakthrough performance, enable new scenarios and offer the ultimate in secure, intelligent edge devices that customers love. Partners including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and MSI have recently announced new modern PCs that will delight both creators and gamers.

Acer’s ConceptD 9 creator notebook features a 4K UHD IPS PANTONE Validated display. Colors are as accurate as possible as the display covers 100 percent of the Adobe RGB color gamut. This creator notebook stays quiet with Acer’s 4th generation AeroBlade 3D Fan with a noise reduction mechanism that emits less than 40 db of noise — equivalent to the sound level of a library — while maintaining high computing and graphics performance.

The ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo (UX581), an ultraportable laptop that includes a 4KOLED UHD ASUS ScreenPad Plus (3840 x 2160), a full-width secondary touchscreen (3840 x 1100) that expands and enhances the interactive capabilities of the original ASUS ScreenPad. The display is a frameless four-sided ASUS NanoEdge design, with ultra slim bezels for immersive visuals, in an ultra-compact form factor.The new Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 packs more performance in a thinner design and larger display. Dell’s first laptop with Intel’s Ice Lake-U 10nm 10th gen processors and features adaptive performance based on the latest Intel Dynamic Tuning Technology, which proactively changes the power of the CPU according to the performance of the workload. It comes with a redesigned thermal system to cool the higher performing processor, while creating an overall 8% thinner 2-in-1 than the previous generation.HP recently announced the OMEN X 2S. On top of a variety of awesome use cases for messaging, music apps, watching videos, stream chats and OMEN Command Center, it features a real-time screen mirroring feature further bolsters the OMEN X 2S, by cutting and magnifying parts of the main screen – such as copying the map portion of a racing game – to the second screen, ensuring centered vision and more vertical head movement.

The new Lenovo ThinkPad T495 offers feature upgrades without compromise, and provides a high level of hardware security and manageability. It has longer battery life, and increased performance by up to 18 percent (compared to benchmarks of prior generations). And since security is top of mind for everyone, Lenovo is delivering greater peace of mind with just a slide of the ThinkShutter, the all-in-one integrated camera security cover that physically protects ThinkPad users from malicious webcam snoopers.

Featuring the latest RTX graphics and 9th Generation Intel Core i9 processor and Wi-Fi 6, the new MSI GE65 Raider can easily handle demanding AAA game titles. Its ultra-fast 240Hz IPS-level thin bezel display ensures sharp and clear images in a compact form factor, and the new two-toned mesh design at the underside of the unit, inspired by a dragon theme, provides better ventilation and prevents hot air from recirculating.These new modern PCs and innovative devices the ecosystem will continue to build and bring to market in the future require a modern operating system. An OS that provides a set of enablers that deliver the foundational experiences customers expect from their devices, and includes a set of delighters that deliver innovative human centric experiences. Enablers include seamless updates – with a modern OS updates are invisibly done in the background; the update experience is deterministic, reliable, and instant with no interruptions! A modern OS, is also secure by default, the state is separated from the operating system; compute is separated from applications; this protects the user from malicious attacks throughout the device lifecycle. Always connected -with a modern OS Wifi, LTE 5G will just work – and users never have to worry about a deadspot. All of a users devices are aware and connected to each other. A modern OS provides sustained performance, from the moment a user picks up their device – everything is ready to go – without having to worry about the next time the PC needs to be charged. These enablers will satisfy customer’s basic needs, but to truly differentiate we must also delight them. A modern OS does this by enabling cloud-connected experiences that use the compute power of the cloud to enhance users experiences on their devices.  These experiences are powered by AI, so a modern OS is aware of what a user is doing tomorrow and helps them get it done, and it enhances applications making them more intelligent. A modern OS is also multi-sense. People can use pen, voice, touch, even gaze – what ever input method a user wants to use works just as well as the keyboard and mouse. Finally, a modern OS provides the ultimate in form factor agility. A modern OS has the right sensor support and posture awareness to enable the breadth of innovative form factors and applications that our partner ecosystem will deliver

These enablers and delighters underpin our vision for a Modern OS, they will provide the foundational elements for an evolution of the PC ecosystem and enable partners to deliver the more human-centric experiences of tomorrow. Microsoft is investing to enable these modern OS experiences, and to deliver new ones that take advantage of silicon advancements, powerful PCs, the cloud and power of AI. Experiences like an Asian Inking platform, cognitive recognition services that help with photo tagging and new Your Phone capabilities that let users mirror their Android phone screen on their PC and use the PC mouse and keyboard to interact with phone apps and content using either Wi-Fi or LTE.

Intelligent Edge and the Internet of Things

IoT is another area of tremendous growth and unparalleled innovation, and our broad ecosystem of IoT partners including chip makers, hardware manufacturers, solution providers and aggregators are building a diverse assortment of IoT devices and solutions for businesses across industries. At Microsoft our goal is to simplify IoT – from the cloud down to the smallest MCU based devices, and we do this by meeting our partners and customers where they are, with the right intelligent cloud services, software and development tools they need to get devices connected, and manage solutions at scale.

Device partners are utilizing Azure IoT Central, Azure IoT Edge and Windows IoT to build intelligent edge devices that can be connected to the cloud and used in solutions that deliver business results. Today at Computex, we announced that Microsoft and NXP are continuing their efforts to bring the full range of NXP systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) to Windows IoT. The board support package (BSP) for the i.MX6 SoloX applications processors will be generally available in June 2019. Additional BSPs for members of the i.MX6 series are expected to become available later this summer, with BSPs for the i.MX7 and i.MX8 series released later this year.

We’ve recently announced additional services and programs that hardware manufacturers can use to get their devices connected to the cloud and included in IoT solutions.

IoT Plug and Play, a new open modeling language to connect IoT devices to the cloud seamlessly, helps device partners navigate one of the biggest challenges they face — deploying IoT solutions at scale. Previously, software had to be written specifically for the connected device it supported, limiting the scale of IoT deployments. IoT Plug and Play provides partners with a straightforward way to model the capabilities and data coming from their IoT devices and will provide customers with a large portfolio of partner-certified devices that can easily be made to work with any IoT solution, often without writing any new code.

Azure IoT Central is a fully managed global IoT SaaS (software-as-a-service) solution that makes it easy to connect, monitor, and manage IoT assets at scale. Bring connected products to market faster while staying focused on customers. New custom dashboard features allow partners to bring their own brand and user experience to their IoT solution, and benefit from the built-in security, reliability, device connectivity and role-based user account management provided by IoT Central.

Microsoft Azure IoT Device Agent V2 for Windows 10 IoT, lets operators configure, monitor and manage their devices remotely from their Azure dashboard. It provides an open-source, ready to build package that: creates and manages the Azure IoT Hub identities on the device, manages the cloud connection and its renewal, provides a plug-in model for platform components, which allows easy onboarding to various Azure services, including discovery, initialization, error reporting and state aggregation, comes with a set of ready-to-ship plug-ins for commonly used platform components and leverages Azure IoT Module Twin so a separate UWP app is not required to connect to Azure IoT Hub.

Businesses who are implementing IoT solutions want to achieve time to value as quickly as possible. And, when partners take advantage of Microsoft’s comprehensive, trusted and easy to use edge to cloud platforms, embrace business model transformation and work together they can reduce the complexity of IoT, and accelerate time to value for customers. Leveraging a common architecture and repeatable solutions based on accelerators can eliminate up to 80 percent of the development work on a new solution, and collaborating with compatible partners offers greater speed, scalability, and depth of expertise. All of which means customers get their IoT solutions up and running faster — hastening ROI and increasing profitability.

Techsun is a great example of an ecosystem partner who is embracing IoT transformation. They successfully collaborated with Compal to design an AI camera, IoT sensor and IOT management platform that leverages Microsoft services including Edge AI, Azure IoT and cognitive services to develop cloud to edge AI algorithms, a data management platform and a business management platform for retail. A variety of retailers have implemented Techsun’s Retail Next solution and are using consumer flow and store operation data along with information on consumer behavior that the solution makes available to improve customer service, increase efficiency and enhance store layouts. By developing this new solution, Techsun has transformed itself from being a traditional Dynamics partner into a leading retail digital service provider in China.

Advantech developed an end-to-end industry safety solution that includes the BTI MIOTY LPWAN wireless solution running on an industry-standard Windows IoT gateway and a wearable device that monitors heart rates. Industrial customers can use this solution to gather health data for their people working in high-risk industrial environments, send the data to the Microsoft Cloud where Hitachi Solutions’ IoT Service Hub is used to provide actionable insights on workers’ health and to send alerts when people are in danger. Employers, such as mining site operators, can deploy this end-to-end solution to protect their workforce with unprecedented responsiveness at a fraction of the cost of previously available technologies.

The breadth of innovative intelligent edge devices and solutions our partners, across the PC and IoT ecosystems, have delivered in the last year is incredible, and we’re just getting started! The opportunities we all have to empower people, drive growth and enable business transformation, when we use the power of the cloud and AI to build intelligent edge solutions, are limitless. I look forward to the innovation we will deliver together.