Microsoft news – Page 91

Posted on August 28, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

New transcription capabilities in Word a time-saver for teachers and students

By Mike Tholfsen Posted on
August 26, 2020 at 7:40 am

Save teachers and students time and effort with new transcription capabilities in Word

By Mike Tholfsen

Educators and students are actively spending time and energy adapting to virtual learning while handling life at home. Our bandwidth to figure out new processes, keep track of various conversations, and digitize workflows while still aspiring to do our best work is limited and that’s why we’re excited to share that Transcribe in Word is here.

Easy transcriptions save you time, effort, and help better remember conversations

There are several scenarios where Transcribe in Word can help – in example,

For post-interview processing: From student assignments like interviewing a career role model to formal research studies, a lot of time is wasted today manually re-listening and transcribing recordings to gather quotes and annotate patterns. Students with may struggle focusing on the conversation while jotting down notes.
For making the most of feedback sessions: Students may need feedback early in their essay-writing process, but when grading comes around, it may be difficult for educators to recollect all the suggestions given from an earlier chat. On the flip side, students may be overwhelmed by all the details in verbal feedback sessions as they try their best to remember it later.
For referencing notes after meetings or video conferences: Educators may forgo jotting down notes in parent-teacher meeting to be present in the moment, but wish they had key details later.
For creating during projects: Whether it’s for extracurricular clubs or hobbies such as journalism with the school paper or making a new podcast, a lot of time can be spent working with audio and video media or manually writing up transcripts to publish.

Transcribe in Word can help you stay focused on your conversation in the moment or preserve valuable time and energy by converting speech into text.

Getting started

Make sure you’re signed into Microsoft 365 using the Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome web browser
Go to the Home tab > Dictate dropdown > Transcribe button
Select Start recording to Upload audio
Check out your new transcript with timestamps, speaker labels, audio playback, and options to add the content into the document

Tip: To make this work over a video conferencing call, just start recording in Word while no headset is used so Word can pick up the sound coming out of the device.

2019-10 Web Word Transcription.gif

Conversations that are recorded or uploaded are saved to your personal OneDrive. Transcribe individually separates different speakers so it’s clear which part was said by a teacher versus a student. After the conversation, parts of the recording can be played back by clicking on timestamped audio and the transcript can be edited.

With smartphones being ubiquitous for educators and students alike, Transcribe enables upload of audio that was recorded outside of Word. Whether recorded on a phone or elsewhere, simply select the file to upload and transcribe. Transcribe supports .

The transcript will appear alongside the Word document, along with the recording which can be played back to hear how something was said, not just read what was said. Want to send or work with an entire transcript? Simply click “add all to document” and the full transcript will be laid out in Word.

Here is a detailed video showing the entire scenario, step by step:

[embedded content]

Transcribe in Word is available in Word for the web for all Microsoft 365 subscribers. Currently, only transcribing audio into English (EN-US) is supported. Transcribe in Office mobile will be coming by the end of the year. For more detailed steps see: Transcribe in Word

Mike Tholfsen

Principal Product Manager

Microsoft Education

@mtholfsen

This post was originally published on this site.

Other Microsoft Education News

Posted on August 28, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Research Mode for HoloLens 2 to facilitate computer vision research

Lifestyle image of male wearing a Hololens 2 device

Since its launch in November 2019, Microsoft HoloLens 2 has helped enterprises in manufacturing, construction, healthcare, and retail onboard employees more quickly, complete tasks faster, and greatly reduce errors and waste. It sets the high-water mark for intelligent edge devices by leveraging a multitude of sensors and a dedicated ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) to allow multiple real-time computer vision workloads to run continuously. In Research Mode, HoloLens 2 is also a potent computer vision research device. (Note: Research Mode is available today to Windows Insiders and soon in an upcoming release of Windows 10 for HoloLens .)

Compared to the previous edition, Research Mode for HoloLens 2 has the following main advantages:

In addition to sensors exposed in HoloLens 1 Research Mode, we now also provide IMU sensor access (these include an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer).
HoloLens 2 provides new capabilities that can be used in conjunction with Research Mode. Specifically, articulated hand-tracking and eye-tracking which can be accessed through APIs while using research mode, allowing for a richer set of experiments.

With Research Mode, application code can not only access video and audio streams, but can also simultaneously leverage the results of built-in computer vision algorithms such as SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) to obtain the motion of the device as well as the spatial-mapping algorithms to obtain 3D meshes of the environment. These capabilities are made possible by several built-in image sensors that complement the color video camera normally accessible to applications.

HoloLens 2 has four grayscale head-tracking cameras and a depth camera to sense its environment and perform articulated hand tracking. It also has two additional infrared cameras and accompanying LEDs that are used for eye tracking and iris recognition. As shown in Figure 1, two of the grayscale cameras are configured as a stereo rig, capturing the area in front of the device so that the absolute depth of tracked visual features can be determined through triangulation. Meanwhile, the two additional grayscale cameras help provide a wider field of view to keep track of features. These synchronized global-shutter cameras are significantly more sensitive to light than the color camera and can be used to capture images at a rate of up to 30 frames per second (FPS).

Figure 1: Hololens 2 Research Mode enables access to the gray-scale, depth camera and IMU sensors on device. This complements the color camera normally available to applications.

The depth camera uses active infrared (IR) illumination to determine depth through phase-based time-of-flight. The camera can operate in two modes. The first mode enables high-framerate (45 FPS) near-depth sensing, commonly used for hand tracking, while the other mode is used for lower-framerate (1-5 FPS) far-depth sensing, currently used by spatial mapping. As hands only need to be supported up to 1 meter from the device, HoloLens 2 saves power by reducing the number of illuminations, which results in the depth wrapping around beyond one meter . For example, something at 1.3 meters will appear at 0.3 meters in HoloLens 2 in this case. In addition to depth, this camera also delivers actively illuminated IR images (in both modes) that can be valuable in their own right because they are illuminated from the HoloLens and reasonably unaffected by ambient light. Azure Kinect uses the same sensor package, but with slightly different depth modes.

With the newest Windows Insider release of Windows 10 for HoloLens, researchers now have the option to enable Research Mode on their HoloLens devices to gain access to all of these external facing raw image sensors streams. Research Mode for HoloLens 2 also provides researchers with access to the accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer readings. To protect users’ privacy, raw eye-tracking camera images are not available through Research Mode. Researchers can access eye-gaze direction through existing APIs.

For other sensor streams, researchers can also still use the results of the built-in computer vision algorithms and can now also choose to use the raw sensor data for their own algorithms.

The sensors’ streams can either be processed or stored on device or transferred wirelessly to another PC or to the cloud for more computationally demanding tasks. This opens a wide range of new computer vision applications for HoloLens 2. HoloLens 2 is particularly well suited as a platform for egocentric vision research as it can be used to analyze the world from the perspective of a user wearing the device. For these applications, HoloLens devices’ abilities to visualize results of the algorithms in the 3D world in front of the user can be a key advantage. HoloLens sensing capabilities can also be very valuable for robotics where these can, for example, enable a robot to navigate its environment.

These new HoloLens capabilities will be demonstrated at a tutorial on August 28th, 2020, at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV). An initial set of sample apps is being made available showcasing computer vision use cases on GitHub, and you can check out the Research Mode documentation for further technical details.

Posted on August 28, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

New research collaboration will accelerate the path to a commercial-scale quantum computer

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced today the creation of several multidisciplinary Quantum Information Science Research Centers in support of the National Quantum Initiative.

Today marks one of the U.S. government’s largest investments in this field. It is also a noteworthy moment for Microsoft, which is providing scientific leadership, in addition to expertise in workforce development and technology transfer.

Microsoft is one of the five core founding members of one of the newly-formed centers, the Quantum Science Center (QSC), along with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and Purdue University. In addition to the Quantum Science Center, Microsoft is also a partner in the Q-NEXT center, led by Argonne National Laboratory and joined by Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. And finally, Microsoft is enrolled in the External Advisory Board of the Quantum Science Accelerator Center, led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and joined by Sandia National Laboratory.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a longstanding DOE Lab collaborator with Microsoft and co-founding member of Northwest Quantum Nexus, will also participate in QSC and Q-NEXT. In both these Centers, Microsoft and PNNL will continue their work on quantum chemistry, algorithms, and tools, leveraging earlier innovations involving NWChem and the QDK.

As has been our impact and experience with other collaborations involving U.S. government entities, universities, and Microsoft, the newly-created QIS Research centers will bring together the best of the public and private sector together to solve the scientific problems that lie on the path to a commercial-scale quantum computer.

While quantum computing will someday have a profound impact, today’s quantum computing systems are still nascent technologies. To scale these systems, we must overcome a number of scientific challenges.

Microsoft has been tackling these challenges head-on through our work towards developing topological qubits, classical information processing devices for quantum control, new quantum algorithms, and simulations. Our team has been collaborating with universities globally since its inception, even opening labs on the campuses of UC Santa Barbara, Purdue University, the University of Sydney, Copenhagen University, and the Technical University of Delft. With today’s announcement, the efforts and expertise of this global network will be taken to the next level across a number of areas.

We believe that we will need to explore new materials combinations in order to realize significant performance improvements in topological qubits, and DOE National Labs have vast experience with the exploration of materials. They also have unique tools, such as a spallation neutron source and synchrotrons for probing the properties of these materials in order to screen them for use in quantum devices. Together, Microsoft and its partners in the DOE’s labs can design the probes of the future that are tailored for topological quantum materials.

At the other end of the quantum computing stack, the Centers can bolster our efforts to benchmark quantum algorithms and protocols for qubit validation and verification. Oak Ridge’s Leadership Computing Facility features a number of near-term quantum computing testbeds, while our Azure Quantum service is backed by Microsoft’s cloud computing expertise and infrastructure, as well as decades of research in quantum algorithms and languages such as our high-level quantum programming language Q#, which can be targeted at near-term quantum computing testbeds and also at the quantum computers of the future.

Today’s announcement connects extensive public-private expertise, resources, and funding to tackle the tough problems ahead and accelerate progress.

Posted on August 27, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

What’s new to Microsoft 365: tasks in Microsoft Teams, whiteboarding during remote meetings and more

As we gear up for our annual Ignite conference, I’m struck by how much we’ve learned these past few months—from our customers, from researchers and experts in every field, and from our own experiences at Microsoft navigating remote and hybrid work models. For all of us, these lessons extend to our home lives as well. Maybe you’re coordinating factory floor operations from a kitchen table hundreds of miles away or greeting your Grandpa on a video screen as he virtually attends a family picnic, it’s probably dawned on you that our world is changing in durable ways. As we work to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, we’re learning to embrace a heterogeneous future. Our mission is to enable people, teams, and organizations to thrive in this new world of remote and hybrid work and learning. Last month at Inspire, I shared how we’re working together with our partners to build new experiences for our customers designed to connect people, inspire creativity, and foster innovation. (To learn more how we’re meeting the evolving demands of the “next normal” with Microsoft 365, you can also check out my Inspire session).

We’re committed as ever to develop technology that helps you keep moving forward, no matter if you’re fully remote or in a hybrid work environment. This month, we’re releasing new features in Microsoft Teams to help users automate more of their workflow, ideate on digital whiteboards more easily, help improve readability while browsing the web, and more.

Let’s take a deeper look at these updates and what else is new in August.  

Manage Tasks and more in Teams

New features to manage tasks, automate workflows, and streamline collaboration in Teams.

Stay on top of tasks without leaving Teams—Managing your tasks gets easier if you don’t have to flip between places to see them all. The new Tasks app in Teams provides a new unified view of tasks and assignments from across Microsoft To Do, Planner, and Outlook, helping you consolidate and prioritize your tasks. Along with a consolidated view of your tasks, we’ve also added a new List view with the ability to edit multiple tasks at once, Graph API and Power Automate integrations, and task publishing capabilities to come. The new experience is rolling out to desktop users now. To get started, add the “Planner” app (the name will later change to “Tasks”) to your Teams client or add it as a tab at the top of a Teams channel.

Simplify actions and alert teammates more easily with new Power Automate capabilities—We’re adding new actions and triggers to Power Automate in Teams to allow users to streamline their workflow. Using the new “create a team” action, you’ll be able to seamlessly spin up a new team as part of your business process—such as automatically creating a team site with members for a project you’re working on. Also, you can now use @mentions in your flows to make sure important messages reach the intended recipient.

An animated image of new triggers to Power Automate.

We’ve also added two new triggers to Power Automate. Using the “for a selected message action” trigger, you can now create customized message actions to initiate critical business processes directly from a message—including converting a message in a chat into a Sales opportunity in Dynamics. Also, when a team member is removed from a team, specific actions can be set in motion—like notifying the team owner. To get started, open the “Flow” app in Microsoft Teams and start building a flow with these two new triggers.

An animated image of two new triggers to Power Automate.

Boost productivity with Microsoft Teams apps designed for remote work—In a remote and hybrid work environment, ensuring everyone is informed, aligned, and engaged can be difficult. We’ve created a new web page with a curated a list of apps for Microsoft Teams that can help improve collaboration and productivity. From managing marketing campaigns and building sales proposals to solving issues with automating responses and prioritizing tasks, these apps will help keep you connected and moving forward in a remote and hybrid world.

An image showing higher productivity with Microsoft Teams apps designed for remote work.

Access Visio directly from a tab within Teams channels—As part of our commitment to make collaborating on Visio diagrams within Teams seamless, we have added “Visio as a tab.” Visio tabs in Teams allow team members to quickly access content in a dedicated space within a channel or in a chat. Adding a tab in Teams is available to all Teams users (editing is only available for those with a Visio Plan 1 or Plan 2 subscription). This feature is now available.

An image showing access to Visio within Microsoft Teams.

Collaborate and organize your work more effectively

New features to help you collaborate more effectively in meetings, access and create Visio diagrams, and browse the web more productively.

Run effective meetings, brainstorm, and think creatively with updates to Whiteboard in Teams—Though many of us aren’t physically together these days, we all still need our brainstorming and creative thinking sessions. But this can be hard in a remote and hybrid work environment. We’ve added new features to Whiteboard in Teams to make it easier to keep the creative process moving forward virtually. Now, you can quickly add sticky notes to a canvas, making it easier to contribute if you’re using a device without a digital pen. We’ve also added the ability to move and re-order objects on the canvas through a simple drag and drop gesture. Finally, we’ve improved the performance, so Whiteboard is now faster than ever. Learn more about these new capabilities and other features in our Whiteboard Help section.

An animated image showing updates to Whiteboard in Teams.

Improve readability and manage notes more effectively in Microsoft Edge—60% of the time people spend on the PC is within the web browser, and it has become the primary way we work, learn and play. That’s why it’s critical that your web browser enables your productivity and helps keep you safe. This month we’re releasing several new capabilities for Edge. First, Collections now allows you to export to OneNote. When you send to OneNote, all your collected content retains its formatting, so you get visual links and all your notes organized neatly.

An animated image of improved readability in Microsoft Teams.

We’re also bringing Picture Dictionary to Immersive Reader in Microsoft Edge. Picture Dictionary will provide a picture representation of a selected word on a web page to help increase comprehension. Get started by turning on the Picture Dictionary toggle in Reading Preferences.

An animated image of Picture Dictionary.

Lastly, we’ve added 5 different highlighter colors, support for screen readers, and the ability to view and validate digital signatures to the built-in PDF reader.

Streamline user and app deployments

New capabilities and resources to help your IT departments streamline new roll outs.

Provision users to Azure AD from SAP SuccessFactors —With the integration between Azure AD and SAP SuccessFactors, you can now automate user access to applications and resources so that a new hire can be up and running with full access to the necessary applications on day one. The integration also helps you reduce dependencies on IT helpdesk for onboarding and offboarding tasks. Get started now by following our documentation.

Request help while deploying Microsoft 365 in your organization —Getting new tools deployed quickly and efficiently is critical to maintaining productivity. To help ensure we’re here for our customers, we’ve streamlined the process for requesting assistance from FastTrack for Microsoft 365. FastTrack is a benefit that comes with your Microsoft 365 subscription, at no additional cost, for customers with eligible plans of 150+ licenses. To get started, sign in and select “Request assistance from FastTrack for Microsoft 365.”

An animated image of FastTrack as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Quickly secure your Windows 10 PCs through a simplified security policy setup experience—With so many employees working remotely, it’s important to ensure their PCs are protected. We are rolling out a new setup experience within Microsoft 365 admin center that makes it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to deploy a lightweight security baseline policy for protecting their Windows 10 computers. This new experience will ensure their devices have the appropriate protections configured—such as encrypting hard drives with BitLocker or locking the screen when users walk away—and are better protected from unauthorized access and malicious threats like viruses and malware. This new policy applies to all ‎Windows 10‎ devices that are enrolled in ‎Microsoft Intune with a Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscription plan‎.

An image showing a simplified PC security set up experience.

Also new this month

The Visio Data Visualizer add-in for Excel is now generally available, providing a new way to create data-driven Visio diagrams directly in Excel.
Application Guard, which helps desktop users stay safer and more productive by opening Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files in a virtualized container, is now generally available.

As organizations are navigating their transition to a more sustainable, hybrid workplace, we are committed to developing technologies that help people, teams, and organizations thrive. All of these updates are aimed at enabling people to collaborate securely and productively from anywhere. We invite you to stay tuned as we share many exciting new announcements next month at Ignite!

Posted on August 27, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Technical curiosity with a philosophical bent: Q&A with Microsoft India’s National Technology Officer Rohini Srivathsa

How has your career and outlook evolved over the years?

The first decade of my career was very technical in its focus. I was a research kind of person then. I wrote a lot of technical papers and got published.

Then came my reinvention. I was technically strong, but I started to recognize a need to understand the big picture. That is, how to take technical advances and create an impact in the real world.

So, I went back to school and did an MBA at Wharton (at the University of Pennsylvania.) I went into consulting and worked in a range of roles. Nowadays, I am focused on issues like responsible AI, ethics, and policy.

That brings us to your current role at Microsoft. Can you explain what a National Technology Officer does?

My role involves thinking about the next generation of technology – emerging topics that are beyond our current horizon. How will these impact not only our business and our customers, but also society as a whole? It is a technology-specific role with a national circle of concern.

I look at how Microsoft can help my country achieve its potential. How it can empower people, communities, and governments. The effects of technology go well beyond business. They impact individuals and society as well.

Tell us about your work as part of the Sensitive Uses Working Group of AETHER?

We look at the challenges that AI innovations can bring across the globe. It’s a matter of not just asking what AI can do, but what AI should do. There are situations when we need to pause and think about where we are heading and the consequences.

We have laid out six ethical principles for AI: fairness; reliability and safety; privacy and security; inclusiveness; transparency; and accountability.

By holding these principles up like a mirror, we set standards for the company and guidelines for our customers and partners.

Why did you join this group?

I was asked to join the effort and at first I declined. I believed I had just too much on my plate with all my other responsibilities. But then, the following weekend, I watched a documentary about how technology was used to interfere with the (2016) U.S. elections.

It made me realize that I had to contribute. It was just too important. Sometimes serendipity makes you realize that your day job is not enough. You are being called to do something that is above and beyond. And you must rise to the opportunity, no matter what.

You work across India, which is a massive and diverse nation. How important is it for Microsoft to pursue policies of diversity and inclusiveness globally?

Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. To empower people, you need to have some understanding of their perceptions and backgrounds.

So, we need diversity and inclusion in our company to really have a shot at carrying out our mission. We also need to be inclusive. I am a pretty bold person, and I do speak my mind. It is not just a gender thing.

But as a woman, perhaps, and also as a former strategy consultant, I am pretty perceptive about what is happening in a room or in a team. Are people stressed? Are people getting on each other’s nerves? Or is somebody feeling that they are not being included? You must care and be courageous about calling that out.

Posted on August 25, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

CVP Ann Johnson on implementing a Zero Trust security model for Microsoft’s remote workforce

Zero Trust has always been key to maintaining business continuity. And now, it’s become even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic to helping enable the largest remote workforce in history. While organizations are empowering people to work securely when, where, and how they want, we have found the most successful are the ones who are also empathetic to the end-user experience. At Microsoft, we refer to this approach as digital empathy. As you take steps to protect a mobile workforce, a Zero Trust strategy grounded in digital empathy will help enhance cybersecurity, along with productivity and collaboration too.

This was one of a few important topics that I recently discussed during a cybersecurity fireside chat with industry thought leader, Kelly Bissell, Global Managing Director of Security Accenture. Accenture, one of Microsoft’s most strategic partners, helps clients use Microsoft 365 to implement a Zero Trust strategy that is inclusive of everyone. “How do we make working from home both convenient and secure for employees during this time of constant change and disruption,” has become a common question both Kelly and I hear from organizations as we discuss the challenges of maintaining business continuity while adapting to this new world—and beyond. I encourage everyone to explore these points more deeply by watching my entire conversation with Kelly.

Our long-term Microsoft-Accenture security relationship helps customers navigate the current environment and emerge even stronger as we look past the pandemic. The following are some of the key steps shared during our conversation that you can take to begin applying digital empathy and Zero Trust to your organization.

Protect your identities with Azure Active Directory

Zero Trust is an “assume breach” security posture that treats each request for access as a unique risk to be evaluated and verified. This starts with strong identity authentication. Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is an identity and secure access management (IAM) solution that you can connect to all your apps including Microsoft apps, non-Microsoft cloud apps, and on-premises apps. Employees sign in once using a single set of credentials, simplifying access. To make it even easier for users, deploy Azure AD solutions like passwordless authentication, which eliminates the need for users to memorize passwords. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is one of the most important things you can do to help secure employee accounts, so implement MFA for 100 percent of your users, 100 percent of the time.

According to a new Forrester report, The Total Economic Impact™ of Securing Apps with Microsoft Azure Active Directory, customers who secure apps with Microsoft Azure Active Directory can improve user productivity, reduce costs, and gain IT efficiencies to generate a 123 % return on investment.

Secure employee devices

Devices present another opportunity for bad actors to infiltrate your organization. Employees may run old operating systems or download vulnerable apps on their personal devices. With Microsoft Endpoint Manager, you can guide employees to keep their devices updated. Conditional Access policies allow you to limit or block access to devices that are unknown or don’t comply with your security policies.

An endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution like Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Microsoft Defender ATP) can help you detect attacks and automatically block sophisticated malware. Each Microsoft Defender ATP license covers up to five devices per user.

Discover and manage cloud apps

Cloud apps have proliferated in today’s workplace. They are so easy to use that IT departments are often not aware of which cloud apps their employees access. Microsoft Cloud App Security is a cloud app security broker (CASB) that allows you to discover all the apps used in your network. Cloud App Security’s risk catalog includes over 16,000 apps that are assessed using over 80 risk factors. Once you understand the risk profile of the apps in your network, you can decide whether to allow access, block access, or onboard it on to Azure AD.

Employees are busy in the best of times. Today, with many working from home for the first time—often in a full house—their stress may be compounded. By simplifying the sign-in process and protecting data on apps and devices, Microsoft 356 security solutions like Azure AD, Microsoft Defender ATP, and Cloud App Security, make it easier for employees to work remotely while improving security for the organization.

Digital empathy and Zero Trust are also two of the five security paradigm shifts that will lead to more inclusive user experiences. Next month, I will provide more details about two additional paradigm shifts, the diversity of data, and integrated security solutions.

CTA: To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Follow Ann Johnson @ajohnsocyber for Microsoft’s latest cybersecurity investments and @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

Posted on August 25, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

How cloud analytics can drive digital transformation in government

Never before have we seen enterprises adapt and transform as rapidly as they have since the arrival of COVID-19. In the private sector, these decisions have come relatively easily (even if the execution is hard): meet the customer where they are, expand infrastructure to meet the ballooning digital demand, and enable legions of employees to work remotely. It’s simply a matter of good business.

Sometimes perceived as slow to adopt digital transformation, how can government entities become agile champions of the cloud and cloud analytics? To explore this topic, I spoke with Steve Bennett, Ph.D., formerly with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security where he led teams working in biological surveillance, and currently Director, Global Government Practice, SAS.

Daniel: Steve, based on your experience working in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, what did you see as some of the main challenges the government faces with adopting cloud computing and leveraging the potential of cloud analytics?

Steve: When I worked at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, we were using analytics to understand new health threats, and we had two challenges that were a constant headache. One was how we store data and remain compliant. The other was managing a large collection of tools—one to enable visualization and dashboards, another for optimization, and yet another for machine learning and predictive analytics.

Daniel: Storing data in a compliant manner and then being able to manage a set of analytics tools are two challenges that I have seen as well. People may not think of a government or a city council as having a large amount of data to store and analyze. However, government Internet of Things (IoT) estates are quite large. Think of light poles, luminaires, air quality sensors, water meters, and water quality management systems. All of these are connected and generating a huge amount of data. For the government to digitally transform, government analysts will need to make sense out of all that data on a large scale. They will need to see patterns, and eventually make predictions. How do you recommend government teams get started?

Steve: With the vast amount of data generated by government IoT projects and the performance requirements, cloud computing makes sense. Cloud computing provides the ability to scale elastically and on-demand, it supports policies, technologies, and controls that strengthen security, and it eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software.

In terms of analytic tools, teams should evaluate how tools model data, the process used for extract transform load (ETL), and the simplicity of the user interface. They should make sure the analytics tools democratize the analysis process. All types of users (business, engineering, data science, and IT) should be able to access, explore, visualize, and transform data into insights.

Daniel: Can you give an example of how cloud-based analytics has been applied in the government?

Steve: Let’s look at a solution that was implemented by SAS and Microsoft for the Town of Cary, North Carolina, USA. During storm events, Cary had no visibility into nearby river levels or how quickly the water was rising. Traditionally, the town relied on citizens to alert them of floods through phone calls, text messages, and other means. The town staff processed these requests manually dispatching public work personnel to erect barriers and close roads.

A key requirement for the Town of Cary was that their new flood prediction system needed to integrate with existing business systems. These included using the SAS Visual Analytics dashboard integrated with ArcGIS for real-time visualization, Salesforce for alerts, automated notifications, and work orders, and data sharing for regional partner response systems.

The Town of Cary installed water level sensors at various points along the Walnut Creek stream basin and rain gauges at several Town of Cary owned facilities. Data on stormwater levels were transferred to the Azure cloud over an LTE wireless connection.

Azure IoT Hub was used to provision, authenticate, and manage the two-way communication to the sensors. SAS Analytics for IoT combined streaming data from sensors and gauges with weather data for real-time scoring, dashboarding, and historical reporting. SAS Visual Analytics provided an interactive dashboard, reports, business intelligence, and analytics. The dashboard integrated with ESRI ArcGIS for additional geographic analysis and data visualization.

With the end-to-end IoT solution, town staff can now visualize flooding events in real-time. Stormwater personnel receive notifications and can generate work orders automatically. The data is also shared with regional partners.

“The Azure IoT platform has been a critical piece of our technology ecosystem and accelerates our ability to scale.” —Terry Yates, Smart City Strategist, Town of Cary

These predictive analytics applications have immense effects on city budgets, and more importantly, human lives—but they wouldn’t be possible without the scale of the cloud.

“We’re still connecting some of the dots, but we’re already seeing real benefits in the automation of formerly manual processes. Previously, we might get a call from a citizen, which would cause us to dispatch public works or emergency services depending on the type of flooding. Now the data triggers alerts that automatically notify stormwater personnel, who can react and address the flooded areas. It’s much more efficient and could ultimately save lives.” —Nicole Raimundo, Chief Information Officer, Town of Cary

Daniel: That’s an excellent example. How do you see cloud computing and analytics playing a role as governments address climate change?

Steve: As governments are compelled by climate change to make commitments around sustainability, carbon management, transportation, or emergency response, the importance of a connected data system that can drive predictive insights becomes clear. Natural disasters are increasing at unprecedented rates and can cost local government tens or even hundreds of millions to recover.

Daniel: Thanks, Steve. How would you like to close our discussion today?

Steve: Governments have a wide range of motivations for adopting analytics in the cloud. Analytics help governments identify fraud and help police become more efficient in investigations. And in the healthcare space, we’re using analytics to find anomalies in public health, figure out how to optimize hospital bed usage, and manage a supply chain for personal protective equipment in the wake of COVID-19.

The possibilities of powerful analytics in government are truly exciting. I recommend that public institutions embrace the cloud quickly to drive tangible results.

From connecting and drawing insight out of city-wide IoT footprints to reversing entire tax systems in a matter of days, only the cloud can meet the new demands placed on the government. It’s simply a matter of good government.

Next steps

Learn more about how Microsoft and its partners like SAS are promoting citizen well-being, influencing positive societal change, and enhancing government services.

Learn how SAS and Microsoft are partnering to further shape the future of analytics and AI.

Posted on August 25, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

MIT students’ Microsoft Garage project helps you explore art across cultures

Art is one of the few languages which transcends barriers of country, culture, and time. Most people view art subjectively through a lens shaped by their experiences and environment. Finding commonalities among pieces from different eras and mediums calls for an open mind and a sharp eye. The Mosaic project is taking this intellectual and human approach and augmenting it with the help of artificial intelligence to find connections between works of art from diverse artists. Working with data from The Rijksmuseum – the Museum of the Netherlands and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), a group of MIT students implemented a new algorithm for visual search that finds similarities across cultures in the museums’ collections as part of their externship project at Microsoft Garage.

Based on a starting image of a Banyan, the algorithm finds similar works of art from different artists in the Rijksmuseum and The Met collections.

The MIT externship with Microsoft Garage takes a traditional semester-long internship experience and condenses it to a month of rapid development where students take an impactful project from concept to reality. Microsoft Garage at NERD was the home base for the externs during the month of January, where a culture of innovation is fostered, and growth mindset is put into action. Some of the externs have since returned to Microsoft as Garage Interns, as part of a virtual summer internship experience where students collaborate online through Microsoft Teams and other productivity tools.

The idea started with long-time Garage collaborator and Mosaic project sponsor Mark Hamilton, Research Engineer pursuing a PhD at MIT alongside his full-time job on the Cognitive Services Research Group at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center (NERD). Mark was inspired by a visit to an exhibit at the Rijksmuseum. This exhibit compared works from the studios of Rembrandt and Velazquez, two prolific artists that never met, yet told similar stories in their works. He began thinking of possible ways the same idea could be enhanced by AI, and developed an algorithm which searches for similar works of art based on a starting image and a feature of that image such as the medium, a color, or the culture (e.g. “French”). Last January, Mark began working with The Met’s Open Access collection with the previous cohort of MIT externs, and out of that effort grew Gen Studio, an interactive tool giving people the ability to generate new art from trained generative adversarial networks.

This year’s MIT students had a different goal with Mosaic.

Mosaic website exploring connections in art.

“This project leverages existing collections of art from both The Met and the Rijksmuseum to find connections between various cultures and time periods,” Mark explained. “With Mosaic we can shine a light into areas of the collections that may not be as well-known and discover really interesting things.” Curators and visitors can use Mosaic to explore art in new ways, such as charting trends that underlie works from different cultures and finding evidence of cultural exchanges and influences throughout history. One example Mark described was how the algorithm found similarities between a Ming Dynasty porcelain vase, a Dutch violin, and a banyan from the Netherlands. “The algorithm picked up on commonalities of form between the banyan and a string instrument, but also the color of the blue and white motif which originated in Ming Dynasty and spread through Europe. You can see evidence of cultural exchanges happening through the outputs of this algorithm.”

For a deeper dive into how this new way of conditional image retrieval can help improve GANs, Mark hosted a Microsoft Research Webinar on the topic.

Before the machine learning model could be implemented, however, there was the complex task of cleaning the data associated with each piece of art.

Meet the team behind Mosaic

Students Mindren Lu and Stephanie Fu study computer science at MIT and worked closely to comb through data from both museums. No small feat, the two data scientists organized descriptive metadata like keywords, authors, and tags associated with each artwork into consistent datasets that could be fed into the algorithm. “There was a lot of manual processing since much of the data is written in another language, sometimes there were misspellings or missing information,” said Stephanie. “It took a lot of time to boil all that down to a nice, formatted dataset that the back-end team could work with.”

Marina Rogers was part of the team building the back-end of Mosaic that interfaces with various Azure products and services. “We’d bring the cleaned datasets and collections in and create the machine learning models based on Mark’s research. Then, we’d deploy the models and different APIs for sharing that connect to the front-end website,” explained Marina, who is an electrical engineering and computer science student with a minor in design.

“Being able to share our work with others is definitely a highlight,” said Johnny Bui, also studying electrical engineering and computer science. He reflected on how getting technical pieces and services to “talk” to each other in novel ways behind the scenes was a challenge. Felix Tran and Maggie Wang completed the team working on the back-end systems that provided uninterrupted end-to-end data flow, described by Jean-Yves Ntamwemezi, Software Engineer on the Microsoft Garage at NERD, as “the glue that brings the pieces together.”

Jean-Yves joined the Garage team just before the externship began, coming from a long tenure as a software engineer on the Office Docs team. “It was a very interesting, fast-paced learning environment, jumping in to lead the externs in many ways.” In addition to general mentorship and support, Jean-Yves readied the Azure DevOps environment for the project, set up pull requests so the externs could have their code reviewed, and introduced them to the right tools and engineers with the expertise to help unblock progress. He also leads the Blacks at Microsoft employee resource group local chapter, building culture and leadership within the company.

MIT externs: Stephanie Fu, Mindren Lu, Ben Chen, Felix Tran, Darius Bopp, Maggie Wang, Marina Rogers, Johnny Bui

“The Garage is a perfect mix of working on exciting technologies and leading a team of engineers toward a solution,” said Jean-Yves. “Interns and new hires inform what the culture becomes, affecting what the work looks like, what teams look like, what the focus is in our working environment. Working in a technical space where empathy is a priority in your thought process – that’s a place where I want to grow.” For Jean-Yves, an important part of his day-to-day was making sure the students were building camaraderie throughout the process.

Darius Bopp and Ben Chen were responsible for the front-end website that is a culmination of all the work the team performed packed into a visually engaging web experience that finds connections among art in new ways. “They took this nebulous design of a website and made it into something that looks great and is easy to navigate,” said Mark. “The front-end team was so fast that we were able to spend a lot of time thinking about what was absolutely necessary on the site, making the website less complex and more intuitive.”

Visualizing machine learning

Though the data science team performed a lot of critical work with Mark’s original algorithm, they didn’t stop there. As a stretch goal, Mark introduced the SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) algorithm to Mindren and Stephanie, a game theoretic approach to explain the output of any machine learning model. The two were immediately intrigued, delving further into the research and how to apply it to their ML model for Mosaic. “SHAP is a tool that tries to explain why the ML model made the decisions that it did, why out of all of these paintings it chose this particular one as a match. ML models don’t think like humans, even though it seems like they do,” said Stephanie. What resulted is a fascinating visual representation of what the algorithm is looking at when it finds objects “similar”. This can show what the model “sees”— like a window into the brain of machine learning — but it takes extensive memory and space to run. For that reason, and because their externship was ending, the team could only implement a few rationales to show on the website as an example.

Machine learning algorithm behind Mosaic identifying parts of pictured sculptures to query and find matches in other artworks.

Though the weekly development cycles went quickly, the externs had solid guidance from Mark throughout the entire process. Mark brings his deep appreciation for art to the work and enjoys applying his knowledge of AI to create new contexts in how art is explored and studied. “So many artists are trying to embody the metaphorical in the visual domain, and this algorithm just can’t help but see that and pick up on it when it finds these matching works from all over the world,” Mark explained. “Art is aesthetic and beautiful, but a lot of times artists are trying to say really deep things about the nature of perception, of feelings and emotions.” In most instances one could almost say the AI managed to extract the intent or idea of the paintings, not just the pixels, to find commonalities.

Art also resonated in Marina’s life as she grew up with a mother who studied fine art. Marina found the most important part of the experience was “the culture of improvement and personal growth. The overall environment was one of learning and encouragement.”

Johnny and his peers agreed the structure of the externship experience set them up for success. “Working on a project of this scale as well as interfacing with third party tools, and collaborating with other people, was a great learning experience. We had a running start on the project within the first couple of days,” he explained, referring to the mini-hackathon that kicked off their experience at the Microsoft Garage where each person could try out what data science, back-end, and front-end development work on the project might look like.

“It was my first real work experience in a big company on a fast-paced project team. It helped inform what direction I want to take in my career,” said Mindren, who found the most exciting moments to be researching about the rationale tool and when he received those first matching artworks from their ML model. “You have a lot more fun than expected, and the culture was cool and super friendly.”

Explore more on the Mosaic website

Check out the Microsoft Research Webinar

Read about 2019 MIT externship project Gen Studio

Learn about the Microsoft Garage Internship Program

Posted on August 25, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Now in Microsoft 365: Record conversations in Word for the web and transcribe them automatically

Harness the power of your voice

Now more than ever, we’re all very busy—juggling family, work, friends, and whatever else life throws our way. New enhancements in Office leverage the Azure Cognitive Services AI platform so you can harness the power of your voice to spend less time and energy creating your best work and focus on what matters most.

Save time and create great content using Transcribe in Word for the web

Whether you’re a reporter conducting interviews, a researcher recording focus group sessions, or an online entrepreneur recording informal discussions, you want to be able to focus on the people you’re talking to without worrying about taking notes and without having to spend hours transcribing your conversations after-the-fact. If that sounds like you, Transcribe in Word is here to help.

Now you can record your conversations directly in Word for the web and transcribe them automatically. Transcribe detects different speakers so after you finish recording, you can easily follow the flow of the transcript. After your conversation, you can revisit parts of the recording by playing back the time-stamped audio and you can even edit the transcript if you see something amiss.

Your transcript will appear alongside the Word document, along with the recording, which enables you to leverage your transcript to create great content in the way that is best for you. Say you want to pull the perfect quote from an interview to support the main point of your story—just click the plus icon on any line of the transcript and voila, the exact quote is inserted. Want to send the entire transcript to your colleague? Simply click “add all to document” and your full transcript will be laid out in Word.

Like many people, you might use a variety of tools to get the job done – that’s why Transcribe enables you to upload audio or videos you recorded outside of Word. Whether you record on your phone or via one of the many calling and video conferencing apps, you can simply select the file to upload and transcribe. Transcribe supports .mp3, .wav, .m4a, or .mp4 files.

Transcribe in Word enables you to stay focused on your conversation in the moment, saves you valuable time and energy by transcribing it for you, and is integrated into Word so you can focus on the message of your document and not fuss around with different windows or applications.

An animated image showing the functionality of dictation in Word.

Transcribe in Word is available in Word for the web for all Microsoft 365 subscribers and is supported in the new Microsoft Edge or Chrome browsers. Currently, transcribing audio into English (EN-US) is the only language supported. At this time, there is a five hour limit of transcription time per month for uploaded recordings and there is a file size limit of 200mb. Transcribe in Office mobile will be coming by the end of the year.

Break away from the keyboard using dictation with voice commands

Since Dictate arrived on the scene, millions of people have leveraged the power of their voice to conquer the blank page. Whether you’re stuck waiting in the car to pick up takeout, on a short walk to stretch your legs, have a temporary or permanent disability that makes typing difficult, or you just think better when on the move, you need flexibility to transition throughout your day while getting everything done. We’ve been adding voice commands to Dictate so that you can break away from the keyboard. Whether on desktop or mobile (or transitioning between devices), you can stay in the flow and focus on your message by using dictation with voice commands to add, format, edit, and organize your text.

Say things like “start list” or “bold last sentence” to let your ideas flow without stopping to adjust your text. Voice commands understand a variety of symbols so you can add things like “ampersand” and “percent sign”, and you don’t have to sound like a robot! We’ve based commands on the way people naturally talk so that you can capture your ideas easily. So saying things like “dot dot dot” when you can’t remember “ellipses” works just as well.

Since you’re constantly juggling work and life, you may get that phone call you’ve been waiting for while working on your paper. There’s no need to rush to the keyboard in a panic. Simply say “pause dictation” and take the call. Working with others in the document? You can collaborate using your voice too—say “add comment [with your content here]” and capture your message in one shot without missing a beat.

Dictation can also help with informal writing as well—sometimes a message needs some personality! You can now say things like “smiley face” or “heart emoji” to give your message that little extra touch. Check out this article for a list of all the voice commands.

Dictate with voice commands in Word is available in Word for the web and Office mobile for free when signed into your Microsoft account. Voice commands are coming to Word desktop and Word for Mac apps towards the end of the year for Microsoft 365 subscribers.

We hope these new voice capabilities save you time and allow you the flexibility you require as you move throughout your busy day!

Posted on August 25, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Xbox One and Xbox Series X get a fresh look, streamlined experience

Summary

The August 2020 Xbox One Update is here with improvements to Guide.
It’s even easier to connect with your friends (messages, parties, volume sliders).
The new Xbox look and feel starts rolling out to Xbox Insiders today, along with changes to profiles and sign-in.

Last week Chris Novak, Head of Xbox Research and Design, shared our vision of a unified Xbox Experience that puts gamers at the center, enabling them to stay connected to their games, friends and communities. It’s a vision we have been building toward for over a year, culminating with the release of Xbox Series X this November.

The August Xbox 2020 Update is the next step on that journey and is rolling out soon to all customers. It includes a variety of improvements, including bigger changes like a new landing page for the Xbox Guide, to smaller, more subtle improvements like individual volume sliders for party members.

Today also marks the first time that some of you will be able to experience the new Xbox experience yourselves with some of the features Chris talked about last week becoming available for Xbox Insiders. Let’s dig in!

Guide

We took the first steps to update the Xbox Guide in May, simplifying the layout to make it easier for gamers to use. Since then, we’ve been refining it based on your feedback, and implemented the following:

Improved Landing Page

The new Guide landing page is designed to be cleaner and easier to read at-a-glance. The layout makes it easier to navigate between the most recent things you were doing, the Dashboard, and My Games and Apps. For those of you who want to customize the Guide, you’ll have the option to change the order of the tabs that show up. We’ve also added buttons to the bottom of the page for important utilities like notifications, search, and audio settings, making it easier to access them from wherever you are.

Connect with your friends

Speaking of notifications, the August update includes a new notifications inbox, easily accessed by clicking the notification bell on the bottom of the Guide. This inbox combines all your alerts, game invites and message notifications into a single feed. Best of all, the inbox includes notifications from across all Xbox apps, including the new Xbox mobile app that we’ll introduce into beta soon. Acting on a notification in one place clears it everywhere, meaning you’ll always be up to date!

Parties and Chats made easy

In June Parties and Chat were combined into a single tab, making it easier to communicate with your friends and fellow gamers. We’ve continued to improve this experience to make it more useful, with the addition of a preview of the text in your new messages. We’ve also added a frequently requested feature – individual volume controls for each party member!

More tips and tricks for new Xbox gamers

Finally, we also aimed to improve the Guide experience for first-time gamers. Guide pages are now easier to read and understand, and shortcuts and button commands are more consistent. We’ve added hints tailored for new customers, helping them understand the purpose of each page, and how to get started using it.

New Activity Feed look

With the new Xbox experience we also set out to rethink how community and game developers’ content is displayed on Xbox. We want the focus to be on the content being shared and highlight the awesome screenshots, videoclips and posts players create.

You will notice all posts shared on Xbox are now the same size: no more guessing on how they will show up in the Community or Club pages. We have made improvements in the Game, People and Community Content Blocks on Home, videoclips auto-play, reduction of metadata over posts and display of engagement counts. We have also introduced shortcuts for easier engagement with the post and for easier discovery of players and games the post relates to.

Coming Soon for Xbox Insiders

We wouldn’t have been able to deliver the features above without the help of our Xbox Insiders. The feedback, suggestions and bug reports ensure we’re always delivering the best possible product for everyone. Not only is the August update live this week for everyone, but this month our Xbox Insiders are also getting the first chance to play with some upcoming new features that you’ll see below.

A fresh look and feel

All the ways you use Xbox should feel inviting and familiar, whether you are on the couch relaxing or streaming your favorite game on the go. We’ve been updating the visual look of our apps across phone and PC for the past year, and now it is console’s turn.

Starting this week Insiders will be receiving a visual update to their Xbox One consoles to better match our other experiences on the PC and mobile devices. This includes some changes to our tile shape, fonts, and focus indicator across the experience. However, the overall layout of most of the pages will not be drastically changing, so you don’t have to learn a whole new UI when Xbox Series X launches.

Express yourself with Profile Themes

User Profiles on Xbox are an important part of our community experience: they are one of the top destinations on console, and your profile should be a space for you to express yourself through customization.

You will be able to select from several different Themes for your profile when we start flighting this feature, including some game Themes from Xbox Game Studios – and more will be added more over time!

Profile Themes are also available in the Xbox App on PC and through Game Bar.

Sign in on multiple devices

Earlier this month, we announced that cloud gaming was coming to the Game Pass app on Android, and the fan response has been amazing. Thousands of gamers have played titles like Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 4 on their phones. Gamers with an Xbox have enjoyed their saved games seamlessly roaming between the cloud and their console, picking up where they left off no matter where they choose to play.

To make that experience even more seamless, we are making some changes to the way you sign in on Xbox. You will be able to sign in on as many Xboxes or Xbox Apps as you want, all at the same time. Now you can use your Xbox console as much as you want for other watching movies, using apps, chatting with friends, and more. When it comes to games, you’ll be able to play on one device at a time so all your progress, achievements and saves stay up to date and synced whichever device you choose to play on.

Want to use your console upstairs while your roommate uses the Xbox in the living room to watch TV? Maybe try out the latest cloud gaming game while watching a movie with the family? We want you to have the freedom to choose.

[embedded content]

If you want a closer look at all of these updates, the team walked through them on Major Nelson’s video podcast – check out the video above and here.

More to come

We’re looking forward to your feedback as we continue to roll out the new, unified experience on Xbox One and Xbox Series X consoles. All the updates to the Xbox ecosystem are built to keep the gamer at the center of the entire experience – stay tuned for more.