Recent News – Page 186

Posted on March 13, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

News recap from March 12 episode of Inside Xbox

Today, on our March episode of Inside Xbox, we made a big announcement about one of the world’s most popular games coming to Xbox Game Pass, revealed some major news regarding Halo: The Master Chief Collection, unveiled some of our plans for E3 2019, introduced a gorgeous new controller, shared info on new modes coming to State of Decay 2, and much more. For a full recap, read on below or watch the replay of Inside Xbox episode above when the VOD is available.

Minecraft is Coming Soon to Xbox Game Pass

Beginning April 4, Xbox Game Pass members can join the Minecraft community of millions of players from around the world. Discover limitless ways to play and create anything you can imagine. Plus, with Minecraft´s free content updates, you´ll always find new environments to explore, tools to create, and mobs to meet. Last summer, the Update Aquatic filled Minecraft´s oceans with dolphins, turtles and more, and the upcoming Village & Pillage update will expand the game even further later this spring. With over 100 great games, including Minecraft, there´s never been a better time to be an Xbox Game Pass member and discover your next favorite game. If you haven’t tried Xbox Game Pass, join today and get your first month for $1.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is Coming to PC and Adding Halo: Reach

On today’s show, the crew was joined by Brian Jarrard from 343 Industries, who shared a couple of pieces of exciting news. First, we announced that Halo: The Master Chief Collection is officially coming to PC! Built specifically for the PC audience, players will be able to experience generation-defining campaigns and iconic multiplayer modes, many for the first time, on Microsoft Store and Steam. On PC, titles within Halo: The Master Chief Collection will be released individually over time to ensure that we are partnering with the community and investing the time into development to create a premier PC experience. We’ll have more to share during the Halo Championship Series Invitational at SXSW on March 15-17. We also announced that we’re bringing Halo: Reach to Halo: The Master Chief Collection for Xbox One and PC! Players will be able to experience this legendary title in stunning 4K/60fps and we’ll have more to share in the future.

Are You Ready for E3 2019?

At Xbox, planning for E3 2019 has kicked into high gear and we couldn’t be more excited for what we have in store for our fans. As you may have heard, Bonnie Ross head of 343i, recently confirmed we’ll learn more about Halo Infinite at the show. Our community team is hard at work getting ready for the return of Xbox FanFest, one of our favorite events at E3. And we’re stoked to announce that in collaboration with AEG and L.A. Live, Microsoft Square will soon be renamed Xbox Plaza and will be a big part of what we have in store for E3 in June. Cool, right? We’ll have more to share on how Xbox Plaza is shaping up, all things FanFest and so much more goodness on E3 2019 in coming weeks and months ahead so be sure to stay tuned to Xbox Wire, This Week on Xbox and Inside Xbox for all the latest info.

The Phantom White Special Edition Joins the Xbox Wireless Controller Family

Controller announcements The Xbox Wireless Controller – Phantom White Special Edition is the second controller in our Phantom Series following the Phantom Black Special Edition. The design is the optimal blend of luxury and Sci-Fi, embodying a new slant on technical beauty. You can grab the Phantom White Special Edition at retailers worldwide beginning April 2 for $69.99 USD, or pre-order yours today at select retailers, including your local Microsoft Store or online.

State of Decay 2 Lets You Choose Your Own Apocalypse

During today’s Inside Xbox segment, we revealed more about the two all-new terrifyingly awesome difficulty levels coming to State of Decay 2 with the free Choose Your Own Apocalypse Update (that we mentioned late last year) coming to Xbox Game Pass members and current players starting on March 26. Dread Zones will offer exciting challenges for experienced players, such as deadlier zombies, plague-infected juggernauts, a faster-acting blood plague, and fewer resources to scavenge. Want the ultimate challenge? Nightmare Zones are grueling endurance tests for hardcore players, featuring wandering groups of freaks and hostile humans capable of scoring lethal headshots against your survivors.

A Closer Look at the Future with Project xCloud

On today’s episode of Inside Xbox, we gave viewers their first real look at Project xCloud, a vision for game-streaming technology that will complement our console hardware and give gamers more choice in how and where they play. We’re developing Project xCloud not as a replacement for the video game console, but as a way to provide the same choice and versatility that lovers of music and movies enjoy today. We’re adding more ways to play Xbox games. We’re excited to share more about the technology in the coming months, including the first details of how and when you can help us to test it in real-world scenarios later this year.

Spatial Sound and the Wireless Display App are Changing the Game

As you might have heard, Xbox One currently supports Spatial Sound that’s specifically mixed for Dolby Atmos. During today’s show, we announced that the team is working to bring Spatial Sound to your whole Xbox One experience, regardless of whether it was specifically mixed for it. That includes all your games, movies, TV shows, and music content. Think as it as up-scaling for sound. To put it in simplest term: In the near future, all the content you experience through Xbox One is going to sound like it’s been mixed for Spatial Sound. We also announced that the team is in the process right now of rolling out the Wireless Display app, which is available in the Microsoft Store today. This app lets you project from your desktop or laptop PC or even your tablet onto the biggest and best screen in the house. Go check it out now!

DayZ Shambles Out of Xbox Game Preview

Bohemia Interactive’s DayZ has been a big hit on Xbox Game Preview, so we were happy to share on today’s episode that this intense RPG shooter will be coming out of XGP on March 27. Yes, you and your friends will be able to take on zombie hordes, as well as other players, in an attempt to stay alive. You’ll need to scavenge the world for weapons, food, water, weapons, and medicine, dealing with both zombies and competing players as you try to survive the outbreak. It’s one of the most intense experiences on Xbox One, and we’re excited for the full version to be released.

We hope you enjoyed the show, and we’ll see you next month!

Posted on March 13, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Project xCloud: Choice for how and when you game

Back in October we formally unveiled our work on Project xCloud: a vision for game-streaming technology that will complement our console hardware and give gamers more choices in how and where they play. Since then, we’ve been heads down and hard at work, preparing to launch the first public trials later this year. At the same time, we wanted to stay transparent about our progress and chat with the Inside Xbox team, showing you the first public demo of the technology in action.

One of the great developments in entertainment over the last decade is how easy and common it’s become to read, listen, or watch your digital content (often via streaming). We’ve seen this revolutionize the way people experience music and video, letting them dive in from wherever they wish and on whichever device is most convenient to them at the time. Applying this approach to the world of video games is a more challenging endeavor. Games by their very nature are interactive entertainment. – And that interactivity is a substantial difference from watching TV or listening to music. We now find ourselves at an inflection point, where current technology can deliver a console-quality experience with the right cloud infrastructure, content and community in place.

We’re developing Project xCloud not as a replacement for game consoles, but as a way to provide the same choice and versatility that lovers of music and video enjoy today. We’re adding more ways to play Xbox games. We love what’s possible when a console is connected to a 4K TV with full HDR support and surround sound – that remains a fantastic way to experience console gaming. We also believe in empowering gamers to decide when and how to play.

We believe in the future where you will be able to seamlessly access content on your phone, tablet or another connected device. Imagine that you just began a single-player campaign the day before heading out of town and want to keep playing from where you left off. Maybe you just need a few more minutes to wrap up that weekly challenge before you head into work, but your bus just won’t wait. Or maybe the living-room television is occupied by someone else in the household when you arranged to play co-op with your friends.

While our vision for the technology is complementary to the ways in which we use consoles today, Project xCloud will also open the world of Xbox to those who may not otherwise own traditional, dedicated gaming hardware. True console-quality gaming will become available on mobile devices, providing the 2 billion-plus gamers around the world a new gateway to previously console- and PC-exclusive content. We can achieve this vision with the global distribution of Microsoft’s datacenters in 54 Azure regions and the advanced network technologies developed by the team at Microsoft Research. We’re excited about our ability to deliver a best-in-class global streaming technology.

Project xCloud is an integral part of our vision for placing you the gamer at the center of your experience, giving you more choice in how and when you play. We’re excited to share more about the technology and our progress in the coming months, including the first details of how and when you can help us test it in real-world scenarios later this year.

There’s so much more to come, so stay tuned. We’ll be in touch.

Posted on March 12, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

What’s new with Seeing AI

By Saqib Shaikh, Software Engineering Manager and Project Lead for Seeing AI

Seeing AI provides people who are blind or with low vision an easier way to understand the world around them through the cameras on their smartphones. Whether in a room, on a street, in a mall or an office – people are using the app to independently accomplish daily tasks like never before. Seeing AI helps users read printed text in books, restaurant menus, street signs and handwritten notes, as well as identify banknotes and products via their barcode. Leveraging on-device facial-recognition technology, the app can even describe the physical appearance of people and predict their mood.

Today, we are announcing new Seeing AI features for the enthusiastic community of users who share their experiences with the app, recommend new capabilities and suggest improvements for its functionalities. Inspired by this rich feedback, here are the updates rolling out to Seeing AI to enhance the user’s experience:

Explore photos by touch: Leveraging the Custom Vision Service in tandem with the Computer Vision API, this new feature enables users to tap their finger to an image on a touch-screen to hear a description of objects within an image and the spatial relationship between them. Users can explore photos of their surroundings taken on the Scene channel, family photos stored in their photo browser, and even images shared on social media by summoning the options menu while in other apps.
Native iPad support: For the first time we’re releasing iPad support, to provide a better Seeing AI experience that accounts for the larger display requirements. iPad support is particularly important to individuals using Seeing AI in academic or other professional settings where they are unable to use a cellular device.
Channel improvements: Users can now customize the order in which channels are shown, enabling easier access to favorite features. We’ve also made it easier to access the face recognition function while on the Person channel, by relocating the feature directly on the main screen. Additionally, when analyzing photos from other apps, the app will now provide audio cues that indicate Seeing AI is processing the image.

Since the app’s launch in 2017, Seeing AI has leveraged AI technology and inclusive design to help people with more than 10 million tasks. If you haven’t tried Seeing AI yet, download it for free on the App Store. If you have, please share your thoughts, feedback or questions with us at seeingai@microsoft.com, or through the Disability Answer Desk and Accessibility User Voice Forum.

Posted on March 12, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

10 of the latest Microsoft Teams integrations to help you work smarter

We built Microsoft Teams as a platform to bring together all of your workplace tools, apps, and services—whether or not we built them—to allow you to deliver better workday flow for you and your employees. A lot of you recognize the power of Teams, and you’ve been asking how to use Teams to its full advantage. Look no further. Today, we’re sharing ten of the latest Teams integrations you can use every day to simplify workflows, refocus your attention, and get back to working smarter—not harder. This is something our CEO, Satya Nadella, recently addressed in his interview on the future of communication at work with the Wall Street Journal.

Ten of the latest integrations to try in Teams

These ten integrations bring everything from customer feedback and employee polls, to workflow and project management, into Teams, to make your apps work for you.

Funnel customer feedback straight into Teams: Twitter
As one of the largest social media platforms around, Twitter mostly needs no introduction. However, did you know it’s a great way to gather customer feedback? By integrating Twitter into Teams, you can set up alerts relevant to your company. So, when a customer tweets at your handle or uses your hashtag, it flows directly into Teams, where you can share or respond without stopping your workflow.
Transform the way you work: ServiceNow
ServiceNow delivers digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity. The cloud-based Now Platform transforms old, manual ways of working into modern digital workflows, so employees and customers get what they need when they need it. Read more about the ServiceNow integration for Virtual Agent, a chatbot that helps build conversational workflows to resolve common ServiceNow actions, as well as IntegrationHub, which lets anyone break down development backlog with codeless workflows in an easy-to-use interface.
Get organized with your very own automated administrative assistant: Zoom.ai
Zoom.ai lives inside your chat, email inbox, and calendar to help you offload and automate tasks. You interact with it by typing commands in a chat window, where it can schedule Teams meetings for you, brief you on your day, send and receive reminders, and create documents when you need them. It works for you, where you work. Watch the Zoom.ai video to learn more.
Organize any of life’s projects: Trello
Trello is a project management software whose boards, lists, and cards enable you to organize and prioritize your projects in a flexible way. By integrating in Teams, you can see your Trello assignments, tasks, and notifications and have conversations about them—without leaving Teams. A fun way to bring together project management and project collaboration. Watch the Trello video to learn more.
Run polls in tandem with your conversations: Polly
Polly is a survey app that lets you create surveys in Teams. You can quickly create polls in your Teams channels and view results in real-time. You have the option to create multiple choice polls, freeform polls, or a mixture of both. Turn on comments and you’ve got yourself a full discussion board. Get the answers you need without disrupting workflows or clogging inboxes. Visit Polly for Microsoft Teams to learn more.
Celebrate your organization’s culture and values: Disco
Disco is a solution that rallies your entire company around your core values. It makes it easy to give public shout-outs and congratulate your colleagues in real-time. So, next time a team member delivers a project ahead of schedule or demonstrates one of your team or company values in their work, pay it forward by giving them Disco “points” in Teams. They’ll feel supported and, who knows, maybe repay your appreciation. Watch the Disco video to learn more.
Help teams deliver value to customers faster by releasing earlier, more often, and more iteratively: Jira
Jira Software is a leading software development tool used by agile teams to plan, track, and release great software. Integrate Jira with Teams for a seamless way to visualize the important things like development velocity, workloads, bug resolution, and app performance all in real-time—from Teams. This makes it easy to inject insights into group collaboration without disrupting workflows. Learn more about Microsoft Teams Jira Connector.
Bring more structure to online brainstorming: MindMeister
MindMeister is an online mind-mapping tool that lets you capture, develop, and share ideas visually. And by integrating in Teams, you can take notes, brainstorm, visualize project plans, and easily show connections between ideas all while discussing details with your team in the chat. Read Create and Manage All Your Mind Maps in Microsoft Teams! to learn more.
Bring creative work to team work: Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe Creative Cloud gives you the world’s best apps and services for video, design, photography, and the web including Adobe Photoshop , Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, Premiere Pro CC, and more. Integrate with Teams to bring your creative work and teamwork together. You can share work, get feedback, and stay up-to-date on tasks and actions. Read Adobe XD Adds Integration with Microsoft Teams—Creativity meets collaboration to learn more.
Build software in the way that works best for you: GitHub
GitHub is the platform where developers work together, solve challenging problems, and create the world’s most important technologies. Whether you are a student, hobbyist, consultant, or enterprise professional, the GitHub integration in Teams allows you to create, share, and ship the best code possible.

Get started with Teams

Bringing these apps and tools together in Teams is a great way to bring focus back to your workflow. They’re easy to integrate and offer something for everyone, whether you’re developing software, managing projects, or gathering customer feedback. And with new apps going live on Teams every day, your next productivity superpower is only a few clicks away. Check the Teams Store today so you don’t miss out!

Posted on March 11, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

With lessons learned from computers, a new platform could help boost production of lifesaving biological therapies

The power of the Station B platform lies in pulling all those pieces of the puzzle together in one integrated system, Phillips said. Both initial deployments will occur in labs that are overseen by health, safety, ethical and medical regulators.

“It marries Microsoft’s deep expertise in programming languages, modeling capabilities and machine learning with lab automation and the power of the cloud and intelligent edge — that combination of tools doesn’t exist anywhere in this industry today,” Phillips said.

To solve one key challenge, the platform uses Synthace’s lab automation system to allow users to run experiments from the cloud and precisely replicate each step in complicated scientific protocols.

Synthace’s Antha software allows the user to replace subjective instructions like “shake a test tube vigorously” with digital language that isn’t open to misinterpretation and that lab robots can execute. Building on top of Azure IoT, Antha is a high-level language for describing biological experiments that allows an array of lab machines made by different manufacturers to run them, much like printer drivers allow any make or model of printer to print PDF documents.

That ability to run experiments exactly the same way each time gives users confidence that the results they’re seeing are meaningful, and not just a fluke in the way the experiment happened to be set up that day.

Synthace’s system — which can handle experiments that simultaneously test dozens of different parameters or genetic constructs rather than one or two at a time — speeds up the research process exponentially. Combined with machine learning capabilities, it also gives customers the ability to pose and learn from much more sophisticated lines of inquiry.

“The near infinite power of biology can only be unlocked by bringing software abstraction and automation to biological R&D and manufacturing, and by enabling biologists to build atop their collective work. That is what the Antha platform does successfully,” said Tim Fell, Synthace chief executive officer.

Sarah-Jane Dunn stands in front a mural with her arms crossed — Sarah-Jane Dunn, scientist for Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK. Photo by Jonathan Banks.

’This could have huge reach’

The Station B platform will be tested first in the lab of Bonnie Bassler, chair of Princeton’s Department of Molecular Biology, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, who studies how bacteria wield outsized power by acting as collectives. The Princeton team includes Bassler’s longtime collaborator Ned Wingreen, a physicist and professor in Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.

“Historically we’ve thought of bacteria as only having harmful behaviors, like infecting us and causing disease, but more recently scientists have discovered the microbiome, a rather magical bacterial community that lives in and on us and that keeps us alive,” Bassler said. “What my lab has always wondered about is how do bacteria manage to either kill us or keep us alive? They’re so tiny.”

Bassler discovered the widespread use of a phenomenon called quorum sensing in the bacterial world. It’s a form of molecular communication that bacteria use to determine when their numbers have reached a critical mass. When they reach the “quorum,” together they trigger behaviors that are only successful when bacteria act as a coordinated group — such as unleashing virulent diseases.

In a proof-of-concept pilot, the team will deploy the Station B platform to investigate how cholera bacteria use quorum sensing to form biofilms, thin layers of bacteria that grow on almost all surfaces. Bacteria living in biofilm communities can be 1000 times more resistant to antibiotics than non-biofilm bacteria.

Princeton researchers will use the Station B platform and Synthace’s lab automation tools to construct and test different versions of two proteins that are key to biofilm formation — which are also genetically programmed to light up. The light allows the scientists to see and measure how much of each protein is produced under many different conditions and in different regions of the biofilm.

Bassler compares the working microbiologists in her lab to master craftspeople, creating elegant and complicated genetic constructs to produce a desired result. But that artisanal process yields only a few prospects at a time and doesn’t allow the team to massively attack the problem.

The Station B platform will be able to build and test dozens of engineered proteins at once — in whatever combinations a researcher can dream up and type into the system for a liquid handling robot to produce. The platform will then help the scientists learn which of the protein constructs behave most like the natural proteins and yield an accurate picture of how biofilm cells organize, Bassler said.

The goal is to build on that basic understanding and find an Achilles heel that might weaken virulent biofilms or increase their sensitivity to antibiotics.

“The platform will allow us to ask more questions, get more results and do more experiments than a graduate student or postdoc, no matter how clever, can do today. So, it gets us to the winning genetic constructs faster,” Bassler said.

Equally important, the platform will also collect and help analyze data from every single lab experiment — including ones that fail, Bassler said. By necessity, scientists have to pursue their most fruitful lines of inquiry, but that can leave an untapped trove of information about why something didn’t succeed.

“If this extra information can help us discover the underlying patterns in what works and what doesn’t work and why, that would be a transformative leap for us,” she said.

The value of deploying the Station B platform in Bassler’s lab is that those researchers have already built an extensive inventory of genetic components, chemical mixtures and models in the years that they’ve been studying bacteria like cholera.

If the team can begin to uncover the rules and principles that govern those systems, Wingreen said, they may be able to program them in transferrable ways. That could potentially enable a doctor who studies cancer or an engineer working on low-carbon fuels to imagine a genetic construct that they’d love to test and get an exact blueprint for assembling it — without spending years at a lab bench.

“From my perspective, this could have a huge reach,” Wingreen said. “Just as the tech sector was democratized by software that lets you ask for what you want in a microchip design and have someone make it, we need that same revolution in biology.”

Top image: Breech Odu works in an Oxford Biomedica lab, where the Station B platform will be deployed to accelerate discovery and manufacturing of gene and cell therapies. Photo by Jonathan Banks.

Related:

Jennifer Langston writes about Microsoft research and innovation. Follow her on Twitter.

Posted on March 11, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Seattle Times: ‘Even one cigarette’ in pregnancy can raise risk of babies’ death, Seattle Children’s and Microsoft find

It’s no surprise that smoking during pregnancy is unhealthy for the fetus — just as it’s unhealthy for the person smoking. But the powerful combination of medical research and data science has given new insights into the risks involved, specifically when it comes to babies suddenly dying in their sleep.

The risk of Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) increases with every cigarette smoked during pregnancy, according to a joint study by Seattle Children’s Research Institute and Microsoft data scientists.

Further, while smoking less or quitting during pregnancy can help significantly, a risk of SUID exists even if a person stops smoking right before becoming pregnant, the team demonstrated.

“Any amount of smoking, even one cigarette, can double your risk,” said Tatiana Anderson, a post-doctoral research fellow at Children’s who worked on the study, which was published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Anderson and the rest of the team estimate that smoking during pregnancy is responsible for 800 of the approximately 3,700 SUID deaths in the United States every year. That’s 22 percent of all SUID cases.

The team analyzed vast data sets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that included every baby born in the United States from 2007 to 2011. In that time span, more than 20 million babies were born and 19,127 died of SUID, which includes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

The study found that the risk of SUID doubles if a person goes from not smoking to smoking just one cigarette daily throughout pregnancy. At a pack a day (20 cigarettes), the risk is tripled compared to nonsmokers. The odds plateau from there.

The chance of SUID decreases when women quit smoking or smoke less: Women who tapered their smoking by the third trimester showed a 12 percent decreased risk. Quitting altogether by the third trimester lowered the risk of SUID by 23 percent.

The biggest predictor of SUID risk was the average number of cigarettes smoked daily throughout the three trimesters of pregnancy, rather than smoking more or less at any particular point.

“Thus, a woman who smoked 20 cigarettes per day in the first trimester and reduced to 10 cigarettes per day in subsequent trimesters had a similarly reduced SUID risk as a woman who averaged 13 cigarettes per day in each trimester,” the study states.

Having such precise data about the effects of smoking before and during pregnancy better arms health-care providers to speak with their patients, Anderson said.

“Doctors need to have frank discussions with patients,” she said. “Every cigarette you can eliminate on a daily basis will reduce your risk of SUID.”

Microsoft data scientists teamed up with the Children’s researchers after John Kahan, who heads up customer data and analytics for Microsoft, lost his son Aaron to SIDS in 2003. After Aaron’s death, days after he came home from the hospital, Kahan started the Aaron Matthew SIDS Research Guild. In 2016, he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for SIDS research.

When he returned from Africa, he found out his team at Microsoft had been working with the available data on infant deaths. Their goal was to use algorithms to analyze the data and help come up with a way to save babies like Aaron from SUID.

Juan Lavista, a member of Kahan’s team at that time, is now the senior director of data science at the AI For Good research lab, which is part of an initiative called AI for Humanitarian Action, launched by Microsoft president Brad Smith. The idea behind the initiative is to use artificial intelligence to tackle some of the world’s most difficult problems, and it has allowed Lavista to work on things like the SUID study full time instead of cramming it in around his day job.

Data scientists can use computing power to work with huge data sets to help solve confounding issues like SUID, climate change and immigration, Lavista said.

“There are many problems the world has that, we believe, we can make a difference with AI,” he said.

The collaboration has been exciting for Anderson, the Children’s research fellow. She says this unusual partnership between the medical world and the technology sector has applications in many different fields.

“I think it is really exciting because it is a concept that absolutely can be used to ask questions outside of SIDS,” Anderson said. “Everybody is there because they want to make a difference. It is very much a collaborative effort.”

The scientists at Microsoft and Children’s aren’t stopping with the publication of this study. Lavista said they are delving into other questions surrounding SUID, such as the impact of prenatal care, how the age of an infant relates to sudden death and an examination of what SUID looks like in all 50 states.

Posted on March 11, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Strength in diversity: Backstage Accelerator announces first cohorts with Microsoft for Startups as partner

Back in September, we shared the news that Microsoft for Starutps had joined Backstage Capital as a launch partner for Backstage Accelerator. Today, Backstage shared details of the first cohorts of startups at its four accelerator locations with Fast Company and announced that the programs are launching in the coming weeks.

The first cohort of startups at Backstage Accelerator

At Microsoft for Startups, we’re focused on creating much greater diversity within our startup ecosystem. The founders who have been chosen to be a part of Backstage Capital’s inaugural cohorts represent a step toward greater diversity and representation and we’re excited to contribute support.

The new Backstage Accelerator is a three-month program “designed to give founders the support they need to reach their next critical milestone.” With locations in Detroit, London, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, Backstage Accelerator is created for underrepresented founders, providing them with the tools and mentorship needed for success.

To that end we will be providing technology and business support, extending the Microsoft for Startups offer to qualified Backstage Accelerator startups, and by committing mentorship and guidance to startups in the program.

The accelerators are scheduled to launch over the coming weeks:

● Detroit – March 12

● Philadelphia – March 21

● Los Angeles – March 26

● London – April 2

For more information about Backstage Accelerator and its cohort startups, you can visit: https://backstagecapital.com/accelerator/

If you would like more information about Microsoft for Startups, you can see our list of benefits here: https://startups.microsoft.com/en-us/benefits/

Posted on March 11, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

13 new titles announced for ID@Xbox ahead of GDC 2019

It’s that time of year again where talented game developers from around the world come together for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, and the ID@Xbox team is ready to kick off another showcase of amazing titles from independent developers in the ID@Xbox program.

We’re looking forward to this year at GDC, with 13 newly announced titles joining us in San Francisco and a total of 30 games featured across the Microsoft Booth, in the lower level of the South Hall, and our Developer Showcase event for media. We’re excited to share a closer look at newly announced titles for Xbox One including Beholder 2, Boomerang Fu, CrossCode, Dead Static Drive, Door Kickers: Action Squad, HyperDot, Mowin’ & Throwin’, StarCrossed, Stela, The Forgotten City, Totem Teller, UnderMine and Unrailed.

Check out the full list below for a complete look at the developers and games that are joining us in San Francisco, or swing by to check out these amazing games in-person!

Afterparty (Night School Studio) – Xbox Game Pass
In Afterparty, you are Milo and Lola, recently deceased best buds who suddenly find themselves staring down an eternity in Hell. But there’s a loophole: outdrink Satan and he’ll grant you re-entry to Earth.

Beholder 2 (E-Home Entertainment/Alawar Premium Limited) – Announced Today for Xbox One
You are a newly employed department officer within the Ministry of a totalitarian State. While you are poised to have an illustrious career and possibly become Prime Minister someday, the way up won’t be easy. So, how high up the career ladder will you climb? The choice is still yours to make!

Boomerang Fu (Cranky Watermelon Pty Ltd) – Announced Today for Xbox One & Windows 10
Boomerang Fu is a frantic physics-based boomerang brawler for 1-6 players. Choose from an adorable cast of cheery food characters to slice and dice with boomerangs. Discover a ridiculous range of power-ups like wildfire, disguises and telekinesis. Stack them together between rounds to form dangerous combinations.

Buildings Have Feelings Too (Merge Games Ltd/Black Staff Games)
Buildings Have Feelings Too is a light-hearted city builder where you take the role of a building. Help other buildings establish businesses, improve the neighborhood and eventually create a thriving city! Resource management and friendship, all wrapped in buildings with their own personalities and dreams.

Cake Bash (High Tea Frog) – Xbox One X Enhanced
Fight to be the tastiest cake! Cake Bash is a party game for up to four players with very unique hazards – bash your friends, dash away from danger and have a delicious time!

Cat Quest II (PQube/The Gentlebros)
Cat Quest II is an open world action-RPG set in a fantasy realm ruled by animals. Play as a cat and dog as you explore both their kingdoms solo, or with a friend! Quest in a world plagued by war, and go on a catventure like never before!

CrossCode (Deck13 Interactive/Radical Fish Games) – Announced Today for Xbox One, Xbox One X Enhanced
A retro-inspired 2D Action RPG set in the distant future. CrossCode combines 16-bit SNES-style graphics with butter-smooth physics, a fast-paced combat system, and engaging puzzle mechanics, served with a gripping sci-fi story.

Dead End Job (Headup GmbH/Ant Workshop) – Xbox One X Enhanced
Dead End Job sends you into a madcap, Ren & Stimpy-esque world to bust up ghosts. It’s a procedurally generated twin-stick shooter that straps a vacuum pack to your back and puts a plasma blaster in your hand. For you, it’s just another day in the office.

Dead Static Drive (Fanclub) – Announced Today for Xbox One, Xbox One X Enhanced
Grand Theft Cthulhu. An existential road trip adventure game through a nightmare, nostalgic Americana world. Drive through a fictional USA, stopping in small towns, gas stations, and rundown city limits. What starts as a road trip evolves into a game of survival against a progressively oppressive world.

Devil’s Hunt (1C Publishing EU/Layopi Games) – Xbox One X Enhanced
Based on original novel by Paweł Leśniak “Equilibrium,” this third-person action game resurrects the everlasting fight between light and darkness, good and evil, as full-fledged war between Angels and Demons seems imminent and our world is the proposed battleground.

Door Kickers: Action Squad (Killhouse Games/PixelShard) – Announced Today for Xbox One
Door Kickers: Action Squad is an old school side scroller with a touch of strategy and tactics on top of the ridiculous SWAT style action. Literally kick the doors down, blast the bad guys and rescue hostages in explosive Single Player and Coop Multiplayer – with Couch play included.

Family Man (No More Robots/Broken Bear Games)
When pushed to the limits of your own morality, how far would you go for your family? You owe the mob money and have 30 days to repay. Will you flip burgers and scrape the money together… or get your hands dirty, for more cash, but push your family away?

Hunt: Showdown (Crytek) – Xbox One X Enhanced
Hunt: Showdown is a competitive first-person PvP bounty hunting game with heavy PvE elements, from the makers of Crysis. Set in the darkest corners of the world, it packs the thrill of survival games into a match-based format.

HyperDot (GLITCH/Tribe Games) – Announced Today for Xbox One & Windows 10, Xbox Play Anywhere
Dodge everything in minimal action arcade game, HyperDot. Quickly evade enemies and test your skills in over 100 hand-crafted trials during campaign mode, outlast your friends in multiplayer battles, or build complex challenges with the custom level editor.

Lonely Mountains: Downhill (Thunderful/Megagon Industries) – Xbox One X Enhanced
Just you and your bike! Take it on a thrilling ride down an unspoiled landscape while descending multiple unique mountains – each offering several different trails to explore. Race, jump, slide and try not to crash while finding your own way down the mountain.

Minion Masters (BetaDwarf) – Xbox Play Anywhere, Xbox One X Enhanced
Dive into 1v1 – or bring a friend to 2v2 – battle in this dangerously addictive fast-paced hybrid of deckbuilder, MOBA, and tower-defense.

Mowin’ & Throwin’ (House Pixel Games) – Announced Today for Xbox One
Mowin’ & Throwin’ is a surprisingly fun pure party game experience where you control lawn gnomes in a chaotic contest to wreck each other’s yards. Go head to head or team up with a real-life friend to take down your other friends.

Operencia: The Stolen Sun (Zen Studios) – Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Play Anywhere, Xbox One X Enhanced
Operencia: The Stolen Sun embraces everything you love about classic first-person dungeon-crawlers, enhancing the old-school turn-based RPG experience with modern sensibilities set to a backdrop inspired by Central European mythology.

Raji: An Ancient Epic (SUPER.com/Nodding Head Games) – Xbox One X Enhanced
Raji: An Ancient Epic is an action adventure game set in Ancient India. Raji, a young girl is chosen by the gods, to stand against the demonic invasion of the human realm, her destiny to rescue her younger brother and face the demon lord Mahabalasura.

Silver Chains (Headup GmbH/Cracked Heads) – Xbox One X Enhanced
Silver Chains is a first-person horror game with a strong emphasis on story and exploration. Search for clues within an old abandoned manor to unravel the truth about the terrible events which have happened here.

Sparklite (Merge Games Ltd/RedBlue Games)
Sparklite is a roguelite brawler-adventure. Using an arsenal of gadgets, guns, and gear, they will battle foes in top-down action combat, solve puzzles, and explore dangerous corners of the world in search of missing gyrocopter parts in an effort to save the Sparklite.

StarCrossed (Whitethorn Digital/Contigo Games Inc.) – Announced Today for Xbox One
StarCrossed is an action arcade game with a magical girl aesthetic and a cooperative twist. Join our cast of 5 space-faring heroes as they travel from planet to planet, working together to strengthen their bond and defeat a looming evil that threatens the galaxy!

Stela (SkyBox Labs) – Announced Today for Xbox One & Windows 10, Xbox One X Enhanced
Stela is a cinematic, atmospheric platformer about a young woman witnessing the final days of a mysterious ancient world.

The Forgotten City (Modern Storyteller) – Announced Today for Xbox One, Xbox One X Enhanced
A re-imagining of the award-winning, critically acclaimed mod with over two million downloads on Xbox One and PC. Like Russian Doll or Groundhog Day in a mythological Roman city, where everyone will die again and again, unless you break the cycle. Cleverly exploit a time loop to solve an ancient mystery. Re-write history.

The Sojourn (Iceberg Interactive/Shifting Tides) – Xbox One X Enhanced
The Sojourn is a thought-provoking first-person puzzle game in which you traverse the parallel worlds of light and darkness in search of answers to the nature of reality. Venture into an enchanting world and face life’s obstacles by solving dozens of unique puzzles through four beautifully crafted chapters.

Totem Teller (Grinning Pickle) – Announced Today for Xbox One, Xbox One X Enhanced
Join a wandering muse in search of inspiration. Gather listeners and retell stories in beautiful, broken places. Recover lost folklore or discard it forever. These stories are yours. Truth is in the telling.

UnderMine (Thorium Entertainment) – Announced Today for Xbox One & Windows 10
Raise up your pickaxe and delve deep into the UnderMine, uncovering its secrets, one peasant at a time. In this action-adventure roguelike, mine gold and discover new combinations of items to take on traps and monsters awaiting below. Rescue friends to unlock permanent upgrades and be the peasant that makes it out alive.

Unrailed! (Daedalic Entertainment/Indoor Astronaut) – Announced Today for Xbox One & Windows 10
Unrailed! is a multiplayer co-op game where you work together with your friends to gather resources and build a train track across endless procedurally generated worlds. Master random encounters with its inhabitants, upgrade your train and keep it from derailing!

Void Bastards (Humble Bundle/Blue Manchu) – Xbox Game Pass
You make the decisions in Void Bastards, a new kind of strategy-shooter. Lead your ragtag prisoners through derelict spaceships and myriad other dangers. Make the right choices about what to do, where to go and when to fight. Master combat, manage ship controls, scavenge supplies, craft improvised tools and more!

Xenosis: Alien Infection (NerdRage Studios) – Xbox One X Enhanced
You are a deep space salvage hunter who discovers the remains of the Starship Carpathian. The ship’s AI will be worth a lifetime of credits. As you dock the port locks down, you are trapped inside. You receive a harrowing transmission from somewhere. A warning, you are not alone.

What games are you most excited to see at GDC? Let us know on Twitter at ID@Xbox!

Posted on March 8, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Ways to encourage girls to keep pursuing STEM this Women’s History Month

In 2018, we conducted a study in collaboration with Dr. Shalini Kesar called Closing the STEM Gap. Our findings revealed that 31 percent of girls believe that jobs requiring coding and programming are “not for them.” In high school, that number jumps up to 40 percent. And by the time they’re in college, 58 percent of girls count themselves out of these jobs.

We also discovered that girls who know a woman in a STEM profession are substantially more likely to feel empowered when they engage in STEM activities (61 percent) than those who don’t know a woman in a STEM profession (44 percent). Unfortunately, most girls don’t have any female role models in STEM to look up to. So it’s no surprise that, when asked to describe a typical scientist, engineer, mathematician, or computer programmer, 30 percent of girls say that they envision a man in these roles. As do almost 40 percent of adult women—and 43 percent of women in STEM and tech fields.

You may be asking: How do we reverse these trends? One of the most important first steps is introducing girls and young women to positive female role models in STEM fields. But it doesn’t end there. An even bigger impact is possible when those women offer encouragement.

Enter: Microsoft EDU’s WomEncouragement Series.

In honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, we’ve created a series of downloadable posters featuring advice and encouragement from women who are paving the way in STEM and opening doors for future generations of girls to step through and succeed.

These are free to download and print so young women and girls can hang them up in their rooms, in their lockers, on their mirrors, or in their classrooms — anywhere they need a dose of positive inspiration!

But we couldn’t pull off this project without our education community! We’d love to hear from you, too. Send us your own words of encouragement and we might turn them into a poster or share them on our social channels!

Technology jobs are among the fastest growing in the country, but only 24 percent of computer scientists are women. As educators, when we encourage girls to pursue STEM, we double the potential to change the world for the better and help ensure ALL young people are future ready.

Are YOU ready to help make a difference?

Other resources you can use to help close the gap or inspire girls, and all students, to love STEM:

Get the free STEM action guide. You’ll find easy things education leaders, teachers, and parents can do today to help inspire girls to stay in STEM and #MakeWhatsNext.
New! Earn a Girls-in-STEM badge when you take this Microsoft Education Community course that shows how you can turn research into action and engage all students to love STEM.
New! Learn from education experts and teachers to get tips and resources to encourage and engage all students in computer science. Education. Download our free guide to inclusive computer science education now.
Participate in a free Microsoft Store DigiGirlz workshop near you through April. Each store will host 2-hour workshops that include presentations from guest speakers along with live Q&As, hands-on coding, and other STEM activities. Workshop topics will cover Women in Gaming, Aviation, Space, Coding, and Business!
Check out this gender equality MEC lesson to complete with your students.
Sign up for a Skype Collaboration with a woman in STEM and introduce your students to their new favorite role model!
Check out how these amazing female code creators who use STEM and CS to save endangered species, create art, fashion, and animated Pixar movies!
Discover female Nobel laureates, women who have broken boundaries to change science in their fields. Find out how to connect students with female pioneers in the Women Who Changed Science experience
Join the #MSFTEduChat global TweetMeet at 10AM PT on March 19^th. The topic is #MakeWhatsNext in STEM, all about empowering young women to pursue careers in STEM to help close the gender gap. This is a great opportunity to engage with educators in over 11 languages globally on this topic!
Learn how EVERY Individual’s Actions Can Make a BIG Impact with Dr. Jane Goodall in a special Skype in the Classroom broadcast on April 2nd & 9th.
Explore the Girls & CS resource pages for even more ideas on how to introduce your female students to STEM and encourage them to stay with it.
From Microsoft on the Issues: How girls from diverse backgrounds have the lens computer science needs.

Closing the STEM gap matters for everyone. More diversity in thought, background, and experience creates more innovation. Innovation is what will help us solve today’s most pressing problems. Together, we can help keep girls inspired and encouraged to pursue a career in STEM.

Spread the support by sharing your words of encouragement or any posters you display using #MicrosoftEDU and #MakeWhatsNext. Then, visit aka.ms/girls-in-stem to learn more.

Posted on March 8, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Encouraging girls to stay in STEM and #MakeWhatsNext

Two girls at computer — Girls program together at a Boys & Girls Club in Menasha, Wisconsin.

As the head of Microsoft Philanthropies and the first female attorney hired at Microsoft, I’ve experienced firsthand the amazing potential for change when girls and women are empowered to create and innovate.

Take Aishwarya Manoharan, a student of computer science and informatics at the University of Washington. When Aishwarya was growing up, she didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do, but she was fairly certain her future wouldn’t revolve around computers. It’s no wonder: She thought that working with computers was for men, and computer science meant sitting in front of a laptop typing code by yourself – not exactly an appealing prospect for this outgoing young woman, who also plays tennis and loves to bake.

College student Aishwarya Manoharan — “My burning drive is to somehow change the world for the better, whether it is small or big,” says Aishwarya Manoharan. “If I can help even one person realize their potential to better the world through the medium of technology, information and computer science, then I have reached my goal.”

But when Aishwarya took the Microsoft TEALS AP Computer Science class her junior year of high school, she realized her image of programming was wrong when she saw other girls getting excited about computer science. That was when Aishwarya met her volunteer teachers, including Arti Gupta, a software development engineer at Microsoft, who became Aishwarya’s mentor. The confidence Aishwarya gained from TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools), and especially Arti’s support, has helped Aishwarya when she feels like she doesn’t belong in her university classes that are overwhelmingly male and Caucasian. She says, “Remembering Ms. Gupta’s belief in me reminds me that I’m in the right place.”

Computing and technology hold the promise of opportunity for so many girls. And, while progress has been made to get more girls introduced, supported and successful in computer science from kindergarten to career, we still have work to do. The path to a computing-related career needs to be inclusive and provide the right support at the right times, so that girls and women feel encouraged and welcomed. Collectively, our companies, products and innovations will suffer without the perspective that girls and women bring – technologies will inevitably emerge with unintentional bias and limited insight into the diversity of people who will use and depend on them.

Today, girls and students of color represent 65 percent of the entire U.S. population, yet only 28 percent of high school students who take the AP Computer Science exam are girls, and only 22 percent are students of color. The reasons girls lose interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and computer science are many: from a lack of role models and support, to a general misperception of what STEM careers look like in the real world, and how these skills can help unlock their wildest ambitions. Without more female influence in STEM fields, we risk having hundreds of thousands of jobs left unfilled, not to mention half of our talent left untapped.

This is why it is urgent that computer science education be more inclusive. We need to show girls, and all students from diverse backgrounds, that they, too, can embrace the art and creativity of computers and be the builders, inventors, problem-solvers and computer scientists solving tomorrow’s challenges. This requires us all to take action:

Make computer science count. This policy is the single biggest way to help computer science reach more girls. Since 2013, when Microsoft began its work with Code.org’s Advocacy Coalition, the number of U.S. states that have made computer science count toward required credits in math or science for high school graduation has grown from nine to 45. Montana became the latest state this week.
Provide access to female role models with diverse backgrounds. Many female Microsoft employees volunteer for our DigiGirlz program, designed to introduce girls to the career opportunities available in technology fields. To date, we have offered more than 54,000 girls the opportunity to explore and become active thinkers, creators and doers in STEM.
Focus on access and inclusion. We do this by partnering with local nonprofits to bring culturally relevant approaches to computer science to local communities. In the U.S., more than 1,400 tech professionals volunteer with TEALS in schools, serving 16,000 students, 33 percent of whom are young women. Abroad, groups like Shared Path in Australia brings tailored digital skills training to indigenous Australians, and Laboratoria in Latin America, a female-led organization which has trained over 1,000 young women to become web developers and designers by mimicking actual work scenarios.

Today on International Women’s Day, join us by taking action and help inspire the next generation of girls to stay in STEM and #MakeWhatsNext:

By taking these steps and joining in collective action, we can create a more inclusive computer science pipeline for women, provider greater access to economic opportunities for people of all backgrounds, and drive more innovation, starting today.

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