Recent News – Page 81

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.

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

Disruptions and opportunities: navigating hybrid education

When COVID-19 disrupted traditional classroom instruction and forced system and school leaders, IT professionals, educators, faculty, and students to pivot to remote learning, it also prompted re-examining education more broadly. We know from the whitepaper “The Class of 2030 and Life Ready Learning” that today’s students will need a high level of cognitive skills like problem solving, critical thinking, and creativity. And social-emotional skills have become even more important in remote and hybrid settings and require solutions that integrate pedagogy and technology accessibly and cohesively.

In “Education Reimagined: the Future of Learning,” the experts from New Pedagogies for Deep Learning suggest that there are three phases that learning institutions are navigating to move education systems to a successful and sustainable hybrid model: Disruption, Transition, and Reimagining.

The Three Phases of Reimagining Education

By now, many schools and universities have worked their way through the initial disruption and have been adapting to online learning for several months. As the next school year begins, there is new data showing some best practices for supporting smooth transitions for students and teachers.

Today, we’re pleased to share a new whitepaper, “Disruptions and Opportunities: Lessons from the spring of 2020,” commissioned by Microsoft in collaboration with Manchester Street Research. The report surveyed 400 K-12 educators and 381 IT professionals in the United States to understand their perspectives about the transition experience, the technology used for remote learning, the quality of student engagement, the assessment of learning outcomes, and more. This research focused on K-12 teachers, IT professionals, and the added challenges of keeping younger students engaged in learning online. Some key insights from the study are:

Microsoft Teams encourages student engagement and facilitates learning assessment

One of the most challenging aspects for teachers when moving online was how their relationships with students changed when meeting only on screens. For remote learning to be effective and sustainable, technologies that encourage meaningful engagement and interaction, with features that help teachers evaluate student progress, are critical. The study found that Microsoft Teams users were 29% more likely than those who didn’t use Teams to describe most of their students as highly engaged. Also, Teams users were on average 23% more likely than those who didn’t use Teams to say they feel confident in their ability to assess learning outcomes while teaching remotely.

Microsoft Teams provides a collaboration lifeline for teachers

Teachers who developed a community of support among colleagues reported that this support was critical for them in developing confidence in remote teaching and learning, trying new things, discovering best practices, and solving problems. Educators in the survey who used Microsoft technology, especially those who used Teams, were 42% more likely to collaborate with their peers than those who used Google Classroom.

A clear strategy integrating technology & pedagogy is critical in hybrid learning

Expecting teachers to select from a multitude of technologies burdens them with the added responsibility of learning and assessing different technology platforms. When leaders provide clarity and direction by selecting a single set of online learning technologies, rooted in the key pedagogical approaches, teachers can get up to speed faster and have more time to focus on teaching. The data shows that for remote learning, too many options can actually cause negative outcomes. One of the study respondents, K-12 teacher Yolanda M., noted that when it came to her students, “I have noticed the difficulty for a lot of the kids is all the different platforms that the teachers have in relaying information to them. That has been really difficult for students and for parents.”

Looking back at the last school year, it’s clear that transitioning to remote learning at scale was a monumental task. And it’s been most successful when pedagogy and technology are adapted to work together to encourage collaboration, engagement, and quality learning outcomes.

It’s inspiring to see the efforts of so many dedicated education leaders, teachers, and IT professionals as they define a new era of learning: one that’s open-walled, student-centered, and unlimited by time or space. As the next academic year gets underway, it’s clear that we’re still in a transitional period and that schools and education systems are still determining the best path forward. While there are still challenges to address, we can see that when pedagogy is coupled with scalable technology for online and hybrid learning, it can help drive enhanced learning outcomes, increase well-being, and create a more fulfilling experience for teachers and students.

For a deeper dive into the findings, visit Microsoft Education’s hybrid learning page and download the complete whitepaper.

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

Empowering remote learning with Azure Cognitive Services

This blog post was co-authored by Anny Dow, Product Marketing Manager, Azure Cognitive Services.

As schools and organizations around the world prepare for a new school year, remote learning tools have never been more critical. Educational technology, and especially AI, has a huge opportunity to facilitate new ways for educators and students to connect and learn.

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Immersive Reader, and shine a light on how new improvements to Azure Cognitive Services can help developers build AI apps for remote education that empower everyone.

Make content more accessible with Immersive Reader, now generally available

Immersive Reader is an Azure Cognitive Service within the Azure AI platform that helps readers read and comprehend text. Through today’s general availability, developers and partners can add Immersive Reader right into their products, enabling students of all abilities to translate in over 70 languages, read text aloud, focus attention through highlighting, other design elements, and more.

Immersive Reader has become a critical resource for distance learning, with more than 23 million people every month using the tool to improve their reading and writing comprehension. Between February and May 2020, when many schools moved to a distance learning model, we saw a 560 percent increase in Immersive Reader usage. As the education community embarks on a new school year in the Fall, we expect to see continued momentum for Immersive Reader as a tool for educators, parents, and students.

With the general availability of Immersive Reader, we are also rolling out the following enhancements:

Immersive Reader SDK 1.1: Updates include support to have a page read aloud automatically, pre-translating content, and more. Learn about SDK updates.
New Neural Text-to-Speech (TTS) languages: Immersive Reader is adding 15 new Neural Text to Speech voices, enabling students to have content read aloud in even more languages. Learn about the new Neural Text to Speech languages.
New Translator languages: Translator is adding five new languages that will also be available in Immersive Reader—Odia, Kurdish (Northern), Kurdish (Central), Pashto, and Dari. Learn about the latest Translator languages.

Today, we’re adding new partners who are integrating Immersive Reader to make content more accessible, Code.org and SAFARI Montage.

Code.org is a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools. To ensure that students of all backgrounds and abilities can access their resources and course content, Code.org is integrating Immersive Reader into their platform.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Microsoft to bring Immersive Reader to the Code.org community. The inclusive capabilities of Immersive Reader to improve reading fluency and comprehension in learners of varied backgrounds, abilities, and learning styles directly aligns with our mission to ensure every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science.” – Hadi Partovi, Founder and CEO of Code.org

SAFARI Montage, a leading learning object repository, is integrating Immersive Reader to make it possible for students of any language background or accessibility needs to engage with content, and enable families who don’t speak the language of instruction to be more involved in their students’ learning journeys.

“Immersive Reader is a crucial support for CPS students and families. During remote learning, particularly for our younger learners, student learning is often supported by parents, guardians, or other caregivers. Since Immersive Reader can be used to translate the student-facing instructions in our digital curriculum, families can support student learning in over 80 languages, making digital learning far more equitable and accessible than ever before! In addition, read-aloud and readability supports are game-changers for diverse learners” – Giovanni Benincasa, UX Manager, Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Digital Learning, Chicago Public Schools

With Immersive Reader, all it takes is a single API call to help users boost literacy. To start exploring how to integrate Immersive Reader into your app or service, check out these resources:

To see the growing list of Immersive Reader partners and learn more, check out our partners page and Immersive Reader education blog.

Bring online courses to life with speech-enabled apps

With the shift to remote learning, another challenge that educators may face is continuing to drive student engagement.

Text to Speech, a Speech service feature that allows users to convert text to lifelike audio can facilitate new ways for students to interact with content. In addition to powering features like Read Aloud in Immersive Reader and the Microsoft Edge browser, Text to Speech enables developers to build apps that speak naturally in over 110 voices with more than 45 languages and variants.

With the Audio Content Creation tool, users can more easily bring audiobooks to life and finetune audio characteristics like voice style, rate, pitch, and pronunciation to fit their scenarios—no code required. Voices can even be customized for specific characters or personas; the Custom Neural Voice capability makes it possible to build one-of-a-kind voices, starting with 30 minutes of audio. Duolingo, for example, is using the Custom Neural Voice capability to create unique voices to represent different characters in its language courses.

To learn more about how to start creating speech-enabled apps for remote learning, check out the technical Text to Speech blog and other resources:

Improve productivity and accessibility with transcription and voice commands

AI can also be a useful tool for more seamless note-taking, making it possible for students and teachers to type with their voice. Transcribe in Word uses Speech to Text in Azure Cognitive Services to automatically transcribe your conversations. Now with speaker diarization, you can get a transcript that identifies who said what, when.

In addition, adding voice enables more seamless experiences in Microsoft 365. For students who have difficulties writing things down, they can use AI-powered tools in Office not just for dictation but also for controls such as adding, formatting, editing, and organizing text. Word uses Language Understanding, an Azure Cognitive Service that enables you to add custom natural language understanding to your apps, to make it possible to capture ideas easily. To learn more about Language Understanding and how it is powering voice commands, check out our Language Understanding blog.

For more details on how AI is powering experiences in Microsoft 365, read the Microsoft 365 blog.

Get started today

We can’t wait to see what you’ll build. Get started today with Azure Cognitive Services and an Azure free account.

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

Xbox unveils 3 consoles inspired by ‘Wonder Woman 1984’

To celebrate the highly anticipated release of “Wonder Woman 1984“, Xbox is giving movie buffs and gamers alike the chance to own a piece of Wonder Woman lore. Inspired by the iconic armor and outfits worn by the powerful female leads of the movie comes three custom consoles like you’ve never seen them before.

Matching the stunning suit of armor worn by Wonder Woman in the film, we’ve created a one-of-a-kind Wonder Woman Golden Armor Xbox One X Console* with 24-carat gold leaves. This console was made entirely by hand features a sophisticated golden eagle crest and 3D printed Wonder Woman 1984 logo resting above it. The best part? This gold console will be auctioned off with all proceeds going to Together for Her, an initiative launched by the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, leading humanitarian organization CARE, and the Entertainment Industry Foundation to stand in solidarity with women and girls around the world deploying funds and supporting the global response against domestic violence during the time of COVID-19. Stay tuned for additional details.

What’s more, you could win your very own Lasso of Truth with this custom Wonder Woman Lasso of Truth Xbox One X Console*. Inspired by the one wielded by Wonder Woman herself in the movie, this braided lasso lays perfectly across the top of the console and encircles a beautiful 3D printed Wonder Woman logo bursting with the vibrant colors of the 1980s.

For those who can’t resist an evil villain, you may find yourself interested in the Barbara Minerva Xbox One X Console*. Inspired by the punk rock look of Wonder Woman’s archenemy, this custom console boasts an intricate snakeskin pattern and faux leopard fur for a truly wild appearance. The silver spikes on the top and front of the console and gold “Wonder Woman 1984” logo were 3D printed to exactly match the size of the console.

From August 25 through September 17, fans will have the chance to win* the Wonder Woman Lasso of Truth Xbox One X Console by simply liking or retweeting the Xbox sweepstakes tweet.

The fun doesn’t stop there. You can also explore an all-new, immersive experience on Roblox for Xbox One, where you can journey to Themyscira and unlock an epic collection of avatar items featuring some of Diana’s most quintessential gear, outfits, accessories and more!

We can’t wait for “Wonder Woman 1984”, Warner Bros. Pictures’ follow up to the DC Super Hero’s first outing, 2017’s record-breaking “Wonder Woman”. Fast forward to the 1980s as Wonder Woman’s next big screen adventure finds her facing two all-new foes: Max Lord and The Cheetah. Set to open in theaters in 2D and 3D in select theaters and IMAX, it will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures and is rated PG-13. To learn more about the upcoming film, visit wonderwomanfilm.com.

*Please note, that all the Xbox is for display ONLY, not gameplay. Prize and the successful bidder will also get a standard Xbox One X.

Posted on August 24, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Humans and AI: New series features people innovating to create a better world

Behind each technological innovation, there is a person with a dream that they are determined to bring to fruition. Today we are excited to launch a new community and series that tells the stories of incredible heroes from all walks of life who are innovating to help solve some of society’s biggest challenges.

Their stories shine a light on discovering what is possible when big hearts, inspirational ideas and innovative technologies converge. We know that technology doesn’t change the world, people do. AI is a game-changing tool that enables people and organizations to solve complex social, health and environmental challenges. With the growing accessibility of AI, we’re seeing this in action—humans accelerating meaningful innovation to improve lives and benefit the planet. These are stories of hope and human empowerment.

Meet our AI heroes

Our first four stories are dedicated to people who are innovating to fight COVID-19. Visit the site to see how they are using AI to combat the virus on multiple fronts, then chat with them live on Sept. 15 during a LinkedIn Live event, followed by a #MicrosoftAIChat on Twitter. They are, from left to right in the image above:

Meet Hadas Bitran: When COVID-19 ravaged the world, she saw a great need to help frontline healthcare workers by developing a COVID-19 self-assessment bot that enables people to check their symptoms before going to a medical appointment.
Meet Dr. Greg Bowman: When COVID-19 started, his lab decided to use their army of citizen scientists and Microsoft AI to advance research and accelerate potential treatments.
Meet Kelvin Summoogum: He founded MiiCare, a digital companion for the elderly that helps them live safely and independently.
Meet Alice Piterova: In the time of COVID-19, she and her cohort at AI for Good UK created an AI model that simulates the spread of COVID-19 in refugee camps.

Here’s how you can be a part of the conversation on Sept. 15:

LinkedIn Live at 8:15 am PT: Influencer and futurist Bernard Marr will be joined by the first four individuals featured in the Humans and AI series. Tune in live on Marr’s LinkedIn page for the live video to ask questions and meet these inspirational individuals.

Twitter chat at 9 am PT: The conversation continues on Twitter with the #MicrosoftAIChat hosted by Marr, Bitran, Bowman, Piterova and Summoogum. This Twitter chat will discuss #HumansAndAI and will be a forum for anyone to meet our team and share ideas on how technology can be applied to challenges and problems we collectively face as a united global community.

How to join the Twitter Chat:

Never participated in a Twitter chat? Welcome! We’ll ask the following five questions starting at 9 am PT on Sept. 15. Anyone can join in by sharing and answering:

If you could launch an AI startup, what would it be? And “@” tag anyone you want to partner with in your reply.
What problem or societal challenge drives your innovation?
Why is AI a potential tool for solving societal challenges?
What is the most inspiring use of AI you have seen?
Do you know an incredible #HumansAndAI leader or do you have a story to share?

You can share the questions with your community or answer by quote retweeting the tweets and adding your answer + tagging the tweet with #MicrosoftAI and #HumansandAI. To follow the conversation once we get started on Twitter, just type #MicrosoftAI #HumansandAI into the search bar, or click this link to find the chat on Twitter.

Posted on August 20, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft Translator adds two Kurdish dialects for text translation

Image: Night view of the citadel of Erbil

Today, Microsoft Translator adds two Kurdish dialects, Northern and Central, to its list of text translation languages. Northern and Central Kurdish are available now, or will be available soon, in the Microsoft Translator app, Office, and Translator for Bing.

You can also use Azure Cognitive Services Translator in your own applications, websites, and tools to add Northern and Central Kurdish text translation to or from more than 70 languages. To translate speech into Kurdish text, or to translate Kurdish text into another language with speech output, you can use Azure Cognitive Services Speech, which combines Translator’s AI-powered translation service with Speech’s advanced speech recognition and speech synthesis. You can view the list of languages available for speech recognition and speech synthesis on the Microsoft Translator website.

Northern and Central Kurdish are the two most common forms of the Kurdish language. Northern Kurdish, also known as Kurmanji, is spoken in Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq, and northwest and northeast Iran by 15-17 million Kurds. Central Kurdish, also known as Sorani, is spoken in Iraqi Kurdistan and western Iran by an estimated 9-12 million Kurds. These two dialects make up about 75% of all Kurdish speakers¹.

Northern and Central Kurdish are generally not mutually understandable. Here are some examples of words and phrases in the two Kurdish dialects.

English	Northern Kurdish	Central Kurdish
Hello	Silav	سڵاو (Slaw)
What’s your name?	Navê te çi ye?	ناوت چییە؟ (Nawt tshya?)
Pleased to meet you	Kêfxweş im bi nas kirina te	خۆشحاڵبووم بە ناسینیت (Xoşhalbuum bi nasînit)

Learn more about the Northern and Central dialects of Kurdish on Bing.

What you can do with Microsoft Translator

At home

Translate real-time conversations, menus and street signs, websites, documents, and more using the Microsoft Translator app for Windows, iOS, Android, and the web. Learn more

At work

Globalize your business and customer interactions with text and speech translation powered by Translator and Microsoft Speech service, both members of the Azure Cognitive Services family. Learn more

In the classroom

Create a more inclusive classroom for both students and parents with live captioning and cross-language understanding. Learn more

For more information on Microsoft Translator please visit microsoft.com/translator.

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¹ Translators Without Borders: https://translatorswithoutborders.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Kurdish-Factsheet-English.pdf