Translating one on one conversations just got even easier with the newest update to speech mode in Microsoft Translator for iOS. With Auto mode, there’s no more need to push the microphone button when it’s your turn to talk—just select the languages, turn on the mic, and start the conversation. The app will listen for the two languages and translate what you have said after you finish speaking. The other person can start talking right away when you’re finished and the app will translate automatically.
The Microsoft Translator app makes it easy to get your translations so that you can concentrate on the conversation, not the phone. There are two ways you can get your translations—either listen to the speech output or read the text translation on the screen.
The app’s split screen design makes reading the translated text simple. Place the phone between you and the other person. You can flip the text on the top portion of the phone so it can be read right side up from the other side.
If you are listening to the speech output, the app also has a brand-new option of slowing down the playback if the default speed is too fast.
The update will roll out to iOS apps over the next couple of days. If you are not seeing the update yet but would like to start using the feature right now, you can manually update your app. Auto mode is not available for Android, but it’s coming soon.
Get started with Auto mode
If you don’t already have the Microsoft Translator app, you can download it for free from the App Store. To start your translated conversation:
Open the app and click on the microphone icon to start speech mode.
Choose your two languages and select auto.
Press the microphone icon and start talking! You can also flip the text of one of the sides of the screen to make it easier for the other person to read.
Do more with the Microsoft Translator app
Multiparty Conversations – Translate conversations with up to 100 people with each participant using their own using their own device.
Text – Translate text in over 60 different languages. You can even download offline language packs so you can translate when you’re not connected to the Internet.
Camera – Translate the text in photos with the app’s built-in camera viewer, or upload saved photos from your gallery.
Phrasebooks – Get verified translations for travel, directions, lodging, dining, and more. Pronunciation guides to help you learn important phrases.
Single Microphone – Tap and speak into the microphone to translate short phrases while online.
Dan Morris, AI for Earth program director, says the most important result from the hackathon was that AI for Earth taught The Ocean Cleanup a lot about machine learning. “The real value was teaching them through interaction with data scientists and engineers at Microsoft,” he says.
This year, The Ocean Cleanup was named an AI for Earth grantee for its work.
“Using the AI for Earth grant, we’ve been able to set up and run the machine learning models,” De Vries says. “Having the resources at our fingertips has greatly accelerated the technical progress, by taking away practical concerns and letting us focus on the development.
“It allowed us to develop the vision that this is something we can do, not just for one river, but eventually for rivers across the globe.”
Robin de Vries, right, of The Ocean Cleanup works with a Microsoft Global Hackathon team member in 2019.
The Ocean Cleanup is highly admired, particularly in the Netherlands, where the organization has been a symbol of pride for years, even before they became more well-known internationally, says Harry van Geijn, a digital adviser for Microsoft in the Netherlands. Van Geijn is among the Microsoft staffers there who have volunteered to help The Ocean Cleanup when it comes to computer and related support.
While its staff is relatively small with around 100 employees, “they have this cause that they pursue with great tenacity and in an extremely professional way,” van Geijn says. So much so that “When I ask around for someone at Microsoft Netherlands to do something for The Ocean Cleanup, half the company raises their hand to say, ‘I want to volunteer for that.’”
Drew Wilkinson at the 2019 Microsoft Global Hackathon in Redmond, Washington.
Wilkinson, who grew up in the hot, dry climate of the Arizona desert, spent time at sea as a volunteer for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a nonprofit, marine wildlife conservation organization.
In 2018 at Microsoft, he and another coworker started an employee group, Microsoft’s Worldwide Sustainability Community, which has grown to more than 3,000 members globally. The group focuses on ways employees can help the company be more environmentally sustainable. Wilkinson now is a community program manager for the Worldwide Communities Program, which includes the employee group he co-founded.
Wilkinson sees the issue of plastics in the ocean as a pretty solvable problem and is excited about the work that has been done, the work that he spurred with an email.
“I’m not a scientist, but it doesn’t take a lot of science to understand that our fate on the land is very much tied to the ocean,” he says. “The ocean is the planet’s life support system. Without a healthy ocean, we don’t stand a chance either.”
Top image: Some of the plastic and trash picked up onto the conveyor belt of The Ocean Cleanup’s Interceptor 002 on the Klang River in Malaysia. Photo credit: The Ocean Cleanup.
In addition to availability on Windows 10 and Xbox Game Pass for PC (Xbox Game Pass for PC is currently in Beta), Microsoft Flight Simulator will also be coming to Steam on August 18. We are thrilled to announce that Steam pre-orders for the Standard, Deluxe, and Premium Deluxe editions of Microsoft Flight Simulator start today!
Listening to the community has been a priority for the development team since the announcement of Microsoft Flight Simulator in June 2019. Two of the most requested features we’ve been hearing about from the Community are TrackIR and VR support. Today we are excited to announce that Microsoft Flight Simulator will have TrackIR support available on day one, and VR support will be available later this year in time for the launch of the HP Reverb G2!
TrackIR
TrackIR is the premier head tracking solution delivering full six degree of freedom (6DOF) camera control for an ultra-immersive simulator experience. TrackIR allows simmers to enjoy a low latency mouse free look around with Microsoft Flight Simulator in full 4K/HDR, while still allowing easy interaction with a suite of hardware peripherals.
HP Reverb G2
Created by HP in collaboration with Microsoft and Valve, the upcoming Reverb G2 headset has a bright, high resolution display, excellent tracking, and immersive audio to take maximum advantage of Microsoft Flight Simulator’s incredible visuals and fully 3D soundscape. The HP Reverb G2 will be available later this fall and the VR update will be a free update for all Microsoft Flight Simulator players.
In addition to Track IR and VR, we also continue to work with partners like Honeycomb Aeronautical, Logitech G, Thrustmaster, Virtual Fly and many other manufacturers to further improve your Microsoft Flight Simulator experience. We are excited to support Honeycomb’s upcoming Bravo Throttle Quadrant and Thrustmaster’s new TCA Sidestick and Quadrant Airbus edition peripherals. We are also committed to supporting existing peripherals and home cockpits via an updated SimConnect.
Xbox Game Studios and Asobo Studio are committed to the community, and the ongoing support of Microsoft Flight Simulator with experience enhancing features like those we’ve announced today. But we have even more planned post-launch! In the future, we will update our development roadmap with continued simulator updates such as themed DLC bundles, free world updates and more. We will be sharing more news in the coming months.
Free World Updates
Microsoft Flight Simulator heralds a new era of data-driven flight simulation. One of the exciting implications of this is that the data that makes up the world is always improving, and players can look forward to a simulator that evolves over time. Thanks to our partnership with Bing, players will enjoy new, even better terrain, and an ever evolving, machine learning-fueled simulator that grows over time.
We have so much ahead for Microsoft Flight Simulator, but even on day one simmers will get highly detailed aircraft, a new checklist system, live air traffic, dynamic weather, new aerodynamic modeling, as well as all the many other features we shared in our launch date announcement, all within a beautifully crafted and rendered world. Whether you are new to flight simulation or an aviation pro, the sky is calling in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
While there has been a focus in the quantum computing industry on growing the number of qubits in a quantum computer, the reality is there are many important factors when building an overall system to bring quantum solutions to fruition. Hardware scaling, temperature control, software optimizations, and many other considerations must be reimagined in ways that allow large-scale quantum computers to do the necessary, meaningful work to solve some of today’s and tomorrow’s biggest problems. A question emerges that is both scientific and philosophical in nature: once a quantum computer scales to handle problems that classical computers cannot, what problems should we solve on it? Quantum researchers at Microsoft are not only thinking about this question—we are producing tangible results that will shape how large-scale quantum computer applications will accomplish these tasks.
We have begun creating quantum computer applications in chemistry, and they could help to address one of the world’s biggest challenges to date: climate change. In January, Microsoft launched a bold new environmental sustainability initiative focusing on carbon, water, waste, and biodiversity, announcing one of the most ambitious carbon commitments put forward by any company: Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030 and remove from the environment more carbon than we have emitted since our founding by 2050. Last week, we announced seven important new steps on our path to be carbon negative by 2030. Learn more on the Microsoft on the Issues blog.
Microsoft has prioritized making an impact on this global issue, and Microsoft Quantum researchers have teamed up with researchers at ETH Zurich to develop a new quantum algorithm to simulate catalytic processes. In the context of climate change, one goal will be to find an efficient catalyst for carbon fixation—a process that reduces carbon dioxide by turning it into valuable chemicals. One of our key findings is that the resource requirements to implement our algorithm on a fault-tolerant quantum computer are more than 10 times lower than recent state-of-the-art algorithms. These improvements significantly decrease the time it will take a quantum computer to do extremely challenging computations in this area of chemistry. In our research, we have not only improved upon quantum algorithms and have shown how they can help effectively find new catalysts, we have also learned more about other quantum resources that are necessary to perform these calculations at an exponentially faster rate than classical computers. These learnings include the size of quantum computers and their runtime—and more generally how to better co-design a hybrid quantum-classical computing system to handle this type of problem. Our research is detailed in a paper called “Quantum computing enhanced computational catalysis.”
Carbon fixation: An opportunity in chemistry opens the door for a new application in quantum computing
Figure 1: In the catalytic cycle studied in our paper, a Ruthenium-based catalyst reacts with carbon dioxide and hydrogen molecules to produce water and methanol, leaving the catalyst unchanged to react with another carbon dioxide molecule.
Synthetic carbon fixation is a process that has potential to help greatly reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by converting CO2 into other useful chemical compounds. Carbon fixation is not a new process. In fact, it is a very old one. Plants use a form of carbon fixation to convert carbon dioxide into energy-rich molecules such as glucose. But glucose isn’t the only possible biproduct of carbon fixation. When using different catalysts, natural or synthetic, carbon dioxide can be converted into other compounds.
Currently, synthetic catalytic processes are found through lengthy trial-and-error lab experiments. In a process that requires testing thousands of molecular combinations, computer simulations that very accurately model quantum correlations could replace complex synthesis of new candidate catalysts. Whereas computers today can have a difficult time accurately calculating properties of complex molecules, quantum computers are especially suited for this task and will give more reliable and predictive simulation results. We hope that quantum computers will complement traditional methods and, together, could reveal a process that both removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provides valuable chemicals in return.
Why begin with a known catalytic reaction if the goal is to find new ones?
It’s important to first look at how these catalytic processes work in order to find ways they can be improved upon, especially exploring where quantum computers can make computational catalysis, a method to simulate catalysts already being performed on classical computers, more effective, more accurate, and less time-consuming.
In order to better understand how quantum computer algorithms can assist in discovering new, more efficient catalysts, we decided to focus our analysis on a previously published catalytic process based on the transition metal Ruthenium to convert carbon dioxide into methanol. It is also—like all known catalysts resulting in methanol to date—extremely inefficient. This inefficiency offers an opportunity for finding catalytic reactions that are more scalable. Using this reaction as a foundation for testing our algorithm, we were able to gain knowledge about how to best optimize algorithms for simulating these types of reactions on a quantum computer (see Figure 1 above).
Our algorithmic advancement: Boosting computational efficiency through compression
We need to develop more efficient algorithms for quantum computers because problems that involve calculating molecular energies with high precision, such as for catalytic processes, will be resource intensive—even on quantum computers.
ENGAGE Quantum Development Kit Are you a researcher or developer who wants to help in discovering new algorithms for quantum computers? Check out the Quantum Development Kit and Q#, a toolkit and high-level programming language for developing quantum algorithms, which allow you to try out a small chemical algorithm for yourself.
Obtaining high-precision energy estimates requires simulating the molecule’s quantum state for a long period of time, which is split into multiple smaller time steps. All the interaction terms in the problem description, the so-called Hamiltonian, need to be loaded over and over again at every single time step since quantum information cannot be copied. The natural approach to reduce overall runtime is then to reduce both the information that needs to be loaded as well as the number of time steps required for the simulation. One promising approach is to use a so-called “double-factorized” representation of the Hamiltonian. In this representation, the information describing the interaction between electrons is compressed into fewer terms.
In our research, we precisely achieve this runtime reduction by developing a new, efficient quantum algorithm. Our algorithm exploits the improved compression properties of the double-factorized form, and it also manages to perform the simulation with significantly larger step sizes compared to prior state of the art that exploits the unfactorized or single-factorized forms of the Hamiltonian. The extent of our improvement for molecules such as Ruthenium catalysts is driven primarily by the larger time step size, as illustrated in the table below. Moreover, aggressive compression can further reduce the number of terms at the cost of accuracy in the simulation. Importantly, our use of a so-called “qubitization” simulation algorithm allows for good control over the target accuracy. Combined, these factors reduce runtime by orders of magnitude for obtaining reliable results.
Ruthenium catalyst configuration VIII with 130 spin-orbitals
Approach
Number of steps per unit of time evolution
Overall algorithmic speedup
Unfactorized
10,600
1.0x
Single-factorized
42,200
0.4x
Our results
570
18.9x
Designing quantum computers for the hunt for new catalysts
The computational design of catalysts relies on very accurate energy calculations. Quantum computers can avoid uncontrolled approximations of classical simulations. They scale much better and open opportunities to assess the energetics of chemical species with sufficient accuracy. By using the Hamiltonian parameters generated on classical computers, a quantum computer could solve the exact energies of the chemical systems and help profile a quantitatively accurate landscape of reaction pathways. Catalyst structures could then be further refined or modified through the insights generated by reaction kinetics analysis. Such a process could iterate until a desired catalyst is found.
Figure 2: Protocol of quantum computing enhanced computational catalysis workflow. The energies of all species in the catalytic reaction cycle can be evaluated through the quantum computer using the output parameters of classical computers (upper right). The kinetics analysis (bottom left) can then be performed on the whole reaction pathways and new insights on the catalyst structures can be generated. This process repeats until an ideal catalyst structure is found.
Our paper is the first to show analysis of a quantum algorithm being done on a specific chemical reaction along the entire reaction pathway. Instead of just a single configuration, we analyzed relevant configurations of the reactants along this pathway. In addition, we performed state-of-the-art classical calculations, but our results with these confirmed that they lack reliability for truly predictive computational catalysis. Thus, one of the first roles for quantum computers will be not only to provide accurate results for novel catalysts, but also to benchmark validity of various classical approximations and develop better classical simulation methods.
Beyond this, we want to further optimize quantum algorithms to enable the simulation of larger numbers of electrons. Current algorithms limit the accurate quantum computation to so-called active spaces of the most correlated electrons. While that may often be sufficiently accurate, we will not know unless we can simulate larger active spaces or ideally all electrons in a molecule.
Finally, with the estimates for gate counts calculated, we were able to translate this information into potential runtime estimates for quantum computation on this problem. Depending on the assumptions made about future quantum computers, we estimate that it may take anywhere from a little over a day to several years to perform such calculations. This clearly shows the need not only for fast algorithms but also fast and scalable quantum hardware.
Our newer, faster quantum algorithm for calculating molecular energy levels is itself an exciting development and a crucial step in the computational catalysis workflow (see Figure 2 above), but it will take more than that to find an efficient catalyst. In fact, knowing more about the quantum algorithms needed to undertake improved computational catalysis opens the door to even more questions about the scale of quantum computers. What is the amount of memory we need to run these algorithms at a meaningful speed? What does this imply for the needed hybrid workflow and quantum architecture it runs on to successfully find these catalysts? Our results after testing this algorithm reveal some important discoveries going forward.
Where do quantum computers and chemistry applications go from here?
The research presented in this post is evidence that rapid advances in quantum computing are happening now—our algorithm is 10,000 times faster than the one we created just three years ago. By gaining more insight into how quantum computers can improve computational catalysis, including ways that will help to address climate change while creating other benefits, we hope to spur new ideas and developments on the road to creating some of the first applications for large-scale quantum computers of the future. The advancements in algorithms and knowledge gained from our research are a springboard for future work, including exploring additional ways algorithms can be made even more effective. Given the promise and potential that quantum computing represents for tackling the toughest challenges in chemistry, we hope to work alongside the chemistry community to better understand how quantum computers can be best utilized to further develop new chemical processes, molecules, and, eventually, materials.
We are encouraging those who are interested in exploring how chemistry can be impacted by quantum computing to explore Azure Quantum, which comprises a full set of tools, ranging from the Quantum Development Kit (QDK) and the Q# programming language for quantum to simulators and resource estimators. The QDK allows researchers to develop and test new quantum algorithms for chemistry, run small examples on a simulator, use Azure Quantum on quantum hardware, and estimate resource requirements to run simulations at scale on future quantum computers.
As part of the QDK, we developed a Q# chemistry library, with our partner Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (PNNL), that provides several fundamental data structures and tools to explore quantum algorithms for chemistry. If you are looking to get started with the QDK and Q#, check out our Microsoft Learn modules released at Microsoft Build 2020.
“This is the greatest show!” the pair sang loudly in celebration. Singing songs from The Greatest Showman, along with creating their own TV shows and doing impressions, had helped lighten the mood and focus their minds throughout the race.
They docked in Antigua a day and a half ahead of “the Northern lads”, and registered an overall time of 43 days, 15 hours and 22 minutes. That was enough to earn them 18th place in the overall standings. The winners, a British team of four men, completed the crossing in 32 days.
Now back in the UK, Cameron said everyone asks him the same question: why did you do it?
“At first I would say that I like adventure,” he said. “This is the ultimate challenge, it’s the Everest of rowing. It’s physical, it’s mental, it’s very technical. But I think the real reason is I wanted to understand why no other brother and sister had ever attempted this before. I now realise there is absolute strength in diverse teams. We brought out the strengths in each other, we found common ground and we created a fast boat.”
Their mother, Susan, couldn’t be prouder. “People would ask me how I could let both of my children go out into this great big ocean,” she said. “But how could I not let them go?
Ashen Winds is the latest Sea of Thieves monthly update, coming July 29 and free for all players across Xbox One, Windows 10, Xbox Game Pass and Steam.
Powerful Ashen Lords arrive on the Sea of Thieves in raging flames and blinding ash clouds – and their skulls can be taken and wielded as fiery weapons!
Accessibility improvements led by single-stick control, alongside new Pirate Emporium pets and discounts, round out this monthly offering.
This month’s Sea of Thievescontent is being served up hot – literally! Captain Flameheart’s manipulation of Stitcher Jim, Duke and countless other pirates on the seas has finally granted him the knowledge and resources he needs to transform some of his most trusted underlings into Ashen Lords. This July, pirates are tasked with taking down a fearsome foursome in Sea of Thieves’ latest monthly update Ashen Winds, available today for all Sea of Thieves players across Xbox One, Windows 10 PC, Steam and with Xbox Game Pass.
Lording It Up
July’s update centers on the rise of the Ashen Lords: four of Flameheart’s followers boosted by the blistering energy of the Ashen Curse, leaving them capable of causing huge destruction. These powerful skeletal foes have emerged across the Sea of Thieves and will strike back with fire, ash and flaming rocks at any pirates who dare to challenge them. The Ashen Lords have distinct personalities and different abilities to anything else seen on the seas, so seafarers must stay sharp at all times to ensure their defeat.
These emergent enemies will appear on islands indicated on the horizon by a raging tornado cloud, and will remain on the Sea of Thieves as a permanent threat to pirates. The Ashen Lords’ fires are far from burning out, and their hot-headed ways are set to rain fiery terror down on players for months to come!
All the Hot Gossip
In combat, an Ashen Lord can spit flame at its opponents – but even after defeat, it’s rumored that the Ashen Winds Skull left behind is potent enough to use as a deadly weapon. Take the cursed cranium and aim it at your enemies to use its fire for your own purposes, but be warned: constant use will drain its power, and reduce its substantial value to the Order of Souls. So if it’s the gold and reputation you’re after, a little restraint will go a long way. If not… fire at will!
Accessibility Additions
In a continued push to open the seas to everyone, more accessibility options are being added to Sea of Thieves this month. The most notable is support for play with a single analog stick, where players can opt to, well, play with just a single analog stick. All ship, pirate and menu controls are moved to your stick of choice, allowing anyone not comfortable with a traditional controller to reduce the number of held inputs required to set sail.
In addition there’s a new auto-centering camera option that ensures it always tends towards the horizon, and an auto-float mode to keep pirates with a dislike of the watery depths bobbing on the surface in a virtual lifejacket. With the number of options in the menu, there’s also a handy button to reset all accessibility options to their default state.
Pirate Emporium Scorchers
Ashen Curse pets are sizzling onto the scene with July’s update, and these charmingly charred critters are joined in the Emporium by new roleplay emotes for your pirates, based on the mannerisms of some of your favorite Sea of Thieves characters. If you’ve ever wanted to prop up the bar just like Duke or delve deeper into roleplaying as a Trading Company Emissary, you’re in luck.
Meanwhile, if you’ve been hankering to dress your four-legged friend in something that reminds you of your many-tentacled enemies, look no further: Kraken cat outfits have reached the Emporium, so your cute kitty can trot about in a dapper new outfit inspired by a terrible behemoth!
There’s also a sale coming to the ship livery aisle of the Pirate Emporium, with a range of Rare-inspired ship bundles (paying tribute to games as diverse as Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Piñata and Perfect Dark) getting a sweet 35% discount to mark Rare’s 35th anniversary. Check out the Pirate Emporium page for all your window shopping needs.
Find Out More
For more information on the AshenWinds update, including full release notes, visit the Sea of Thieves website. The update is available for free to all Sea of Thieves players who have bought the game on Xbox One, on Windows 10 PC or via Steam, or players who have access to it with Xbox Game Pass. Simply download and install the latest Sea of Thieves update to get access.
New to Sea of Thieves? Join the fun with our Maiden Voyage, a narrative-driven tutorial experience separate from Adventure and Arena modes. New Sea of Thieves players will begin their travels within this scenario, which provides guidance and information to fledgling sailors. Learn more about Sea of Thieves at www.xbox.com/seaofthieves, or join the ongoing adventure at www.seaofthieves.com where you can embark on an epic journey with one of gaming’s most welcoming communities!
Today, we are excited to announce that the Microsoft Family Safety app, designed to help you protect your family’s digital and physical safety, is starting to rollout today on iOS and Android.
Over the past few months, I have been using the preview with my family, and it has been a game-changer! As a kid, my two favorite things to do after school were to ride my bike and play soccer with my neighborhood friends. Nowadays, my kids are always on their devices, whether playing video games with their friends, on social media or learning remotely. Kids have access to more information and endless ways to connect with other people. This can be scary for parents. As a mom, I seek to give my kids the independence to learn and grow whilst ensuring that they are also safe online and in the real world. Today, I am excited to share with you how any family worried about their kids’ online safety can benefit from the Microsoft Family Safety app and how it has helped us to create healthier habits for my kids, while also giving my wife and me peace of mind.
Here are the top 5 ways my family has benefited from the Microsoft Family Safety app:
1. Use the weekly activity report as a conversation starter.
Every week, parents and kids receive an email with highlights of the child’s digital activity. This creates a great mechanism to drive a conversation between parents and kids about how much time they are spending on their devices and what websites and content they are viewing. Last week, the weekly activity email for my youngest showed that he had spent 30 hours playing Minecraft. Believe me, that started a conversation!
Below you can see an example report that parents and kids receive.
2. Limit screen time for play and make more time for learning.1
In recent months, we have all spent a lot more time at home. This means that my kids have naturally spent more time on their devices. However, much of this time is necessary since their schooling and summer camps have moved to remote learning. One of my favorite features has been the ability to set app and game screen time limits. These limits give my kids the flexibility to be on their devices more for learning but help keep them focused by limiting the amount of time they can spend on other apps and games. My wife and I can also give them more screen time if they run out and request additional time, providing our family with the right level of flexibility for our busy schedule and changing needs.
Below is an example of how parents can set up app limits.
3. Set healthy boundaries with web and search filters.2
This is one of the features that has provided me the most peace of mind. In the past, my seven-year-old son has unknowingly come across some unwelcome search results. With the Family Safety app, we have been using web and search filters to block adult content and set browsing to kid-friendly websites with either allowed or blocked websites list. This feature works in a tight concert with the Microsoft Edge browser on Windows, Xbox, and Android. My son now feels empowered to explore online, knowing we set up a safe place for him to explore and we know he is safer online.
Below is an example of how parents can set up content filters and help ensure a safer web browsing experience.
4. Get purchase request emails to avoid surprise spending3
Have you ever received a credit card bill with a bunch of unexpected app store purchases? I have and it is not a fun surprise! I love that I get an email request before one of my kids can purchase something from the Microsoft Store. This has limited surprises and allowed us to talk about purchases before they happen, instilling more responsible spending habits.
5. Know where your family is when things start to open back up.4
When things eventually open back up, Family Safety will also help you to stay connected in the real world. Location sharing lets you see each of your family members’ last known location on a map and save favorite locations like “home” to see, at a glance, that everyone is safe and sound.
It is also important to me that my family’s privacy is protected. I am not a fan of apps that sell or share my family’s location data to third parties. Microsoft Family Safety provides you full control around how and why data is collected and used. Unlike other location-tracking apps, your family’s location data will not be sold or shared with insurance companies or data brokers.
These are just a few ways my family has benefited from the app. In addition to my own kids’ feedback (and they have a lot!), we have also learned more about what all our other preview users want to see in Family Safety as we evolve the app. Our team has been hard at work making improvements based on this early feedback. Here are just some new user benefits that we have already implemented:
We added a new feature to block or unblock specific apps.
We updated our designs to be more accessible and inclusive (i.e. improved visual contrast to help low vision users and provided additional context for screen reader users).
We added more time options for parents to quickly respond to requests for screen time (i.e. you can now easily add 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, or 3 hours of more of screen time).
We added location clustering to see when multiple family members are at the same location (i.e. when multiple people are in one place you can see that there are 4 people and zoom in to see who it is).
And this is just the beginning. We are excited to launch Family Safety and we will continue to add new features to help you protect your family. In the coming months, we plan to introduce two premium features that will be part of Microsoft 365 Family subscription: (1) drive safety5 to help to build better habits behind the wheel with insights on driving behavior and (2) location alerts to notify you when a family member arrives or departs a specific location. We are also in the process of working to bring digital safety features to iOS to set screen time and content filters on iPhones.
1 Windows, Xbox, and Android apps and games only. 2 Enables SafeSearch with Microsoft Edge on Windows, Xbox, and Android. 3Applies to apps and games downloaded from the Xbox and Microsoft stores; these settings can be managed at family.microsoft.com. 4 Location permissions must be active. 5 Drive Safety features will be available only in the US, UK, AUS, and CA.
With the global pandemic, customers are relying on remote work more than ever, and Windows Virtual Desktop is helping customers rapidly deliver a secure Windows 10 desktop experience to their users. Charlie Anderson, CIO of Fife Council in the United Kingdom, was planning to modernize his companies’ existing Remote Destop Services (RDS) infrastructure, and then business requirements changed. He needed increased agility and scale to meet the changing requirements. In his own words:
“Windows Virtual Desktop was absolutely essential for us in terms of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many, we were faced with a continuity issue unparalleled in recent times. For us, this meant not only the continuation of services we already delivered, but also responding very quickly to new demands arising as a result of our public response to the pandemic.
To do that, we needed to provide as close to the “in-office” experience as we could to a workforce now working away from our offices. This meant multiplying previous remote working capacities by a factor of 15 almost overnight – something which would have been impossible without a scalable and cloud-based approach, which also worked well on a range of Council and self-provided devices.
There is little doubt that the Windows Virtual Desktop solution will not only be vital to the future resilience of our public services to the people of Fife, but it will also form a key part of our future device strategy as we seek to develop new, agile, and cost-effective approaches going forward.“
In April 2020, we released the public preview of Azure portal integration which made it easier to deploy and manage Windows Virtual Desktop. We also announced a new audio/video redirection (A/V redirect) capability that provided seamless meeting and collaboration experience for Microsoft Teams. We are humbled by the amazing feedback we’ve received from you on these capabilities, and that’s been a huge motivation for our team to accelerate development. We are happy to announce that both the Azure portal integration and A/V redirect in Microsoft Teams are now generally available.
Azure portal integration
With the Azure portal integration, you get a simple interface to deploy and manage your apps and virtual desktops. Host pool, workspace, and all other objects you create are Azure Resource Manager objects and are managed the same way you manage other Azure resources.
Customers who have existing deployments based on the previous (classic) model can continue using it. We will soon publish guidance on migrating to the new Azure Resource Manager-based deployment model so you can take advantage of all the new capabilities, including:
Azure role-based access control (RBAC)
You can use Azure RBAC to provide fine-grained access control to your Windows Virtual Desktop resources. There are four built-in admin roles that you can get started with, and you can create custom roles if necessary.
User management
Previously, you could only publish Remote Apps and Desktops to individual users. You can now publish resources to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) groups, which makes it much easier to scale.
Monitoring
The monitoring logs are now stored in Azure Monitor Logs. You can analyze the logs with Log Analytics and create visualizations to help you quickly troubleshoot issues.
A/V redirect for Microsoft Teams
Many of you use Microsoft Teams to collaborate with your colleagues. Traditionally, virtual desktops have not been ideal for audio and video conferencing due to latency issues. That changes with the new A/V redirect feature in Windows Virtual Desktop. Once you enable A/V redirect in the Desktop client for Windows, the audio and video will be handled locally for Microsoft Teams calls and meetings. You can still use Microsoft Teams on Windows Virtual Desktop with other clients without optimized calling and meetings. Microsoft Teams chat and collaboration features are supported on all platforms.
Last June, when I shared the 5 principles driving a customer-obsessed identity strategy at Microsoft, many of you had embraced the idea of a boundaryless environment, but relatively few had implemented it in practice. A global pandemic made remote access essential and forced many of you to accelerate your digital transformation plans.
The new reality requires not only supporting secure remote productivity and collaboration, but also other remote operations, such as onboarding, offboarding, and training employees. And this reality will continue for the near future. According to our most recent Work Life Index, 71 percent of employees and managers (Information Workers) reported a desire to continue working from home at least part-time post-pandemic.
Your experiences and insights have helped shape the investments we’re making in our identity services for the coming year and beyond. Today, I’m sharing with you the updated set of guiding principles we’re following to deliver a secure and scalable identity solution that’s seamless for your end-users.
Secure adaptive access
An identity system that is secure from the ground up continues to drive our product investments. In a recent survey of over 500 security executives, achieving a high level of protection without impeding user productivity was rated the number one challenge. Using risk-based Conditional Access policies in Azure AD, you can protect sensitive data with minimal friction to your end-users. This combines the power of Identity Protection with Conditional Access to only prompt users when the sign-in is considered risky.
To enhance identity security, we’re investing in compromise prevention technologies such as security defaults, attack blocking, and password protection, as well as reputation and anti-abuse systems. Security mechanisms like end-user notifications and in-line interrupts can help everyone defend themselves from malicious actors. Every day, our data scientists and investigators evaluate the threat and log data to gather real-world insights, so they can adjust our machine learning algorithms to recognize and protect our customers from the latest threats.
Our product and ecosystem investments are guided by embracing Zero Trust security strategy as our worldview. We build Azure AD on the principles of Zero Trust to make implementing this model across your entire digital estate achievable at scale.
Seamless user experiences
When your employees need to get things done, delivering a great user experience is essential. Employees who interact directly with customers, patients, and citizens need tools that are simple to learn and use. Because an easy, fast sign-in experience can make all the difference for your users—and your Help Desk—we’re continuing our investments in Firstline Worker scenarios to address the challenges they face, for example, by providing seamless handoffs of shared mobile devices and enhancing tools and workflows for managers.
We’ve seen more interest than ever in minimizing the use of passwords and eliminating them completely. We continue our commitment to identity standards that help scale the technology and make it more useful and accessible for everyone. We’re also developing easy-to-use self-service options for end-users, such as managing security information, requesting access to apps and groups, and getting automatic recommendations for approved applications based on what peers are using most.
Your customers, business partners, and suppliers also deserve a great, consumer-grade sign-in and collaboration experience. With the External Identities feature in Azure AD, we are investing in making it easier for organizations and developers to secure, manage, and build apps that connect with different users outside your organization.
We’re also looking ahead to technologies that respect everyone’s privacy, such as decentralized identity systems and verifiable credentials, that can verify information about an individual without requiring another username and password. Verifiable credentials are based on open standards from W3C and leverage the OIDC protocol, so you will be able to incorporate them into your existing systems.
Unified identity management
It’s hard to scale and manage security when you have overlapping products from multiple vendors that need to work together. You have a portfolio of on-premises and cloud-based applications that you need to manage and provide secure access to your users. We are simplifying these experiences in Azure AD, making it easier to manage all your applications for all your users in a single place. We’re also consolidating our APIs into Microsoft Graph to unify programmatic access to and management of data across workloads in Microsoft 365, including Azure AD.
By embracing open standards, we can help you more easily manage and secure your hybrid environment. We’re working with partners like Box and Workday to further deepen our product integrations and streamline identity processes. Azure AD is pre-integrated with thousands of SaaS applications, and more to come, so you can provide users one set of credentials for secure access to any application. We are continuing to extend capabilities in Azure AD so that you can migrate access for all your applications to be managed in the cloud.
Simplified identity governance
While having the ability to control access requests, approvals, and privileges in a timely and efficient manner is key, traditional identity governance and privileged access management solutions can be cumbersome and inflexible. This is true particularly now that these workflows are more often done remotely than in person. Providing every user access to the apps and files they need should be as simple as defining access packages and group assignments upfront. Onboarding and offboarding employees then become easy with an automated solution connected to your HR system.
We want to help more companies adopt these scenarios and incorporate our machine learning technology in Azure AD to provide better recommendations and alerts in response to unusual behavior or too many unnecessary privileges. Our goal is for these capabilities to span both employee and external identity scenarios, built in the cloud for maximum benefit. This will help strengthen your overall security, efficiency, and compliance.
The last several months have been a whirlwind for all of us. We’re in it with you, committed to helping you on your digital transformation journey. Whatever happens, you can be sure that we’ll continue to listen to your feedback and input, so we can evolve our engineering priorities and principles to help you stay ahead and prepare for what comes next. Thank you for your continued trust!
To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.
First impressions matter. Especially when you’re looking for a job. It’s why we fuss over the right verbs in our résumés and rehearse our introductions. Every detail matters at every stage of the process, and here’s how Microsoft can help.
From a recruiter’s first look at your résumé or LinkedIn profile to job interview tips, Microsoft has what you need to help you present your best self and make that great first impression.
1. Create a well-designed, well-written résumé with Word
Start with Microsoft Word to make a professional-looking résumé that catches a recruiter’s eye.
Word’s free résumé templates are beautifully designed and easily customizable, giving any job seeker a great starting point to stand out from the competition. Let Word take care of the formatting—you can focus on the content. That’s where the Résumé Assistant tool comes in when you have a Microsoft 365 subscription. Integrated as a panel in Word as you edit your file, the tool enables you to look up roles in specific industries to see top skills related to that role.
You can then use them as inspiration for your own description. For example, if you’re seeking a role as a project manager in marketing, you can use Résumé Assistant to receive suggestions regarding work experience summary, skills, and other relevant content available on LinkedIn.
Once you’ve built your résumé, you can use Microsoft Editor to scan your résumé for mistakes. The tool looks out for résumé-specific style issues such as first-person references, vague verbs, awkward expressions, and more. Remember: When it comes to presenting your best self, polish is vital.
2. Build your professional identity with a great LinkedIn profile
These days, recruiters or hiring managers often search the internet for your name when they receive your résumé or are considering you for a role. Make sure they like what they see by making your LinkedIn profile as compelling as possible.
Sure, you may know how to make a résumé. But the next step is about telling a story that says you’re the perfect candidate for the job. What better platform to broadcast it to potential employers than LinkedIn? With 690 million members (and counting), it’s the world’s largest professional network by far. And it’s the first stop for many who want to get connected, stay informed, and get hired.
Tyrona Heath, global lead of LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, offers a few tips on how you can improve your profile:
Add a photo that suits your profession. Did you know adding a photo results in 21 times more profile views and nine times more connection requests?
Draft a compelling summary. This is not only an opportunity to tell your story, but also to weave in searchable keywords based on the job you want.
Detail your work experience. Profiles with more than one position listed are 12 times more likely to be viewed! If you need help writing a description, just use Résumé Assistant.
List your skills. Including at least 5 of your skills gets you up to to 31x more messages from recruiters and others who can help you get ahead.
3. Prepare for your interview with Presenter Coach
Why just rehearse in front of the mirror when all it can do is show your reflection? Instead, you can rehearse and get job interview tips from Presenter Coach, accessible via LinkedIn Interview Prep or PowerPoint! By using artificial intelligence (AI), Presenter Coach can record and give you feedback on your delivery for a presentation, interview or simply how you present yourself. Here are a few things Presenter Coach checks:
Words per minute
Filler words like “ums” and “ers” and frequency
Non-inclusive terms and phrases, like “you guys” or “best man for the job”
Originality, helping you avoid clichéd expressions
Monotone pitch: Presenter Coach can also give tips on varying your tone to avoid boring your audience.
This can be especially good preparation for remote interviews. The first impression potential employers are getting from you will be via video calls and recorded “introductory clips”—so make them count!
