By: Amos Miller, Microsoft AI & Research

Imagine you’re paddling on the lake, you feel the warm sun on your face, listen quietly to the calm ripples of the water. You can hear a sound beacon, in 3D, on the water, just in front of you and over to the right; you know exactly where it is, you steer the kayak towards it, paddle like crazy and catch it, collecting 25 points.

When your ability to perceive the space around you is enhanced in a natural, intuitive way, the urge to get out and enjoy that heightened sense of independence is irresistible. We experienced that feeling a few weeks ago on a beautiful sunny day on Lake Sammamish at the Microsoft Soundscape kayaking PaddlePalooza. What was that all about? Let me share the story.

In my June post, I noted the continued excitement about the Soundscape beacon from people who are blind or have low vision. Many of you have asked to be able to place the Soundscape audio beacon anywhere. In response, we recently introduced Soundscape markers. With Soundscape you can now quickly and easily mark-up anything in your surroundings that you care about. That could be, for example, your front door or the post box at the top of your street, or you can mark-up key landmarks in your area to help with learning a route. You might even mark the entrance to the park or the picnic spot on the lawn.

With your markers in place you can hear them through Soundscape or set a beacon to them, so you can always know where they are. This is a wonderful way for you to personalize the areas you walk in and build up confidence to go beyond what you are familiar with, always knowing that you have your markers for orientation. Do give it a try and tell us what you think. It’s a lot of fun.

We then thought, well, if you can place a marker anywhere what if we marked up a lake and used the markers for orientation on the water while kayaking? Hmmm. Ok, so this sounds new, and we figured it would be something that takes empowerment to a completely new level!

As part of the Microsoft One Week hackathon, we marked up seven virtual beacons on the lake. In partnership with Outdoors For All, we invited a group of people with blindness or low vision to join us for a kayaking scavenger hunt.

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Click here for the audio description of the Soundscape Kayaking Scavenger Hunt video.

Wow! What an extraordinary day. When you wake up in the morning and by the end of the day realize you have done something you never imagined would be possible.

Now for the cool statistics! Of the 13 competing teams, 3 had only sighted paddlers, and 10 had blind or low vision paddlers. 11 of the 13 teams successfully found all seven beacons (covering an area roughly within a circle of 1000 meters in diameter) and scored the maximum points. The winning team completed the course in just 16 minutes!! The best sighted team came in sixth place at 25 minutes!

“We were having a blast, the sun was shining, the water was calm and warm, I had an attentive partner, and I was independently captaining a kayak and successfully found all seven beacons, earning the maximum 140 points in 25 minutes…the exhilaration of being able to compete, to experience the freedom of paddling on the water, and truly being the navigator of our team is something I’ll remember always,” noted Cindy Van Winkle, a participant from the Seattle Lighthouse. You can read more about her experience on her blog.

The kayaking experience motivated us to reflect, once again, on what we mean by the sense of independence and about presence and empowerment. Have people who are blind kayaked before? Sure, they do all the time. However, are they really the driver? On this occasion they indeed were the driver in every sense of the term.

Firstly, in the teams with a paddler who is blind, only the blind participant knew where the beacons were located; the sighted companions had no indication where they were, and therefore they were not able to help. That meant that the paddler who is blind didn’t even need to ask for that independence, it was built into the game. Secondly, the participants didn’t have an agent whispering in their ear, go left a bit, straight, right, nor did they receive any form of instructions they had to listen to and process. Instead, Soundscape, using 3D audio, enabled the participant to effortlessly hear exactly where the beacons were, leaving it for them to decide where to steer. This transfer of control not only creates a true sense of independence, but the participants in fact performed much better. I talk about this phenomenon in my TedX talk where I describe the feeling I had flying a glider.

A few months ago, at an event in Montana I had the pleasure of meeting Sharon. As we made our way out to learn how to use the Soundscape beacon, I noticed that Sharon stayed back. When I checked with her I understood she chose not to join because she is hard of hearing. After we established that she was still able to hear the high pitch of the Soundscape beacon, she gave it a try, and, with her husband walking along with her, off they went and within a few minutes made it to her destination. When I caught up with them I noticed she was overcome with emotion, this had been the first time in many years she truly felt that sense of independence and that she was in the driver’s seat. For her, this is what mattered at that moment, that sense of joy and empowerment; and, knowing that her life would now be different.

There is no greater gift that technology can provide than a true sense of independence.

I must say that the impact the kayak hack has really surprised and motivated us to think about how we can bring Soundscape to more people and more organizations to really benefit from the value it provides and the empowering changes it has started to enable for people. This is something that we are looking into, and if you, or an organization you know, run programs or activities in which you believe Soundscape can help then do get in touch with us at soundscapefeed@microsoft.com.

Before wrapping up let me highlight some of the other recent updates we made to Soundscape:

• We’ve been working to light up the experience while you’re travelling, whether in a bus, a car, or a train. To minimize interruptions and avoid getting in the way of whatever else you may be doing, Soundscape now identifies when you are in a moving vehicle and adjusts callouts to include only major landmarks, and update you only when you change roads.
• Battery savings! You no longer need to close Soundscape to save battery; you can now just select the “Sleep” button on the home screen to stop Soundscape from using GPS and your data plan.
• For our low vision users, you no longer need to hold the phone flat when pressing buttons; instead, you can now bring the phone right up close and press buttons, and everything will continue working correctly.

We can’t wait to hear what you make of them, please do continue to write to us on soundscapefeed@microsoft.com and of course, check our FAQ’s on our website for more detailed information and guidance.

In closing we welcome our friends from down under to the Soundscape community! Soundscape was launched in Australia on September 12, 2018, with a great partnership with Vision Australia and the extended community of people who are blind. Based on our learnings from the launch in Australia we continue to look at how we can bring Soundscape to other countries and aim to support the local language where possible. We will be sure to provide further updates as soon as we can.

We continue to be humbled by the response to Soundscape, we recognize that this is just the start and there is more work to be done; but please keep the feedback coming, on anything from the app, to the content we produce, to the way we can engage with you. Let’s continue to empower everyone, everywhere with the benefits of technology.

Amos and the Soundscape team.

Microsoft Soundscape is available for free on iOS and iPhone in the US, UK and Australia.

As the software industry shifts to running software in the cloud, organizations are looking to migrate existing applications from on-premises to the cloud. Last week at Microsoft’s Ignite conference, Paul Yuknewicz and I delivered a talk focused on how to get started migrating applications to Azure (watch the talk free) where we walked through the business case for migrating to the cloud, and choosing the right hosting and data services.

If your application is a candidate for running in App Service, one of the most useful pieces of technology that we showed was Hybrid Connections. Hybrid Connections let you host a part of your application in Azure App Service, while calling back into resources and services not running in Azure (e.g. still on-premises). This enables you to try running a small part of your application in the cloud without the need to move your entire application and all of its dependencies at once; which is usually time consuming, and extremely difficult to debug when things don’t work. So, in this post I’ll show you how to host an ASP.NET front application in the cloud, and configure a hybrid connection to connect back to a service on your local machine.

Publishing Our Sample App to the Cloud

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to use the Smart Hotel 360 App sample that uses an ASP.NET front end that calls a WCF service which then accesses a SQL Express LocalDB instance on my machine.

Advances in technology have instigated a substantial shift in consumer expectations. Today’s financial services customers demand access to a range of services, real-time updates and a seamless customer experience. At Open FinTech Forum, I will provide some insight into Spotcap’s approach to credit risk assessment using text mining and machine learning.

A recent survey by Oracle found, that although customers are generally satisfied with basic banking services, their satisfaction drops when attempting more complex transactions such as securing a loan. We have observed the same sentiment across the business community. This is why, at Spotcap, we’ve turned tradition on its head and created a more efficient take on business loans.

We undertake cash flow based, rather than credit-score based underwriting, and use technology to speed up the process. Combining tried and tested credit assessment principles with innovative technology such as our automated data scraping services, machine learning credit models, and skilled human analysts enables us to offer a more efficient take on business loans.

Machine learning credit algorithms

Our risk assessment utilizes numerous sources but relies heavily on three main sources – borrower profile, bank account, and business profile – and is supported by a set of machine learning credit algorithms. This approach allows us to accurately and fairly assess how a business is performing today, and make a prediction about its future performance.  

Whilst we feed our models with hundreds of data points sourced from credit bureaus, tax agencies, business records and the applicants themselves, it is bank account transactional data that often paints the most accurate picture.

Spotcap’s Bank Account Model incorporates more than 200 numerical variables. Business bank account data, when structured correctly, is one of the strongest sources of predictive information for short-term lending and risk mitigation. We construct the raw data found in a bank account into a form of variables enabling us to derive meaningful insights.  

We have also developed bank account text mining tools to identify key negative factors such as payment reversals, late fees and collections transactions.However, this requires a supervised approach to minimize the risk of false positives.

The more data you feed into your machine learning models, the more accurate will be your results. But it’s not only about quantity, it’s primarily the quality of data that matters. Well specified machine learning models can help lenders make faster and more informed decisions. However, even the most powerful machine learning algorithm will fail if applied to data with measurement error. The better your understanding of your data, the more accurate and insightful your results. Our underwriters and data scientists continuously add new knowledge and risk drivers to our models to get even more precise outcomes.

It’s all about automating the right parts of your analysis and remembering that human interaction is important at every stage of the model life cycle because we’re dealing with real people and real businesses, which are by nature complex. Human expertise combined with advanced technology enables us to make accurate, yet flexible credit decisions within one day.

We hope to see you at Open FinTech Forum for an informative and high-value event. Sign up to receive updates on Open FinTech Forum:

“What if I never learn to read?”

This question was posed by eight-year old Fatima to her mom, Tasneem, after coming home from school in tears because she was struggling to read aloud in class.

Fatima has dyslexia, a term used to describe disorders that involve difficulty learning to read or interpret words, letters, and other symbols. She was diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age after her teachers noticed that she was mispronouncing certain names and words.

Fatima’s mom explained to her that children learn in different ways and having dyslexia doesn’t mean she is “stupid” or “dumb”.  She assured Fatima that she is just as intelligent as the other children, and explained that many people who struggled with dyslexia had gone on to have successful careers, like Albert Einstein, who became the world’s most renowned physicist.

That was nine years ago.

Now Fatima reads with the assistance of sophisticated technology called Immersive Reader. Immersive Reader is a Microsoft Learning Tool that empowers students with challenges like dyslexia, dysgraphia (the inability to write coherently) and Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD) to improve their reading and writing skills. It’s currently used by more than 13 million students around the world and has been shown to increase student test scores by as much as 10 percent.

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Technology gives all students a leg up

It’s clear that our world is changing faster than ever. Just a decade ago, a child such as Fatima, who struggled to read or write, didn’t have the opportunities technology provides now.

For countries in the Middle East and Africa, where vast disparities in educational opportunities exist, technology offers many teachers and students access to tools and content that would otherwise be out of reach. Mobile technology in particular is poised to revolutionise education in the region, as more students in emerging economies use their cell phones as learning devices.

At the Likoni School for the Blind in Kenya, over 500 visually impaired children are using assistive technology to access richer digital learning content.  And in Sharjah City in the United Arab Emirates, the Al Amal School for the Deaf is also using technology to help teachers build more engaging lessons, create sign-language videos and facilitate independent learning.

According to Afaf Haridi, principal of Al Amal School for the Deaf, “The children are gaining skills that they can use in the professional world. All in all, the initiative we rolled out with the help of Microsoft hasn’t just improved classroom learning—it has also created an amazing bond between the school and our students.”

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No one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning

However, the benefits of integrating technology in the classroom don’t only apply to children who have disabilities. Technology is improving overall learning outcomes by meeting the needs of different learning styles of students.

The days of the “one-size-fits-all” educational model are numbered. Today’s educators have more tools and resources at their disposal than ever before, meeting the diverse needs of their students and helping them succeed both inside and outside the classroom.

Teaching for success: Integrating tech into the different learning styles

Students enter the classroom with a wide range of learning styles and abilities, as well as their own unique personalities. To help them grasp new concepts, a fundamental understanding of the learning styles is essential. But it’s sometimes difficult for teachers to accommodate each student individually within the traditional classroom setting.

Fortunately, technology is providing teachers with accessible solutions that support a more personalised and inclusive approach to learning.

In general terms, learning styles refer to the ways in which learners understand, process and remember new information. The most popular learning styles include: visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic

For example, visual learners respond best to pictures and videos. Incorporating a tool like Picture Dictionary into the classroom gives these learners the ability to see a picture and hear the word simultaneously aiding reading comprehension.

Nikki Heyman, a speech and language therapist in South Africa, uses technology to visually represent concepts to children. “Having material at hand because of access to technology is fantastic. There may be a word or a concept that a child doesn’t understand, and technology allows you to provide the child with an immediate visual image of the word,” she says.

Auditory learners, on the other hand, learn best through audible signals, storytelling and music. A tool like Dictation in Office is a simple yet transformative tool that helps students of all abilities write freely by speaking into a microphone. In addition, with Skype, students can connect with classrooms around the world. Foreign language teachers can also use Skype to connect their class with native speakers of the language which can help students develop their conversational skills.

Kinesthetic learners prefer acting and role-playing. A great way to enhance the learning outcomes of these types of learners is to incorporate mixed reality into the classroom. Mixed reality helps transform classrooms by enabling students to experience curricula in completely new ways. Students can immerse themselves in the subject matter in a truly engaging way.

For example, with Microsoft’s mixed reality HoloTour, students can explore the beauty and history of Rome or uncover the hidden secrets of Machu Picchu. They can experience a whole new world with a unique combination of 360-degree video, spatial sound, and holographic scenery.

For tactile students who prefer to learn by touch, mixed reality lets them experience 3D content creation. With Masterpiece VR, students can sculpt and paint using intuitive and dynamic features that assist students build tangible objects, colourful environments and high quality models.

Minecraft: Education Edition is another great tool for all types of learners as it teaches creativity, collaboration and even coding. Minecraft: Education Edition is used to teach all types of subjects, from mathematics and physics to history and languages. Today, the game has more than four million licensed users in 115 countries. Educators have created more than 250 free lesson plans spanning a variety of subjects and over 300 educators around the world are trained as Minecraft mentors to help others get started.

Giving a voice to more children

According to Heyman, “The biggest revolution in technology for me is the ability to give more children a voice. In the past children with complex needs were written off because they could not communicate.”

However, she believes that there are still challenges that need to be overcome before technology can be used to its full potential in the classroom. “There are many teachers who are reluctant to change from the ‘old school’ style of teaching for fear of the unknown and having to learn new skills. Also, placing a device in front of a child and expecting them to just use it, is not going to happen. They need to be taught how to use it, and this takes time, resources and practice. It needs buy-in from everyone in the environment to be successful,” she says.

This sentiment is echoed by Michele Botha, a primary school assessment specialist for the Independent Examinations Board in South Africa. Botha believes that using technology in teaching to enhance the learning experience demands a high level of understanding and skill – it cannot be left to intuition.

She also believes that the reason education is still playing catch up with the digital world, particularly in the MEA region, is because education is generally more conservative in its approach to change than other workplaces.

“By its very nature education is dependent on a deeply personal relationship of trust and care. Additionally, there is sometimes a lack of money, teacher training, confidence in use of technology, inadequate infrastructure and poor connectivity, which are also contributing factors,” she says.

Technology now for students in the future

The role of the teacher is to prepare the future generations. The biggest question facing educators now is what skills today’s children will need to be ready by the time they graduate, and how can technology support their educational journey?

To answer these critical questions, Microsoft launched a key piece of research: “The class of 2030 and life-ready learning: The technology imperative.” The research interviewed more than 70 thought leaders around the world, reviewed 150 pieces of existing research, and surveyed 2 000 teachers and 2 000 students.

The research highlights personalised learning as an approach which supports skills development — both cognitive as well as social and emotional. The students were also clear: they want to develop these skills to navigate their own learning – to explore and make choices that unlock their curiosity and potential – and they want teachers who know and understand them as individuals.

Three technologies were highlighted in the research as showing great promise to support social and emotional skill development and personalised learning. These are collaborative platforms, mixed reality and analytics powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Technology can’t substitute the teacher

According to Botha, technology is not the silver bullet with which to solve all education problems. “It’s just another tool in a teacher’s toolbox. A teacher’s power lies in the opportunities he or she creates for learners to solve problems in an environment grounded in strong interpersonal relationships.”

“Good teachers have always finessed the technology available to them to create spaces where learning to think, learning to learn and creativity are paramount. Technology is only an asset when it’s added into this mix,” she concludes.

Assault Spy / アサルトスパイ is Now Available on Steam!

Dash, evade, and smash your way to the truth as the corporate spy, Asaru; or the reckless CIA agent, Amelia! Uncover the dark secrets of the Negabot mega corporation as you save the company from a hostile takeover. Assault Spy is a stylish, fast paced, pure-action game with a dash of comedy.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has banned over 13 million players since the game’s publisher started sharing ban numbers in June 2017.

That 13 million figure comes courtesy of a Reddit post spotted by Eurogamer that added up (and made a nifty chart out of) the publicly disclosed ban numbers that PUBG Corp’s parent company Bluehole shares online.

The data, and the resulting graph, offers developers a slightly more detailed look at the war PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has been fighting against cheaters since the game kicked off the current battle royale boom. 

Those 13 million permanent bans have been dished out across 69 weekly waves of bans. The original post from the Reddit user sjk045 features a spreadsheet of each week’s ban numbers as well that shows a peak of 1,010,163 cheaters banned during Bluehole’s 42nd weekly ban session.

The post also notes that this latest week, week 69, is the only time since week 25 that under 100,000 cheaters have been caught and banned.