Go ahead and call me weird, but of all the Mixed Reality demos I did at this year’s Build, the one I found most fun had me repairing an electric panel.

To understand the deep sense of satisfaction I experienced when the pretend machinery setup at the Seattle Sheraton hummed to life, you first have to understand how utterly useless I am at any sort of DIY, so even though I’d been guided through the procedure step-by-step, I felt a real sense of accomplishment at the end, even if it was all make-believe.

What is different about this is that apart from being more polished and integrating more collaborative features in one place via Microsoft Teams it also plugs into the company’s strategic focus on AI
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I was trying out the Microsoft Remote Assist feature, a HoloLens app (although the functionality also works on PCs. Phones and tablets) designed to help Firstline workers collaborate remotely with hands-free video calling, image sharing, and a full complement of Mixed Reality annotations. That type of use case is not new in itself, as HoloLens works with Skype out of the box which of course enables you to video call someone have them “see through your eyes” and offer advice on what you should do. In fact, German manufacturing giant Thyssenkrupp has been using that functionality to improve the efficiency of their elevator repair crews for well over a year now.

What is different about this is that apart from being more polished and integrating more collaborative features in one place via Microsoft Teams it also plugs into the company’s strategic focus on AI. The idea is that as more enterprise customers use the service the system will be able to learn from the data and optimize the experience (for example, recommending the best expert to contact depending on the type of problem encountered and real-time availability, taking into account what time zones each user is in, etc.)

The other advantage for enterprise customers looking to use the service is that Microsoft promises to provide all this with advanced identity and security measures
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The remote expert I had on video call not only told me what to do based on what I was seeing via the HoloLens, but was also able to look up and pin a schematic map to the wall next to me
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The other advantage for enterprise customers looking to use the service is that Microsoft promises to provide all this with advanced identity and security measures, which in settings where it might be a concern to share plans and reference materials relating to industrial processes.

A similar demo I tried in Seattle was from 3D app developer Taqtile, which generates step-by-step instructions supported by images, videos, text and holograms, all integrated into real-world physical actions. So here I had no input from a person, but (in spite of being that person who follows the LEGO instructions to the letter and ends up with a wonky masterpiece every time) but still managed to navigate the process so that at the end – lo and behold – the light switched on! It’s all about those simple pleasures.

Taqtile’s interface makes it easy for anybody to create such a list of instructions, which can then be used in a variety of scenarios from training to verification and compliance.

In the United States Air Force, for example, jet engine mechanics are not allowed to use operational airplanes for training. Some bases have training engines available, but these don’t necessarily match the aircrafts they would be called upon to repair, and many are restricted to learning from manuals and other supporting documentation, with their first hands-on experience being when they’re actually performing those tasks on planes that are in service.

This training allows students to practice alongside a physical training engine or a virtual 3D holographic one, which means they are physically performing and rehearsing those actions and building muscle memory
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This step-by-step training, however, allows those same students to practice alongside a physical training engine or a virtual 3D holographic one, which means they are physically performing and rehearsing those actions, building muscle memory and improving their confidence and knowledge retention.

Mixed reality applications such as these can help address a cross-industry challenge of productivity growth plateau
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Those materials can also be used by fully trained technicians to walk through a job and tick each step off the list. A mechanic in the field can select an appropriate job from the work order system, and will be provided with step-by-step instructions (overlaid on the physical equipment) on how to complete the job, which they can check off as they complete each task. The instructions include media such as video, audio, and images, and can link to external information as well as 3D models of the equipment’s “digital twin” and sub-parts.

While I enjoy a good VR rollercoaster or a spell of realistic zombie-blasting as much as the next gal, I do think these are the sort of practical, functional experiences that will sustain the growth of immersive technology
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For example, rather than having to rifle through a binder to find the appropriate Material Safety Data Sheet, the mechanic can access it directly from the relevant step in the tutorial. The inspector function allows a supervisor or compliance technician to review the mechanic’s work. The inspector can bring up the job completed by the technician, and can walk through step-by-step to ensure that everything was executed properly.

Mixed reality applications such as these can really help address a cross-industry challenge, a so-called plateau in productivity growth which results from a decline in number of skilled workers and increase in demand for maintenance and inspection expertise.

Taqtile’s interface makes it easy for anybody to create such a list of instructions, which can then be used in a variety of scenarios from training to verification and compliance.
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So while I enjoy a good VR rollercoaster or a spell of realistic zombie-blasting as much as the next gal, I do think these are the sort of practical, functional experiences that will sustain the growth of immersive technology while consumers wrap their heads around how it fits into their day-to-day lives. These applications give companies an immediate and often dramatic return on their investment, and – if my own experience is anything to go on – they can also be rather fun.

Microsoft Introduces HoloLens Mixed Reality To The Job Site via @alicebonasio https://t.co/XPDbk7Uqg9 pic.twitter.com/1jsHLVehy9

— VRScout (@VRScout) May 10, 2018

To find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your enterprise, Tech Trends offers bespoke Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Mixed Reality Lending a Helping Hand appeared first on Tech Trends.

Google harnesses the power of photos and street view to deliver simplified VR development for teachers and students.

The benefits of using immersive technologies as teaching tools have been widely documented and extensively discussed, specially in recent years with the rapid development of Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed reality hardware and applications.

The benefits of using immersive technologies as teaching tools have been widely documented and extensively discussed
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Yet the biggest obstacle that often keeps teachers from adopting these technologies in the classroom is not necessarily cost – there are, after all, many entry-level budget ways of experiencing Virtual Reality which use fairly pervasive and accessible mobile technology such as the Google Cardboard – but the lack of relevant content with which educators and learners alike can identify beyond the level of an amusing novelty.

Many educators and academics do believe that this technology will eventually become as commonplace as computers and mobile phones are today:

Speaking at the Global Education and Skills Forum in March, Jakki Bailey – a researcher from The University of Texas at Austin who focuses on the psychological and social experiences of Virtual Reality – said that as the technology becomes more affordable, it will seamlessly intersect with the physical world. Whereas now we tend to refer to the physical and digital worlds as separate entities, we are inexorably moving towards a blending of the two. This is the new reality that educators need to prepare themselves to proactively use it rather than reactively adapt to it.

Technology companies are also recognizing the need to better enable the creation of content that will empower teachers to leverage the benefits of the technology in a coherent pedagogical context. At its annual I/O Developer Conference in Mountain View, California Google announced the launch of Tour Creator, a new tool that easily allows anyone to create interactive content in Virtual Reality.

Much as the Internet facilitated broader access to knowledge, Immersive technologies could enable broader access to experience
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Educators and academics believe that Immersive technology will become as commonplace as computers and mobile phones today
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This follows from the company’s introduction three years ago of Google’s initial foray in educational VR – Google Expeditions – which first introduced the idea of taking students on virtual reality field trips using basic equipment such as Google Cardboard. Since 2015, Google Expeditions has brought students to places like the Burj Khalifa, Antarctica, and Machu Picchu with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).

Tour Creator builds upon this success – over three million students used the service so far – by allowing people to create and customize their own experiential content. As Jen Zurawski, an educator with Wisconsin’s West De Pere School District, puts it: “With Expeditions, our students had access to a wide range of tours outside our geographical area, but we wanted to create tours here in our own community.”

Using simplified web-based interfaces, Tour Creator is meant to be an accessible tool for everyone, regardless of their experience or technical background. Users simply search across Google Street View for their desired locations – or upload their own 360-degree photos – and easily stitch that content together to form “scenes” to which they can add various interactive elements such as buttons that activate additional information at certain points within the scene, and embed the whole experience onto the school’s website, for instance.

“Being able to work with Tour Creator has been an awesome experience,” says Jennifer Newton, a school media coordinator in Georgia. “It has allowed our students from a small town in Georgia to tell our story to the world.”

“As the technology progresses it will become more affordable and more integrated into our everyday lives. Just as most people here are carrying some sort of smartphone, the next step will be some sort of augmented reality device, so that will filter down into classrooms as well,” adds Dr Dimitri Amiras, a consultant at Imperial College who has been working on clinical and training applications of Microsoft’s HoloLens Mixed Reality technology who also participated in the discussion at GESF examining the future of immersive technologies in learning environments.

Much in the same way as the widespread adoption of the Internet facilitated broader access to knowledge, Immersive technologies could enable broader and more egalitarian access to experience. However, this potential can only be realized once both content and hardware becomes universally accessible, and initiatives such as these by Google help teachers advance towards that goal

“The technology gets out of the way and enables students to focus on crafting fantastic visual stories,” explains Charlie Reisinger, a Pennsylvania educator. And that, in fact, is the ultimate goal of any transformative technology. For as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put it in his keynote at Microsoft Build in Seattle this week (quoting the father of ubiquitous computing Mark Weiser) “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of our daily lives.”

This article was originally published on IDG Connect

Empowering educators to create immersive learning experiences, by @alicebonasio from @CIOonline https://t.co/HRC0SuUFOv

— IDG Contributor Network (@IDGCN) May 11, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Creating Immersive Learning Experiences appeared first on Tech Trends.

Market Opportunity Meets Corporate Responsibility in Microsoft’s New Strategy.

With a Billion people worldwide living with some form of disability, there is tremendous scope for the development of assistive technologies – a market expected be worth over $26 Billion by 2024.

In the next 10 years, billions of IoT smart devices will be connected. AI will enable these devides to listen, see, reason and predict without a 24/7 dependence on the cloud (this physical interface between humans and machines is what Microsoft terms the “intelligent edge”) and the average smart home will generate around 50GB of data every single day.

In the next 10 years, billions of IoT smart devices will be connected. AI will enable these devides to listen, see, reason and predict without a 24/7 dependence on the cloud
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The AI for Accessibility program will provide seed grants of technology to developers, universities, nongovernmental organizations and inventors
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“AI can be a game changer for people with disabilities. Already we’re witnessing this as people with disabilities expand their use of computers to hear, see and reason with impressive accuracy,” explains Brad Smith, President and CLO at Microsoft.

This week at the company’s annual Build developer conference in Seattle, Microsoft announced the launch of AI for Accessibility, a new $25 million 5-year program aimed at accelerating the development of accessible and intelligent AI solutions. The aim is to enable disabled users to achieve more in three specific scenarios: Employment, Modern Life and Human Connection. The program comprises grants, technology investments and expertise, with innovations integrated into Microsoft Cloud services.

“Around the world, only one in 10 people with disabilities has access to assistive technologies and products. By making AI solutions more widely available, we believe technology can have a broad impact on this important community,” says Smith.

The AI for Accessibility program will provide seed grants of technology to developers, universities, nongovernmental organizations and inventors taking an AI-first approach focused on creating solutions in those areas.

It will also identify projects that show the most promise and make larger investments of technology and access to Microsoft AI experts to help bring them to scale, as well as working with external partners to incorporate AI innovations into platform level services.

We've started to see the impact AI can have accelerating accessible tech
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The aim is to enable disabled users to achieve more in three specific scenarios: Employment, Modern Life and Human Connection
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The Program will be run by Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft’s Chief Accessibility Officer, who has been credited with achieving a cultural change change within the company. Lay-Flurrie, who is deaf, was named a “Champion of Change” by the White House for her work and created a hiring program through which the company identifies and trains people with autism.

“We have started to see the impact AI can have in accelerating accessible technology. Microsoft Translator is today empowering people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing with real-time captioning of conversations. Helpicto, an application that turns voice commands into images, is enabling children in France with autism to better understand situations and communicate with others,” says Smith.

How that works in practice was poignantly showcased during Monday’s keynote, where Eric Bridges, CEO of the American Council of the Blind, talked about using the Seeing AI talking camera app on a daily basis to help his three-year-old son, Tyler to complete his schoolwork. Eric now uses the app to scan Tyler’s work so he can review it, but just two years ago, that same interaction would have required the assistance of a sighted person. Technology has, quite literally, removed that barrier so that a father can interact directly with his child, and that’s the fundamental call to action that the program is putting out for developers, NGO’s, academics, researchers and inventors – to accelerate their work for people with disabilities as they develop new technology products.

But while all this brings enormous possibilities for supporting vulnerable people and assisting disabled users in their everyday lives, Smith stresses that by innovating for people with disabilities, they are better innovating for us all – something that Engineer Katie Sullivan helped to demonstrate on stage at Build.

The Microsoft Build demo showcased how AI would help facilitate better collaboration and efficiencies in the workplace, using features such as facial recognition, live caption and translation technology
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The live demo involved showcasing how AI would help facilitate better collaboration and efficiencies in the workplace, using features such as facial recognition, live caption and translation technology. Sullivan joined the meeting with her sign language interpreter at a later stage, and remarked that the fact that the meeting was being captioned allowed her to participate more fully as she didn’t have to worry about constantly taking notes. Although that might prove more difficult for someone with a disability such as hers, it is certainly something that most people would find rather useful in such a scenario.

“By ensuring that technology fulfills its promise to address the broadest societal needs, we can empower everyone – not just individuals with disabilities – to achieve more,” Smith concludes.

Can AI make the world a more inclusive place? https://t.co/nUEd8z6bjg

— TNW Contributors (@TNWcontributors) May 10, 2018

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post AI for Accessibility appeared first on Tech Trends.

Live from Seattle, Tech Trends scoops up all the tastiest bites from the #MSBuild2018 developer’s conference.

“We need to ask ourselves not only what computers can do, but what they should do,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in his opening keynote at Build.

The era of the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge is upon us
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Addressing an audience of over five thousand developers in Seattle’s Washington Convention Center, Nadella struck a soberly optimistic note; on the one hand insisting on the message he delivered last year about the great transformative power of technology, but also highlighting the monumental challenges that come with its rapid development.

“These advancements create incredible developer opportunity and also come with a responsibility to ensure the technology we build is trusted and benefits all.”

With customers in control, privacy is preserved
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It was clear that the Facebook scandal was top of mind here, even if (unsurprisingly) it wasn’t directly referenced as Nadella advocated for the need to put customers in control and safeguard privacy, or said that “GDPR is good, solid regulation and we’re working hard to build the compliance infrastructure.” He stressed, however, that it was just the beginning, as the work was never going to be done: “we’re going to continuously work to preserve privacy, this is just the starting point.”

As cloud based applications scale and power AI experiences, we have come to a place where you need data at planet scale and performance
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Ethical AI

By 2020, the average person will generate 1.5GB of data a day, a smart home 50GB and a smart city, a whopping 250 petabytes of data per day. This data – as the Cambridge Analytica debacle proved all too painfully – gives developers a tremendous amount of power, and responsibility.

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of our daily lives
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Microsoft sees the “intelligent cloud” as the backbone of this revolution. In the next 10 years, billions of everyday devices will become “smart” – being able to see, listen, reason, predict and more, without a 24/7 dependence on the cloud. This is what they call the “intelligent edge” – the interface between computers and the real world. Within that vision, Azure is being built as “the world’s computer,” a ubiquitous computing fabric that would allow Microsoft to meet the digital sovereignty and regulatory needs of their customers while delivering the benefits of innovation.

“Artificial intelligence has truly replaced Windows as Microsoft’s key platform for developers,” says Nick McQuire, VP of Enterprise Research at CCS Insight. “The majority of developer focus will shift from operating systems to artificial intelligence platforms as they increasingly look to intelligence services that span all devices including Internet of things. Its intelligent cloud and intelligent edge strategy is a much more compelling proposition for developers which will continue to define its corporate strategy for the next several years.”

McQuire points to the fact that this follows similar moves made by Amazon Web Services over the past 12 months, and sees it as a clear statement of intent at gaining developer mindshare against Google ahead of its own developer event, Google I/O which also happens this week.

It’s all about putting people – rather than devices – at the centre
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Kinect gets a Second Life

The Kinect was the first commercial device to integrated speech, gaze and vision, and since its launch a broad range of industrial applications – from security to manufacturing and healthcare – have been developed for it, and the technology has also been incorporated in devices such as the HoloLens.

Microsoft want to enable developers to reach customers in a multi-sense, multi-device way
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Sensor technology has come a long way since then, however, and Microsoft now wants to combine those capabilities with Azure AI services such as Machine Learning, Cognitive Services, and IoT Edge. Project Kinect for Azure will be a package of sensors – with extra wide field of view – capable of inputting fully articulated hand tracking and high-fidelity special mapping. It will include a next-generation depth camera, with onboard compute designed for AI on the Edge, what Microsoft calls “ambient intelligence,” meaning the device’s ability to scan and make sense of its surroundings by contextualizing cloud and spatially scanned datain real-time. Which is all incredibly exciting, but as a Mixed Reality fan, they frankly had me at “Extra wide Field of View”.

Microsoft had me at ‘extra wide FOV’
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Lorraine Bardeen, GM Studio Manager, also introduced two new Mixed Reality Products during the keynote: Microsoft Remote Assist – which allows customers to better collaborate remotely with heads-up, hands-free video calling, image sharing, and mixed-reality annotations – and Microsoft Layout, which lets you import 3-D models to create room layouts in real-world scale, experience designs as high-quality holograms in physical space or in virtual reality. With a potential market of 2 billion first-line workers, this is a huge opportunity, Bardeen told developers.

Alexa+Cortana = BFFs

Microsoft was keen to show how it’s been fostering collaborations across the board in an effort to make its platform play nicely with pretty much anyone. It announced that the open-sourcing the Azure IoT Edge to allow developers to develop more easily for it, and then went on to treat us to a very well-choreographed demo introduced by Nadella, who said they’d been working with “their friends across the lake” to bring Alexa and Cortana together.

The whole world is becoming a computer
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Tom Taylor – SVP of Amazon Alexa, then came on stage together with his Microsoft counterpart to show how Cortana and Alexa could be “intelligent friends,” helping their users with different sorts of tasks and collaborating seamlessly with each other as well as their humans. As always you have to wonder how consistently and smoothly these things would work day-to-day, but it did make the audience giggle and in a divided world, all this talk of friendship and collaboration gives you a warm fuzzy feeling…

We’re ready and comfortable for the #msbuild2018 keynote from @satyanadella pic.twitter.com/x7fVQi2Hoo

— TechTrends (@techtrends_tech) May 7, 2018

Main #Build2018 announcements

• Following last year’s announcement of AI for Earth – a program to apply artificial intelligence towards unlocking solutions to climate, water, agriculture, and biodiversity issues facing the planet – Microsoft is now expanding that model with a new $25 million 5-year program called AI for Accessibility, aimed at accelerating development of accessible and intelligent AI solutions to benefit over one billion people around the world who live with disabilities.
• The world’s biggest drone company, DJI announced a commercial partnership with Microsoft to co-develop solutions leveraging Azure IoT Edge and Microsoft’s AI services across new scenarios such as agriculture, construction and public safety. They will create a new SDK for Windows 10 PCs to bring full flight control and real-time data transfer capabilities to nearly 700M Windows 10 connected devices globally.
• A joint effort with Qualcomm to create a vision AI developer kit running Azure IoT Edge which makes available the key hardware and software required to develop camera-based IoT solutions. The camera can also power advanced Azure services, such as machine learning, stream analytics and cognitive services that can be downloaded from the cloud to run locally on the edge.
• Speech Devices SDK delivering audio processing from multichannel sources for more accurate speech recognition, including noise cancellation and far-field voice. With this, developers can build a variety of voice-enabled scenarios like drive-thru ordering systems, in-car or in-home assistants, smart speakers, and other digital assistants.
• A preview of Project Brainwave – an architecture for deep neural net processing – is now available on Azure and on the edge, and makes it the fastest cloud to run real-time AI.
• Azure Cognitive Services updates include a unified Speech service with improved speech recognition and text-to-speech, which support customized voice models and translation.
• New updates to Bot Framework and Cognitive Services will power the next generation of conversational bots enabling richer dialogs, and full personality and voice customization to match the company’s brand identity.
• Azure Search with Cognitive Services integration – combining AI with indexing technologies so it’s possible to quickly find information via text or images.
• Partnership with GitHub that brings the power of Azure DevOps services to GitHub customers, including integration with Visual Studio App Center.
• The Microsoft Azure Blockchain Workbench makes it easier to develop blockchain applications by stitching together an Azure-supported blockchain network with cloud services.
• Power BI Visualizations makes it possible for developers to extend the custom visuals created for Power BI to Excel.

• A new way to connect your phone to your PC with Windows 10 that enables instant access to text messages, photos and notifications – imagine being able to quickly drag and drop your phone’s photos into a document on your PC in one swift movement — without having to take your phone out of your pocket.
• Microsoft 365 currently has 135M commercial monthly active users and nearly 700M Windows 10 connected devices. The suite of new features announced at Build are aimed at better blending between web and application environments for end users and developers and enabling developers to create experiences

Technology can be a force multiplier is unlocking solutions for some of the biggest challenges facing society
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Remember you can find out more about Build and watch the live keynotes here and play the Microsoft Build announcements bingo with the card below!

The world is a computer, filled with an incredible amount of data
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For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Power and Responsibility: Highlights from Microsoft Build appeared first on Tech Trends.

We’re heading back to Seattle for Microsoft’s flagship developer conference and one of the biggest events in the tech calendar – Microsoft Build.

Watch the Livestream of the keynotes below!

 

Time flies when you’re having fun, and it definitely doesn’t seem like a year since Tech Trends was last at the Washington Convention Center for Microsoft Build 2017.

Tech Trends is really excited to find out more about what @Microsoft is planning on the #MixedReality front #MSBuild
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#MSBuild will take place from the 7th-9th May 2018, see you in Seattle!
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This year’s conference promises more of the same in terms of high profile speakers and big announcements, as well as a continued focus on the mission of “empowering every developer on the planet” and delivering an “Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge.” With a few curve balls thrown in such as their Search and Rescue Challenge:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, will take your coding prowess to new heights, literally. The Search and Rescue Challenge at Microsoft Build will be an exercise in problem-solving, cunning strategy and daring application of your potentially life-saving techniques. You will develop a custom vision model that will optimize the tools on board our search and rescue mission drones.

#TechTrends will be covering all the latest #MSBuild news and announcements
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But as exciting as all of that is – we will of course be covering all the major news as they unfold as we did last year – we’re very much hoping for a chance to delve a bit deeper into Microsoft’s Mixed Reality strategy, including details about the highly anticipated next version of the HoloLens, and plans for developing their recently acquired Social Virtual Reality platform AltspaceVR.

For those not able to make it to the conference in person, Microsoft is also going to be setting up live streaming and interactive events, so be sure to check out their Microsoft Build Live free digital gathering for details.

Microsoft Build takes place from the 7th to 9th May 2018 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. Watch this space for the latest news and if you fancy meeting us there be sure to reach out on Twitter @techtrends_tech using the #MSBuild hashtag!

#MSBuild is more than 350+ sessions of learning, it’s chatting with thousands of other #devs or as we like to call them, not-yet-friends. Come join the fun: https://t.co/vh8hDFAs89 pic.twitter.com/L2yzSvn9fG

— Microsoft Developer (@msdev) April 6, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Tech Trends at #MSBuild 2018! appeared first on Tech Trends.

After a fantastic #MSBuild2017 Tech Trends is heading back to Seattle for the Imagine Cup

Now in its 15^th year, the Microsoft Imagine Cup brings together some of the world’s smartest students to create solutions with the potential for global impact. 54 teams from all around the world will come together at Microsoft’s Redmond HQ to compete now only for a $100,000 prize, but also a $120,000 Azure grant and a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself.

The Microsoft Imagine Cup finals will take place on July 27th
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The finals will take place on July 27^th and we’ll be covering the stories and projects in more detail then, but in the meantime, meet the teams below!

I wish all the teams traveling to Seattle the best of luck. I can’t wait to see what they’ve got in store for us!

You won’t want to miss any of the action, so be sure to tune into the Imagine Cup Championship via a special webcast at 9 a.m. PT on July 27 on Microsoft Imagine.

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedInand follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Tech Trends @ Microsoft Imagine Cup 2017 appeared first on Tech Trends.

At Microsoft Build 2017 there was a focus on Artificial Intelligence as an enabler of widespread creativity across all industries.

It is hardly surprising that Artificial Intelligence was a major focus of Microsoft’s Build 2017 conference. In fact, given the rapid advancements in all areas of AI technology and the raging debates about if – or rather, when – robots will take over our jobs, it would be surprising if one of the world’s biggest technology companies weren’t thinking about these problems in a big way.

AI has the potential to disturb every industry
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When Harry Shum – Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s AI and Research group – took to the main stage on Monday, he talked about how soon it will be almost impossible to imagine a technology that doesn’t tap into the power of AI in one way or another. What made this possible, he continued, was the convergence of three forces – increased cloud computing power, algorithms running off deep neural networks, and access to massive datasets. This means that AI does indeed have the potential to disturb every single industry and process out there.

Microsoft wants to use AI to amplify human ingenuity
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But while the disruption does seem inevitable, companies like Microsoft are betting they can make it a positive one, talking about the possibilities it brings to amplify human ingenuity, augmenting people’s capabilities and helping them to be more productive.

“I’m really glad we’re having all these conversations about the disruptive power of AI, and it’s a good thing that we’re being so thoughtful about the ways in which we’re designing these systems, because it’s crucial that they are designed for people, to help them do their jobs better,” says Lili Cheng distinguished engineer, general manager FUSE labs.

Microsoft has been creating building blocks for the current wave of AI breakthroughs for more than two decades, and now it wants to leverage that accumulated research with the massive amounts of data available to them through the Microsoft Graph portfolio of products and Azure’s computing power, moving towards its vision of the “Intelligent Cloud”.

“One of the things we’ve done with our bot framework and the cognitive services is that we componentized things so that they can be reused into other context. For Cognitive Services there are 29 and you can choose whichever one(s) you choose,” explains Cheng.

So by adding a few lines of code, developers can mix, match and customize AI functionalities to suit their needs, spanning functions such as translation, video deconstruction and search, gesture recognition and real-time captioning.

Broadly speaking, therefore, Cognitive Services are plugin functionalities that developers can use to enable systems within their apps to hear, speak, understand and interpret human needs. For example, LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligent Service) helps developers to integrate language models to understand users using either prebuilt or customized models. While the Custom Vision Service makes it easy to create your own image recognition service.

Microsoft now wants to redefine itself with AI by infusing it into every product and service it offers, from Xbox to Windows, from Bing to Office
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The overarching idea is to move towards what the company calls “conversational AI,” (where instead of humans having to learn about computers, computers will be able to understand humans) and thus enable more fluid and natural interactions between humans and machines.

Clearly when one thinks of conversational AI this includes Cortana – Microsoft’s personal intelligent assistant which is already used by 145 million people across the world, and the company is certainly focusing heavily on making it easier for developers to reach this growing audience by working in partnership with companies like HP, Intel and Harman on IoT devices such as Invoke intelligent speaker.

However, this is an extension of the Cognitive Services offering the company launched back in 2015, which has since attracted over 568,000 developers from more than 60 countries to sign up. Microsoft now wants to redefine itself with AI by infusing it into every product and service it offers, from Xbox to Windows, from Bing to Office.

Cognitive Services are plugin functionalities that developers can use to enable their apps to hear, speak, understand and interpret human needs
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AI has the potential to become a much more creative tool, not something that can only be leveraged and understood by Data Scientists
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An example of this was the demo showcased during the keynote which showed how Microsoft’s translation APIs could provide real-time translation in multiple languages during any PowerPoint presentation. It not only embeds live transcriptions of the presenter into a specific language, but also generates an unique link which lets attendees get further live translations into their own preferred languages – all in real time. Other such functionalities include Project Prague – an early stage SDK that matches captured user movement against an extensive library of hand poses, allowing the developer to tie app actions to gestures and create a more intuitive user experience through gesture interaction.

The ease with which developers can incorporate these elements into their apps, together with this growing emphasis on natural interaction, means that AI has the potential to become a much more creative tool across the board, not something that can only be leveraged and understood by Data Scientists. This democratization of AI is in fact a cornerstone of Microsoft’s vision, and something Cheng is very keen to enable:

“You need to make people laugh, and you need creativity and you need all this stuff because that’s what being human is about. This better be a creator platform for writers and other non-technical people. AI can’t be just for people with PhDs we want people who are writers, artists or builders to be able to use those tools to get their jobs done better. We’re super committed to that. There’s a lot more to AI than writing code, and I think that has to be our goal, to make people want to make the things they live in all day,” she concludes.

This article was originally published on  The Next Web

How Microsoft wants us all to get creative with Artificial Intelligence https://t.co/3phsuZvZX0

— Alice Bonasio (@alicebonasio) May 16, 2017

For companies looking to gain a competitive edge through technology, Tech Trends offers strategic Virtual Reality and Digital Transformation Consultancy services tailored to your brand.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Sparking Creativity with AI appeared first on Tech Trends.

Being a woman at a tech conference, specially a developers’ gathering such as Microsoft Build inevitably means you’re outnumbered. Looking around, I’d guess the ratio of men to women was at least 10 to one and that’s me being extremely generous with the counting.

Being a woman at a tech conference still means being grossly outnumbered
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Cornelia Carapcea Senior Program Manager – Cognitive Services

The upside of that is that it’s one of the few occasions where, in an extremely crowded, large-scale event, there is no queue for the ladies bathroom. The downside is that it reminds us that tech still has a ways to go to address its gender gap problem.

Tech still has much to do to address its gender gap problems
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Yina Arenas – Principal Program Manager with Harry Shum

We need positive role models to inspire girls to go into tech
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Part of the solution to that enduring problem, however, is inspiring more girls to get into tech in the first place, and this is where I think Microsoft deserves a shout out. Because although everywhere else women might have been outnumbered, they were a majority at the keynotes.

On the main stage at Microsoft Build 2017 Women were in a majority
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Rimma Nehme Architect, Open Source Software Analytics + NoSQL group

It was great to see such a diverse group of talented and confident female experts proudly showcasing their teams’ work. From Laura Jones showing the audience how Cortana’s AI and the cloud will make our lives easier to Maria Naggaga and Rimma Nehme rocking some live coding,there was no shortage of empowerment on stage.

A diverse group of talented women confidently showcased the work of their teams
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Maria Naggaga – Program Manager

Innovation director or human experience and design Haiyan Zheng had the audience in tears with the story of how she built Emma, a wearable that offered hope for Parkinson’s sufferers to better control their symptoms, and Yina Arenas joined Harry Shum during his AI keynote to show off the new translation feature for PowerPoint (the computer seemed to deal much better with her Spanish than Shum’s Chinese, but overall it was a very impressive demo.)

Haiyan Zhang with Emma Lawton and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Day two didn’t feature quite as many women, but Lorraine Barden, Engineering & Product Strategy partner director of program management got the most enthusiastic applause when unveiling the Windows Story Remix app which is being released as part of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. The idea behind the app is not only to seamlessly make all your content accessible – end editable – across all devices, but to inspire you to tell stories with it. I was particularly excited to see the ease with which she incorporated Mixed Reality elements into those stories.

Lorraine Barden's Windows Story Remix demo was a highlight of #MSBuild2017 keynote
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Lorraine Bardeen GM, Windows, HoloLens, and Mixed Reality Experiences

I later caught up with Lili Cheng, a distinguished engineer and general manager at FUSE labs, and I pointed out my impressions regarding this prominence of female tech talent at build. Cheng is at the forefront of research and development of AI solutions for the Microsoft Graph, and she said that having diversity in teams is crucial to solving the immensely complex problems they face:

Diversity is crucial in finding the best solutions to complex problems
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Andrea Carl – Director Commercial Communications

“We have to have a diverse group of people working on AI, otherwise it’s simply not going to end up being as good as it should be,” she concluded.

For companies looking to gain a competitive edge through technology, Tech Trends offers strategic Virtual Reality and Digital Transformation Consultancy services tailored to your brand.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Women in the Driving Seat at #MSBuild2017 appeared first on Tech Trends.

Microsoft announces Windows Mixed Reality Dev Kit and world’s first MR motion controllers with no markers required at #MSBuild2017 

Microsoft is looking to expand its Mixed Reality offering with new hardware and tools
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The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update demoed today at the Build Developers Conference in Seattle focuses on the concept of Fluent Design which wants to bring Mixed Reality to consumers around the world.

Using just the sensors in the headset, the motion controllers offer responsive movement tracking
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We’ll go deeper into what those features look like in our Day 2 update – but we were so excited about the freshly unveiled VR and MR hardware that we thought it deserved an update all of its own.

“We are working with developers to create this new frontier in computing and want any developer to get a Windows Mixed Reality dev kit.”

From today, developers in the US and Canada will be able to pre-order an Acer ($299) or HP ($329) headset from the Microsoft Store for delivery later this summer.

Microsoft unveiled Mixed Reality motion controllers that don't need physical markers in the room
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They also introduced the world’s first Windows Mixed Reality motion controllers which does not require markers. This means that – unlike a headset like the HTC Vive where you have to set several sensors around the room to allow the headset to accurately map where you are in relation to the VR/MR elements. The motion controllers offer precise and responsive tracking of movement in your field of view using just the sensors in your headset.

“A customer who pairs a Windows Mixed Reality headset with motion controllers will have a rich and immersive experience across creativity tools, productivity, games, and entertainment. There is no need to install hardware on the walls around you. We created the controllers as a high quality and comfortable input device with the same ease of set up and portability as our headsets. “

The plan is to have a consumer-ready version ready for the 2017 holiday season

“We are keeping our promise to deliver a new mixed reality experience for everyone at an affordable price point. Today we announced Acer will sell a Windows Mixed Reality headset and motion controller bundle priced at $399 this holiday.”

For companies looking to gain a competitive edge through technology, Tech Trends offers strategic Virtual Reality and Digital Transformation Consultancy services tailored to your brand.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post New VR and MR Hardware Unveiled at Microsoft Build 2017 appeared first on Tech Trends.

Believe that we’re still years away from Minority Report-like interfaces? Think again. At a recent Microsoft demo showcasing some of the latest work from its HoloLens partner agencies, I was rather blown away by what Rik Hepworth, the IT Director at Black Marble was showing off.

This was called tuServ, an application for mobilising Command and Control Units. It effectively allows police officers to produce holographic, virtual, mobile command and control centres, which can be dynamically deployed anywhere at short notice, and bring together all the available information in a way that enhances real-time information sharing.

“It brings together all the available elements onto an overall map view,” explains Hepworth. “You can then pull out individual pieces of evidence and reorganize them by resizing and dragging the skills around any room which you happen to want to make into a control room.”

Yet he makes it clear that they’re not out to replace existing Command and Control or Crime Scene systems, but rather to enhance, or – rather appropriately, augment – them.

“We want to be the tool for presenting that information, because at the moment these systems area all about presenting information to you or extracting information from you, they’re not about sharing that information, and that is the element of collaboration that we think the HoloLens is particularly well-suited for and that will allow the police forces to make more efficient decisions.”

TuServ was developed on Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and is delivered across devices, including tablets, laptops and phones. It was designed in close collaboration with operational police officers, so is very much based on their practical needs, enabling improved accuracy and much more agile and efficient use of resources.

Rik Hepworth from Black Marble

The HoloLens is particularly well-suited for enabling collaboration
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What this effectively enables is a fully functional Command and Control unit that can be taken and quickly deployed anywhere. Running tuServ on the HoloLens allows officers in a Command and Control scenario to view officers and incidents on a map interface, providing an overview of everything going on in the area. It allows officers to be assigned to incidents, communicate with their colleagues on the ground, and provides a dynamic live picture of what is going on at the scene in real time.

With tuServ you can effectively have a fully functional portable Command and Control Centre
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Not content with resting on those laurels, however, Black Marble got busy developing a Proof of Concept solution that enabled the capture of content at a Scene of Crime using the HoloLens, and I got to try it out first-hand.

Simply put, it creates a whole new way of approaching the scene of a crime, by enabling officers to place virtual markers and gather multi-media evidence without in any way disturbing the physical scene and potentially tainting the scene. Crucially, the captured object mesh ensures that everything remains positioned exactly where it was originally placed/captured within the room to give the investigator a real understanding of the scene, regardless of when they choose to revisit it. That sort of evidential continuity and collaboration is something that simply hadn’t been possible before.

Once you experience the boost in efficiency that using Mixed Reality can bring, it's hard to go back
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Whereas before investigators relied going back to printed and gathered evidence once the crime scene had been cleared, this application preserves that evidence in its original context and setting, allowing investigators to come back virtually to the scene of the crime at any time, viewing the markers they placed and all the evidence gathered not only by them, but by their colleagues.

“As a detective, I can say that its ability to scan crime scenes and create a mapped 3D version will allow for a reduction in cross contamination issues and allow for investigators to visualise in real time the scenes of major crime,” says Superintendent Nick Lyall of Bedfordshire Police.

That enthusiastic feedback is typical of what they have been getting from forces trying out both products according to Black Marble. In fact, during the demo they said that some crime scene investigators practically cried with happiness upon testing the functionalities it enabled. It also opens up huge potential for safely and consistently training new police officers in real-world investigative scenarios without compromising crime scenes or evidence in any way.

Tech Trends will be at Microsoft Build 2017 - See you in Seattle in May!
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And as much as I hesitate to use the word “fun” in the context of Crime Scene Investigation, it is definitely safe to say that I was impressed. Like so many Mixed Reality applications, the immediate gains in efficiency are so remarkable that once you experience them it’s incredibly difficult to imagine how you ever coped without it. Which is why we’re particularly thrilled to share the news that Tech Trends will be attending Microsoft Build 2017 in Seattle in May. Watch this space for more exciting Mixed Reality news!

Looking to make an impact in VR/AR/MR? Get in touch about our Virtual Reality Consultancy services and see how this exciting technology can be integrated into your brand strategy.

The post MR CSI isn’t SciFi appeared first on Tech Trends.