Microsoft AI support for COVID-19

November 29, 2020November 29, 2020Sandeep Mewara Leave a comment

In January 2020, Microsoft launched AI for Health program. Goal is to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data to help improve the health of people worldwide. Post COVID-19 hit world wide, Microsoft took steps to support & empower researchers, nonprofits and policymakers with resources.

There have been more than 50 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 and more than 1.25 million deaths globally
World Health Organization

Research has accelerated with large-scale computing and open data.

Highlights from Grantees World wide

ai-health-covid-response — Credit: Microsoft

As shared here, few of them are:

A grassroots employee volunteer effort at Belgian biopharmaceutical company UCB.
UC Riverside researchers utilize quantum-based methods to more accurately predict the effectiveness of proposed Covid-19 inhibitors.
IHME, a global health research organization at the University of Washington School of Medicine, forecasts the Covid-19 pandemic.
Professor Amanda Randles at Duke University is conducting hundreds of millions of simulations required to help more patients have access to critical ventilators.

Partnership with Organizations

As shared here, few of them are:

Partnering with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) High Performance Computing Consortium to support researchers and academia.
Working with Brown University’s School of Public Health and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard to visualize a common set of measures on testing and risk levels to help everyone know where we are with the pandemic and help policymakers guide their response.
Joining University of Oxford and their Government Response Tracker initiative to track and compare government and policy responses to address Covid-19 around the world.

The rapid progress means researchers can more quickly identify potential solutions to combat Covid-19 and provide timely information to policymakers for data-driven decisions that protect communities, cities and regions.
Microsoft blog

Public Information

Using publicly available information from partners, Microsoft have created:

a number of interactive visualizations to provide transparency into Covid-19 trends globally.
a unique measure called Progress to Zero to help everyone understand, progress in reducing Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

My Take

There are some great work being done world wide to fight Covid-19 in all possible ways. Organizations like Microsoft are making an active effort to help partners and grantees for Covid-19 response. There is much to do and supports like these will help mankind avert Pandemic.

Keep exploring!

Sandeep Mewara Github
News Update
Tech Explore
Data Explore
samples GitHub Profile Readme
Learn Machine Learning with Examples
Machine Learning workflow
What is Data Science
Word Ladder solution
What is Dynamic Programming
Microsoft .NET5

Microsoft .NET 5 – all you need to know

November 21, 2020March 6, 2021Sandeep Mewara Leave a comment

As announced earlier, Microsoft released .NET 5 on Nov. 10 during .NET Conf 2020. It’s a major release with many new features and improvements to .NET Core 3. Keeping cross platform support and open source development as key base, going forward it kind of merges off .NET Framework and .NET Core.

Plan

Microsoft started it’s journey of cross platform and open source in 2015. .NET 5 is a major milestone of this transition as .NET Framework 4.8 was the last major version of .NET Framework. Microsoft published a blog to explain how .NET 5 relates to .NET Framework.

.NET 5.0 is the main implementation of .NET going forward and .NET Framework 4.x is still supported.

.NET 5 has been called as .NET Core vNext for quite some time now. It has following key principles:

– Produce a single .NET runtime and framework that can be used everywhere and that has uniform runtime behaviors and developer experiences.
– Expand the capabilities of .NET by taking the best of .NET Core, .NET Framework, Xamarin and Mono.
– Build that product out of a single code-base that developers (Microsoft and the community) can work on and expand together and that improves all scenarios.
Microsoft

Highlights

There are many improvements in .NET 5 like:

Performance across many components
Performance in .NET Libraries
Language C# 9 & F# 5
Application deployment options
Platform scope (includes Windows Arm64 & WebAssembly)

Details about these enhancements are here.

dot.net and Bing.com are already running on .NET 5 for months now

References

What’s new in .NET 5, the next major release of .NET Core following 3.1
Download .NET 5.0 installers and binaries, for Windows, macOS, and Linux, for x86, x64, Arm32, Arm64
Container images, all .NET Docker images
.NET 5.0 Examples to learn more about new C# 9 and libraries features
- C# 9 updates
- F# 5 updates
Linux packages with Install instructions
Release notes, .NET 5.0.0 – November 10, 2020
.NET 5 known issues that can be encountered during usage
GitHub issue tracker to report any issues found with .NET 5

IDE

You need Visual Studio 16.8 or later to use .NET 5.0 on Windows and the latest version of Visual Studio for Mac on macOS. Latest C# extension for Visual Studio Code already supports .NET 5.0 and C# 9.

Impacts

There are few breaking changes with upgrade to .NET 5:

while migrating from version 3.1 of .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, or EF Core to version 5.0 of .NET, ASP.NET Core, or EF Core are captured here.
in Roslyn in C# 9.0 introduced with .NET 5 are captured here.
for migration from .NET Framework to .NET Core are captured here.
obsolete features in .NET 5 are captured here.

Deprecated

.NET 5 does not have few of the known technologies:

ASP.NET WebForms – Microsoft’s recommendation is to move to Blazor
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) – Microsoft’s recommendation is to use gRPC
Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) – recommendation is to look at CoreWF, a form of WF runtime

Advantages

.NET 5 helps if you have cross-platform needs or targeting microservices or want to use Docker containers. Based on how it is setup underlying, it helps in designing high-performance and scalable systems.

.NET 5 supports side-by-side installation of different versions of the .NET 5 runtime on the same machine. This allows multiple services or applications on the same server running on their own version of .NET 5 variant.

A detailed analysis and shareout can be read here.

Wrap Up

.NET 5 is a major step of the .NET journey planned ahead. Next would be .NET 6 next year (late in 2021), which will also be a long term (multi year) supported (LTS) version.

Microsoft is working towards a defined vision – same .NET API and languages working across operating system, application types and architectures.

With active support to previous .NET versions, we have time to assess, plan and adapt the new path.

Keep exploring!

POC Guide for Developers by Microsoft

November 7, 2020November 7, 2020Sandeep Mewara Leave a comment

Few weeks back, Microsoft Azure published a white paper about a Proof Of Concept (POC) guide for developers. Intent of the paper is to share what POC is and how it would help minimize risk and reduce cost while exploring new technology or an idea.

Guide uses Azure application as an example on how to create and execute a POC.

POC guide can be downloaded from here.

Brief Overview

Guide touch-bases and share details around:

POC Introduction
Steps of a POC
Example 1: Sample Azure web app
Example 2: Sample Azure chatbot

Additionally, it covers overview of Azure and where to find interactive learning path for beginners. It also shares additional resources that can help develop an Azure based application.

What is Proof of Concept?

Proof of concept (POC) is validating an idea or a concept about it’s feasibility, capability and provides helpful insights. They are scoped to limited features and are generally done in a quick and dirty manner to acquire some metrics.

A proof of concept is an important first step in cultivating business innovations.

How to prepare for and start your POC?

We can get a good POC following a defined set of basic steps:

Defining a goal with success criteria
Setting up a timeline and cost boundaries
Scoping the feature(s) for the POC
Designing, Implementing & Testing
Measure metrics to deduce insights
Take decisions based on the insights

Closing Thoughts

POCs are great way to validate an idea or a technology or a concept. With it, we can take a data back decision for a project that would reduce risk, provide a higher success probability and a conscious cost decision. It also help gauge probable next steps needed once adopted as a mainstream solution.

Provided document is a nice compile and provides a systematic approach for building a POC. With couple of examples, it demonstrates the steps in action. Definitely worth a read.

Don’t ever shy away from building and using a POC to explore and learn.

Keep exploring!

Learn AI ML with Netflix’s Fei Fei!

November 1, 2020November 1, 2020Sandeep Mewara Leave a comment

Off late, Microsoft has been working on providing more and more learning materials. This is as per their Global Skills Initiative aimed at helping 25 million people worldwide acquire new digital skills.

Our goal is to ignite the passion to solve important problems relevant to their lives, families and communities.
Microsoft

Last week, they partnered with Netflix to release a new learning experience featuring a young female hero Fei Fei, who has a passion for science and explores space.

Newly launched

Microsoft has launched three new modules under Explore Space with “Over the Moon” learning path. These modules will help learn basic concepts of data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning:

Plan a Moon Mission using the Python Pandas Library
Predict Meteor Showers using Python and VC Code
Use AI to Recognize Objects in Images using Azure Custom Vision

The movie’s story takes place in a beautifully animated universe and tackles problems real-life space engineers face.

How is it?

They cover the basic workflow of a machine learning problem similar to what I shared in my previous article here.

Exercises also provide a professional experience as they are built on Visual Studio Code and use Azure Cognitive Services.

Looking at it, seems a fun way to learn and explore the data world. Microsoft is really trying to make things simple and available to all. An effort worth to try out. Would recommend and ask to give it a shot.

Keep learning!

samples GitHub Profile Readme

Sandeep Mewara Github
Sandeep Mewara Learn By Insight
Matplotlib plot samples
Sandeep Mewara Github Repositories

Machine Learning workflow

Learn Microsoft Tech via Videos & Live Streams

October 17, 2020October 18, 2020Sandeep Mewara Leave a comment

Recently, Microsoft has invested and made extra efforts into putting up the resources to learn.

Recordings …

This September, Microsoft launched Video Hub, a new resource home for Tech Community Videos and Interactive Guides to help learn everything about major Microsoft products.

Access: Microsoft Tech Community Video Hub

Live …

Yesterday (Mid October), Microsoft launched .NET Live TV, a one stop shop for all .NET and Visual Studio Live Streams across Twitch and YouTube.

To view, visit: .NET Live TV

Sometime back, Microsoft launched Learn TV. It is a place to find the latest digital content to be updated on the latest announcements, features, and products from Microsoft.

To view, visit: Learn TV

Discover your path …

As shared on the Microsoft’s Learning site, irrespective of which stage you are in your carrier – a fresher or an experience professional, material can help learn hands on and gain confidence faster.

You can choose topics, learn at your own schedule and even do Microsoft based certifications. It even has suggestions and ratings for popular topics to guide further.

Explore: Microsoft Learn

Well, seems knowledge is all there and pretty organized for the taking.

Keep learning!

samples GitHub Profile Readme

Sandeep Mewara Github
Sandeep Mewara Learn By Insight
Matplotlib plot samples
Sandeep Mewara Github Repositories

Three A’s of the Next Gen World!

October 4, 2020October 11, 2020Sandeep Mewara Leave a comment

There are many new ideas and research going on in today’s tech world. I believe the potential of maximum disruption is by the three A’s – Analytics, Automation & Artificial Intelligence. Because of their scope of evolution and impact, they tend to be the foundation of the next generation tech world.
.

A natural progressive way of doing it would be to:

first gather data (analytics)
define what’s crucial or repetitive that can be replaced to ease the flow (automate)
collate such multiple replaced things to move into predictive analysis and actions to complete a complex task (artificial intelligence)

Day by day, it looks more feasible to achieve above because of technology innovations and the processing power.

Analytics

It is the first step towards anything more concrete and is a great supportive to theories and assumptions. Enables to have data backed decisions which are easy to relate and comprehend.

This would mean collecting data and making better use of it. This would need to have a data architecture setup. With it, it would be easier to know and decide what and how to collect. Post it, using any data visualization tool, it would be easier to deduce insights, patterns and plan accordingly.

It’s not about just any or more data, but the right, quality data that would matter

Automation

It is solving for complex processes using technology. Data analytics help a great deal identify and solve for such processes. These repetitive mundane tasks can be automated and the efforts saved from it can be put elsewhere. Thus helps in concentrating on tasks that needs more human attention.

Just like machines brought industrial revolution to factory floor, automation has similar potential to transform most of our day to day work. This could lead to enhanced productivity, thus better outcomes, leading to more accurate predictions and optimizations.

Only way to scale the massive amount of work in defined time without hiring an army of professionals

Artificial Intelligence

This is exploring the world that was considered impossible a decade ago by most of us. It is easier to relate and understand when comparing with human capabilities like recognizing handwriting or identifying a particular disease cell. Not just it, AI has great potential to automate non-routine tasks.

With AI, we can analyze data, understand concepts, make assumptions, learn behaviors and provide predictions at a scale with detail that would be impossible for individual humans. It can also have self-learning to improve with more and more interactions with data and human.

AI evolution is being greatly supported with advanced algorithms and improved computing power & storage.

Potential

There is a nice data backed assessment and shareout by McKinsey Global Institute on the three A’s. I would suggest a must read of it. In there, they shared AI/ML potential usecases across industries.

AI and Automation will provide a much-needed boost to global productivity and may help some ‘moonshot’ challenges.
McKinsey Global Institute

Wrap Up

AI combined with various Process Automation and powerful Data Analytics transforms into an intelligent automated solution. Potential of these solutions are huge.

It would be more appropriate to say that it’s no more a choice but compulsion for all sectors to go through this digital transformation. Those who are able to do it will be setup sooner for the next generation of the tech world. It will provide them with an edge over their competitors, putting them in a position to take advantage big time.

Keep exploring!

samples GitHub Profile Readme

Sandeep Mewara Github
Sandeep Mewara Learn By Insight
Matplotlib plot samples
Sandeep Mewara Github Repositories

Flood forecasting – new tech way!

September 20, 2020September 25, 2020Sandeep Mewara Leave a comment

Recently, Google opened up its Flood Forecasting Initiative that uses Artificial Intelligence to predict when and where flood will occur for India and Bangladesh. They worked with governments to develop systems that predict flood and thus keep people safe and informed.

Google now covers 200 million people living in more than 250,000 square kilometers in India.

This topic was also touched upon in the Decode with Google event last week.

Initiative Plan

Google started this initiative back in 2018.

Floods are devastating natural disasters worldwide—it’s estimated that every year, 250 million people around the world are affected by floods, causing around $10 billion in damages.

The plan was to use AI and create forecasting models based on:

historical events
river level readings
terrain and elevation of an area

An inside look at the flood forecasting was published here that covers:
1. The Inundation Model
2. Real time water level measurements
3. Elevation Map creation
4. Hydraulic modeling

Recent Improvements

The new approach devised for inundation modeling is called a morphological inundation model. It combines physics-based modeling with machine learning to create more accurate and scalable inundation models in real-world settings.

This new forecasting system covers:
1. Forecasting Water Levels
2. Morphological Inundation Modeling
3. Alert targeting
4. Improved Water Levels Forecasting

Have a read of the following blog for full details.

Current State

As shared here, they partnered with Indian Central Water Commission to expand forecasting models and services. For research, they have collaborated with Yale to visit flood affected areas. This helps them to understand how to provide information and what information would people need to protect themselves.

We’re providing people with information about flood depth: when and how much flood waters are likely to rise. And in areas where we can produce depth maps throughout the floodplain, we’re sharing information about depth in the user’s village or area.

To increase it’s reach about alerts, Google.org has started a collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

My Thoughts

It’s a great use of technology to help mankind. Floods are life changing events and an early prediction and shareout would help big to everyone.

Awesome initiative, breakthroughs and progress!

samples GitHub Profile Readme

Sandeep Mewara Github
Sandeep Mewara Learn By Insight
Matplotlib plot samples

Harness your voice using Transcribe in Word

September 5, 2020September 25, 2020Sandeep Mewara Leave a comment

A new enhancement in Microsoft Office 365’s Word for the web – Transcribe in Word. It leverages the Azure Cognitive Services AI platform.

Transcribe converts speech (recorded directly in Word or from an uploaded audio file) to a text transcript with each speaker individually separated.

We can record our conversations directly in Word for the web and it transcribes them automatically with each speaker identified separately. Transcript will appear alongside the Word document, along with the recording.

For now, English (EN-US) is the only language supported for transcribe audio

Once the recording is finished, we can:

easily follow the flow of the transcript
revisit parts of the recording by playing back the time-stamped audio
edit the transcript for any corrections or if we see something amiss
save the full transcript as a Word document

How to use it?

Transcribe in Word is already available in Word for the web for all Microsoft 365 subscribers. Usage wise, it is completely unlimited to record and transcribe within Word for the Web.

There is a five hour limit per month for uploaded recordings and each uploaded recording is limited to 200mb.

Real life applications …

It has multiple values in different aspects of usage:

would be much easier to concentrate in meetings & discussions if doing multitask affects (taking notes during discussion)
provide important quotes with others in quick time
summarize the meeting based on key topics identified
- Minutes of meetings
- Key notes
opens up potential for NLP world (AI) in future
- access patterns particular speakers on how they speak, use specific words, provide feedback
- access questions and their response, act specifically
- improve auto corrections

Wrap Up

Seems like a nice move by Microsoft, to cover more than one aspect where it can help. Worth a feature to try out and see how it works and helps.

Reference: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/08/25/microsoft-365-transcription-voice-commands-word/

Keep exploring!

Samples GitHub profile Readme

Microsoft Build Conference 2016: Keynote announcements

April 4, 2016August 27, 2020smewara Leave a comment

Wanted to share across the Microsoft’s Build conference Keynote announcements that was done on March 30 2016.

Windows 10: Usage
Out for 8 months

810M users world-wide
270M users in US
- 5B visitis to the Windows Store
- 60% growth in the “last few months alone”
- Coming soon Universal Windows Platform Apps: includes new Facebook app + audience network

Windows 10: Update
Anniversary update of Windows 10 coming this summer (FREE)

Update For – New Pcs, 5-year old Pcs or a Brand New Macs
Insider version available today along with Update of Visual Studio 2
Windows Hello, Ink, Gaming, Hololens, and Cortanna updates

Desktop App Converter:
Takes a modern Win32/.Net app/Game installer and runs it though Centennial tool

Sage example – run it through centennial and submit to the Windows 10 app store.
Visual studio – Win32 code with no modifications
Added in Live Tile code
Game examples with Age of Empires 2 HD

HoloLens:

Starts to ship to developers and enterprise partners today (exclusive to Windows 10)
Code example on github are available today on the Windows Store (“Galaxy Explorer”)

“Bash” shell:
Coming to Windows (native Ubuntu windows)

Power of command-line tools
example using JavaScript, ssh, Ruby and emacs

Windows Ecosystem:

Cortanna as a “boundary-less” offering across all devices and user actions/history

To me, in order to have Win10 capture more market, one of the most interesting support to look forward would be: Support for Win32 Desktop apps to the Windows 10 store (coming in June)

Microsoft IE Support

January 7, 2016August 27, 2020smewara Leave a comment

Microsoft shared the following information with us in order to be better prepared. As per Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy, beginning January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will receive technical support and security updates, as shown below:

Windows Desktop Operating Systems	Internet Explorer Version
Windows Vista SP2	Internet Explorer 9
Windows 7 SP1	Internet Explorer 11
Windows 8.1 Update	Internet Explorer 11

Windows Server Operating Systems	Internet Explorer Version
Windows Server 2008 SP2	Internet Explorer 9
Windows Server 2008 IA64 (Itanium)	Internet Explorer 9
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1	Internet Explorer 11
Windows Server 2008 R2 IA64 (Itanium)	Internet Explorer 11
Windows Server 2012	Internet Explorer 10
Windows Server 2012 R2	Internet Explorer 11

Windows Embedded Operating Systems	Internet Explorer Version
Windows Embedded for Point of Service (WEPOS)	Internet Explorer 7
Windows Embedded Standard 2009 (WES09)	Internet Explorer 8
Windows Embedded POSReady 2009	Internet Explorer 8
Windows Embedded Standard 7	Internet Explorer 11
Windows Embedded POSReady 7	Internet Explorer 11
Windows Thin PC	Internet Explorer 8
Windows Embedded 8 Standard	Internet Explorer 10
Windows 8.1 Industry Update	Internet Explorer 11

Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy provides consistent and predictable guidelines for product support availability when a product releases and throughout that product’s life. By understanding the product support available, customers are better able to maximize the management of their IT investments and strategically plan for a successful IT future.
Microsoft

They recommend to customers running on an older version of Internet Explorer to migrate to one of the above supported operating systems and browser combinations by January 12, 2016.

For more details, one can refer: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-Internet-Explorer