Liquid Telecom hosted an Azure Accelerator conference in Mauritius in partnership with Microsoft. The event saw attendees learning how to benefit from Microsoft’s Azure and cloud services.
This year Microsoft announced Africa cloud datacenters for customers and organizations in the region. Microsoft cloud partner Liquid Telecom, together with Microsoft invited organizations to the event to learn and explore what the African Azure Cloud meant for African businesses.
Event speakers expounded on digital transformation, cloud trends, cyber security, their impact in the cloud and more. The Azure Accelerator Conference in Mauritius also showcased how some local businesses are already using the services. Participants were able to meet and network with Liquid Telecom and Microsoft experts.
Help rural farmers in Africa predict soil humidity using sensor data from IoT.
Wazihub and Microsoft are partnering with Zindi Africa to create the Wazihub Soil Moisture Prediction Challenge competition. The competition seeks to create a machine learning model capable of predicting soil humidity. Using past data from the soil and getting results in a very short time.
Find out more about the Wazihub challenge
In the face of climate change, the agricultural sector in Africa needs to adapt its practices. Being able to accurately measure and predict soil humidity in their fields will allow farmers to prepare their irrigation schedules optimally and efficiently.
Sensor-based irrigation and machine learning algorithms can provide farmers with a solution to manage water usage more efficiently. However, current machine learning algorithms built on sensor data require a lot of data for proper training. Stable sensor data is difficult to obtain in rural Africa where many problems arise such as accessibility, limited battery power, lack of internet, humidity/heat problem.
The objective of this Zindi competition is to create a machine learning model. Capable of predicting the humidity for a particular plot in the next few days, using data from the past. A part of the challenge is to design algorithms that are resilient and can be trained with incomplete data. (E.g. missing data points) and unclean data (e.g. lot of outliers).
This resulting model will enable farmers to anticipate water needs and prepare their irrigation schedules. This competition is sponsored by Wazihub[webpage] and Microsoft.
Samsung held its Galaxy Unpacked 2019 event yesterday. Unveiling new mobile computing devices and experiences for its customers. Shilpa Ranganathan, Microsoft CVP Mobile and Cross Device Experiences joined Samsung Director of Product Strategy & Marketing Mobile Computing Hassan Anjum on stage. Talking about a unifying PC to mobile experience and the future of productivity using Galaxy Note10 and Galaxy Note10+.
Shilpa said Microsoft is excited to come together with Samsung to “innovate in hardware, software and services. We will meet you where you are“, highlighting how distracting and counterproductive switching between devices is. For Samsung it is about seamlessly integrating key services to unify consumer experiences.
Using Your Phone app in Windows 10, Shilpa Ranganathan demoed Samsung Galaxy Note10 and Note10+ specific features. Your phone app on Windows works with any android and iOS device. Allowing you to access contents of your phone straight from the PC. Making your phone’s screen available to you on your PC, so you wouldn’t need to keep switching between your phone and PC.
In the Samsung Galaxy Note10, Microsoft worked with Samsung to integrate the Link to Windows button in the quick panel.
Watch Samsung Galaxy Note10 demo
Later this year Microsoft will be introducing the ability to “make and receive mobile calls directly from your PC for all users. You will be able to accept the call, reply with a text or send the caller to voicemail.
Microsoft used its latest mixed reality capture technology to create an on stage human sized hologram. Well this isn’t new. What is new this time around is that the hologram from the demo below was speaking Japanese. A language Microsoft CVP, Azure Marketing doesn’t speak.
Using mixed reality and Azure AI services Microsoft was able to translate her speech into Japanese, training the hologram to speak and sound like her. This Microsoft says is “The magic of AI neural TTS and holograms”.
Watch Microsoft Demo AI technology and holographic experience on stage at Microsoft Inspire
Julia shares that to do this Microsoft used;
Mixed reality technology to create and render hologram
Azure speech-to-text capability in English transcription to get her speech
Azure translate to get her English speech into Japanese and then applied
Neural text-to-speech technology to make the Japanese sound like her.
What do you think about this ai technology? Getting ideas on other areas this can be used? Microsoft says the tech is here. Share your thoughts.
Microsoft User Group Ghana (MUGGH) invites you to join the Global Microsoft 365 Developer Bootcamp 2019 event in Accra, Ghana. Come and learn about new technologies and products included in Microsoft 365 at the free, one-day, hands-on training event. Scheduled to take place October 26th 2019 at the Microsoft office in Accra.
The event will be led by Microsoft MVPs and community leaders. You’ll learn the latest technologies on Microsoft 365 platform that you can apply to your future projects. These including Microsoft Graph, SharePoint Framework, Microsoft Teams, Office Add-ins and Actionable Messages, etc. Get to meet and network with other IT Professionals.
Visit event page and register (free event but you need to register) to participate in the bootcamp. Don’t forget to share with your community of IT Pros, developers, admins etc.
Update: There are two event days now. So kindly click the event for the day that suits you or that isn’t filled up yet. Thank you.
