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Microsoft Set to Improve Microsoft Teams with Sign Language View

Microsoft recently announced the addition of Sign Language View to Microsoft Teams, to make sign language interpreters more visible in the collaboration software. The forthcoming update will give MT users who have hearing problems the option to access two video feeds, where one has the sign language interpreter at the center and in a bigger aspect at the front of the screen.

Sign Language View (SLV) is designed to help those with hearing difficulties experience better engagement during the cloud-based business meetings. The SLV feed makes possible a larger and clearer view of the interpreter while only those signed-in to the SLV feature can see the special feed.

In cases when a participant shares content during an ongoing meeting, the SLV signer’s video feed moves to the side to spotlight the shared content, but will still maintain a bigger aspect to present a clear view of the interpreter. This kind of setup is visible only to SLV signers while the regular MT participants view the conventional MT feeds.

As indicated in the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the Sign Language View will be available to desktop and browser-accessed Microsoft Teams sometime in December 2022. Actually, some lucky MT clients had been chosen by Microsoft to beta test the features on a per user basis via the Team’s Public Preview program.

How to Set Up the SLV Feature for MT Meetings

Sign Language View can be activated on a case-to-case basis or for all meetings, while only sign language interpreters working in the same company will be pre-assigned prior to the holding of an online MT meeting.

Through the Settings Menu and the Manage Signers button in the Accessibility pane, the MT collab leader or designate, needs only to type in the name of the pre-assigned Interpreter. Doing so will enable the assigned person to enter the meeting as a sign language interpreter.

Low Code Platforms : Highlighting Their Role in Today’s Shift to Digitalization

Low-code in software development is a quick approach for the creation and delivery of automation solutions needed by businesses in their shift to digitalization. Based on a research conducted by Frevvo, low code platforms are responsible for the 40% reduction of dependency on high technical skills. Moreover, they can help quicken the digital transformation of businesses at a rate of 69% by the year 2024.

A low-code development platform allows users to create the code faster and effortlessly. Platform users do not need to go through the conventional way of programming, as the platform provides a Graphical User Interface specifically for that purpose. The tools that can be accessed not only aids in lessening the time and effort spend on coding, as it also makes setup and deployment of solutions quicker.

These platforms simply allow users to draw a flowchart and the platform will automatically generate the codes, which lessens the time spent in typing the code per line.

Benefits Businesses Derive from Using Low-Code Development Platforms

There are a lot of benefits furnished by low-code development platforms mainly because they offer tools that can be used in the development of process and mobile applications to improve user-experiences of customers.

Business organizations also gain advantage from the use of a low code platforms when looking to improve or enhance their agility by making processes less complex.

Through a company’s existing talents and use of the built-in collaboration tools, cross-functioning with the low code development teams will enable the company to quickly arrive at decisions.

Other benefits of low-code platforms include reduced cost in having a business app developed in less time, which leads to higher productivity among workers.

UK NGESO to Solve Solar Energy Dilemma with Open Climate Fix’s AI

Non-profit Open Climate Fix’s deal of creating an AI powered tracking system has now been signed by UK’s National Grid Electricity System Operator (NGESO). The tracking system can forecast cloud movements by minutes and hours instead of days. The AI can improve solar forecasting accuracy by 50% as its predictions match the solar panels’ exact locations.

The project is funded by Ofgem, UK’s energy regulator and commenced last August and is expected to attain completion within 18 months.

Solving The Solar Dilemma

The unpredictability of solar and wind energy makes maintaining the balance of supply and demand for the country’s electricity grid, much harder for NGESO. As an approach to solving this problem, the ability of Open Climate Fix’s machine-learning model to read satellite images and recognize where and how the clouds will move, will provide accurate solar and wind forecasts.

NGESO’s head of Innovation Strategy and Digital Transformation Carolina Tortora, said that accurate forecasts are significantly important for weather-dependent energy generation. Especially when they are dealing with solar and wind as a way to operate a low carbon electricity system.

Ms. Tortora added that in being confident with the accuracy of the solar and wind forecasts, they can let fossil fuel remain idle, as there will be more certainty in generating green energy produced by the sun and wind.

Voice Tech: A No-Touch Solution in Bringing Back People to the Workplace

While working from home has been successful for many businesses, some still prefer having their employees work together in a safe workplace. One proposed solution to reduce the risk of infection in an office environment is the use of Voice Technology, a high-tech feature found in many smart appliances.

This technology can reduce the number of times employees need to touch surfaces, including their mobile devices, and has been successfully implemented in modern televisions, light switches, alarm systems, and plumbing fixtures.

According to Anthony Mullen, a senior analyst at Gartner, software such as Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Home, and Alexa for Business, which were not widely adopted before the pandemic, can now significantly help businesses run smoothly by assisting employees and clients while maintaining a safe distance.

Studies show that mobile devices are touched over 2,600 times a day, making people fearful of transmitting the coronavirus from their phones. Voice technology can help alleviate this uneasiness, especially in an office where one co-worker may be asymptomatic.

Speech recognition AI in chatbots, combined with smart speakers and their voice technology functionality, can keep office businesses secure by allowing users to stream music, ask questions, and get live updates on weather, traffic, sports, and more, all without touching their devices.

Covid-19 Crisis: Need for Businesses to Stay Robust

While during the Covid-19 crisis, businesses need to stay robust so that they can bolster stakeholders’ faith in their bankability as an investment option.

As various companies face challenges presented by the Covid-19 crisis, many are operating through employees carrying out tasks using collaboration and remote-working technologies. However, those at the helm of operations should make sure that causes for disruptions are minimized and resolved at the soonest possible time. That way, once the public health crisis is over, only minor issues, if anything at all, would hold them back from re-establishing their former position in the world of business.

Fortunately, many major providers of business technologies have stepped up to offer free use of solutions, applications, and tools. Their offers are extended to new and existing clients as a means that will permit them to continue operations without the burden of incurring additional costs.

ServiceNow is one of the major tech companies that took the initiative to offer free applications to help companies stay strong during the Covid-19 pandemic. ServiceNow CIO Chris Bedi remarked that “it is in times like this when everyone needs to come together and help.”

ServiceNow offers free apps to help governments and businesses monitor the health of their workforce. The company offers cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) to help improve a company’s ability to optimize workflows while providing all forms of technical support and IT management functions.

Recently, the company released four applications dedicated to assisting various U.S. government offices and agencies, as well as private companies, in monitoring not only the workflow status of their employees but also their health. The great news is that ServiceNow is releasing it for use, free of charge to old and new clients, up to the end of September 2020.

Unlike other major tech companies that are offering remote-working software and collaboration and teleconferencing tools, ServiceNow’s free applications enable government agencies and companies to respond to the health emergencies presented by the pandemic.

One of the four applications was developed by ServiceNow for the Washington State Department of Health. The app has been released as a free tool for use by other government entities, business organizations, and institutions for an indefinite period.

The government-donated app through ServiceNow’s cloud platform handles digitization processes aimed at eliminating the tediousness of making resource allocations immediately visible, as a means of improving responses to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.

The three other ServiceNow applications, namely: “Employee Outreach,” “Employee Exposure Management” and “Employee Self Report,” mainly involve enabling employers to confirm the health status of employees while working at home or in a remote location.

The “Employee Outreach” app facilitates an employer’s inquiry in confirming the geographical location and safety of their employees. The “Emergency Self Report” app, on the other hand, comprises a workflow as a means for employees in providing updates to their respective employers while under self-quarantine measures.

The third, which is deemed as the most important of the three ServiceNow free apps, is the “Emergency Exposure Management (EEM).” This is mainly because the EEM app addresses a situation in which an employee has tested positive for the Covid-19 disease.

Through the EEM app’s features, employers will be able to identify those who have had recent contact with the Covid-19 positive employee by reviewing the latter’s history of assignment locations and meetings.

Audacity: The Multi-Language Recorder and Audio Editor Open-Source Software

Audacity is free software that can be used by music enthusiasts to record and edit multi-track audio on any operating system, including Mac OS X, Windows, and GNU/Linux, among others. It is an editing program that is also open-source software that can be used, studied, and improved by anyone and shared with others.

Audacity is a tool for recording live audio, computer playback or soundtracks, and for converting music records and tapes into digital recordings such as Compact Discs (CD) or in editing other sound files such as Waveform Audio File (WAV), Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF), Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), MP2, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis, as well as other formats using optional libraries including Windows Media Audio (WMA), AC3 Dolby Digital, or Mpeg 4 Audio (M4A/M4R), just to mention a few.

The Audacity software also provides users with tools for cutting, splicing, or mixing different sounds together, while adding effects by changing the pitch or speed of a recording. Users can even write their own plug-in effects using Nyquist frequency.

Users of the Audacity open-source codes who want to submit suggestions, request features, report bugs, or pose any technical queries can find support at the Audacity Forum site.

Audacity 2.3.2 Version

The latest version of Audacity is Audacity 2.3.2, which was released in May 2019 to replace all earlier versions for Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. Aside from bug fixes, the new edition now includes an encoder for LAME mp3, a SELECT button for the whole track, and a file browser for selecting files from the Nyquist plug-in installer. Note that in this latest Audacity version, the “Type to Create a Label” feature has to be enabled as it is now off by default.

Moreover, the open-source codes for the Audacity 2.3.2 Version now come with a mod-script-pipe for driving the software from Python using a preferred enabler.

openElement® : A Free Web-Authoring Software as an Alternative to Free Online Website Builder

openElement® is one of several choices available to use as a web authoring/website builder program when looking for an alternative to offers of free online website builder.

Powered by Chromium, openElement® provides creative professionals with a comprehensive set of standalone web authoring and editing tools that allow flexibility and control, as well as transferability of website content.

Although it is understandably tempting to choose an easy-to-use free online website builder, especially if one has no basic knowledge or expertise. Ease of use though has to be traded off with flexibility in creating and controlling a website since the design, elements, and features will be confined to what the web host offers as pre-built templates.

Now if your lack of confidence and limited skills are stopping you from building a website developed and stylized using your own creativity, consider openElement®.

What to Expect from openElement®

openElement® is a web authoring and web-building software that is intuitive and powerful enough to liberate creative professionals from the built-in features and elements of free online web-building sites. It allows you to develop from scratch based on your own ideas on how you want your website project to look and function, or to use a professionally designed website but still retain control over editing its features.

First off, the software is absolutely free to download and use.
Secondly, it is software that incorporates some features of a Content Management System (CMS) in a standalone application. The openElement® software has a “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) interface that allows users to add, customize and modify conventional elements used in creating web content, thru simple dragging and dropping actions.
Elements include the standards, such as documents, Vertical, Horizontal, or Multiline Texts, Table “Link to URL,” etc. as well as other elements for navigation, form, media, container, interactivity, community, animation, statistics, and security configurations.
Users are relieved from writing codes because the program automatically writes the appropriate codes that will enable the website to function and display properly.
Awesome even is that the openElement® software supports nearly all the latest web building technology such as HTML5. jQuery, CSS3, and the like.
The user interface provides a user-friendly approach that enables beginners to acquire skills from learning the ropes of standalone web building. At the same time, the interface presents a faster approach with which professional web builders can carry out repetitive tasks.

After all, the main advantage to building your own website apart from flexibility and control is transferability. Since you will not be using the templates and graphics offered by a free online website builder, you can easily transfer everything to another web host in case there is a need to do so.

EaseUS Todo Backup – The Best Free Disk Cloning Software

If your PC is acting up and you fear it may slow down at any moment, you should take steps to save all the data stored on your hard drive. Don’t procrastinate, because you can save yourself a lot of trouble by backing up your computer.

One possible reason why you may be putting off backing up is that you think the process is long and tedious. But think again, because there is an easier and faster way to do it without losing or leaving out any data.

All you need to do is download and install disk cloning software, and it will take care of the rest once the program is up and running. The program can make an exact copy of everything on your hard drive and store it directly to another hard drive, be it a hybrid (HDD) or solid-state drive, or an external USB.

Disk cloning software can copy everything in less time than it would take you to do it manually, with no data loss. The disk cloning action copies all data, applications, the operating system, preferences, and settings. You can even retrieve the cloned data in the cloud, making it possible to access your files using any type of internet-connected device.

Disk cloning is a highly recommended method of backing up without losing data. There are several disk cloning software options to choose from, some of which offer free trials. One that immediately caught our attention is “EaseUS Todo Backup,” as it has a free version to offer.

About EaseUS Todo Backup

EaseUS Todo Backup is a backup software that can create a duplicate hard disk, either completely or sectionally. During processing, the software copies everything to an HDD, SSD, or USB, including data, the Windows operating system, applications, current settings, and preferences. Just make sure that the receiving device is larger than the source hard drive.

The EaseUS Todo Backup software allows PC users to backup and recovers a full range with just a few clicks. After downloading the software, users need only click on “Clone” in the menu list, select the original disk as the source, and indicate if the destination disk is HDD, SSD, or an external USB. If the destination disk is an SSD, enable the “Optimize for SSD” feature located under “Advanced options,” as this ensures improved results.

Once the backup is complete, you can recover whatever data was stored on your PC’s hard drive in the event the computer breaks down.

GIMP : The Best Free Alternative Image Editing Software

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the most recommended alternative image editing software, mainly because it comes free. The program has been around as far back as 1998, starting at version 1.0, whilst receiving continuous updates through the years.

The most recent GIMP release is Version 2.10 which comes with a new Dark Theme as default user interface. An image set for editing will appear on a somewhat dim background, in order to direct greater focus on the content. Actually, the Dark Theme brings the number of user interface to four (4); the three (3) others being the System, the Gray and the Light.

Although Adobe Photoshop also offers a free downloadable software of the latest version, the offer is available only as a free-trial for 7 days. Now if you are looking for an image editing software that is nearly as good as Adobe Photoshop and at the same time free for lifetime, there is always an updated version of GIMP.

A Cursory Look at What GIMP Users Can Do, Free of Charge

GIMP users have expressed great satisfaction for having a graphic editing program that allows them to transform images with excellent results, sans the need to pay for monthly subscriptions. Images for business cards, banners, brochures and web pages have been created using robust tools that allow for dabbling, editing or converting formats of graphic files coming from Windows or Linux.

Similar to the proprietary Photoshop PSD file that enables modifiers to work on individual layers of the image, GIMP also has layer editing features. Version 2.10 now includes a Layer Attributes Dialog box, showing all setting options related to layer-related tasks. Awesome even are the color labels available to use as tags for layers, channels and paths, which make project organization more efficient.

The great news is that while Version 3.00 is currently in the works, GIMP users do not have to wait long to acquire the newest features and tools. Currently new stuffs, along with bug fixes are released as a series of stable releases every 1 to 2 months.

Category: Software