Ultrathin laptops help you find information, but writing things down, on paper, in a notebook, helps you learn and remember. Wireless headphones make your music better and more portable, but earplugs ensure sleep. And though your smartphone is the camera you always have with you, an instant camera creates actual moments you share with just one person, not the world (on purpose or accidentally).
In short: You’re heading to school with a lot of trendsetting new gear, but you still need the stuff that generations of students lugged along, too. At Wirecutter, we research and test both the cutting-edge and the old and solid, and we think these items are the best buys for your college days.
Notebook (silicon) and notebook (paper)
Danby’s Designer Stainless microwave will last you all through college, and maybe even longer (unlike your textbooks). Photo: Katie Hausenbauer-Koster
If you need an ultra-portable laptop before school starts, and a Mac isn’t a requirement, you should get a Dell XPS 13 (late-2015 model), the best Windows ultrabook for most people. It has a big, beautiful screen, the longest battery life of any lightweight Windows laptop we tested, a keyboard second only to ThinkPads in quality, a solid trackpad, and the best-designed body.
If you need to save some money, the Asus ZenBook UX305UA is a fantastic Windows ultrabook for its price; it has a little less battery life (though still great), and a slightly lesser keyboard and trackpad, but those are reasonable sacrifices.
We’d like to recommend a MacBook, but the timing is terrible right now, thanks to a conspicuous lack of current-generation processors and USB-C ports across nearly the whole MacBook line. If you specifically need OS X (soon to be macOS) for school or work, you should try to wait until Apple updates its lineup, which we expect very soon. If you need a Mac now, check out our “Which MacBook Should I Buy” guide.
As for the other notebooks—the kind you don’t charge—we recommend the Mead Five Star as the perfect choice for an affordable, single-subject spiral-bound notebook. We picked the Five Star after subjecting some of the most popular notebooks to everyday writing, and then heavy abuse (such as throwing them down stairs and soaking them in water). You can write smoothly and crisply on the Five Star using an array of pens and pencils, with minimal bleed-through with all but the wettest of inks. And because it’s both perforated and hole punched, you can easily remove clean-edged pages or snap the whole thing into a binder. If you’re looking for something a little more affordable (especially if you find it on sale), the basic Mead Spiral has similar paper quality without the bonuses.
If you need a pen to take notes in class or to write exam essays, the one to grab is the Uni-ball Jetstream. It’s widely available and it creates one of the smoothest, quickest-drying lines you can find. And if you need a mechanical pencil to go with it, we recommend the Uni-ball Kuru Toga. Unlike any other widely available pencil, the Kuru Toga has a unique ratcheting internal mechanism, so each time you lift the pencil from the page, the lead rotates a tiny amount. What does that mean? The sharpest point of your lead will always touch the paper, and you won’t constantly fidget to rotate the pencil in your hand.
Headphones and earplugs
Jabra’s Move Wireless headphones sound better than headphones costing twice as much, and are more comfortable than most. Photo: Michael Zhao
A set of comfortable, closed, on-ear headphones is great for enjoying music, videos, or games without disturbing your roommate, or for jamming through a study session at the library. After researching 93 models and testing the 55 best-reviewed and newest models, our headphone experts picked the Jabra Move Wireless as a great set at a great price.
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Of the Bluetooth headphones we tested in this price range, the Move pair was among the best sounding, beating out models that cost almost twice as much. In fact, it sounded about 75 percent as good as our luxury pick, at less than one-fifth the price. Unlike other Bluetooth headphones, which tend to be full of confusing buttons, the Move offers easy-to-use, easy-to-understand controls and a comfortable feel on your head. Best of all, it’s affordable: You can usually find it for a good amount less than its $100 MSRP.
If you need to hear less music (or phone calls, or hall noise) to study or sleep, keep a trusty pair of disposable earplugs handy. We spent several hours researching contenders, tested four top-rated models, and slept in a house next to an airport. Mack’s Ultra Soft Foam Earplugs emerged as the best earplugs for most people. These earplugs’ 32-decibel noise-reduction rating was one of the highest among the models we tested. According to safety-equipment distributor Cooper Safety, that’s enough to reduce the volume of a gas lawnmower to that of a normal conversation. What also makes Mack’s earplugs so effective is their ability to stay in your ear through a whole night and remain comfortable, unlike some of the competition.
Messenger bag and backpack
The Waterfield Vitesse looks great and holds up in school, city, and outdoor environments. Photo: Michael Hession
The Waterfield Vitesse is a great choice whether you get to school via bike, foot, bus, or crowded subway car, and need a stylish bag that can transition well into night use. The Vitesse is surprisingly roomy and tough, with a sleek appearance that looks natural at a party or out to dinner.
Its waxed-canvas finish is durable, it’s lightweight at just 1.9 pounds, and though not technically waterproof, it sheds stains and water easily, and cleans up with just a simple wipe-down. The Vitesse has an unpadded laptop pocket that can accommodate a 15-inch MacBook Pro (though you can add your own sleeve), an accessible front zip pocket, and three small organizing pockets that are perfect for your keys, wallet, and other miscellany.
If you prefer the classic look of a backpack, we recommend the L.L.Bean Quad. Compared with similarly priced competitors, our pick balances comfort and a smart blend of school storage and hiking comfort features at a nice price. You can find cheaper bags that’ll hold up fine for a few years at school, and pricier options that might serve you better on a mountain trail, but the Quad is a pick that’s tough, versatile, and affordable. We particularly love its large, zippered exterior pouch that gives you almost instant access to anything from a notebook to a fully packed bag lunch. Its ventilated and mesh-padded back also won’t leave you with a too-sweaty back after a walk in the summertime.
Rice cooker and microwave
Danby’s Designer Stainless microwave will last you all through college, and maybe even longer (unlike your textbooks). Photo: Katie Hausenbauer-Koster
Overview ASUS is a global technology leader in the digital era. It is the world’s top 3 consumer notebook vendor and the maker of the world’s best-selling and most award-winning motherboards. ASUS is the number one manufacturer of motherboards in the world, commanding almost a 40% market share of the motherboard business. Today, one in every three computers houses an ASUS motherboard. Over 24 million …
OverviewGN Netcom, led by the Jabra brand, continues to build on its standing as one of the world’s leading and fastest growing suppliers of hands-free communications solutions. With approximately 875 employees and sales offices around the world, GN Netcom develops manufactures and markets a broad range of wireless headsets for mobile users and both wireless and corded headsets for contact centre and …
OverviewFUJIFILM Corporation is one of the major operating companies of FUJIFILM Holdings. Since its founding in 1934, the company has built up a wealth of advanced technologies in the field of photo imaging, and in line with its efforts to become a comprehensive healthcare company, Fujifilm is now applying these technologies to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases in the Medical and Life Science …
Despite retailing for less than half the price of some competitors, the Digital Simplicity earned the top spot in our taste tests for white rice. Its speed was also impressive, as it produced a 3-cup batch of white rice in less than 38 minutes and brown rice in 1 hour, 20 minutes—12 and 25 minutes faster, respectively, than the higher-end Zojirushi NS-TSC10. A delayed-start option, a dedicated steam mode, and a boil-then-simmer function add to the Digital Simplicity’s versatility.
Microwaves enable the enjoyment of late-night leftovers, piping-hot popcorn, and even full meals for one in the comfort of your dorm room. After 18 hours of research and considering eight popular models, we think the Danby Designer Stainless is the best microwave for dorm rooms because it has a handle instead of the more common, ever-breaking push-button door mechanism.
The Danby also has a start button that doubles as an “add 30 seconds” button—we learned this was a must-have feature for many people when we researched the best full-size microwaves. At about 17 by 14 by 10 inches, this 0.7-cubic-foot, 700-watt microwave fits perfectly on top of a mini fridge and uses less power than the more common 1,000-watt models, which means it’s less likely to trip your breaker when it’s sharing a circuit with a kettle, the fridge, and your laptop.
Desk lamp and book light
The Anker Lumos swivels, folds up, and has four color temperatures at five levels each. Photo: Kevin Purdy
Dorm desks aren’t renowned for their expansive surfaces, so the best desk lamp for a first-year student should be compact, adjustable in height, and sufficiently bright for late-night cram sessions. If you study in the very early morning or late at night—as students are known to do—the Anker Lumos LED Desk Lamp can add the right light mixture to your space.
The Lumos has four color modes (Reading, Studying, Relax, and Bedtime) and five brightness levels. Its base rotates 180 degrees, pivots at three points, and has a decent-looking control panel with a sleep timer―all handy features if you’ve got books spread out, or need to accommodate a sleeping roommate. Most lamps with all of those modes and options cost $10 to $30 more than the Lumos. And the Lumos beams its light in a wide, even glow from a continuous panel, not a strip with visible tiny bulbs.
The Anker does look a little techy, and though it’s a great value, its price could be a turnoff to those on a tighter budget. For them, the IKEA Forså (available in store only) is an adjustable, attractive, very affordable alternative. It looks better than any multiple-setting LED lamp we saw at a reasonable price, it has a 6-foot-long cord, and a small weighted base that frees up desk pace.
The drawback: IKEA sells bulbs for the Forså only with a 2,700-kelvin “warm daylight” temperature, and LED candelabra bulbs with a cooler temperature are uncommon and somewhat pricey. That limitation is fine if you use the Forså exclusively for calm reading or nighttime work. If you use it as your main desk light, your other lighting must be warm, or the conflicting temperatures (colors) may cause discomfort.
For reading in bed after a roommate is asleep, a reading light (aka book light) is more discreet. After testing three top-rated lights, we recommend the Mighty Bright XtraFlex2. Compare it with the competition, and you’ll see why the XtraFlex2 is the multiyear best-selling book light on Amazon. On its low brightness setting, it emits just enough light for personal reading, but not so much it leaks beyond the book. And on its high brightness setting, the light is perfect for late-night object searches.
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iPhone lenses and instant camera
The Instax Mini 50S captures the moment better than most instant cameras, and you can easily order more film. Photo: Gregory Han
Taking better, more interesting iPhone photos can be done at a very reasonable price. For $45, the CamKix Camera Lens Kit provides four lenses―fisheye, combo macro, wide-angle lens, and 8x tele―and a mini-tripod. Though the image quality isn’t the best available, it’s better than anything else at that price, and good for someone who wants to mess around with different lens types. We were initially extremely skeptical of the looks and quality of the multi-lens assortment, especially the shot-glasslike 8x tele. But we were pleasantly surprised by the reasonably good photo quality.
Sharing photos to dozens or hundreds of people from a smartphone is easy, but to create something tangible and exclusive, an instant film camera is an analog throwback still worth the price. The best instant film camera we’ve found is the Fujifilm Instax Mini 50S. It’s easy (and fun) enough to use that you can pass it around at a party, and it takes better photos than most instant cameras. The Instax film it uses is still widely available, too, and if you want to put more time and effort into it, you still have plenty of manual controls to fiddle around with.
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Using artificial intelligence to create invisible UI
Interaction with the world around us should be as easy as walking into your favorite bar and getting your favorite drink in hand before your butt hits the bar stool. The bartender knows you, knows exactly what drink you like and knows you just walked through the door. That’s a lot of interaction, without any “interaction.”
We’re redefining how we interact with machines and how they interact with us. Advances in AI help make new human-to-machine and machine-to-human interaction possible. Traditional interfaces get simplified, abstracted, hidden — they become ambient, part of everything. The ultimate UI is no UI.
Everyone’s getting in the game, but few have cracked the code. We must fundamentally change the way we think.
Cross-train your team
Our roles as technologists, UX designers, copywriters and designers have to change. What and how we build — scrolling pages, buttons, taps and clicks — is based on aging concepts. These concepts are familiar, proven and will still remain useful. But we need a new user interaction model for devices that listen, “feel” and talk to us.
Technologists need to become more like UX designers and vice versa. They must work much closer together and mix their roles, at least until some standards, best practices and new tools are established.
No decision trees
The bartender from the above example is where more of the UI is starting to reside. On one hand, that represents a lot more responsibility to create transparent experiences that tend to be based on hidden rules and algorithms. But on another, this gives us incredible latitude for creating open-ended experiences in which only important and viable information is presented to the user.
For example, to command our AI assistant, “Tell my wife I am going to be late,” the system needs to be smart enough not only to understand the intent, but also to know who the wife is and the best way to contact her. No extraneous information is necessary, no option list, no follow-up questions. We call this Minimum Viable Interaction (MVI).
Your interface is showing
We’ve started talking to our machines — not with commands, menus and quirky key combinations — but using our own human language. Natural language processing has seen incredible advances and we finally don’t need to be a machine to talk to one. We chat with the latest chatbots, search using Google Voice or talk to Siri. The accuracy of speech recognition has improved to an incredible 96 percent accuracy.
This space is way too dynamic to be married to an original creative concept.
The last few percentage points might not seem like a lot, but it’s what makes or breaks the perfect experience. Imagine a system that can recognize what anyone says 100 percent of the time, no matter how we say things (whether you have an accent, pause between words or say a bunch of inevitable “uhhs” and “umms”). Swap a tap or a click for the Amazon Echo’s far-field recognition, and the UI melts away. It becomes invisible, ubiquitous and natural.
We aren’t there yet. For now, we can devise smart ways of disguising the capability gap. A lot of time goes into creating programming logic and clever responses to make the machine seem smarter than it really is. Make one mistake where the UI shows and the illusion will break.
Contextual awareness
The system needs to know more about us for invisible UI to become reality. Contextual awareness today is somewhat limited. For example, when asking for directions via Google Maps, the system knows your location and will return a different result if you are in New York versus California.
Our phones, watches and other mobile devices are loaded with a ton of sensors. They make us humans the cheap sensors machines need today. We gather the knowledge and data that the system needs to do its work.
But even with all the sensors and data, the machine needs to know more about us and what is going on in our world in order to create the experiences we really need. One solution is combining the power of multiple devices/sensors to gather more information. But this usually narrows down and limits the user base — not an easy thing to sell to a client. You have to think on your feet. Change, tweak, iterate. This space is way too dynamic to be married to an original creative concept.
What wasn’t possible just yesterday is becoming mainstream today as we develop new experiences, explore new tech, topple old paradigms and continue to adapt.
We are happy to announce Microsoft Azure obtained the ISO/IEC 27017:2015 certification, an international standard that aligns with and complements the ISO/IEC 27002:2013 with an emphasis on cloud-specific threats and risks.
This certification provides guidance on 37 controls in ISO/IEC 27002 and features seven new controls not addressed in ISO/IEC 27002. Both cloud service providers and cloud service customers can leverage this guidance to effectively design and implement cloud computing information security controls. Customers can download the ISO/IEC 27017 certificate which demonstrates Microsoft’s continuous commitment to providing a secure and compliant cloud environment for our customers.
Microsoft Azure helps customers meet their compliance requirements across a broad range of regulated industries and markets including financial services, healthcare, life sciences, media and entertainment, worldwide public sector, and US federal, state and local government.
Boeing chose the Azure cloud platform because Microsoft agreed to collaborate on analytics software intended to help improve operational efficiency in the narrow margin aviation sector.
Boeing's decision to run its aviation analytics applications on the Azure cloud computing software is a big win for Microsoft, which is chasing Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the high-stakes race to sell computing, storage and other infrastructure software over the internet. The aerospace giant based its choice largely on Microsoft’s willingness to help it develop applications to serve its 300 airline customers, which are starved for ways to optimize fuel efficiency and better manage fleets.
"The combination of technical acumen and depth, as well as where they're investing and how they're addressing the business customer, really matched up with our objectives," says Andrew Gendreau, director of advanced information solutions at Boeing's digital aviation unit. He tells CIO.com that Microsoft also impressed with its commitment to advancing its Cortana analytics and internet of things suites as well as augmented reality, which could play a big factor modeling aviation modeling.
That even a division within a large enterprise would standardize on Azure shows just how far the platform has come in a few years. AWS grabbed an early lead in corporate cloud infrastructure a decade ago as developers began consuming its elastic storage and compute services. With AWS proving reliable and cost-effective, developers sung AWS' praises, boasting that the capability to spin up and shut down servers at will made application development more nimble. AWS soon began attracting larger corporate customers, notably Netflix, Capital One, Pfizer and the CIA.
Boeing deal shows Microsoft no longer 'bumbling around'
Azure has come on strong under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, whose mobile first, cloud first strategy is resonating with CIOs. Pattonair CIO Brian Long recently told CIO.com that CIOs have noticed how Microsoft has "gotten its act together," entering the mobile and cloud frays after a few years of "bumbling around."
Boeing's digital aviation unit chose Azure after using AWS, CenturyLink and other vendors. Gendreau acknowledges that while there are "players that accelerate your business" most cloud providers offer point solutions, which can introduce complexity in Boeing customer's aircraft systems. Conversely, Microsoft is willing to work closely with organizations to understand their business objectives and provide more comprehensive software suites.
Gendreau says Microsoft will help Boeing generate analytics that enable predictive aircraft maintenance, optimize fuel efficiency and fleet management in an industry where margins are razor thin. While airlines globally generate about $700 billion in revenue, they spend about $700 billion in operating costs, Gendreau says. Ensuring access to real-time machine information will assist pilots, mechanics, dispatchers and flight attendants in making flying more efficient. Ideally, this will help airlines sustain profitable growth.
"The aircraft are becoming smarter and smarter and the operators are all looking to gain more operational insights into what's happening on the aircraft," says Greg Jones, Microsoft’s global industry director for travel. "This is a true opportunity to look at what transformation can occur within the aviation space."
Several smaller organizations, from native cloud companies such as Box to the nearly 200-year-old publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are using Azure. Yet if Microsoft is going to challenge AWS it needs more marquee enterprise customers like Boeing and General Electric, which earlier this month said that its Predix IoT platform would run on Azure.
Yet Microsoft faces a big challenge in a cloud market where exclusive deals remain hard to come by. AWS enjoys commercial relationships with Box, GE and Boeing.
In AWS, Microsoft faces stiff test
Ed Anderson, a Gartner analyst who tracks the cloud computing market, says Microsoft’s recent enterprise wins underscores how traditional businesses such as GE and Boeing are adopting progressive computing approaches, including cloud, IoT and machine intelligence. “The fact that Boeing announced this with Microsoft rather than with AWS shows some traction that Microsoft is gaining,” says Anderson. “It’s very important for Microsoft to win deals like this.”
AWS played a major role in driving Amazon.com's profitable second quarter Thursday, reporting revenue of $2.87 billion, up 58 percent from the same period in 2015 and the most it ever delivered in one quarter. If AWS keeps up the pace, it will easily exceed the $10 billion run rate CEO Jeff Bezos foreshadowed for 2016. And there's no signs of slippage: Salesforce.com selected AWS as its preferred public cloud infrastructure provider and Kellogg’s, Brooks Brothers, Ferrara Candy Company are all running critical SAP business applications on AWS.
Microsoft’s cloud business is on a bit of a tear itself. The company said earlier this month that its fourth-quarter revenue from Azure grew 102 percent, while Azure compute usage doubled year-over-year. Its Intelligent Cloud, which includes server Windows Server and Azure, grew 7 percent to $6.7 billion. More broadly, Microsoft’s commercial cloud business, which includes Azure, as well as Office 365 and Dynamics CRM, achieved a $12 billion run rate, up from $10 billion in its previous quarter.
However, Microsoft’s accounting practices – it declines to disclose revenues for Azure alone -- make apples-to-apples comparisons between Azure and AWS impossible. Anderson says that while Microsoft’s enterprise reach goes deep, particularly with businesses that use .NET applications and that have inked enterprise agreements, AWS enjoys the pole position in the public cloud market. As such,Anderson says, Microsoft “must go the extra mile to attract some of these big deals.”
While tech startups have become synonymous with urban areas that offer improved access to talent, resources and infrastructure, the reality is that rural areas are also home to startups.
This may come as a surprise to those who have moved away from rural areas specifically to find a job in the tech industry, which accounts for more than 6.7 million jobs in the United States alone. Population loss is a real issue for much of rural America; some states, such as Nebraska and Kansas, have introduced tax incentives to fight back against this trend. Others are turning to technology to counter the trend.
States are starting to recognize the importance of supporting and developing opportunities for rural counties. In the state of Washington, the Department of Commerce has been encouraging business plan competitions in rural areas with “at least 10 competitions in rural areas that we have promoted and supported,” stated Maury Forman, senior manager of the rural initiatives and innovations at Washington State Department of Commerce.
This foresight is necessary to support tech startups and the entrepreneurs behind them — tech startups tend to grow quickly in their early years, which offsets “job destruction from early-stage business failures,” which in turn leads to a more robust job market.
Live. Give. Save. Inc., is a financial tech startup based in the city of Red Wing, Minnesota, home to a little over 16,000 people. “Red Wing has a history of pioneers … and inventors. There’s a rich, rich beautiful history of arts, culture and innovation,” said Susan Sorensen Langer, CEO, Live. Give. Save., Inc., a financial tech startup that is creating a mobile platform to boost retirement savings through charitable giving.
Langer moved out to Red Wing after her contract ended with her last employer and was introduced to Neela Mollgaard, Executive Director of Red Wing Ignite, a nonprofit organization that develops and promotes next-generation technology services and applications. “I was blown away by what they were doing in Red Wing,” Langer said, and spoke to the desire to change Red Wing’s image into a place that would become known for startups much like Austin, Texas.
Access to internet hasn’t really been an issue actually.
— C. Skyler Young
Support from the community to provide the necessary resources and infrastructure has been invaluable to the success of tech startups such as Live. Give. Save., Inc. In 2012, the city of Red Wing and Hiawatha Broadband Communications (HBC) formed a public-private partnership to bring gigabit broadband to Red Wing. For entrepreneurs such as Langer, who have virtual teams, having access to fast internet is crucial.
While other rural areas may not have the same support Red Wing has, technological updates and developments have been on the rise. Certain companies have specifically focused on bringing broadband internet to rural America. “I am often asked if the difficulty of running a company in a rural area is high-speed internet. It’s not,” said Ken Levy, CEO and co-founder of 4-Tell, which helps increase sales for online retailers by 17.1 percent with big data.
C. Skyler Young, owner of Site Savvy, a tech startup that provides managed websites and online marketing for small to mid-sized businesses based in Yakima, Washington, has a similar experience to Levy. “Access to internet hasn’t really been an issue actually,” said Young. “There are a few dead zones in town; some of the communication infrastructure dates back to the 20s,” Young said. “However, it’s been updated a great deal in recent years. It’s not at all hard to find good connections these days.”
While Yakima has a larger population that what is typically considered to be rural, the land is undeveloped and used mostly for agricultural purposes. Known to locals as the little sister of Seattle, Yakima offers plenty of opportunities to enjoy the outdoors, with mountains and bodies of water surrounding the area.
In terms of access to talent, Levy has credited the Columbia River Gorge area with attracting “a personality type that is perfect for startups, and employees want to move here.” Levy stated that “the Gorge has created a high-tech hub with over a thousand technical employees centered around Insitu (a division of Boeing) and related software and hardware companies.”
The assumption that rural areas cannot support tech startups is coming under fire.
While both Young and Langer spoke about the difficulties they’ve faced in getting talent to move to rural areas, they credit remote employees and having a virtual team as filling this gap. “After this [product] kickoff, what I plan is to get a couple of developers to move to Red Wing,” Langer said. Young noted that although finding talent was still a struggle, “it’s becoming easier as time goes on … as people work remotely and choose to live more comfortable and sustainable lifestyles in the countryside.”
And the advantages to having your tech startup based in a rural area? Plenty. Young was full of praise, citing “low cost of living, no traffic, elbow room, and easy access to the outdoors.” In a similar vein, Langer talked about how Red Wing is a great place for those with a love of the outdoors, its close proximity to both Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as only being 45 minutes away from the nearest airport. “Red Wing is the perfect mix of small town and big city,” Langer said. “It’s a wonderful place to raise children. It’s got everything.” An important factor Levy brought up was access to quality education. The Gorge has access to quality schools and “employees for a high-tech company want the best schools for their kids.”
Although challenges still exist for rural startups, the assumption that rural areas cannot support tech startups is coming under fire. Because of the initiatives of state organizations and private companies, as well as the opening of co-working spaces, rural areas are being given the attention they need and deserve to develop and invest in opportunities that will allow business as a whole to grow and succeed.
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Technology can help bridge the gap as cures are sought for ALS
On Friday, GLEASON, the critically acclaimed documentary about former NFL player Steve Gleason, will open in select theaters across the U.S. GLEASON tells the incredibly powerful story of Steve’s life both leading up to and after his diagnosis in 2011 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. I’ve been fortunate to see the documentary a few times over the last few months and I’ll be honest, you’ll need tissues and strong stomach muscles. It is real, gritty, warm, humbling and hilarious. The Gleasons have a relentless drive to empower others with ALS to ‘live’ and live a life that is worth living, and I know I’m not the only one who feels unbelievably lucky to partner with Team Gleason on technology to help support that goal.
Microsoft’s work with Team Gleason got ignited two years ago this week at //oneweek, our annual hackathon where thousands of Microsoft employees spend days poring over projects that have a real impact. Steve had issued a challenge to Microsoft to develop technology to help people with ALS, specifically to help him communicate more easily, play with his son and move his wheelchair independently. The 2014 //oneweek Ability EyeGaze hackathon team came together to tackle that challenge and ended up winning the whole hackathon that year.
Two years on, Team Gleason and Steve continue to work on these goals with the Microsoft Enable team in Microsoft Technology and Research, producing technology that enables people to move their wheelchairs and communicate through their keyboards using nothing more than the movement of their eyes. The passion and dedication of everyone that has touched this project has been overwhelming; it’s been a remarkable experience in which to participate. In that time, the project has evolved from an early stage hack into technology that helps Steve do exactly what he asked: be more independent. Steve is regularly using the technology to get around and to communicate with friends and family, just as he had envisioned at the beginning.
The technology may now be real and have a lot less duct tape involved than when we first started, but the work is far from done. We are still in the research phase and are continuing to improve it – even here at //oneweek this week – with the goal of making it available to everyone who can benefit from it.
We have learned so much along the way from many families impacted by ALS and we are humbled by their generosity. We know that technology has the power to change lives and we are fired up at the chance to work with so many amazing people to help make that possible.
To stay up to speed on the latest developments in accessibility, visit the Microsoft Accessibility website. You can also read more about exciting new research projects like this on the Microsoft Enable team’s website. And follow us on Twitter at Microsoft Accessibility (@MSFTEnable), Microsoft Research (@MSFTResearch) and Team Gleason (@TeamGleason).
Lastly, please, go see this documentary, and you’ll see why we’re so passionate.
As Steve says, ‘Until there is a cure for ALS, technology is the cure.’
7 simple calendar tricks that will level-up your team’s productivity
What’s the secret to maximizing productivity and efficiency? There’s no single silver bullet, but one sure-fire way to make gains is with calendar tricks that will keep you organized and focused. From scheduling “no meeting” time blocks to integrating mobile so you never miss a meeting—the art of calendar optimization is crucial.
Here are seven simple calendar tricks you can use to bring your productivity to the next level:
1.Schedule “no meeting” time blocks—Instead of multitasking, set aside time without interruptions. “When people multitask, often they do multiple things badly,” says David Sanbonmatsu, University of Utah professor of Psychology. “A lot of times, the people who multitask the most are the worst at it…it’s individuals who lack impulse control.” (From Forbes.)
2.Set out-of-office (OOO) time—Identify blocks of time on your calendar as “unavailable,” “not working” or “OOO” if you’re not working a certain day or are traveling.
Pro hack: If you have a regular non-work appointment or commute time when you’re unavailable, schedule it as recurring OOO time. To do this in Outlook, just open the meeting you want to set as recurring and on the Meeting tab (in the Options group), click Recurrence. Select your desired frequency, set options for the frequency and click OK.
3.Connect your calendar on your mobile—It happens to everyone: You’re not on your laptop and a meeting runs late, you forget when and where your next meeting is and you end up shuffling in with a flurry of apologies five minutes after the next meeting begins. Integrate your calendar on your mobile device to stay up-to-date on all your meetings.
4.Install buffer time—Whenever possible, schedule an extra 10 minutes on either side of every meeting, so that you have enough time to clean up from the current meeting and then prepare and set up for the next meeting. This will also help you avoid the feeling of “running” from meeting to meeting.
5.Schedule breaks—When you’re completing tasks like a do-it-all, it’s easy to plow through and work till you’re fried. “Getting up for a few minutes and getting our blood flowing and some more oxygen to the brain is a necessary piece of the work day,” according to the Huffington Post’s Healthy Living team. Schedule breaks into your calendar to avoid burnout and boost creativity and let your calendar reminders hold you accountable.
6.Set check-in reminders—As major deadlines approach, schedule check-ins with reminders for benchmarks along the way. This avoids end-of-project stress and ensures you’re checking off tasks before they’ve passed. Include team members on your calendar reminders to encourage team check-ins as well.
7.Integrate business contacts—Simplify inviting business contacts by integrating your calendar with your contact list.
Pro hack: You can add a contact from an email message in Office 365. Open the message so that the person’s name is shown in one of these lines: From, To, Cc or Bcc. Right-click the appropriate name and click Add to Outlook Contacts. A new window opens, where you can fill in the details you want and then OK when done.
Use your calendar to stay on top of your day by optimizing organization and ultimately making you more productive. For more productivity tips learn how to work smarter in the cloud. To ensure you and your team are more connected get the eBook: “Collaborate, Anytime, Anywhere.“
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Evolving the application platform from software to dataware
Every decade, a set of major forces work together to change the way we think about “applications.” Until now, those changes were principally evolutions of software programming, networked communications and user interactions.
In the mid-1990s, Bill Gates’ famous “The Internet Tidal Wave” letter highlighted the rise of the internet, browser-based applications and portable computing.
By 2006, smart, touch devices, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and the earliest days of cloud computing were emerging. Today, data and machine learning/artificial intelligence are combining with software and cloud infrastructure to become a new platform.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently described this new platform as “a third ‘run time’ — the next platform…one that doesn’t just manage information but also learns from information and interacts with the physical world.”
I think of this as an evolution from software to dataware as applications transform from predictable programs to data-trained systems that continuously learn and make predictions that become more effective over time. Three forces — application intelligence, microservices/serverless architectures and natural user interfaces — will dominate how we interact with and benefit from intelligent applications over the next decade.
In the mid-1990s, the rise of internet applications offered countless new services to consumers, including search, news and e-commerce. Businesses and individuals had a new way to broadcast or market themselves to others via websites. Application servers from BEA, IBM, Sun and others provided the foundation for internet-based applications, and browsers connected users with apps and content. As consumer hardware shifted from desktop PCs to portable laptops, and infrastructure became increasingly networked, the fundamental architectures of applications were re-thought.
By 2006, a new wave of core forces shaped the definition of applications. Software was moving from client-server to Software-as-a-Service. Companies like Salesforce.com and NetSuite led the way, with others like Concur transforming into SaaS leaders. In addition, hardware started to become software services in the form of Infrastructure-as-a-Service with the launch of Amazon Web Services S3 (Simple Storage Service) and then EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute Service).
Smart, mobile devices began to emerge, and applications for these devices quickly followed. Apple entered the market with the iPhone in 2007, and a year later introduced the App Store. In addition, Google launched the Android ecosystem that year. Applications were purpose-built to run on these smart devices, and legacy applications were re-purposed to work in a mobile context.
As devices, including iPads, Kindles, Surfaces and others proliferated, application user interfaces became increasingly complex. Soon developers were creating applications that responsively adjusted to the type of device and use case they were supporting. Another major change of this past decade was the transition from typing and clicking, which had dominated the PC and Blackberry era, to touch as a dominant interface for humans and applications.
Software is programmed and predictable, while the new dataware is trained and predictive.
In 2016, we are on the cusp of a totally new era in how applications are built, managed and accessed by users. The most important aspect of this evolution is how applications are being redefined from “software programs” to “dataware learners.”
For decades, software has been programmed and designed to run in predictable ways. Over the next decade, dataware will be created through training a computer system with data that enables the system to continuously learn and make predictions based on new data/metadata, engineered features and algorithm-powered data models.
In short, software is programmed and predictable, while the new dataware is trained and predictive. We benefit from dataware all the time today in modern search, consumer services like Netflix and Spotify and fraud protection for our credit cards. But soon, every application will be an intelligent application.
Three major forces underlie the shift from software to dataware which necessitates a new “platform” for application development and operations and these forces are interrelated.
Application intelligence
Intelligent applications are the end product of this evolution. They leverage data, algorithms and ongoing learning to anticipate and improve interactions with the people and machines they interact with.
They combine three layers: innovative data and metadata stores, data intelligence systems (enabled by machine learning/AI) and the predictive intelligence that is expressed at an “application” layer. In addition, these layers are connected by a continual feedback loop that collects data at the points of interaction between machines and/or humans to continually improve the quality of the intelligent applications.
Microservices and serverless functions
Monolithic applications, even SaaS applications, are being deconstructed into components that are elastic building blocks for “macro-services.” Microservice building blocks can be simple or multi-dimensional, and they are expressed through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). These APIs often communicate machine-to-machine, such as Twilio for communication or Microsoft’s Active Directory Service for identity. They also enable traditional applications to more easily “talk” or interact with new applications.
And, in the form of “bots,” they perform specific functions, like calling a car service or ordering a pizza via an underlying communication platform. A closely related and profound infrastructure trend is the emergence of event-driven, “serverless” application architectures. Serverless functions such as Amazon’s Lambda service or Google Functions leverage cloud infrastructure and containerized systems such as Docker.
Without access to the data and the right to use it to train models, dataware will not be possible.
At one level, these “serverless functions” are a form of microservice. But, they are separate, as they rely on data-driven events to trigger a “state-less” function to perform a specific task. These functions can even call intelligent applications or bots as part of a functional flow. These tasks can be connected and scaled to form real-time, intelligent applications and be delivered in a personalized way to end-users. Microservices, in their varying forms, will dominate how applications are built and “served” over the next decade.
Natural user interface
If touch was the last major evolution in interfaces, voice, vision and virtual interaction using a mix of our natural senses will be the major interfaces of the next decade. Voice is finally exploding with platforms like Alexa, Cortana and Siri. Amazon Alexa already has more than 1,000 voice-activated skills on its platform. And, as virtual and augmented reality continue to progress, voice and visual interfaces (looking at an object to direct an action) will dominate how people interact with applications.
Microsoft HoloLens and Samsung Gear are early examples of devices using visual interfaces. Even touch will evolve in both the physical sense through “chatbots” and the virtual sense, as we use hand controllers like those that come with a Valve/HTC Vive to interact with both our physical and virtual worlds. And especially in virtual environments, using a voice-activated service like Alexa to open and edit a document will feel natural.
What are the high-level implications of the evolution to intelligent applications powered by a dataware platform?
SaaS is not enough. The past 10 years in commercial software have been dominated by a shift to cloud-based, always-on SaaS applications. But, these applications are built in a monolithic (not microservices) manner and are generally programmed, versus trained. New commercial applications will emerge that will incorporate the intelligent applications framework, and usually be built on a microservices platform. Even those now “legacy” SaaS applications will try to modernize by building in data intelligence and microservices components.
Data access and usage rights are required. Intelligent applications are powered by data, metadata and intelligent data models (“learners”). Without access to the data and the right to use it to train models, dataware will not be possible. The best sources of data will be proprietary and differentiated. Companies that curate such data sources and build frequently used, intelligent applications will create a virtuous cycle and a sustainable competitive advantage. There will also be a lot of work and opportunity ahead in creating systems to ingest, clean, normalize and create intelligent data learners leveraging machine learning techniques.
New form factors will emerge. Natural user interfaces leveraging speech and vision are just beginning to influence new form factors like Amazon Echo, Microsoft HoloLens and Valve/HTC Vive. These multi-sense and machine-learning-powered form factors will continue to evolve over the next several years. Interestingly, the three mentioned above emerged from a mix of Seattle-based companies with roots in software, e-commerce and gaming!
The three major trends outlined here will help turn software applications into dataware learners over the next decade, and will shape the future of how man and machine interact. Intelligent applications will be data-driven, highly componentized, accessed via almost all of our senses and delivered in real time.
These applications and the devices used to interact with them, which may seem improbable to some today, will feel natural and inevitable to all by 2026 — if not sooner. Entrepreneurs and companies looking to build valuable services and software today need to keep these rapidly emerging trends in mind.
I remember debating with our portfolio companies in 2006 and 2007 whether or not to build products as SaaS and mobile-first on a cloud infrastructure. That ship has sailed. Today we encourage them to build applications powered by machine learning, microservices and voice/visual inputs.
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