NASA tech could trim air travel delays
By Derek Major as written on gsn.com
When severe storms hit, air travel delays are all but guaranteed. Last month alone, more than 10,000 flights were cancelled in a three-day period after a snowstorm dropped up to 30 inches on the East Coast from New York to Georgia. But NASA is working on a software-driven solution that could ease the pain for travellers, airlines and air traffic controllers alike.
NASA's Ames Research Center, the Federal Aviation Administration and industry developers are developing and testing a system known as Dynamic Weather Routes. According to NASA, the system updates and compares weather and air traffic data to find alternate routes when severe weather is likely to impact planes already in the air.
The DWR system collects and updates weather and air traffic information every 12 seconds and uses the data to find alternative routes and resolve air traffic conflicts. (The traditional method depends on a teleconference held every two hours.) DWR can account for frequent weather changes and plot new routes to avoid traffic or airspace that is designated for special use.
A 10-person team has been developing DWR since 2010, and research shows the software could save 10 minutes per flight. “The [current] static weather avoidance routes may not be well tailored to the weather of the day,” Kapil Sheth, a NASA aerospace research engineer, explained. “Large buffers compensate for forecast uncertainty of up to four hours ahead. When weather changes, it leaves an opportunity to save time and fuel.”
The Ames Research Center was awarded a patent for DWR late last year, and an industry partner has been field testing the prototype system for more than two years. Dave McNally, NASA’s principal investigator for DWR, said that one aerospace company already has licensed DWR, and the system is currently being used for advisories on flights.
NASA tech could trim air travel delays
By Derek Major as written on gsn.com
When severe storms hit, air travel delays are all but guaranteed. Last month alone, more than 10,000 flights were cancelled in a three-day period after a snowstorm dropped up to 30 inches on the East Coast from New York to Georgia. But NASA is working on a software-driven solution that could ease the pain for travellers, airlines and air traffic controllers alike.
NASA's Ames Research Center, the Federal Aviation Administration and industry developers are developing and testing a system known as Dynamic Weather Routes. According to NASA, the system updates and compares weather and air traffic data to find alternate routes when severe weather is likely to impact planes already in the air.
The DWR system collects and updates weather and air traffic information every 12 seconds and uses the data to find alternative routes and resolve air traffic conflicts. (The traditional method depends on a teleconference held every two hours.) DWR can account for frequent weather changes and plot new routes to avoid traffic or airspace that is designated for special use.
A 10-person team has been developing DWR since 2010, and research shows the software could save 10 minutes per flight. “The [current] static weather avoidance routes may not be well tailored to the weather of the day,” Kapil Sheth, a NASA aerospace research engineer, explained. “Large buffers compensate for forecast uncertainty of up to four hours ahead. When weather changes, it leaves an opportunity to save time and fuel.”
The Ames Research Center was awarded a patent for DWR late last year, and an industry partner has been field testing the prototype system for more than two years. Dave McNally, NASA’s principal investigator for DWR, said that one aerospace company already has licensed DWR, and the system is currently being used for advisories on flights.
EU Model Clauses and HIPAA BAA update now available for all Yammer customers
Post was written by Juliet Wei, senior product marketing manager for the Yammer team.
Yammer’s mission is to enable open team collaboration, and we recognize that sharing goes hand in hand with the right levels of privacy, security and compliance. With more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500 using Yammer to collaborate, our goal is to provide customers with industry-leading privacy and security commitments.
Today I’m thrilled to announce that Yammer has achieved a major compliance milestone to enhance its commitment to the protection of personal data for European customers. Effective immediately, all customers can obtain a Data Processing Agreement with the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses for data processors, known commonly as the “EU Model Clauses (EUMC).” This provides customers with an alternative to transfer personal data from the European Union to the United States.
Additionally, the standard HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (HIPAA BAA) for Microsoft enterprise online services is now available for Yammer customers.
Organizations want a collaboration platform that gives them the right levels of privacy, security, and compliance. The EUMC and use of the standard HIPAA BAA for Microsoft enterprise online services are part of Yammer’s ongoing investments to deliver the protection customers need to collaborate with confidence.
—Juliet Wei
Source: https://blogs.office.com
Azure Media Services announces new services and partnerships at IBC 2015
As written by Sudheer Sirivara, Director, Azure Media Services on September 10, 2015 Azure.microsoft.com.
Over the past six months, the Media Services team has aggressively added innovative new capabilities to enable content owners and partners to prepare, protect, distribute and monetize media in the cloud. We are seeing great momentum with our customers and partners, including the record-breaking successful stream of the 2015 Super Stream Sunday, the launch of Next Generation Sports Network (NGSN), F1 car racing on FujiTV’s NextSmart service, and Telenet’s new interactive “Play Sports” app.
Today at IBC in Amsterdam, we are thrilled to announce key new services, certifications and partnerships that further enable end-to-end cloud based media workflows, from camera to viewer. These include:
Live Encoding general availability
Live Encoding allows you to send a single bitrate live feed to Azure Media Services, have it encoded into an adaptive bitrate stream and deliver it to a wide variety of clients for delivery in MPEG-DASH, Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Apple HLS, or Adobe HDS formats. Generally available in the coming weeks, Live Encoding can be combined with dynamic packaging, dynamic encryption, sub-clipping, dynamic manifest manipulation, ad-marker insertion, and near-seamless live/on-demand capabilities to build comprehensive live and cloud DVR workflows.
Introducing Live sub-clipping and archive extraction
Building on the recent availability of our industry proven Media Encoder Standard and Premium, today we are excited to announce important new features to our live streaming platform. Media Encoder Standard now includes support for extracting sub-clips, i.e. taking a portion of the live stream and producing a new on-demand asset. Media Encoder Standard now also has the ability to extract live archives as MP4s for subsequent syndication. Click here for more information about how to get started with these new live asset editing features.
Google Widevine now supported for Content Protection
In addition to AES 128-bit clear key encryption and Microsoft PlayReady DRM content protection services, we are now adding support for Google Widevine Modular DRM dynamic packaging. Additionally, our new partnerships with EZDRM and Axinom enable you to deliver Widevine licenses to your devices and browsers and you can deliver a dynamically packaged multi-DRM stream that uses Common Encryption (CENC). Click here for more information.
Expanded reach for Azure Media Player
We launched Azure Media Player in April at NAB and we are seeing a phenomenal response and uptake. Over 4 million streams have already been served to websites and mobile apps using an embedded and customized Azure Media Player. With new support for Widevine DRM, the Azure Media Player can now playback encrypted video content in Google Chrome with Widevine through HTML5 and Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer browsers with PlayReady or AES. And yes, that means Chrome running on desktops, Android devices, and Macs! Additionally, Azure Media Player now has the capability to playback multi-language audio and continues to support WebVTT captions, screen readers and tabbing control.
Azure Media Indexer adds Custom Language Models
Our powerful speech-to-text engine, takes in an audio or video media asset, and returns the caption/index/keyword files. For example, broadcasters looking to make their catalogs available on the internet can use Indexer to automatically generate TTML subtitles. A new capability of Indexer, Custom Language Models, lets you use relevant text documents to augment the internal dictionary (language model) for the duration of your job. This will be extremely useful if you are indexing content with lots of non-standard words or technical jargon (i.e. scientific, law enforcement, industry) or specific brand names or proper nouns.
Imagine Communications integration for Broadcast Channel Cloud Playout
Visitors to the Microsoft booth at IBC can see a demonstration of how to setup and deploy a fully featured ‘pop-up’ channel solution and channels for disaster recovery. What would have formerly taken a broadcaster weeks to deploy can now be accomplished in minutes on Azure with all of the traditional integrated channel playout functions now cloud-enabled, including automation, branding, graphics, and file server capabilities.
Compliance certifications
With the Content Delivery and Security Association’s (CDSA) Content Protection and Security Program (CPS) certification, Azure Media Services is the only hyper-scale cloud media solution provider in the market offering encryption on the fly for both video-on-demand and live streaming broadcasts. With the validation of CDSA certification, asset owners on the Azure Media Services platform can rest assured that their content is protected with enterprise-grade security. Stop by the Microsoft IBC booth to pick up a copy of our CDSA CPS Implementation Guide.
The services, partnerships and certifications we are announcing this week in Amsterdam are helping us move the needle when it comes to scalable, secure, and cost-effective media workflows in the cloud. Combined with our rich ecosystem of partners, some of which are presenting within the Microsoft Booth at IBC, we offer a differentiated platform to enable your end-to-end media solution needs. Click here to learn more about Azure Media Services, and come visit us at IBC in Hall 13, MS1 and MS2.
Formalized Change Management – Is It Needed? BY JOSH HENDRICKSON, SYSTEMS ENGINEER
As IT infrastructure grows, so does the need for more and more administrative staff to manage that infrastructure. Along with the increased number of staff members and servers also comes an ever increasing level of system interoperation and complexity. It is as these high levels of growth and complexity that an organization must start to consider a more formalized change management process and procedure.
First though, let’s back up and talk about what a formal change management process consists of. A formal change management process generally requires a change management governing body, a change execution entity/member, and the infrastructure itself.
A governing body can be as simple as the next few organizational levels over the infrastructure administrators (generally a department manager and the director or VP of IT). It can also be a complex organizational entity (also known as a steering committee) that includes many different internal departments to a larger IT department. Basically, the goal of this governing body is to oversee any change requests, ensure clear direction of any infrastructure changes, as well as ensure there will be little to no unforeseen impact on end user production systems. The change execution entity can consist of one IT administrator or a group of IT members working to collectively execute the change as approved by the governing body.
If executed properly a formal change management process can greatly reduce the risk of service outages, data lose, or critical revenue loss incurred by production systems that require adherence to strict service level agreements (SLAs). Failure to comply with change management process and procedure generally comes with professional consequences. In some cases, non-complying IT staff members could be formally reprimanded or even worse result in termination of employment.
Some organizations only implement change management on production environments, while others require change management on development, QA, and production environments. Any level of formalize change management ensures that there is a written record of infrastructure changes, the intended impact (if any) of the change, and the entity that requested and/or conducted the execution of the change.
Whether it is an external compliance regulation, such as HIPPA or Sarbanes Oxley, or an internal company practice and procedure, the benefits of implementing a formal change management process can prove extremely valuable to an organization. So, as a company executive or valued member of an organization’s IT staff, it may be time to stand up a formal change management control system to mitigate company risks related to Information Technology.
About the author
Josh Hendrickson is a detail oriented IT Professional that focuses on core infrastructure systems. He was born and raised in Indiana and migrated to California back in 2003. He has worked in an array of industries such as healthcare, marketing and IT services.
Articles by Josh Hendrickson:
