Author: Susanna Ray

Susanna Ray

Artificial intelligence takes on machine reading, Christmas carols and eye disease – Weekend Reading: Dec. 30 edition

- Susanna Ray
Rangan Majumder, partner group program manager with Microsoft’s Bing search engine division.

Artificial intelligence (AI) made incredible strides in 2016, and the growth appears set to accelerate as we enter the New Year. A team of Microsoft researchers has released a dataset of 100,000 questions and answers that other AI researchers can use – for free – in their quest to create systems that can read and answer questions as well as a human. The MS MARCO dataset is based on anonymized … Read more »

Using web search data to detect lung cancer and swinging through the universe with Kinect – Weekend Reading: Nov. 11 edition

- Susanna Ray

While the U.S. election dominated global headlines, there has been lots of other news you may have missed, including Microsoft researchers who detected lung cancer risks through web search logs, and an art exhibit where you can explore the universe from the seat of a swing. So take a moment to look at the world around you – and beyond – this weekend. Although smoking cigarettes is the leading cause … Read more »

Football tech, election predictions and perfectly fitting jeans – Weekend Reading: Oct. 14 edition

- Susanna Ray
seahawks

Weather woes, election exhaustion, darkening days – there’s lots of justification this weekend for curling up on the couch with nibbles and beverages. Or for leaping off it and screaming at your television. Either way, the NFL is sure to oblige with some distracting entertainment. And Microsoft Surface tablets will come in handy on both sides of the TV screen. Surface Pro tablets are going into their fourth season helping … Read more »

New back-to-school tech tools, Xbox at gamescom and turning playtime into profits — Weekend Reading: Aug. 19 edition

- Susanna Ray
Dona Sarkar and her team photographed on the soccer field at The Commons on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Wash. on August 8, 2016. The team includes (from left) Joe Camp, Cheryl Sanders, Blair Glennon, Tyler Ahn, Dona Sarkar, Derek Haynes, Thomas Trembly, Manik Rane (kneeling), Ursula Hildenbrand, Joan Steelquist and Seth Rubinstein. Photo by Dan DeLong

Summer ended this week for some North American kids and teachers, but the week also marked the arrival of new technology to help ease those back-to-school blues – and what’s especially nice is it’s free. Office 365 Education, which is free for students and teachers, has a bunch of new features for the coming school year. Microsoft Classroom will help educators manage their administrative tasks so they have more time … Read more »

Summer, Spartans, Spark and Sprightly – Weekend Reading: June 10 edition

- Susanna Ray
Microsoft-KING-5-314-1024x683

“S” is for summer – and for Spartans, Spark and Sprightly, three super subjects this week that you won’t want to have missed. (See what we did there?) But first, let’s talk about the terrific trickle-down effect that’s in full swing in the field of data visualization. Seattle broadcaster KING 5 made Puget Sound voters the first in the nation to get a real-time, in-depth look at their local civic … Read more »

Microsoft adds intelligence to industry, Horvitz wins an AI award and Skype celebrates a big milestone – Weekend Reading: April 29 edition

- Susanna Ray

Wurst and beer were on the minds – and in the stomachs – of many in the tech world this week, as tens of thousands descended on Hannover, Germany, for the world’s largest industrial technology fair. Grab a tasty snack or beverage yourself as you sit back and enjoy this Weekend Reading overview. At the Hannover Messe, Microsoft and its partners demonstrated intelligent aircraft engines, street lights, buildings, factories, refrigerators … Read more »

Cyber security gets the spotlight at Microsoft Envision business conference, starting April 4

- Susanna Ray
FINAL_GLOBE_telescope-011

Cyber security will be a main focus at the Microsoft Envision conference, reflecting the topic’s importance to every executive or business leader who sets strategy for a company, business unit or government agency. More than a dozen sessions will address cyber security at Envision, which begins April 4 in New Orleans, including topics such as what questions to ask a security team, managing security, surveillance and keeping highly regulated industries … Read more »