The content below is taken from the original (Send your Azure alerts to ITSM tools using Action Groups), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

At Ignite 2017, we announced the new IT Service Management (ITSM) Action in Azure Action Groups. As you might know, Action Groups is a reusable notification grouping for Azure alerts. Users can create an action group with functions such as sending an email or SMS, as well as calling a webhook and re-use it across multiple alerts. The new ITSM Action will allow users to create a work item in the connected ITSM tool when an alert is fired.

ITSM Connector Solution in Log Analytics

This action builds on top of the IT Service Management Connector Solution in Azure Log Analytics. The ITSM Connector solution provides a bi-directional connection with the ITSM tool of your choice. Currently the solution is in public preview and supports connections with ITSM tools such as System Center Service Manager, ServiceNow, Provance, and Cherwell. Today, through the ITSM Action, we are bringing the same integration capabilities to Azure alerts.

The IT Service Management Connector allows you to:

• Create work items (incidents, alerts, and events) in the connected ITSM tool when a Log Analytics alert fires, or manually from a Log Analytics log record.
• Combine the power of help desk data, such as incidents and change requests, and log data, such as activity and diagnostic logs, performance, and configuration changes, to mitigate incidents quickly.
• Derive insights from incidents using the Azure Log Analytics platform.

Using the new ITSM Action

Before you can start using the ITSM Action, you will need to install and configure the IT Service Management Connector Solution in Log Analytics. Once you have the solution configured, you can follow the steps below to use the ITSM Action.

1. In Azure portal, click on Monitor.

2. In the left pane, click on Action groups.

3. Provide Name and ShortName for your action group. Select the Resource Group and Subscription where you want your action group to get created.

4. In the Actions list, select ITSM from the drop-down for Action Type. Provide a Name for the action and click on Edit details.

5. Select the Subscription where your Log Analytics workspace is located. Select the Connection (i.e your ITSM Connector name) followed by your Workspace name. For example, "MyITSMMConnector(MyWorkspace)."

6. Select Work Item type from the drop-down.

7. Choose to use an existing template or complete the fields required by your ITSM product.

8. Click OK

When creating/editing an Azure alert rule, use an Action Group which has an ITSM Action. When the alert triggers, a work item is created in the ITSM tool.

Note: Currently only Activity Log Alerts support the ITSM Action. For other Azure alerts, this action is triggered but no work item will be created.

We hope you will find this feature useful in integrating your alerting and Service Desk solutions. Learn more and get information on IT Service Management Connector Solution and Action Groups.

We would love to hear your feedback. Send us any questions or feedback to [email protected]. 

The content below is taken from the original (Casio’s ‘2.5D’ printer can mimic leather and fabric), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

It’s safe to say that we’re all familiar with the term "3D printing" by now, but "2.5D printing?" As silly as it sounds, this may be a game changer for all the industrial designers out there. At CEATEC, Casio demoed this Mofrel printing technology that adds a range of textures to ordinary-looking sheets, before giving them the final touch with a 16-million-color inkjet.

The printed samples looked and felt surprisingly convincing with a great level of detail — down to the uneven surfaces plus puffiness of leather, the subtle bumps on stitches and even the coarseness of embroidered fabrics (especially for kimono designs). Hard materials like wood, stone, brick and ceramic can also be mimicked, though some of these may require additional coating for hardness or shininess.

The secret behind this trick lies within Casio’s "digital sheets." These appear to be slightly thicker sheets of paper, but in fact, they contain a layer of micro powder between the inkjet layer and the paper or PET substrate. Each powder particle consists of a liquid hydrocarbon coated with a thermoplastic resin (acrylonitrile), and such combination expands when exposed to heat, then the structure is retained when heat is removed, thus leaving behind the mimicked texture on the sheet.

To better control the texture formation, the texture pattern is first printed onto the sheet’s top microfilm using carbon, then these infrared-absorbing carbon particles focus the heat onto the desired areas of the micro powder layer. According to Casio Digital Art Division’s Executive Officer Hideaki Terada, the sheet’s expansion is currently capped at 1.7 mm thick for the sake of stability, but 2mm to 2.5mm is also technically possible albeit with difficulty. The microfilm is then peeled off so that colors can be printed onto the textured surface i.e. the inkjet layer.

The entire process takes around three to five minutes for a single-sided A4 "digital sheet," with each sheet costing around $10 (Terada might have been referring to the PET-based version for this). This may seem steep compared to ordinary sheets of paper, but considering the vast range of textures that this technology can simulate, it’s actually a lot cheaper — and faster — than prototyping with the real materials. This is a dream come true for pretty much all sorts of designers. The printer also supports A3 sheets, and you can get double-sided sheets for both sizes (A4 would take about nine minutes to process), though prices for these are unknown.

As for the Mofrel printer, the current version costs around a whopping five million yen or about $44,400, and it’ll be available as a B2B solution some time next year. That said, I was told that some top automobile makers as well as electronics companies got early access to Mofrel, and they are already using it for research and development. It goes without saying that this price point is a bit too much for us mere mortals, but Terada hinted that his team is already prototyping a consumer version, though we’re still one to 1.5 years away from its debut.

Source: Casio

The content below is taken from the original (One Night, the boutique last-minute hotel app, is expanding internationally to London), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

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Copy text content from dialog boxes.

The content below is taken from the original (Microsoft Launcher offers ‘Continue on PC’ option for Android phones), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Microsoft is taking a step to make bridging your life between your phone and PC a little easier, at least for Android users. Today they announced Microsoft Launcher, which gives you the option to "Continue on PC," allowing you to work seamlessly between your Android phone and Windows computer. It’s similar to the Handoff feature on Apple products.

Android phones allow users to customize what’s called a "launcher" that appears when you press the Home button — a feature that iPhone doesn’t have. Microsoft Launcher, which is based on Fluent design, allows you to further customize what you see. In addition to "Continue on PC," you can place icons of your favorite people on your home screen. It also offers The Feed, where you can find your most-used apps, recent news, important events and more, all tailored to your needs. You can access The Feed by swiping right.

Microsoft Launcher also offers full customization capabilities. Not only do you have the ability to change backgrounds, but it offers "gesture" support to make you as productive as possible. The app is available in Preview for now, and it’s open to any Android user. If you’re on the Arrow Launcher beta, you’ll automatically get the Microsoft Launcher update. Support for Continue on PC will arrive with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

Via: The Verge

Source: Microsoft

The content below is taken from the original (Microsoft is bringing its Edge browser to Android and iOS), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (Alexa is about to disappear into other devices, thanks to a new technology), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Today, the reason you have an Amazon Alexa sitting on your coffee table or by a couch is because it needs to be able to hear you clearly when you speak. Too near the TV and it’ll go ordering strange things, whenever someone, like South Park’s Cartman, says “Alexa!”.

What is required is the kind of sophisticated technology that can listen out for a human voice while ignoring all the other noise around. It’s literally harder than it sounds.

Now, a British firm is about to become the world’s first to offer this technology and incorporate the Amazon Alexa Voice Service.

XMOS, which a month ago closed a $15M funding round led by Infineon, has become the first European chip company to release a qualified Amazon Alexa Voice Service (AVS) development kit. It will also be the first company in the world with an AVS-qualified “far-field linear mic array”.

This technology combines the radar normally used in cars with microphones. This means that you can take your voice-enabled speaker off your coffee table and put it back where it belongs – against a wall, discretely integrated into other kit. This means Alex would simply disappear and be discretely integrated it into something else.

XMOS has 50 employees, making it the smallest company to achieve AVS qualification. Its competitors include Synaptics which has a $1.27Bn market cap, and 1800 employees; Microsemi ($5.7Bn), with 4400 employees; and Cirrus Logic ($3.28Bn), and 1100 employees.

While there are competing solutions, XMOS has the first far-field linear array to support Alexa, meaning Alexa could melt into the background.

The linear array is the first Alexa qualified solution for things that have flat panels or sit against the wall – like about 90% of the technology in your home.

It means a future of accessing voice services via devices which are accessible and inconspicuous.

The content below is taken from the original (Smart mattress startup Eight shows off its Alexa integration), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Sleep tech startup Eight has always aimed to connect its products (first a mattress cover, then an actual smart mattress) to the broader smart home ecosystem.

Most recently, it launched a new Alexa skill that allows Eight owners to use the Echo and other Amazon devices to interact with their mattress, both to control it (say by adjusting the temperature) and to access their sleep data.

We visited the Eight office in New York to see the Alexa integration in action, and to talk to co-founder and CEO Matteo Franceschetti about his vision for the company.

“You don’t even need to touch your phone — you can just ask Alexa how you slept,” Franceschetti said. “Or you can ask Alexa to start warming your bed and Alexa will do it automatically for you.”

You can see more of our interview and brief demo in the video above. Pricing for Eight’s lineup for smart mattresses starts at $699.

Featured Image: Eight

The content below is taken from the original (Five more reasons why you should download the Azure mobile app), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

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The content below is taken from the original (A mini version of the Commodore 64 is coming in 2018), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

It’s hard to deny the popularity of Nintendo’s retro mini systems. After all, demand far outstripped supply for the mini version of the original console, and the same is expected to happen for today’s SNES release. It’s not a surprise, then, that other companies are getting in on the action. Retro Games is launching a mini version of the 1982 computer Commodore 64 called the C64 Mini. It will be available in early 2018, with a price point of $70.

The C64 Mini, which is half the size of the original version, will come with 64 preinstalled licensed games, including California Games, Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe and Paradroid. You can find a more complete list of games on their website.

It comes with a wired joystick, a charging cable and will connect to your TV via an HDMI port, but you can also use any standard PC USB keyboard to interface with it. The C64 Mini will have a save game capability and filtering options such as CRT, pixel perfect and scanline emulation. You can upgrade your console’s firmware via a USB flash drive. Retro Games is also planning a full-sized version of the C64 for late 2018.

Via: EuroGamer

Source: Retro Games

The content below is taken from the original (trid (2.24.20171001)), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

TrID is an utility designed to identify file types from their binary signatures

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The content below is taken from the original (Migrating the Smart Way, with Azure), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The cloud era is gaining greater speed, and market projections look very healthy for years to come. This growth and the enthusiasm it’s creating for cloud technology is pushing organizations who, until very recently, were resistant to start their own cloud initiatives. This post is about how your organization can migrate the smart way with Azure cloud. 
Unfortunately, many firms think of a cloud-migration effort as just another IT project (similar to what was previously done to install new hardware and software). As a result, they are making costly missteps for three key reasons:
1. Lack of training
2. Not using cloud architecture best practices
3.  Not taking cost control and monitoring seriously from the start
Consider the following scenario:
Susan is the IT director for Spry Maneuvers, a successful, mid-level logistics firm. SpryM specializes in moving difficult-to-ship freight (such as power plant gas turbines) across the globe.
SpryM is heavily dependent upon a complex database system that sprawls across a large number of virtual machines (VMs) hosted on-premise:
The business is growing, so there is always a need for more storage capacity, more computing power, and greater performance from VSphere’s production and development environments.
Susan is an experienced and knowledgeable manager, and she knows how to address this need through budgeting, hardware provisioning, software licensing, patching, and all the other items required to engineer and maintain a busy data center.
Recently, however, the CIO gave Susan a new directive: For the coming fiscal year, there will be no budget for further on-premises data center investment. Every new initiative must be built on Azure and every existing asset must be moved there too, ASAP.
Under pressure, Susan and her team decided to lift and shift the database farm to Azure by building VMs and simply moving the workloads onto them, just as they’ve done countless times before within their data center:

This seemed easy enough, and after a period of adjustment to the Azure portal interface, SpryM’s IT team began building more and more VMs and moving workloads to over-provisioned F-series virtual machines.
Everything seemed fine until the bill (for tens of thousands for only a few weeks of run time) came due and end-users began complaining about performance issues.
The CIO wondered:

• Wasn’t running things in Azure supposed to be cheaper?
• Wasn’t the cloud supposed to be faster and more efficient?
• How could my team let me down?

SpryM made several critical (and all too common) mistakes from the start:
1. They assumed that the cloud was nothing more than an extension of their data center, as currently configured.
2. Staff requests for training (from those who recognized the challenge) fell on deaf ears—too expensive not necessary.
3. The cloud project was too ambitious. There was no modest proof of concept in which a low impact workload was relocated to Azure to help IT gain experience and confidence
4. No one monitored costs.
How could they have done things better?

Training

Cloud Academy offers excellent courses on Azure such as Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions–70-534 Certification Preparation.
This learning path covers the following key areas:

• Designing Azure Resource Manager (ARM) networking
• Securing resources
• Designing an application storage and data access strategy
• Designing advanced applications
• Designing Azure Web and Mobile Apps
• Designing a management, monitoring, and business continuity strategy
• Architecting an Azure Compute infrastructure

These are the skills that SpryM’s IT team needed to make the right choices.  In addition to courseware for individuals, Cloud Academy offers team-optimized training that could have put SpryM on the correct path.

Azure Solutions Architecture

Microsoft provides a wealth of guidance to help you intelligently and effectively apply the platform’s offerings to your needs.  This should be one of the first places you visit and examine when you’re building with Azure:

Azure Pricing Calculator

SpryM’s IT team was unprepared for the high runtime cost of the type of VM that they chose. This embarrassing surprise was avoidable—they just needed to use the Azure Pricing Calculator:

Using the Pricing Calculator, they would’ve seen that, when compared to running SQL Server on an always-on virtual machine, using an Azure SQL database is very cost effective.
As you move workloads to Azure—whether you eagerly volunteered or were pushed by management—keep the combination of training, cloud-native solutions, and pricing foremost in mind and you’ll greatly increase your odds for success.
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The content below is taken from the original (Local, LocalNow and Roaming folders in AppData on Windows 10 explained), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (Google to let anyone add to Street View, starting with Insta360’s Pro camera), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (DJI’s drone ‘privacy mode’ is now available), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

In August, DJI announced that it would be introducing Local Data Mode to its line of drones, a setting that would cut drones off from internet activity and stop information like flight location from being uploaded to the company’s servers. Well that privacy mode is now available through a DJI Pilot app update for DJI CrystalSky monitors and some Android tablets. "We are creating Local Data Mode to address the needs of our enterprise customers, including public and private organizations that are using DJI technology to perform sensitive operations around the world," Brendan Schulman, DJI’s VP of policy and legal affairs, said in a statement.

While the announcement of the new setting noted that it had been in the works for some time, it did come after the US Army stopped using DJI drones due to "increased awareness of cyber vulnerabilities." The Australian Defense Force also ceased use of DJI drones temporarily, but began using them again following a two week security assessment.

While in Local Data Mode, DJI drones won’t be able to detect location, so information like flight restrictions or no fly zones won’t be automatically adhered to. Therefore, any infringements will be on the user. To activate the privacy mode, click "Activate LDM Mode" in the DJI Pilot app. Local Data Mode isn’t available yet for iOS or the DJI GO 4 app, but DJI told The Verge that it plans to incorporate it into those platforms in the future.

Via: The Verge

Source: DJI