This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
This past year has certainly been an extraordinary one, and we’ve seen the impact of technology as it transforms to meet increasing productivity and collaboration needs around the world. In just the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we observed two years’ worth of digital transformation take place. And the momentum continues to help organizations and businesses optimize. In fact, in the past year, Microsoft Azure grew by more than 1,000 new capabilities, allowing us to innovate with the latest advancements in key areas including AI, machine learning, and virtualization. The rapid pace of technology change has truly shifted the landscape of in-demand skills for a digital world.
At Microsoft, we’ve been building a portfolio of role-based training and certifications designed to help tech professionals stay current and be future-ready. The retirement of product-focused certifications has allowed us to continue investing in our role-based learning offerings. And today, we’re excited to announce a couple of upcoming updates to our certification program to help our customers and partners keep pace with technology.
First, we’re providing our certified professionals a method to renew their Microsoft Certifications, initially earned by passing rigorous exam(s). In early February 2021, you’ll be able to renew your role-based and specialty certifications by passing a free renewal assessment on Microsoft Learn. Rather than having to retake scheduled exam(s), the renewal assessment can be completed online on your own time, and anytime within six months before your certification expires. After you pass the renewal assessment, your certification is extended by one additional year from the current expiration date; this can be done annually. To help you prepare, you’ll also have the option to access a free collection of curated learning modules for each renewal assessment.
Second, we’re updating the validity for role-based and specialty certifications to one year from the date you earned it. Starting in June 2021, this change will take effect for newly earned certifications. The shift to a one-year certification validity aligns to how quickly cloud technology changes; renewing certifications on an annual basis validates skills and ability to perform in job roles are relevant in the market.
This new frictionless approach is intended to enable you to focus on keeping current with technology, while also reducing the stress, complexity, and cost of keeping your certification active. Embracing a growth mindset and the need for continuous learning can help you open career opportunities, successfully perform in job roles, and continue to support your organization’s digital and cloud transformation. With a Microsoft Certification—globally recognized and industry-endorsed evidence of mastered real-world skills—you also demonstrate your proficiency in keeping pace with technology.
We’re happy to share these upcoming changes that enable you to stay current with necessary skills and to seamlessly weave in your certification renewal. For additional details on how to renew role-based and specialty certifications, including answers to frequently asked questions, check out the Renew your Microsoft Certification page. We thank you for sharing your learning journey with us, and we look forward to keeping you up to date on technology’s groundbreaking ability to continue transforming our world.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
With many retailers extending online holiday sales, consumers are taking advantage of the ease of shopping from home. Online shopping can also enable more impulse buying, which in turn increases the likelihood of returns and cancelations and can open the door to abuse and fraud. Merchants need the right tools and controls to help reduce fraud and maximize their holiday revenue.
Here are some proactive and reactive ways to mitigate fraud and related losses during the high-volume holiday sales season.
Do a fraud check before the order is shipped
While it is common to do a fraud check at the time of checkout for online purchases, another effective method to protect against fraud is to do an assessment before the order is ready to be shipped. This will ensure that any change in the status of orders, during the time elapsed since checkout, gets accounted for. To get an idea of the fraud vulnerabilities that exist in your system, try to identify a user placing several orders repeatedly and then canceling the orders.
Doing this additional fraud check also helps prevent the loss of goods and saves the associated shipping costs. It’s especially important for your retail business, when most of what you sell are physical goods the fraud loss could influence the overall profit efficiency of your business.
To reduce loss, you can create a segment of high purchase value products and apply a distinctive fraud strategy for that segment. In addition, if you have a manual review process in place for reviewing orders, you can control the overall manual review volume by choosing to send orders for products that experience a high-fraud rate category instead of sending all orders for review.
Frequently look for patterns in consumer purchases
While proactive ways to stop fraud are ideal, another way to detect fraud is to reactively look for patterns in bulk data from the most recent orders.
Running anomaly detection on purchase orders placed in the last hour, identifying outliers in the data, and sending those specific outliers for further investigation is a good control that complements the real-time fraud checks.
This is also a good feedback loop for the real-time systems that use artificial intelligence to improve precision and accuracy in identifying fraudulent orders. A reactive fraud strategy is a good way to supplement overall fraud controls that are already in place.
Deriving insights through reporting
In addition to responding proactively and reactively, having robust reporting can provide additional insights and enable analytics. The ability to drill down to a specific product level to review transaction lines, see the specific reason code applied, and having access to the entire journal would enable fraud analysts and investigations teams to make decisions rapidly. Setting up alerts on when specific conditions and thresholds are met for products (or markets) that have been traditionally subject to fraud gives you the ability to respond quickly and adjust fraud strategies rapidly.
How Microsoft can help reduce post-purchase fraud loss
Reactive fraud assessment features can help to identify specific vulnerabilities existing at the store, point of sale, product levels, and so on. The Dynamics 365 Fraud Prevention tool provides a risk-based ranking of staff and point of sale terminals, analyzes underlying transaction data, and helps drive investigations. It provides the ability to drill down to specific transaction lines and review what reason codes were applied by the staff at the point of sale to order. This helps fraud investigators understand which business process such as returns, cancellations, or price overrides is the most susceptible to abuse. It also helps to identify where controls are needed the most (such as region, district, or store). Running your reactive fraud processes frequently will help your overall fraud strategy to be more effective over time.
Next steps
If you are currently using Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, you can get a fraud check in real-time. The scorecard gives you a real-time view of the performance and support tool that helps to search and investigate all transactions including risk information and history. You can also enable loss prevention, which is based on anomaly detection for protecting against the abuse that happens in relation to returns and cancellations.
This article was originally posted by the FTC. See the original article here.
“Hello? It’s me — Frosty. Look it’s a long story but without my top hat, I’m melting. Please, I need your help — send money now or I’ll be nothing but a puddle!”
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
This post was co-authored with Qinying Liao, Sheng Zhao, Gang Wang, Yueying Liu
Neural Text to Speech (Neural TTS), a powerful speech synthesis capability of Cognitive Services on Azure, enables you to convert text to lifelike speech which is close to human-parity. Since its launch, we have seen it widely adopted in a variety of scenarios by many Azure customers, from voice assistants to audio content creation. More and more customers are asking for richer and more diverse choices of synthetic voices for different use cases.
Today, we are excited to announce that Azure Neural TTS has added 51 new voices for a total of 129 neural voices across 54 languages/locales. With this release, we provide at least one male and one female voice for customers to choose in each language/locale. In total, Azure TTS now enables developers to reach millions more people with more than 200 voices available in standard and neural TTS.
What’s new
Neural TTS has now been extended to support 51 new voices, which will bring to you the capability to have both male and female voices in each language for your apps. You can hear samples of the voices below, or try them with your own text in our demo.
46 new voices are generally available
In total 46 new voices are released across the 49 locales that are generally available in the Azure data centers/regions that support neural TTS (see the full list of Azure regions here).
Locale
Language
Gender
Voice
Sample audio
ar-EG
Arabic (Egypt)
Male
ShakirNeural
البركان هو أكثر ما في الطبيعــة إثارة للرهبة
ar-SA
Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
Male
HamedNeural
الناس مَعادن، تصدأ بالملل، وتتمدد بالأمل، وتنكمش بالألم
bg-BG
Bulgarian (Bulgary)
Male
BorislavNeural
Шофьорът задължително трябва да вземе експерт за второ мнение, за да провери дали всички системи на автомобила работят нормално.
ca-ES
Catalan (Spain)
Male
EnricNeural
Les activitats docents tenen lloc al campus del Poblenou.
ca-ES
Catalan (Spain)
Female
JoanaNeural
L’artista està considerat com el pintor de les multituds.
cs-CZ
Czech (Czech)
Male
AntoninNeural
Opravdový zasvěcenec ví, že nejmocnějším tajemstvím je to, které nemá žádný obsah.
da-DK
Danish (Denmark)
Male
JeppeNeural
61 procent af de kandidatstuderende er kvinder.
de-AT
German (Austria)
Male
JonasNeural
Das ist das letzte lange Pfingstwochenende für Schülerinnen und Schüler.
de-CH
German (Switzerland)
Male
JanNeural
Eine Person, die sich bei Brandausbruch im oberen Stock aufgehalten hat, hat sich noch rechtzeitig in Sicherheit bringen können.
el-GR
Greek (Greece)
Male
NestorasNeural
Συγκλονιστικές εξελίξεις και ανατροπές στα επόμενα επεισόδια .
en-CA
English (Canada)
Male
LiamNeural
He had held the position since 2010.
en-IE
English (Ireland)
Male
ConnorNeural
Life is short, think before you talk.
en-IN
English (India)
Male
PrabhatNeural
Sometimes you can see snow on the mountains.
fi-FI
Finnish (Finland)
Male
HarriNeural
Yhtiö kertoi loppuvuoden tuloksestaan ennakkotietoja.
fi-FI
Finnish (Finland)
Female
SelmaNeural
Hevoset ovat uljaita ja nopeita eläimiä.
fr-CH
French (Switzerland)
Male
FabriceNeural
La Suisse comptera 5,6 millions (12%) de personnes actives en 2050.
he-IL
Hebrew (Israel)
Male
AvriNeural
הוא אמר שהמספרים מדאיגים בשל עצמם, אבל בכל הישיבות שלנו המסקנה היא שזה סימפטום למשהו רחב יותר.
hi-IN
Hindi (India)
Male
MadhurNeural
सिद्धार्थ ने भी शहनाज के साथ इस इवेंट की फोटो शेयर की है।
hr-HR
Croatian (Croatia)
Male
SreckoNeural
Video je pregledan gotovo 70 tisuća puta, a neki od obožavatelja su mu u komentarima pisali kako ih je motivirao.
hu-HU
Hungarian (Hungary)
Male
TamasNeural
A lakóhelyem nagyon komfortos.
id-ID
Indonesian (Indonesia)
Female
GadisNeural
Inflasi ringan terjadi apabila kenaikan harga berada di bawah angka 10% setahun.
ms-MY
Malay (Malaysia)
Male
OsmanNeural
Setiap individu perlu memakai topeng muka ketika berada di luar.
nb-NO
Norwegian (Bokmål, Norway)
Male
FinnNeural
Jansson forteller at den svenske øya tar imot rundt 8000 besøkende fra Norge årlig.
nb-NO
Norwegian (Bokmål, Norway)
Female
PernilleNeural
For en fantastisk forestilling!
nl-NL
Dutch (Netherlands)
Female
FennaNeural
De afstand tussen Rotterdam en Breda is ongeveer 45 km.
nl-NL
Dutch (Netherlands)
Male
MaartenNeural
Zij heeft haar studie al een tijdje geleden afgerond.
pl-PL
Polish (Poland)
Female
AgnieszkaNeural
To już nie będzie to samo, będzie drożej.
pl-PL
Polish (Poland)
Male
MarekNeural
Na wszelki wypadek sprawdź, czy coś cię jednak nie zaskoczy.
pt-PT
Portuguese (Portugal)
Male
DuarteNeural
Para a aprovação do exame, tenho de ter pelo menos 80% das respostas corretas.
pt-PT
Portuguese (Portugal)
Female
RaquelNeural
A minha mãe ensinou-me que devo ter respeito por todos, mas principalmente pelos mais velhos.
ro-RO
Romanian (Romania)
Male
EmilNeural
Actul normativ se axează pe instituirea de măsuri active, 41,5 % din salariul de bază la revenirea din șomaj tehnic.
ru-RU
Russian (Russia)
Male
DmitryNeural
Ранее посольство требовало от агентства опровержения статьи о количестве больничных коек в России.
ru-RU
Russian (Russia)
Female
SvetlanaNeural
Изменений в организме людей, попробовавших еду без приправ, не произошло.
sk-SK
Slovak (Slovakia)
Male
LukasNeural
Zápis 45 % je v skutočnosti iba skratka pre zlomok.
sl-SI
Slovenian (Slovenia)
Male
RokNeural
Zloraba bonov in dvigovanje cen turističnih storitev je nesprejemljivo ravnanje.
sv-SE
Swedish (Sweden)
Male
MattiasNeural
Båda lagen bjöd på riktigt bra hockey och skapade flera riktigt bra målchanser.
Sosyal mesafeye büyük ölçüde riayet eden çocuklar, başta mahalle parkları olmak üzere sahiller ve oyun parklarında enerji attı.
vi-VN
Vietnamese (Vietnam)
Male
NamMinhNeural
Nhiệt độ hiện tại ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh là 38 độ C.
zh-HK
Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional)
Female
HiuMaanNeural
抗疫舉措成為安全重啟經濟的重要一環。
zh-HK
Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional)
Male
WanLungNeural
隨着疫情緩和，愈來愈多人回到辦公室上班，但是很多人仍想留在家中工作（work from home）。
zh-TW
Chinese (Taiwanese Mandarin)
Female
HsiaoChenNeural
賭博的勝率應該不到50%。
zh-TW
Chinese (Taiwanese Mandarin)
Male
YunJheNeural
台北車站大廳能不能坐，連日引發正反意見。
5 new voices are in public preview
We have also added 5 male voices in the 5 low-resource languages that have been supported since November. These voices are available in public preview in three Azure regions: EastUS, SouthEastAsia and WestEurope.
Hear the samples below:
Locale
Language
Gender
Voice Name
Sample audio
et-EE
Estonian (Estonia)
Male
KertNeural
Ametlikku meetodit sellise pettuse avastamiseks ei olegi olemas.
ga-IE
Irish (Ireland)
Male
ColmNeural
Ritheadh próiseas comhairliúcháin faoin scéal sa bhfómhar.
lt-LT
Lithuanian (Lithuania)
Male
LeonasNeural
Aišku, anksčiau ar vėliau paaiškės tos priežastys.
lv-LV
Latvian (Latvia)
Male
NilsNeural
Aizvadīto gadu uzņēmums noslēdzis ar 6,3 miljonu eiro zaudējumiem.
mt-MT
Maltese (Malta)
Male
JosephNeural
Anki tfajjel tal-primarja jaf li l-popolazzjoni tikber fejn hemm il-prosperità.
In general, Neural TTS can convert text to lifelike speech, however there are nuances that can always be improved. For example, we have customers who have requested the ability to support a scenario where Katja, our de-DE neural voice, can pronounce English words in the context of a German sentence. This was valuable feedback, and we anticipate a similar need across languages.
For German, we observed that our users prefer the voice to handle an English word/phrase as close as the native English pronunciation. To enable a voice model to speak English as a second language, it is normally required that we collect the speech data of the same speaker speaking English besides his/her native language. This is a big challenge as we do not have sufficient multi-language speech data from our German voice talents. By leveraging cross-lingual capability of UNI-TTS, we are able to generate more English pronunciation data with the transferred voice from our German voice talent. Such data is used to improve the quality of the English word/phrase pronunciations for the German Katja voice, so Katja can pronounce English words in a more natural way.
The CMOS metric is used to measure the improvement of the English word pronunciation for Katja. Below table shows that the updated model is significantly better in pronouncing English words in the context of a German sentence.
Script
Old
New
Star Wars – Das Erwachen der Macht
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.
This improvement has now been released to the Azure Neural TTS service for Katja. Moving forward, we’ll extend this capability to support more languages.
Tell us your experience!
By offering more voices across more languages and locales, we anticipate developers across the world will be able to build applications that change experiences for millions. Whether you’re building a voice-enabled chatbot or IoT device, an IVR solution, adding read-aloud features to your app, converting e-books to audio books, or even adding Speech to a translation app, you can make all these experiences natural sounding and fun with Neural TTS.
Let us know how you are using or plan to use Neural TTS voices in this form. If you prefer, you can also contact us at mstts [at] microsoft.com. We look forward to hearing your experience and developing more compelling services together with you for the developers around the world.
Retailers are already preparing for what they hope will be a successful shopping season. Because of COVID-19, it’s likely that we’ll be going online to look for those perfect buys. With so many deals around and what seem like eternal “Black Friday” sales, it’s important to keep some online shopping tips in mind.
So, if you plan to shop from the comfort of your home instead of heading out in person for those doorbuster deals, first, make sure your home computer has the latest antivirus software updated. This will help protect you from hackers and identity thieves. Read more computer safety tips here.
Once you’re ready to shop, make sure you:
Take time to compare products. To get the best deal, compare products. Do research online, check product comparison sites, and read online reviews.
Check out the seller. Confirm that the seller is legit. Look for reviews about their reputation and customer service, and be sure you can contact the seller if you have a dispute.
Look for coupon codes. Search the store’s name with terms like “coupons,” “discounts,” or “free shipping.”
Pay by credit card. Paying by credit card gives you added protections. Never mail cash or wire money to online sellers. If the seller asks you to pay this way, it could be a scam.
Use secure checkout. Before you enter your credit card information online, check that the website address starts with “https.” The “s” stands for secure. If you don’t see the “s,” don’t enter your information.
Keep records of online transactions until you get the goods, confirm you got what you ordered, and that you’re satisfied you won’t have to return the item.
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