TechBooky

What just happened? Have you ever found yourself wishing there was a way to keep track of certain key points you wanted to mention while writing a lengthy Word document? If so, Microsoft has you covered now - if you"re an Office 365 user, you can now enjoy this benefits. Microsoft has announced that it has released the new capability in beta designed to automatically search for texts in a document containing "todo:" or "<< insert something here >>". Users will then be able to view a complete list of to-dos and click on each item to go to the appropriate portion in that document. The to-do feature, is an AI-powered tool that allows users to easily pick up where they left off in a document. Microsoft says that most Word users add a placeholder in a document to mark an area they need to return to later on. This enables them to keep working without breaking their flow, but isn’t ideal for managing a document. The new AI-based tool automatically creates...

Microsoft is slamming the brakes on the Windows 10 October 2018 Update rollout. After many Windows numerous users across the web reportedly complained of problems experienced with the latest major update – especially loss of their user files, Microsoft acknowledged the problem and quickly responded by preventing the update from being installed on some systems—User profiles and entire folders full of files went missing in some cases and rolling back the upgrade didn’t restore them The upgrade became available during the company’s Surface event on Tuesday, but in the days that followed, Now Microsoft is temporarily halting the October 2018 Update’s distribution due to the issue. In a support document update, the Redmond-based OS maker said it took this decision after users complained that v1809 had deleted files after the update. “ We have paused the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) for all users as we investigate isolated r...

Back in June, at the Xbox E3 2018 press conference, Xbox head Phil Spencer reported that cloud engineers were building a game streaming network that would be proficient at streaming console-grade games on any compatible device. Microsoft has been implying at such a service for a long while, however on Monday, the software giant announced officially that it was launching Project xCloud, thereby allowing us a sneak peek into what such a service would like from next year. As Microsoft states, there are billions of gamers everywhere throughout the world, yet not every one of them possess or are even keen on owning gaming consoles. The best way to reach whatever number individuals as could be expected under the circumstances is to enable them to play games more flexibly on devices such as the PC, tablet and even the phone.  With that in mind, Microsoft has assembled custom devices called "blades" utilizing the parts inside Xbox One consoles and has started introducing those blade...

Microsoft just took the wraps off of a host of exciting new Surface devices. The company unveiled a new Surface Pro 6 tablet, Surface Laptop 2 and Surface Studio 2 all-in-one desktop PC at a media event in New York, and surprised with its entry into the world of high-end headphones with the Surface Headphones. It also unveiled a slew of new features for Windows and Office 365. Here"s an overview of the new products: Surface Pro 6 Surface Pro 6 is 67 percent more powerful than the previous model, 2017"s Surface Pro, and will start at $899. The Surface Pro 6 will also start at £879 in the UK and AU$1,349 in Australia. Other specification include, the surface pro 6 has: 8th-gen Intel CPU 3-inch touch display Up to 1TB of SSD storage 5 hours of battery life Weighs 1.7 pounds Redesigned thermal system Available in black. The Surface Laptop 2 [xyz-ihs snippet="surface-laptop-2"] The sells will start at $999 . UK and Australia pricing wasn"t immediately avai...

Bad news for those hoping to stick with the classic desktop version of Skype: Microsoft is pulling the plug. Again. “As we continue to focus on and improve Skype version 8, support for Skype versions 7, and below will end on November 1, 2018 on desktop devices and November 15, 2018 on mobile and tablet devices,” a revision to Microsoft’s original post about the latest Skype version now reads . “Although you may be able to use older versions for a little while, we encourage you to update today to avoid any interruption.” As you may recall, Microsoft suddenly and unexpectedly started upgrading the classic Skype desktop client—version 7.x—to a new, less capable product called Skype 8 in mid-July, right as I was heading to Sweden. Worse, they informed users that they had until September 1 to upgrade: After that, classic Skype would stop working. The deprecation comes as the Windows operating system developer is consolidating its Skype development on...

Skype gets yet another redesign. Microsoft announced it is all set to redesign Skype. The technology company is working on removing the Highlights feature in an effort to simplify the user experience on the platform. Since acquiring the online messaging service in 2011 Microsoft has rolled out several redesigns and new features, although not always to much fanfare. Last year, the company launched a new Highlights feature seemingly styled after Snapchat’s Stories , which allows users to post photos and videos which their friends could view, but for now the feature is been dropped. A blog post from Skype admitted that Highlights “didn’t resonate with a majority of users”, and set out its aim to focus on the core messaging features its community is actually making use of. On mobile, the app is slimming down to three navigation buttons for Chats, Calls, and Contacts along a bottom bar, while the desktop app is grouping them with the Notifications button at the top-...

Microsoft’s Office 365 service has been a great deal for a long time, and it’s eventually getting better— Soon, Office 365 Home will let six users install an unlimited number of Office applications. In an announcement , recently made by Microsoft, currently the improvement for Office 365 users in which the Office 365 Home allows up to five users but now, what’s new is that Microsoft is raising this limit to six, so each Office 365 Home account gets an additional user. Office 365 is essentially a Microsoft Office subscription. While the family plan, named Office 365 Home, costs $100 per year. For that price, five (soon six) people can install the latest versions of Microsoft Office on their PCs, Macs, tablets, and phones. Each person gets 1TB of OneDrive storage too. Microsoft has made a few account changes that are taking effect immediately. After signing up for Office 365, all user accounts in your Microsoft Family will be automatically given access. You can ma...

Have you ever stepped away from your PC only to return and find it in the middle of an update? Such is the bane of forced updates on Windows 10. They"re not disappearing, but Microsoft is employing machine learning to train Windows 10 not to update itself at an inappropriate times. Windows 10"s overly aggressive update system, which sometimes restarts while using the device, has been a point of frustration for many users for a long time. Software has been developed to prevent forced update of Windows 10 by volunteers, but of course Microsoft also receives feedback from users and recognises that there is a problem with Windows 10 update. Microsoft currently has a snooze feature to postpone installing updates, but it still seems that complaints of "restarting while using the device" are still being sent.  To combat this issue, Microsoft has been testing a new system that uses a predictive model to learn when devices aren’t in use. So instead of applying an update whil...

Skype is going to start allowing users record video calls natively within apps (iOS and Android) in the new Skype version 8 which is set to replace the former Skype Classic or version 7. In a blog post , the Skype teams explains that,  “Call recording is completely cloud-based, and as soon as you start recording, everyone in the call is notified that the call is being recorded…Call recordings combine everyone’s video as well as any screens shared during the call.” [caption id="attachment_12100" align="alignnone" width="1720"]                                                  Skype call recording feature, source: 9To5Google [/caption] The redesign will see Skype on desktop get a mobile-like design. This has been in the works for over a year now and it looks like Microsoft is going to force all Skype classic desktop users to upgrade to t...

Microsoft announced a slew of product updates ahead of its Inspire developer conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. In addition to a free version of Microsoft Teams and enhancements to Workplace Analytics. Ahead of its Inspire partner conference next week, Microsoft has launched its Whiteboard collaboration app out of preview. The freeform inking app is now generally available on Windows 10, and it will be "coming soon" to iOS and on the web. Whiteboard, for the uninitiated, lets you sketch, draw, erase, and attach sticky notes to a digital canvas. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though — there’s a search feature that surfaces relevant images on the web, a virtual ruler tool, and a host of other design-centric tools. “Since releasing a preview of the app in December, more than 200,000 customers have helped us fine tune the feature set and end-user experience,” Microsoft said. “Based on their feedback we’ve added a number of new features, including...

Gmail is by far the most popular email service around, but there are plenty of reasons to use other options. Microsoft"s Outlook.com is an alternative that offers tight integration with Redmond"s services. One of the most requested features has been a dark mode for the user interface, and it seems that Microsoft is getting ready to deliver on the demands from users. Microsoft first introduced Outlook nearly six years ago as a replacement for its ageing Hotmail web service, and it has now around 400 million active users. Microsoft has been tweaking its webmail service ever since with updated features, and now a new mode is going to be rolled out in future. Last year, Microsoft rolled out a temporary dark theme for Outlook on Halloween (pictured above), it turns out that dark theme was something more than a one-off gag. Microsoft has apparently been testing a dark theme for Outlook web app internally over the past few months and now the firm is getting ready to roll it out to ...

Following the lead of both Opera and Google, Microsoft has announced it is testing a built-in Adblock Plus integration in its mobile Edge browser available for both iOS and Android devices. Microsoft has already began rolling out the feature to those running the beta version of Edge for Android. Those using the stable version of the browser will receive the feature in a future update. Edge isn"t the first mobile browser to feature ad-blocking. Firefox for Android blocks ads in private browsing mode, and the privacy-first Firefox Focus stops them appearing by default. Google has integrated an ad-blocker into its Chrome for Android users earlier this year, although in practice it only prevented the most egregious ads appearing (including videos that play sound automatically and those that take up half your screen). Adblock Plus takes a far more drastic approach, putting the brakes on pretty much all advertising. Edge is a relative newcomer to Android. It"s been available on And...

It is now confirmed, Microsoft say is buying code-repository platform, GitHub for $7.5b (about the same amount it paid for Nokia’s mobile business four years ago. GitHub was valued at $2b three years ago). Well this is not by any way the biggest Microsoft acquisition so far, you’ll recall that Microsoft had to fork out $26.2b to buy social professional networking site LinkedIn two years ago. Like I said in my last article , it makes sense for Microsoft to be buying GitHub at the this time from business to technology reasons but for starters, GitHub is probably the largest code repository and has big companies including Google and Microsoft hosting some projects on it including documentation. The platform reportedly has 85 million repositories with 28 million developers contributing hence the tag; the nerdy Facebook or Facebook for developers. Under the new arrangement, GitHub gets a new CEO in the person of Nat Friedman, the founder of Xamarin who will in turn report to M...

Just last night, Bloomberg broke the news that Microsoft was buying coding platform GitHub . The formal declaration is expected later today though. According to the report, “GitHub preferred selling the company to going public and chose Microsoft partially because it was impressed by Nadella, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Terms of the agreement weren’t known on Sunday. GitHub was last valued at $2 billion in 2015.” That said, it is also reported that developers did not take the news well as some have threatened to switch to a rival, GitLab. As much as the developers may not be happy with the deal which could mean integration of more Microsoft tools and platforms but be that as it may, Microsoft is the biggest software maker in the world and it only makes sense that it would be one to acquire it. Azure is the certainly the big price here for Microsoft which will further bring the compete ion to AWS. By a...

Are you still using Microsoft’s Groove Music app on your iOS or Android device? Prepare to say farewell. Following the retirement of Groove Music"s streaming service earlier this year, Microsoft is preparing to kill off its apps for Android and iOS. As first spotted by Microsoft watcher Richard Hay on Twitter, Microsoft has quietly announced that the Groove apps for iOS and Android will be retired on December 1, 2018. After that date, the apps will no longer function. According to a report from Microsoft support page which reads: “Your personal music files will still be available on OneDrive. You can access OneDrive online or through the OneDrive app on any supported device. To keep playing your music and playlists in Groove, use the Windows 10 Groove Music apps on PC, Xbox, or Windows Phone. The company also added that Starting from today June 1st, users will no longer be able to access MP3 or audio files stored on Microsoft’s Onedrive via the Groove Music app. Howe...

Microsoft passed Google’s parent company Alphabet in market value by $10b for the first time in six years on Tuesday. Google overtook Microsoft six years ago but over the last 12 months, Microsoft’s stock value has grown by about 40 percent which according to CNBC is five times Google’s (Alphabet’s) gain. As of Tuesday the 29 th of May 2018, Microsoft had a market value of $749b while Alphabet had $739b. Apple which is the most valuable by market capitalisation is now worth over $920b and is well on track to becoming the world’s first trillion dollar company .   Here’s more from CNBC ; Microsoft"s latest rally has been sparked by growth in its cloud-computing business, which is bigger than Google"s though it still trails Amazon Web Services. In March, Microsoft reorganized its Windows and Devices Group and moved its engineering resources into other units, including one focusing on cloud and artificial intelligence. Both Microsoft and Alphabet be...

Microsoft is infusing mixed reality into SharePoint , adding a new degree of customisation to the document management and collaboration program, which is an integral part of the Office 365 package. At the SharePoint Virtual Summit, streamed live from SharePoint Conference North America, the company displayed the new SharePoint spaces capability. The Spaces creates a 3D, 360-degree experience that’s aims at making it easier for companies, to better interact with data, products and their employees. SharePoint Spaces, which adds immersive, mixed reality experiences to the long-standing web-based, collaborative platform – widely used by businesses to share internal content. It also enable users to create a virtual space to view and interact with mixed reality content, information, and video on any device—in a browser, mobile browser, or headset. Mixed reality refers to partly coincide in time with digital or virtual objects with the real world. SharePoint spaces will ena...

Remember the Surface Hub? You probably won"t. Unlike Microsoft"s other PCs -- the Surface Pro, Book, Laptop and Studio -- the Hub was a giant and expensive device meant for workplace collaboration. It has never featured in any commercials or turn heads at Best Buy. But yet Microsoft admits that it only sold to more than 5,000 businesses in 25 countries, with more than half of Fortune 100 companies already own a Surface Hub, and of course it’s the most popular Surface device for enterprise customers. Surface Hub, it’s successor Surface Hub 2 was pre-announced by Microsoft in March, The news was little more than a heads-up that refreshed hardware was planned, but more info was expected during "first half of this year." Moving forward,  Microsoft has officially announced the first preview of Surface Hub 2 . The device is a 50.5-inch "more than 4K" display with a familiar 3:2 aspect ratio. There is also a 4K video camera, built-in speakers, a new Surface Pen ...

[caption id="attachment_11336" align="aligncenter" width="768"]            Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella [/caption] Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella- just wrapped up the keynote at the company’s big developer conference- Microsoft BUILD. This year, the keynote was a wild ride through the future of what the software giant thinks the world will look like, but in between the philosophy quotes and visions of dystopias where you have Skype embedded in your car dashboard, Microsoft actually did reveal a few new projects and products. This year is all about software, AI, distributed computing, and the “multi-device” experience. In case it wasn’t clear before, Microsoft wants to make it clear that it doesn’t care if you’re using a Windows PC, a Mac, an Android phone, or anything else that can access the internet. It just wants you to be using its platform and its software to do so, and that’s the core of everything the company an...

  The machine learning tools will help developers build and deploy machine learning models. Office 365 is built on Microsoft’s powerful platform for AI that makes advancements in machine learning and AI accessible to every developer.  Office 365 is built on Microsoft’s powerful platform for AI that makes advancements in machine learning and AI accessible to every developer and organisation. From document translation to intelligent threat detection, AI is already enhancing the productivity experience of over 120 million commercial Office 365 users. Today at Microsoft"s annual developer conference, the company announced a slew of new tools for its Microsoft 365 suite, which combines Windows 10, Office 365 and its Enterprise Mobility + Security package. Among the additions is Windows Machine Learning, a new platform that will help developers create machine learning models in the intelligent cloud and then put them into use. Microsoft already uses AI in its Office 365...