The company behind Hillary Clinton’s erased emails is riding high

Microsoft Excel is ruining scientific papers with its autocorrect feature

The iPhone's autocorrect feature is often a help, but also a major source of embarrassment. So much so there is a whole website dedicated to nothing but embarrassing autocorrect moments.Those are merely embarrassing moments. Microsoft Excel, the de facto spreadsheet application in the world, is making a mess of scientific papers all over the world thanks to the software's own auto-format and autocorrect functions.According to the BBC, a report from the Melbourne, Australia-based academic institute Baker IDI, found four 704 errors in genetic names in 3,597 published scientific papers. That's almost 20 percent of all papers. For example, Excel changed the name of a gene called SEPT2 (short for Septin) to a date, September 2.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft reveals the chip behind HoloLens

Microsoft has talked up its well-regarded virtual reality headset called HoloLens, but has been a little stingy on some technical details, such as what's powering the device.However, it finally took the wraps off that mystery at an appropriate show. Microsoft detailed for the first time its custom CPU for HoloLens at Hot Chips, an annual semiconductor conference held at Stanford University every August.Hot Chips is a great show, and I miss attending it even more than IDF, since a variety of chip vendors show up to talk. Between the extreme technical detail from Ph.D. engineers and some brutal accents, it requires your full attention, but that's not a hard thing to do because the insights are often fascinating.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Beware the ‘Windows Self-Healing Tool’ app

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update has caused its fair share of problems for users, such as freeze-ups of their PCs and the most recent issue of it crashing computers with a webcam attached. So, it's understandably tempting for some people to jump at a repair utility. In the case of the "Windows Self-Healing Tool," please don't. This utility has been circulating on several technology news sites, with people repeating its claim to fix problems associated with Windows 10. It has the air of authorization because it has a Microsoft logo on it and was first posted on the Microsoft Answers forum for Surface users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft announces Insider program for Visio on iPad

Microsoft announced it plans to launch its charting and diagramming app Visio on the iPad, and with it an Insider Program for users to get a chance to try out the app before it launches.Amazing how creative companies are at avoiding the word "beta."The company is looking for 2,000 Insiders, and in a break from its usual English-only Insider programs, Microsoft is supporting multiple languages this time: English, Chinese, French, German, Russian and Spanish.The program will run on all iPads, including iPad Mini and iPad Pro, that are capable of running iOS 9.0 or later, which basically means iPad third generation or later. Microsoft plans to roll out the first feature update around August or September.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 7, 8.1 move to Windows 10 update model

If you are a holdout who did not make the move to Windows 10, you're going to see its influence on your legacy operating system anyway. Microsoft is changing the way it delivers updates to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, mirroring the delivery model of Windows 10.Normally a Windows update for 7 or 8.1 would mean a number of individual updates. Every Patch Tuesday you got 6, 10, 15 or whatever number of individual updates, each with their own number. However, starting in October, Microsoft will release all Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 updates using a "Monthly Rollup" method similar to the cumulative rollup of all fixes in one lump sum.The update process will also be added to Windows Server 2008 and Server 2012. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft acknowledges Anniversary Update causes freezing

After a lot of anecdotal reports, Microsoft acknowledged there is a problem with the Anniversary Update to Windows 10 causing PCs to freeze up. However, it says the problem is isolated to a specific PC configuration.In a Windows forum post, Microsoft claims the freezing issue is experienced only on computers with SSDs where apps are installed on a different drive than the one where Windows 10 is installed. The obvious workaround is to move all apps to the drive where Windows 10 is located, and the company actually recommends this.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

People are patching Windows but not their apps

The good news? People are keeping Windows up to date and patched. The bad news? They are a lot sloppier about the apps they use on their Windows PCs.According to a new report from Secunia Research in its Country Reports, covering Q2 2016 for 12 countries, the number of unpatched Windows machines has declined to just 5.4 percent, which is a sizable drop from the 6.1 percent of the first quarter. In Q2 of 2015, that figure was 10.3 percent.+ Also on Network World: The unrelenting danger of unpatched computers +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More details on rumored Microsoft Surface desktops appear

Last month I mentioned Microsoft could be targeting the all-in-one (AIO) market—including Apple's horribly neglected iMac line—with a series of AIO PCs. Now details are emerging on just what Redmond has in the works.Windows Central, which fueled the initial rumors, has updated the story with new details from its own sources on Microsoft's AIO Surface devices. According to the report, which cites unnamed sources, Microsoft is currently testing three Surface AIOs:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tablets continue to fall out of favor

If you think PC sales are in the toilet, you should look at what's happening in the tablet world. For the second quarter in a row, sales are down by double digits as consumers and businesses alike seek something more functional.Tablets have a bunch of things going against them. Primarily, the problem is they are a consumption device, not a creation device, and people want something more powerful. In addition, phablets and large smartphones have eaten into the market, there are no compelling reasons to upgrade because new generations are only a little better than the old, and the chief advocate for tablets, Steve Jobs, is no longer among us.The result, according to IDC, is a 12.3 percent decline in sales year over year for the second quarter of 2016. That comes on the heels of a 14.7 percent decline in Q1. IDC said this is due to vendors restructuring their product lines and customers delaying purchases as the market shifts focus towards productivity-oriented devices such as detachables.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Think older workers struggle with technology? Think again

Conventional thinking assumes that older workers have trouble adapting to new technologies.That notion is nothing more than a stereotype, but it’s a harmful one that could make life difficult for IT professionals over the age of 50 who are searching for new jobs. And now the results of a new survey suggest that the stereotype might not be accurate after all.Cloud storage provider Dropbox and Ipsos Mori, a London-based market research firm, surveyed more than 4,000 information workers in the U.S. and Europe about their use of technology in the workplace and found that people 55 and up use 4.9 forms of technology per week, on average — a smidge above the overall average of 4.7 per week. More importantly, the survey also revealed that older workers are less likely than their younger colleagues to find using technology in the workplace stressful. Just one-quarter of the respondents who are 55 or older said that they find tech in the workplace stressful. Meanwhile, 36 percent of the respondents who are 18 to 34 years old — the ones who supposedly grew up with technology — said they find tech in the workplace stressful.To read this Continue reading

Microsoft Edge browser gets extensions and Adblock Plus support

It's quite a day for Microsoft Edge and the few people who use it. Thanks to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Edge will finally gain support for extensions. And by supporting extensions, one of the first out of the gate is Adblock Plus, that bane of advertisers everywhere.Edge can now use extensions for both Chrome and Firefox. To get extensions, open Edge and click on the menu icon, the three horizontal dots in the upper-right corner. Next, select Extensions from the drop-down menu. It's near the bottom. This will open a new window with extensions you already have installed and a link labeled "Get Extensions from the Store."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lumia sales plummet as Microsoft fires more staffers

Microsoft had a pretty good earnings report last month as it closed out fiscal year 2016 (its fiscal year ends June 30 of each year). Now people are digging through the financial reports to see what the company didn't disclose in its press release or earnings call, and one unfortunate number has emerged: the pitiful sales of Lumia phones.It's the latest in the sad story behind former CEO Steve Ballmer's final debacle, the purchase of Nokia's handset business. Nokia was the strongest supporter of Windows Phone, but beyond Ballmer and some Finnish shareholders, no one thought this $7.2 billion acquisition was a good idea. In the end, it cost more than $10 billion in write-downs, which means paper losses, not actual money out the door, but many employees from Nokia have been cut loose as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft brings Edge JavaScript engine to Linux, Mac OS X

If you ever needed a sign that a new era has dawned at Microsoft, this is it: The company announced it is bringing ChakraCore to Linux and OS X. ChakraCore is the main element of the Chakra JavaScript engine used in both the Microsoft Edge browser and the company's Universal Windows Platform. So, the company whose not-invented-here mentality was so iron-clad in the 1990s is now developing a JavaScript browser and app engine for its two competitor desktop operating systems. + Also on Network World: Microsoft cozies up to Linux containers +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft gives Office 365 a major upgrade

Microsoft has announced a number of features to be added to Office 365 users as part of the July 2016 update that are a group of "cloud-powered intelligent services" designed to save time and improve productivity for users of Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. The news came in an Office blog post by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team.New to Word Word is getting two significant new features, called Researcher and Editor. As its name implies, Researcher is designed to help the user find reliable sources of information by using the Bing Knowledge Graph to search for sources, and it will properly cite them in the Word document.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10: Insiders initiated more than 5,000 changes to the Anniversary Update

After the complete tone deafness of the Windows 8 development cycle, Terry Myerson decided to change course once put in charge of the Windows development team. Microsoft would take a page from Seattle's most famous fictional resident, Dr. Frasier Crane, and adopt the motto of "I'm listening."According to a writer for WinBeta who visited Microsoft and got the news straight from the horse's mouth, Windows Insiders who tested beta builds of the OS since its release last year logged over 75 million pieces of feedback, with over 5,000 changes and enhancements to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update as a result.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Japan Airlines employs Microsoft HoloLens for inspections and training

Japan Airlines (JAL) has developed new training applications for engine mechanics and flight crew trainees using the Microsoft HoloLens virtual reality headset. Instead of using videos and printouts of cockpit panel instruments and switches, the flight crews will experience what it is like to be inside the cockpit. And engine mechanics can study and be trained as if they were working on the actual engine or cockpit instead of reading about it in manuals. This is not JAL's first experience with a visual headset. It employed Google Glass, that much-maligned failed project from Google, at the Honolulu Airport to perform plane inspections and send and receive information to ground crews regarding passengers and baggage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft lays out iOS porting plans with Islandwood

Eleven months ago, Microsoft introduced its Windows Bridge for iOS, otherwise known as Project Islandwood. It is an open source tool to port iOS apps to Windows freely available on GitHub. Since then, the project has experienced considerable downloads and Microsoft has made quite a bit of changes. All of this is documented in the Windows blog.According to the company, developers have been requesting complete API coverage of Microsoft's UIKit implementation. UIKit is a set of 30 modular interface components used in iOS's Cocoa Touch, among other platforms, and it's difficult to modify UIKit because that would mean modifying hundreds of classes. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

It’s official (sorta): Windows 10 kneecapped PC sales

There has been anecdotal talk that Microsoft's aggressive Windows 10 upgrade/giveaway harmed PC sales, since it's known most people upgrade to a new OS via a new PC purchase rather than doing a software upgrade. Now Gartner has confirmed this theory.In an interview with The Register (and confirmed with the analyst by me), Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal told the publication, "People with older PCs upgraded to Windows 10 and held onto them. Microsoft didn’t expect that number to be so high."+ Also on Network World: Credibility and trust: Microsoft blows it +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can’t upgrade your laptop to Windows 10? Microsoft will give you one for free*

With two weeks left before Microsoft’s free upgrade offer for Windows 10 comes to a close, the company is pulling out its biggest gimmick yet. Its latest offer is that they’ll give you a free Dell Inspiron 15 laptop if they can’t update your laptop to Windows 10 with same-day service.And yes, there are some strings. Quite a few. First, your trade-in PC needs to be compatible with Windows 10 in the first place. That should cut out a lot of lame old PCs from the mix. If you don’t have a compatible system, you can earn $150 to the purchase of a new PC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here