Blair Hanley Frank

Author Archives: Blair Hanley Frank

Gmail will push users further away for XP and Vista

Google quietly announced Tuesday that Gmail will stop supporting older versions of its Chrome browser soon, in a move that will put another nail in the coffins of Windows XP and Windows Vista.Users of Chrome version 53 and older editions of the browser could start being redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as December, the company said in a blog post. Starting next week, users who will be affected by the change will start seeing a banner at the top of Gmail telling them to upgrade to an up-to-date version of Google’s browser.The affected browser versions include Chrome v49, the last version of the software that supports XP and Vista. While Microsoft officially ended support for XP more than two and a half years ago, Gmail has continued to work with it. Vista Service Pack 2 will reach the end of its extended support period on April 11.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Gmail will push users further away from XP and Vista

Google quietly announced Tuesday that Gmail will stop supporting older versions of its Chrome browser soon, in a move that will put another nail in the coffins of Windows XP and Windows Vista. Users of Chrome version 53 and older editions of the browser could start being redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as December, the company said in a blog post. Starting next week, users who will be affected by the change will start seeing a banner at the top of Gmail telling them to upgrade to an up-to-date version of Google’s browser.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Slack finally launches its enterprise edition

After a long wait, Slack has announced the version of its popular work chat application that is designed for enterprises. On Tuesday in San Francisco, the company unveiled its new Enterprise Grid product, aimed at helping companies administer and connect multiple chat instances.Grid allows business administrators to set up each team inside their organization with their own centrally managed Slack instance. Those workspaces can then be linked together using shared channels, and all of the people inside an enterprise can direct- message one another, even if they’re not part of the same workspace.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dropbox highlights productivity enhancements in rollout of new services

Dropbox kicked off its 2017 product launches with a pair of major announcements Monday aimed at improving users’ productivity at work. The cloud storage company announced the general availability of its Paper document collaboration service, along with the closed beta of a Smart Sync feature that gives users easy access to every file shared with them in Dropbox. Paper , first announced in 2015 , gives users a shared workspace to work with one another on documents. It’s designed to be the product people use for collaborative tasks like brainstorming and taking meeting notes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cloud growth continues to boost Microsoft’s financials

Microsoft’s focus on the cloud continues to pay off. The tech titan showed growth across all its cloud-based businesses during the last quarter ended Dec. 31, including Office, Dynamics and Azure.Reporting financial results for its fiscal second quarter on Thursday, the company said its Commercial Cloud business is pulling in revenue at the rate of $14 billion per year. During the previous quarter, that rate was $13 billion.Azure growth was especially strong. Azure compute usage more than from a year earlier, and revenue from the business grew by 93 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco snatches AppDynamics from IPO market for $3.7 billion

Cisco has agreed to acquire AppDynamics for $3.7 billion in cash and assumed equity awards, scooping up the application performance management company just days before its expected initial public offering. The deal, which Cisco announced late Tuesday, is expected to close by the end of April.AppDynamics was going to be the first tech company to go public in 2017, with its initial offering set for Thursday, January 26. Tech industry insiders and investors were watching AppDynamics’s IPO closely, because Wall Street investors’ treatment of its business could signal how other companies would fare later in 2017.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s OneDrive for Business gets Mac client, shared folder sync

Microsoft gave users and administrators of OneDrive for Business some new features on Tuesday that they’ve requested for a while.The company also launched a new Mac client for its business-focused cloud storage service that can be deployed outside the confines of the Mac App Store. Users will also be able to sync files from SharePoint sites and OneDrive for Business shared folders to their desktops, like they have been able to for files that they own.IDC Research Manager Chandana Gopal said in an interview that she saw the new features are Microsoft’s attempt to play catch up with other players in the enterprise cloud storage market like Box and Dropbox, which already offer Mac clients and broad syncing of all the files stored in their services. What’s more, Box and Dropbox are working on making it possible for people to stream files from the cloud to the desktop when they need them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Box launches standalone Notes app to help teams collaborate

Box Notes is getting its own standalone web app and a new desktop app for Windows and Mac. It's a new turn for the product, which allows users to collaboratively edit documents in real time.Notes gives users a workspace for jotting down ideas and sharing them with others. Those notes can include rich text elements like embedded images, tasks and tables, in addition to plain text. The service is designed to give users a shared workspace in the cloud for discussing ideas and working on them with other people. Making Notes a standalone app could help it appeal to a broader audience and increase its usage. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft expands FastTrack migration service

Microsoft is expanding the free services it offers to help enterprise customers adopt its products.The company announced Monday that its FastTrack services now encompass Dynamics 365, Windows 10 and Microsoft Teams. Those come in addition to Office 365 and the Enterprise Mobility Suite, which were already covered under FastTrack.Each service is designed to help companies get the most out of products they've already subscribed to and adopt products that the company has recently released. FastTrack includes adoption guides, tools to find a Microsoft partner company to help with migration, and consulting help from Microsoft employees on particular issues.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft will soon end Office 2013 distribution through Office 365

Get ready, Office 365 administrators: Microsoft is ending support for the Office 2013 client apps that it previously distributed through its cloud-based productivity service. Instead, administrators and users will be pushed to use Office 2016, the latest version of the productivity suite that includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.Starting on Feb. 28, users won’t be able to download the Office 2013 apps from the Office 365 self-service portal, and they won’t be downloadable through the Office 365 Admin Center. Microsoft also won’t release feature updates for those products, and won’t provide support through Customer Service Support or Premier Support.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Slack finally launches threaded replies

Slack, the popular work chat app, has launched one of the features that users have been clamoring for over its entire lifetime: threaded messages.On Wednesday, the company began the process of rolling out the update to all of its users, which will allow them to keep conversations about a particular topic corralled into a single thread. The feature is designed to keep conversations on a particular topic out of the main flow of a chat channel, the company said in a blog post.Starting a thread just requires users to hover over a message, click the “Start a Thread” button, and type their response. Replies will be grouped into a sidebar thread, and a small link will appear below the original message showing who has replied to a thread and how many replies it has garnered.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft launches StaffHub to connect deskless workers

Microsoft is taking another step toward serving workers who aren't at computers all day with a new Office 365 service launched Thursday. StaffHub, which is part of the company's enterprise productivity offering, allows managers to set schedules for deskless workers like retail employees and service technicians.The service is designed to let managers set schedules for and distribute company resources to employees through a simple interface. Employees can use the service to swap shifts with one another and chat, too.The new offering is part of Microsoft's push to expand usage of Office 365. While the cloud productivity service has had a strong following among knowledge workers, it has traditionally held less utility for people who aren't editing Word documents and sending emails through Outlook all day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tech luminaries team up on $27M AI ethics fund

Artificial intelligence technology is becoming an increasingly large part of our daily lives. While those developments have led to cool new features, they've also presented a host of potential problems, like automation displacing human jobs, and algorithms providing biased results.Now, a team of philanthropists and tech luminaries have put together a fund that's aimed at bringing more humanity into the AI development process. It's called the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund, and it will focus on advancing AI in the public interest.A fund such as this one is important as issues arise during AI development. The IEEE highlighted a host of potential issues with artificial intelligence systems in a recent report, and the fund seems aimed at funding solutions to several of those problems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft is retiring the Blue Screen of Death for some users

Windows 10 beta testers who are used to the warm, familiar glow of Microsoft’s Blue Screen of Death will start learning it’s not easy being green.Microsoft is tweaking its venerable error message that lets people know that something went wrong, and their computers need to be restarted. While everyday consumers will still see the same old BSOD that we love to hate, people who are using beta builds released as part of the Windows 10 Insider Program will now see a Green Screen of Death.The change is designed to help distinguish between crashes in the generally available branch of Windows 10 and the beta branch. Microsoft lets people know that they use Insider builds at their own risk, and the betas can contain bugs that crash programs or entire devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft will let some users take a time out on Windows 10 updates

Microsoft is giving users some more control over Windows 10 updates, with a new beta build of its operating system released Monday.The build allows folks with the Windows 10 Professional, Education, and Enterprise versions to defer new updates for up to 35 days. In addition, the company will allow those users to decide whether or not they want to include driver updates when they want to update Windows.It’s a move that helps respond to one of the key criticisms of Windows 10: that Microsoft’s regime of forced, cumulative updates has caused problems for users with some configurations. This way, users can steer clear of updates they don’t want to install yet and dodge problematic driver updates.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hey Alexa, what are your competitors doing?

Internet-connected intelligent gizmos had a big showing at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, and there is one common thread between many ofthem: Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant.Lenovo has a new speaker featuring the assistant. Volkswagen and Ford are building Alexa into their cars. Plus, there’s a whole flotilla of other connected devices featuring Alexa, including a high-tech refrigerator from LG.That’s not to say other virtual assistants aren’t doing the same thing, but Amazon is the clear winner by volume at CES.So, what does that mean for the virtual assistant market, which includes competitors such as Microsoft's Cortana, the Google Assistant and Apple's Siri? To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft is bundling cloud services to make cars smarter

CES has turned into the first car show of the year, with major automakers choosing to show off upcoming features in Las Vegas. Microsoft wants to help make cars more intelligent, and it unveiled a new suite of services Thursday to do so.The Connected Vehicle Platform brings together a smorgasbord of services from Microsoft, including Azure IoT Hub, Cortana Intelligence Suite, Microsoft Dynamics and many others. In addition, Office 365, Skype for Business and Cortana can be integrated with the platform.It’s not a surprising move. Microsoft frequently packages cloud services as suites, then markets them for kick-starting particular applications. Furthermore, the company has been saying for some time that its goal in car tech is to support carmakers rather than build its own connected cars.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel says standalone VR is coming by the end of this year

Intel is serious about bringing its Project Alloy untethered VR headset to the masses. On Wednesday, company CEO Brian Krzanich said at the company's CES press conference that it will be available in the fourth quarter of 2017. That will be roughly a year and a half after the company announced it at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.It’s still unknown how much a Project Alloy headset will cost, or even which company will make it. Krzanich said that the headsets will be made available through Intel’s hardware partners, but didn’t provide details beyond that.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

See this year’s top 5 underrated Microsoft announcements

This was a big year for Microsoft. The HoloLens began shipping to developers, Windows 10 made it through its first year intact (though not without controversy), and the company got into the desktop computer market with a stunning mega-touchscreen. But there were a few key announcements that flew under the radar this year. While they may not have the splash factor of a Surface Studio or HoloLens, these developments have the potential to alter Microsoft and the world for years to come. Here’s the rundown on what you probably missed.Microsoft’s new bot tools help build conversation partners At its Build developer conference, Microsoft outlined a vision for a conversational computing platform. The idea is pretty simple: Traditional user interfaces are hard to understand right off the bat, so we should let people just talk with computers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft CMO: Forced Windows 10 upgrade was ‘painful’ at one point

This year, Microsoft pushed users on taking advantage of its offer to upgrade their PCs to Windows 10 for free. That meant the company used a variety of tactics to get people to install an updater and run it to replace their old operating systems with the new one. Overall, Microsoft got the balance right between being too aggressive and getting users to upgrade, Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela said in a Windows Weekly interview. But he did admit that Microsoft stepped out of line at one point with a change that confused and dismayed a number of users. "There was one particular moment ... where the red 'x' in the dialog box, which typically means, you know, 'cancel,' didn’t mean cancel," he said. "And within a couple of hours of that hitting the world, with the listening systems we have, we knew that we had gone too far.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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