Microsoft is fixing this unloved Windows 11 feature

If you’re using Windows 11, you may have briefly checked out the Widgets panel – before promptly forgetting all about it – but it looks like Microsoft is finally going to make it more useful.

The Widgets panel is a new feature introduced in Windows 11 that can give you details about the weather, news, traffic and more via ‘widgets’ – essentially small apps that give you at-a-glance information. You can bring up the Widgets panel by either swiping from the left-hand side of the screen, or pressing Windows + W on your keyboard.

While this might sound useful, the problem is that there aren’t many widgets available, and most of them are tied to Microsoft services (such as Outlook or OneDrive), making them pretty much useless if you don’t use those services. The fact that the Widgets panel is hidden away doesn’t help either, and it’s led to the feature being all to easy to ignore and forget about.

Microsoft needs to act to make sure the Widgets panel doesn’t go the way of other unloved Windows features, such as the notorious ‘Metro’ Start screen of Windows 8. The good news is that Microsoft appears to be looking at ways to improve Widgets.

Third party support

As Windows Central reports, a developer has posted on Twitter claiming that Microsoft will soon announce that it will allow third party Widgets in Windows 11. This should allow for a much more diverse, and potentially useful, selection of Widgets.

According to the developer, FireCube, Microsoft is talking to third parties, explaining that they will soon be able to submit widgets through the Microsoft Store – in the same way Windows apps are submitted.

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Hopefully this means we should see an influx of new, more useful Widgets coming to Windows 11. With the documentation apparently being shared with developers, it looks like Microsoft could be getting ready to officially announce third party widgets soon.

Will it be too late for Windows 11 widgets? Perhaps – some people will have already made their minds up about the feature. However, if Microsoft can convince some big names to make widgets for Windows 11, then perhaps users can be convinced to give them another chance.

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Aerial 3.0 brings Apple TV screensavers to your Mac… in HDR

A macOS app called Aerial has been updated with new screensaver options, alongside featuring HDR, integration with Spotify and Apple Music, and much more.

New screensavers from Apple have trickled out in recent years, with the latest one being the ‘hello’ logo that’s appeared on the redesigned iMac 24-inch (2021) models. But while AppleTV has had attractive flyover screensavers that show a view of certain cities, they’ve never moved over to other Apple devices.

Thanks to Aerial, you can now get similar screensavers for your Mac. It offers plenty of customization options, including the ability to create playlists and display certain overlays such as weather, battery status, timers, and more.

For version 3.0, the 16 screensavers from tvOS 15 can be used on your Mac, such as Yosemite National Park, Grand Canyon, Torres del Paine in Chile, and others.


Analysis: A welcome macOS 13 addition

Configuring Aerial in System Preferences > Desktop and Screen Saver is an easy affair, where you can tailor these to your location, the time of day, or to a certain order. 

There are also custom flyover screensavers from Jetson Creative, all free to use, alongside picking other screensavers from tvOS 10 and above.

Aerial app on macOS

(Image credit: Aerial)

Using these on the recently-released MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) in HDR makes the screensavers look absolutely fantastic.

Seeing landscapes from locations such as Scotland, Florida, and others really showcases the quality of the new MacBooks’ screens. Combine that with the customization options on offer, and it makes you wonder why Apple hasn’t officially brought these screensavers to macOS.

Aerial 3 on macOS

(Image credit: Aerial)

Screensavers have been a constant feature in computers since the first ever one, created by John Socha in 1983, with an app called ScrnSave. 

There’s a good chance you’ll have seen a screensaver full of pipes, or one where you’re walking through a house. But with advances in display technology, from CRT to LCD monitors, they have diminished in use in recent years.

But with apps like Aerial and official features from Apple, there’s an opportunity for screensavers to return in a big way again. Not just for macOS, but for Windows 11 as well. Perhaps remakes of the pipes and houses screensavers from the mid-nineties, alongside methods to download more screensavers from the Microsoft Store.

But in the meantime, Aerial does a great job of showcasing how screensavers can thrive in 2022, and what Apple and Microsoft could do for future updates of macOS and Windows.

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Firefox Relay may not be as useful as you thought

A major debate has erupted online after Firefox's Relay offering was nearly added to a list of “burner” email services.

There is a list on the GitHub repository, with hundreds of burner email services, used by many service providers to prevent customers from using such tools  (such as, for example, 10minutemail) to register an account, and force them into using legitimate emails.

Companies do this for a number of reasons – to prevent abuse (someone might register hundreds of accounts to take advantage of a free offer), or to ensure that the service provider’s mailing list is useful.

Burner emails

Users, on the other hand, enjoy burner emails as they allow them to register for a service without having to sign up for a mailing list and receive multiple promotional emails every day. 

Recently, a co-maintainer of the list suggested that the “relay.firefox.com” domain be added to the list, prompting a major discussion on the forums, and drawing the attention of the media.

Relay is Firefox’s email privacy service, giving users free email aliases to use whenever they want to sign up for an online account anywhere. According to Mozilla, Relay’s goal is to preserve the privacy of its users’ email addresses, and comes as both a free service, and a paid Premium service.

Turning anti-abuse measures into weapons

Firefox Relay works by sending and forwarding email messages from the alias address to the primary email address. Besides the five free aliases, users are also allowed to get up to 150kb attachments.

Unlike burner emails, these aliases do not disappear unless deleted by the user, and are perceived by the users as “purely a privacy tool”.

“My reasoning on including this is that an email with a mozmail domain is never going to be a primary email and is always going to forward to some other address,” the co-maintainer, Dustin Ingram, explained.

But some people weren’t buying it. A GitHub user going by the alias worldofgeese said the GitHub repo “looks like it’s used, or can potentially be used, as a weapon by providers trying to rob users of one of the few defenses they have to their email address leaking, a scarily common occurrence, which are then weaponized by bad actors to flood those users' inboxes with spam.”

“Can you not do this? You look like extremely bad actors. Please don't contribute to an unsafe internet. I use Private Relay to protect my personal mail address, not as a tool for spam. I'm not even sure how a user would use Private Relay for spam, as users cannot begin email chains with a Relay address, only respond to mails delivered to those addresses.”

Via: BleepingComputer

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Microsoft pushes out emergency fix for Windows Server mess

Microsoft is addressing the problems caused by the January 2021 Patch Tuesday updates – with more updates. 

The company has issued an emergency out-of-band (OOB) update to address bugs that forced domain controllers to reboot endlessly, broke Hyper-V, and rendered ReFS volumes inaccessible while showing them as RAW file systems.

“This update addresses issues related to VPN connectivity, Windows Server Domain Controllers restarting, Virtual Machines start failures, and ReFS-formatted removable media failing to mount,” Microsoft explained in the update catalog. 

Patches breaking things

All of the patches, issued for different versions of the Windows OS, can be found in the Microsoft Update Catalog. Some can also be obtained through Windows Update, but being labeled as optional, Windows admins need to manually check for updates if they want to take this route.

The updates listed below, however, can only be obtained through the Update Catalog: 

Issuing patches for Windows has been nothing short of a roller coaster recently. Earlier in January 201, a patch issued for Windows 10 and Windows 11 broke the software’s built-in VPN tool, preventing it from establishing a connection. 

The only way to rid the system of the bug is to uninstall the patch altogether, which also meant exposing the systems to known vulnerability issues. One such issue was recently found (and fixed in that same patch) in the HTTP Protocol Stack. The flaw allows a malicious actor to execute arbitrary code, remotely, without much user interaction. 

There’s yet no malware abusing this flaw out there, but being extremely dangerous, it’s only a matter of time before one is discovered. To protect vulnerable devices, disabling the HTTP Trailer Support feature will suffice. 

Windows admins will need to carefully weigh the benefits and the downsides of installing, as well as uninstalling, these patches, until Microsoft sorts all of the problems that have piled up in recent times. 

Via: BleepingComputer

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Python custodians apologize for “cursed” start to the year

Developers from Python have published three new versions of the programming language, and apologized for the process not going as smoothly as planned.

In the release announcement, CPython core developer Łukasz Langa said that all versions were “cursed in some way”, and that developing them was a “bumpy ride”. 

However, the Python Software Foundation (PSF) is happy with the end result, and claims to be on route to making Python twice as fast as it used to be.

Speeding things up

There are now three versions of Python now available – 3.9.x – the “legacy series”, 3.10.x, the latest series of Python 3, and 3.11.x, the version that hints to the future. 

“The releases you're looking at were all cursed in some way. What a way to start 2022! Besides the certificate hold up, Python 3.10.2 is an expedited release (you'll want to upgrade, read below!), Python 3.11.0a4 had almost 20 (sic, twenty!) release blockers before being finally green, and Python 3.9.10 was made from a new M1 Mac on macOS Monterey which made the usually boring process quite a ride,” Langa explained.

The new versions are being shipped out without Windows installers, as there was an issue with renewing certificates. But with the earlier releases having a major memory leak issue, the devs are recommending the new versions, anyway.

“We've held the releases all week while the situation is getting resolved but the urgency of 3.10.2 in particular made us release without the Windows installers after all,” Langa further said. 

The problem with the certificates is expected to be solved in the coming days. 

While the current main version (3.10) solves memory leak issues and other problems, the upcoming 3.11.x versions are inching the product closer to creator Guido van Rossum’s plan, that was laid out at the PyCon 2021 conference.

Van Rossum’s idea is to make Python 3.11 twice as fast as 3.10. Right now, it’s about 19% faster, ZDNet reports. 

Via: ZDNet

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Friendly reminder: soon new ComiXology purchases will not be DRM-free

Here’s one of your last reminders that ComiXology’s digital store will soon be integrated with Amazon, at which point your new comic book purchases will no longer be DRM-free

ComiXology's plans to integrate more closely with its parent company’s store were announced back in September last year, with the change is expected to occur in “early 2022”. There’s no word yet on when exactly the change will be made; however, we suspect it will happen fairly swiftly after Amazon and Visa resolve their squabble in the UK.

Amazon and Visa are back in talks, which suggests they could be closer to an agreement, so it may be only a matter of weeks before the ComiXology store is no more.

Once the switch has been flipped (whenever it happens) ComiXology.com will start redirecting to Amazon.com’s “revamped digital comics shopping experience”, which is set to provide customers a more streamlined way to search for comics and manga on the site.

Unfortunately for comic book fans, though, the change also means that they’ll no longer be able to pick up new DRM-free downloads through ComiXology’s services,  with the new Amazon store not supporting DRM-free downloads either.

Thankfully your library of already purchased comics will remain DRM-free. When asked about changes to its services ComiXology told a user on Twitter “Your previous ComiXology purchases will still allow for DRM-free backups if the publisher allowed for them at the time of purchase.”

So you'll be able to save any comics you buy before the switch as PDFs that you can store independently of ComiXology’s own app.

With that in mind, if you’ve been holding out on buying certain issues in the series you love, you might want to take the plunge sooner rather than later; if they currently support DRM-free downloads you can buy it to secure the PDF download before it's too late.

The change to ComiXology isn’t all doom and gloom. The storefront change will also bring an update to the app, with better navigation tools including flexible filtering and sorting as well as the ability to read while downloading. 

ComiXology’s services will also be better integrated with the Kindle app, which has already added ComiXology’s panel-by-panel viewing experience.

These long-sought-after tools may not completely appease ComiXology fans disappointed by the DRM change, but they may at least soften the blow.

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Microsoft Teams update finally lets you hide from your own face

One of the worst part of video calls could soon be eliminated for Microsoft Teams users thanks to a new update coming to the service.

The video conferencing platform has revealed it is working on a new feature that will let users hide their own video feed whilst on a call.

This means that Microsoft Teams users will no longer be confronted with the sight of their own face pretending to pay attention (or losing focus), instead just letting them view other co-workers.

Microsoft Teams video

“Currently, the user's video is displayed at the bottom right corner of the meeting screen,” the official entry on the Microsoft 365 roadmap reads. “This feature allows users to hide their own video during a meeting. This will help reduce distractions during the call while still having your video available for other participants.”

The feature is currently shown as “in development” in Microsoft's roadmap, but the entry does claim a projected release date of January 2022. When it does arrive, the feature is set to be available to all Microsoft Teams users worldwide across web and desktop versions.

The update is one of the latest in a series of features announced by Microsoft as it looks to help Teams users increase productivity and efficiency as the era of hybrid working shows no sign of abating.

This includes the recent announcement that Microsoft Teams will soon allow users to mute notifications whilst they are in a video conferencing meeting or don't want to be disturbed.

This should mean an end to distracting notifications or alerts when you’re in the middle of an important meeting.

Recent data collected by software firm StarLeaf found almost all (97%) businesses say that tools such as ZoomWebex and Teams are now essential to their operations.

More than half (57%) of the 2,000 UK-based respondents claim their company would not be able to operate for more than an hour without access to their communications tools, while 27% admitted they would struggle to function for even 30 minutes.

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Microsoft Edge is bringing back a classic feature, but with a modern twist

Microsoft is trialling new functionality for web browser Edge that expands upon the RSS-style Followable Web feature, which landed recently in early-access.

As part of an A/B testing process, the company is rolling out a new YouTube integration to a small pool of Microsoft Edge users, who will be able to follow their favorite creators with the press of a button.

The YouTube follow button will appear on the right side of the URL bar for trial participants. Clicking the button will provide information about the channel (e.g. subscriber numbers, total videos), a feed of the most recent videos and the opportunity to become a follower.

The feature appears to differ from the native YouTube subscription functionality, instead serving up content to Edge users via the Collections pane, as part of Microsoft’s recent RSS push.

RSS comeback

Developed in 1999, RSS (an acronym for Really Simple Syndication) was once one of the most popular ways of keeping track of news and other content published to the web. But its reign was relatively short-lived.

By creating a new avenue for sharing and discovering web content, the rise of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter effectively put an end to the heyday of RSS. Other algorithm-based services like Google News also provided an alternative model for serving up content to web users.

However, as the problems with the algorithm-based approach to content discovery come to light (misinformation, echo chambers etc.), there are plenty of people looking for a way to exercise greater control over the information they are presented with.

Currently, many of these people make do with free RSS readers, a large proportion of which are developed on a shoe-string budget. But now, major web browsers like Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome are beginning to offer RSS functionality built-in.

Although RSS services have allowed users to follow YouTube creators for a while, Microsoft appears to be aiming at an altogether richer experience, whereby people are provided with contextual information about a channel as well as being notified when a new video lands.

The feature remains in early access for now, but depending on the outcome of testing may be rolled out as part of a full public build later in the year.

Via Windows Latest

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Global ecommerce payments are set to soar in the next few years

The value of global ecommerce payment transactions is on track to exceed $ 7.5 trillion by 2026, according to a new report from Juniper Research.

This represents a growth rate increasing by 55% over the next five years, with the sector previously valued at $ 4.9 trillion in 2021.

Retailers offering omnichannel retail experiences are highlighted as the main driver of this growth, which over time, will increase user ecommerce spend, the analyst firm claimed, as omnichannel retail provides end users with the ability to access retail services, including sales and customer support, via multiple channels. 

Ecommerce spend rises

The report also predicts that ecommerce payments, including online, mobile and physical retail locations will all contribute to the sector’s growth, as users expect the same services to be available irrespective of the channel.

Juniper Research states that there is an increase in appetite for new payment methods within eCommerce checkouts, including Open Banking-facilitated payments and digital wallet one-click checkout buttons. 

“Merchants should ensure payment options match changing user expectations, or they will be rapidly left behind”, it added.

Amongst other insights, the study additionally found that by 2026, China will account for over 37% of global ecommerce payments by transaction value, which will provide ecommerce website users easier access to alternative payment methods.

Physical goods sold on ecommerce platforms will account for 82% of the global ecommerce payments transaction value in the next five years, with Juniper Research highlighting that the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to aid the growth of online shopping globally.

With that in mind, Juniper Research highlights that alternative payment methods that integrate fixed installment plans and flexible credit in ecommerce check out options will continue to capitalize on this growth.

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Classic File Manager from 1990 gets remade for Windows 11

The first iteration of managing your files and folders has been remade and released for Windows 10 and Windows 11 users, giving you a useful alternative to Windows Explorer.

File Manager first appeared back in 1990 with Windows 3.0, where it was the only way to add, delete and manage your files and folders. But following the appearance of a graphical user interface and Windows Explorer with Windows 95, it was eventually retired in 1999.

But there were some users who loved the control that File Manager gave them, and that control is something that’s seemingly missing or hidden with Windows 11 in Explorer. 

With File Manager, almost every feature was discoverable either through an icon at the top of the window, or when you right-clicked a folder, but in Windows 11 currently, some features, such as Command Prompt and ‘Copy’, are displayed through a right-click menu or in an Options menu at the top of the Explorer window.

Thanks to the source code having been released back in 2018, this rewritten version has been headed up by Microsoft Azure Architect Craig Wittenberg, you can drag and drop files into the app, alongside a search function, and much more. You can download it from GitHub or directly from the Microsoft Store to use on your PC to manage your files like it’s 1990 all over again.


Analysis: what’s old is useful again

Using File Manager in 2022 through Windows 11 is, to pardon a phrase, like stepping through a window to 1990. While the appearance of this File Manager may be overwhelming to some users, who may be used to a more elegant appearance for a user interface, the features it offers are very helpful.

Whereas in recent years with Windows Explorer, you’d have to go to the Taskbar or a different app to reach some of the features that exist in a right-click menu in File Manager, such as ‘Run’, ‘Move’ or ‘Go to ‘Directory’. Every function is accessible in a few clicks, and thanks to the tree layout of your files and folders, you gain a better overview of where your content is, alongside how you can manage these files across multiple hard drives for example.

File Manager in Windows 11

(Image credit: Microsoft)

But it also shows how far interfaces and methods in computing have evolved in 30 years. It would be unimaginable now to start up Microsoft Edge through a command line, for instance, or use physical media such as Floppy Disks to play God of War in 8K.

Looking at Explorer in Windows 11, there’s plenty that could be influenced by File Manager. The inclusion of different view options to more clearly display folders and what they contain, alongside the facility to browse multiple windows in one Explorer window rather than separate ones, would be much more useful than what we have now.

With the next major update of Windows 11, Sun Valley 2 on its way, there’s always a chance that we could see further improvements to Windows Explorer that takes everything about what File Manager still does so well, and repackages it for a 2022 audience.

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