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Posts tagged "Plan"

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Microsoft’s ad plan for Windows 11 is its worst idea since Windows 8 – but all is not lost
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Microsoft’s leaked plans to add even more ads into the Windows 11 Start menu has not gone down well, and the less-than-positive reaction could hopefully make the company think twice about implementing the change.

As we reported on March 29, Microsoft has added 'notifications for Microsoft accounts' into a new option update for Windows 11. Despite its rather coy-sounding name, many people saw this as meaning more adverts for Microsoft’s services, such as OneDrive.

However, as Neowin reports, a hidden setting has been spotted in Windows 11 build 23419 that allows you to turn off those adverts. This build of Windows 11 is only currently available to people who are signed up to the Windows Insiders programme to help test early versions of Windows 11, but it could hint that Microsoft is considering adding the option to an upcoming version of Windows 11 for everyone.

Good news and bad

The discovery of this setting could be seen as good news. It means that Microsoft may have anticipated that its move to add more adverts to the Windows 11 Start menu wouldn’t be popular, and decided that adding the option to turn ads off could address some people’s concerns.

Somewhere in the bowls of Microsoft, then, there may be a voice, no matter how faint, that’s saying “maybe we shouldn’t keep trying to push our services so aggressively onto our users.” That gives me hope that not all is lost.

However, it’s not all good news. For a start, when I say this option to turn off adverts is hidden – I mean really hidden. Not only is it supposed to be buried deep in the menus (you have to go to Settings > Personalization > Start), but it won’t even appear unless you use a third-party app called ‘ViveTool’ to make it appear.

Messing around with this app, and using the powerful Windows PowerShell application to make the option appear, isn’t recommended (visit Neowin’s page above for instructions if you are keen), and forcing this hidden option to appear and disable adverts could have unanticipated consequences.

Even if Microsoft doesn’t hide it so completely, it’s pretty obvious that Microsoft wants to have the adverts turned on by default, and hopes that many users won’t know how to turn them off.

We’ll keep an eye on how this develops, but if Microsoft keeps filling Windows 11 with adverts for services its users don’t want, we could soon see an even more vocal pushback against its plans.

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Microsoft’s plan for Windows 11 dominance still has a big TPM problem
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Is  Windows 11 being abandoned by gamers? That’s what it looks like on the face of it with the arrival of the latest Steam hardware survey, but there’s a lot more to those stats if you dig under the surface.

Valve’s survey for March shows that Windows 11 has dropped a massive 9.65% for operating system share among Steam gamers, leaving it on 22.41% (shedding almost a third of its hard-fought adoption figures, no less). Meanwhile, Windows 10 is up 11.62%.

Leading to the obvious question – what’s happening here, are folks leaving Windows 11 to revert to Windows 10? Well, no – there’s a strong clue as to what’s going on if you take a look at another part of the survey, namely the language used for the surveyed operating systems.

This shows a huge jump in ‘Simplified Chinese’ which represents 51.63% of the PCs surveyed in March (up 25.35% on the previous month). Whereas ‘English’ language installations have dropped to 22.83% (down a hefty 12.44%).

Of course, the Steam survey takes a sample of a whole different swathe of PCs (rigs whose owners have indicated they want to take part) every time around, which often accounts for variations in percentages. And a big change in the geographical focus of the survey, as seen here, is going to make a major difference no doubt – as we see with Windows 11 adoption.

We do have to consider the possibility that Valve’s March survey is flawed somehow, too – and perhaps the numbers of Chinese installations of Windows have been inflated. There have been theories about this in the past, contending that Valve is potentially misreading installations as Chinese (or that other factors could be at play, such as bots).

Interestingly, though, there’s other evidence of odd shifts in macOS and Linux, particularly Apple’s desktop platform which has dropped heavily.

Analysis: Untrusted Platform Modules?

The biggest impact is clearly that Windows 11 shift, and this makes sense for the Chinese market due to one obvious upgrade blocking factor – TPM.

In China there was a big fuss made when Windows 11 was wheeled out with its TPM requirement, because in that country, they use TCM chips instead – not trusting TPM. (Ironically, we suppose, as technically that makes them UPM or Untrusted Platform Modules).

At any rate, this was a big problem for Microsoft, what with TPM being a hard requirement for Window 11 in order to bolster security levels with the desktop OS. It’s something Microsoft has worked around for enterprise clients in China – that’s far too large a cash cow to ignore – but as for your average Chinese consumer, well, they’ve been left out in the cold. And they’re still shivering there as of 2023, something clearly illustrated by this latest Steam survey, in which the large influx of Chinese PCs has caused such a swing between Windows 11 and Windows 10.

In summary, then, no, gamers aren’t fleeing Windows 11 in droves, but Microsoft still has a big problem in the Chinese market when it comes to TPM and adoption of its newest OS. Clearly, Chinese users are not keen on trying to fudge an installation of Windows 11 without TPM (which is possible, but not recommended).

We weren’t sure what Microsoft was going to do regarding the consumer market in China back at the launch of Windows 11, and we still aren’t sure, but presumably, this is an issue that needs to be addressed at some stage.

Otherwise, Microsoft’s desktop OS dominance in China – a massive market where Windows currently accounts for 82.5% of PC operating systems as of March 2023, according to Statcounter, is surely going to be eroded. Remember, Windows 10 only has a couple of years of support left in the tank.

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Microsoft has a new plan to make Edge better than Chrome
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Microsoft Edge is going to make an effort to help you improve the browser with a new system of badges for add-ons.

Add-ons (also referred to as extensions) are little extras that can be bolted onto the browser to deliver all kinds of functionality, but clearly the trick to making Edge better with them is choosing good add-ons, and not bloat or poor-quality efforts (or even malicious ones in a worst-case scenario).

As MS Power User reports, what the new system delivers is a badge – a visual icon, present on the product description page and elsewhere – to show that any given browser extension is of a high enough quality to deserve that label. So in short, you know you’re getting something you can trust, and that will work well.

Microsoft says that it’ll soon start to experiment with testing extension badges in the Edge Addons Store (EAS). The company notes: “Edge is starting with a small-scale experiment and will begin to engage with the developer community to talk through the criterion and help them get acquainted with the badging process on EAS.”

Analysis: Another step in the right direction

Badges will also act as a carrot for devs to make better extensions, too. As Microsoft explains, developers will be encouraged to follow best practice guidelines when putting together their add-ons in order to try to qualify for a badge that’ll ensure their products are more likely to be used by Edge fans. So, it’s more likely that the extensions being made will be of a higher quality, broadly speaking, or at least that’s the hope.

There are quite a number of add-ons in the library available to Edge users at this point, so helping to sort the wheat from the chaff is definitely a good idea. According to Microsoft, there are almost 11,000 extensions for Edge at this point, and that’ll keep on growing, naturally.

It’s good to see the software giant taking more positive steps to try and improve Edge as a product. We’ve also glimpsed another innovative step in recent times, namely the integrated free VPN that’s been in testing (and has supposedly just reached release, at least for some Edge users).

All this is refreshing, primarily because advancing Edge with extra capabilities and fresh features is what we want to see, not experimenting with how more adverts can be jammed into Windows 11 to push Edge (let’s stop with that already, Microsoft, please).

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WhatsApp gets a new way to quiz your friends and plan nights out
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Group chats in WhatsApp are used for all sort of things, from giving ways for distant members of the family to keep in touch, to helping people in real-world clubs and groups to contact each other easily. While the ability to chat, send photos, have video calls and so on are great, what has been lacking is the ability to create polls.

But this is set to change. If you've been looking for an easy way to see which restaurant you and your friends should go to, a way to vote on which design is best for your company logo, or countless other things, group chats in WhatsApp look like they are going to be gaining the long-missing polling option.

Spotted in the iOS version of the WhatsApp app by the ever-reliable WABetaInfo, we can see glimpses of a rudimentary poll creation interface that can be used to pose a question to member of a group chat. At this stage it's not clear quite how polls will look, or how customizable they will be, but we do know that they will be end-to-end encrypted.

Not for the first time, WhatsApp finds itself playing catch-up here. As welcome as the impending arrival of polls is, it is something that rival messaging apps have offered for quite some time. This does not, however, detract from the usefulness of the feature in any way, and it is something that it sure to prove popular and will be well-used whenever it does finally roll out.

Polling opinion

While at the moment, the poll option is only visible in the beta version of the WhatsApp app for iOS, it would be quite surprising if the very same option did not also make its way to Android. That said, WhatsApp is no stranger to giving iOS and Android users the same options at different times.

And speaking of staggered rollouts, it seems that Android users could be in line to gain access to a WhatApp feature that is already available to iOS users. In the redesigned drawing editor, iOS users have been able to use a blur tool to obscure private information in photos, making sensitive data unintelligible

WABetaInfo has spotted the same tool popping up in beta versions of the Android app, bringing the two platforms closer together in terms of features. For both this bur tool and the up-coming polling option, there is no hint about when the rollout is planned, so it is just a case of waiting patiently for WhatsApp to continue development and then flip the necessary switch.

Via WABetaInfo

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Zendesk’s plan to acquire SurveyMonkey is officially dead
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Zendesk's billion-dollar plan to acquire Momentive, which runs the popular SurveyMonkey tool, has failed after its own shareholders rejected the proposal. 

The deal was worth around $ 4.1 billion, with the news coming just days after the CRM giant turned down a $ 16 billion offer to be acquired by a consortium of private equity firms. 

“While we were excited by the potential of this transaction to transform the customer experience and create stockholder value, we respect and appreciate the perspectives of our stockholders,” said Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svanek. 

Foiled bid

In a blog post, Svanek explained a little more about what made Momentive an attractive target and Zendesk's future plans. Zendesk's business is sound, he said, but could've been augmented by Momentive. 

“We planned to acquire Momentive as a way to accelerate our ability to deliver the future of customer intelligence,” he wrote. “While we will not be moving forward with that acquisition, we remain as committed as ever to helping our customers get more value out of their data.” 

Investor hostility 

The deal was sunk largely by activist shareholders who opposed it. The Wall Street Journal reported that Jana Partners, which owns 3%, and Janus Henderson, which owns 5%, both opposed the deal. Jana called it a “reactive and impulsive decision”. 

Faced with scepticism from its own shareholders, spending $ 4.1 billion is an impossible ask. Shareholders voted against the deal on February 25. 

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>Zendesk boosts CRM capabilities with Smooch deal

For Momentive, the decision is not ideal. “While we are disappointed that Zendesk stockholders did not vote to approve the transaction, we are confident in our go-forward strategy,” said Monentive CEO Zander Laurie. 

It remains to be seen what direction the two companies take but with intense pressure in the CRM market, Zendesk needs to find a bold new plan. 

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Google’s cookie replacement plan just passed a major hurdle
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Google's plan to replace third-party cookies with its new Privacy Sandbox standards is one step closer to becoming a reality after receiving approval from the UK's competition regulator.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced that it has formally accepted the search giant's commitments regarding how it will develop its new standards in such a way that they don't impede competition or unfairly benefit Google's advertising business.

In a press release, chief executive at the CMA, Andrea Coscelli explained that while the regulator has approved Google's new set of standards, it will still be keeping a 'close eye' on the search giant as it develops these proposals, saying:

“The commitments we have obtained from Google will promote competition, help to protect the ability of online publishers to raise money through advertising and safeguard users’ privacy. While this is an important step, we are under no illusions that our work is done. We now move into a new phase where we will keep a close eye on Google as it continues to develop these proposals. We will engage with all market participants in this process, in order to ensure that Google is taking account of concerns and suggestions raised.”

Privacy Sandbox proposals

After abandoning its original FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) proposal, Google recently introduced a substitute called Google Topics that will serve ads to users based on broad interest categories as opposed to using granular and often more sensitive data collected by third-party cookies.

Now that the CMA has formally accepted the company's commitments, they have become legally binding and Google has said that it will apply them globally. As part of these commitments, the company will develop its Privacy Sandbox proposals in a way that's transparent and it will also publish test results.

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> Google Chrome won't get cookie blocking for another two years

> Google attacked over latest plan to replace tracking cookies

> Google has more cross-site trackers than other popular websites

Google has also confirmed that it won't remove third-party cookies from Chrome until the CMA gives the all clear that its new alternatives don't raise any competition concerns. At the same time, the search giant won't share data within its business in a way that is unfair and gives it an edge over its competitors.

There is still some time left until Google phases out third-party cookies in Chrome as the company plans to put its Privacy Sandbox standards in place by the end of next year. However, other browsers such as Firefox and Safari have already decided to block third-party cookies outright.

Via The Verge

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OneDrive update offers a peek into Microsoft’s master plan
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Microsoft is preparing an update for OneDrive that will embed the cloud storage service more deeply into its ecosystem of productivity and collaboration apps.

According to a new entry in the company’s product roadmap, Microsoft 365 users will soon benefit from a new synergy between OneDrive and Teams.

“In OneDrive, we are adding a ‘Your Teams’ section to the ‘More Places’ page to allow you to easily find and work with your files in Teams,” Microsoft explained.

The new feature is still under development for now, but is scheduled to roll out to all relevant customers in April.

Microsoft Teams, meet OneDrive

Although Microsoft remains the dominant brand in the office software space, Google stole the march when it came to bringing productivity tools into the cloud. In addition to the flexibility this afforded customers, the move also gave Google more freedom to build interactions between its apps.

While Microsoft has long offered web-based versions of its famous software, the company is now focusing more closely on tightening up the relationship between each of its services, extending all the way out to the Windows OS on which most business computers run.

The idea is to use this heightened level of interoperability to make it as inconvenient as possible to break away from the Microsoft ecosystem, even if a company or individual has adopted just a small selection of services.

Read more

> Why Slack isn't afraid of Teams or any other competitor

> Microsoft 365 exploit could give attackers access to all your emails

> The unlikely CEO beating Zoom and Teams at their own game

The upcoming Microsoft 365 update is a reflection of this strategy, improving the fluidity with which users can utilize the file-sharing and management functionalities available with both OneDrive and Teams.

Other recent examples include the integration of Microsoft Teams and LinkedIn, the professional social network owned by Microsoft, and trade-in initiative designed to increase the volume of Microsoft hardware in office meeting rooms.

In addition to improving the interoperability of its apps, Microsoft is also working to ensure it is able to reach as wide an audience as possible. For example, the company recently announced a host of features aimed at frontline workers, a previously underserved demographic, as well as new accessibility functionality.

Although the latest Microsoft 365 announcement will have a comparatively small effect on the overall user experience, it’s one piece of a much larger puzzle Microsoft is attempting to assemble.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

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Amazon’s Plan to Track Worker Keystrokes: A Sign of Controls to Come?
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Data theft, insider threats and imposters accessing sensitive customer data have apparently gotten so bad inside Amazon, the company is considering rolling out keyboard-stroke monitoring for its customer-service reps. A confidential memo from inside Amazon explained that customer service credential abuse and data theft was on the rise, according to Motherboard which reviewed the document. […]
Threatpost

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