Tip o’ the Week 348 – Headspace and Mindfulness

Posted on October 14, 2016 by ewand

“Mindfulness” is all the rage right now, or more to the point, it’s all the calm state of mental wellbeing. Airport bookshops are chock full of guides on how to empty your head, ironically just at the time & place when most people are rushing around with high levels of cortisol and many things fighting for their inner attention.

Satya is a great proponent of Carol Dweck’s thinking on Mindset (though it’s fair to say, her book is better than her website), but it’s worth noting that talk of Mindset and mindfulness can sometimes confuse as they are not necessarily related, even if often connected. It’s arguably easier to be conscious of one if you practice the other.

Mindfulness starts for most people with meditation: if you’ve never really tried it, banish thoughts of yogic flying, far out sounds and oming your way through life. Whilst some people doubtless find these things relevant, a simple 10 minute exercise in breathing meditation can help to get your head straight before or even during a busy day,.

Long-time UK Microsofties may recall the personal excellence training that was de rigeur in the tenure of a previous HR director, espoused by Nicholas Bate and his Strategic Edge consulting & training business. Not to be confused with a US business of the same name but a somewhat different charter.

Nick talked about a “personal operating system” ethos, called MEDS – Meditation, Exercise, Diet & Sleep. Here is a media file of the cassette tape he used to give out, to help attendees keep up the meditation bit, together with the warning of “don’t use this tape in the car”…

If you’re not a alumnus/alumna of the Personal Excellence course and want to try 10 minutes of meditation to help clear your heid, then you could do worse than check out www.headspace.com – it’s a subscription service of bite-sized meditation guides, aiming to help you better deal with the stuff that competes for mental attention.

There’s a great, free, 10-day introduction (10×10 minutes) online course, and there are iOS and Android apps to aid mobile digestion, though everything’s browser accessible so can be picked up anywhere. Headspace’s Andy Puddicombe gave a great TED talk a while back – start by giving this 10 minutes and see how you get on.

There’s no Windows app for Headspace, but other similar if less slick alternatives do exist, like Harmony. Search meditation in the Store, and you’ll find all sorts of others too.

Tip o’ the Week 347 – Mentions in Outlook

Posted on October 14, 2016 by ewand

One of the nice things about subscribing to client apps as part of Office365 is the regular feature updates which flow, tying together new capabilities in the service at the back end with updates to the client. One such change which came out recently was the addition of “mentions” in Outlook – you may have seen the dialog…

Mentions is a new feature that helps to get someone’s attention, much like mentioning them on Facebook, Twitter or Yammer.

When you type an @ symbol in Outlook, you’ll see an inline pop up showing the a list of frequent and/or recent email recipients. If you start typing then that list gets narrowed and when you select the person’s name, it’s added to the message in full and they’re automatically added to the To line of the mail or meeting request too.

You can edit their name inline (so it might just say @forename) to make the mail easier to read. As a mentionee, you can show only mails that have mentioned you as above – in the main Outlook window, look for the filter next to the search box, usually showing “All”, and it can quickly show you only mentions. In Outlook Web client, you’ll also see a little @ to the right of the messages which mention you, in the regular inbox view.

If the people you work with are in agreement, this can be a handy way of asking colleagues to do something; if you embed mentions in a long mail, then the people you’re invoking will be able to quickly show the mails they need to respond to – a less structured and formal way than assigning a task or other means.

Tip o’ the Week 346 – Under the Bridge

Posted on September 30, 2016 by ewand

There’s something beautiful about a well-made bridge, even a modernist one with engineering on display and functional elements providing elegance as well as strength. Of course, not all bridges work out quite as planned while some engender mythology all of their own.

There other types of bridge too, of course – they form intrinsic parts of some music, and essential parts of musical instruments, but there is also the concept in computing, of a bridge that can be used to make stuff designed for one environment to connect to or work in another. Like in networking, or in the case of several projects Microsoft worked on over the last few years, in bridging applications to work across multiple platforms.

At the build conference in 2015, Microsoft unveiled several bridges to bring Universal Windows Platform apps from other platforms – “Islandwood”, which allowed developers to port iOS apps to Windows was later released as Windows Bridge for iOS and a few high-profile apps have reportedly used it.

There was a web bridge, taking HTML and Javascript based apps and repurposing them for Windows with additional functionality like Live Tiles and Cortana support. Shazam used that. And a “Project Astoria” (tentatively called the Windows Bridge for Android) was announced, leaked and then unannounced and subsequently deep sixed.

Which leaves “Project Centennial”, a closer-to-home, perhaps smaller, less ornate & elaborate bridge, but one that’s likely to see a lot more traffic – it’s the bridge that lets developers take traditional Windows/Win32 apps and package them up to be in the Store, with a bunch of additional capabilities yet without wholesale rewriting.

Now released as the “Desktop bridge”, Centennial is available for developers to push their apps into the store by converting them to UWPs – see here for more detail. There are a handful of apps already in store thanks to the conversion process, perhaps most notably Evernote, who have now dropped their previous Win8.x app that had relatively limited functionality, and replaced it with the fully featured desktop version re-packaged for the Windows Store.

Tip o’ the Week 345 – Android in the Garage

Posted on September 30, 2016 by ewand

For some time now, there’s been a collective of off-the-wall projects and experiments (which may or may not become part of more fully-fledged Microsoft products) called the Microsoft Garage. In an homage to the semi-stereotypical Silicon Valley startup idea (a few techies hacking away in the garage to make stuff, as gave life to both Apple and HP among many others), the Garage has some projects that will live fast and die young, while others persist as long-term experiments on the periphery of maturity.

One of the more interesting developments – for Microsoft, at least – over the last year or two, has been the number of Garage projects which not only come out first for non-Microsoft platforms, but which may even be exclusive to other environments. The Word Flow Keyboard for iPhone, for example, has been getting rave reviews, yet doesn’t have an immediate equivalent for Windows or any other OS.

If you’re an existing – or aspiring – Android user, you may want to take a look at a recently-updated Garage project, called Arrow.

There’s a concept in Android of the “launcher”, the software that presents the main UI to the end user for navigating installed apps. In desktop OSes, it might be called the shell or GUI; with Windows and Mac, you basically get what you’re given, but with Linux, there’s usually a choice of shells and UIs that you can pick from.

Well, Microsoft’s Arrow is a launcher (said to be the best, no less) aimed at the kind of user who wants to put their most useful content at the fore; whether that’s the apps you use the most, or widgets that summarise information that you care about. It’s nowhere near as good as the Start screen and live tiles environment on Windows Mobile, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Arrow has recently been updated (to v2.3.x.xx…) and now, as well as showing you Bing wallpaper of the day, lets you quickly search using Bing, from the home screen (just swipe up from the panel at the bottom of the screen as if you wanted to expand it vertically, and the Bing search box appears at the top).

The new release includes Wunderlist integration too, as well as some abilities to dial-down the animation if you’re a particular speed freak or you have an old device that struggles with modern window movements.

As with iOS, there is a plethora of other Microsoft apps available, too – from OneNote, OneDrive, Cortana, various MSN content-rich apps… and the Arrow launcher provides a neat and fast way of navigating the stuff you care about. Check it out on the Google Play store.

Tip o’ the Week 344 – Inky betterness

Posted on September 9, 2016 by ewand

Inky was, along with his friends Blinky, Pinky & Clyde, one of the ghosts in the original Pac-Man. A little further back, Henry “Inky” Stephens was a noted inventor, businessman, politician & philanthropist. More recently, Inky is a company aiming to displace Outlook & Exchange by “fixing email”. You could also think of apps that support Windows Ink as “inky”. Maybe.

If you have a Windows 10 PC with a stylus, you may have noticed some additional functionality provided through the Ink Workspace (covered in ToW #340 no less) but it’s worth keeping an eye out on other applications for their increased usage of Ink, in a way that could make scribbling a more obvious and natural part of using your computer than you’d expected.

Recent updates to Office365’s client portfolio include a bunch of inky features – like the Maths* assistant in OneNote Mobile (the mobile/modern app, not the OneNote 2016 desktop version), which lets you not only capture written equations but can bring them to life. Or the ability to do Ink Replay (see here), which lets you show how the ink on a given page was produced – great if you like drawing a diagram that tells a story, almost like an animation.

Planky made something of a name for himself in producing these kinds of videos – here he is explaining cryptography, certificates, public/private keys and digital signatures.

To see which version of OneNote Mobile you’re running, go to the hamburger menu in the top left, then look in Settings -> About. There’s also a “What’s New” button to show you the headline latest features.

Ink Replay functionality is due to arrive in mainstream Office desktop apps soon, too. For more information, see the Office blog here, which also details a slew of other updates being made to Office through these regular feature enhancements.

*Maths is the abbreviation used by pretty much the whole English-speaking world for the study of Mathematics, and in the English UK localisation of Office, fortunately, the functionality is presented as “Maths” just as browsers have Favourites. Presumably the button in OneNote for US users will say, simply, “Math”. Maths vs Math can still be cause for argument (watch the video, it’s quite interesting) – just read the comments here. Most other languages avoid the issue by simply not having a commonly agreed abbreviation.

Tip o’ the Week 342 – LastPass on Edge

Posted on September 5, 2016 by ewand

As has been discussed on previous ToWs, one of the notable features of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update has been the slew of improvements that have come to the default web browser, Microsoft Edge. Even Thurrott is talking about it, if anyone is prepared to pay to read.

The availability of extensions is surely one of the big news items. One of the most useful extensions (see the rest here, or in the store) is LastPass – an online website password manager, useful for a couple of things … keeping an off-machine archive of your usernames/passwords for websites (across multiple machines if you pay for a Premium subscription) and an easy way of entering the saved username & password (look for the ellipsys icon which the addin shows at the far side of password dialogs – click on that to select the saved usernames & passwords for that site; you could use this to manage multiple identities for the same site).

The LastPass addin – and corresponding web service – also lets you set up a random password when signing up for new websites; hopefully avoiding the same username/password problem that hurts when online forums or websites get compromised and usernames & passwords are leaked. And who has the time to generate and remember a unique username & password for every site?

Tip o’ the Week 343 – QUIET!!!!

Posted on August 26, 2016 by ewand

One of the rare regressions from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 was the effective loss of “Quiet Hours”, a feature which persists in Windows 10 Mobile 10 and lets you silence your phone at times when you don’t need to know there’s a conf call in a different time zone to which you’ve been invited, or that it’s some dude on LinkedIn’s birthday.

You may wish for the same functionality (as described 2½ years ago in ToW 209) on your home PC or WFH laptop; although there’s a feature in Windows 10 called “Quiet hours”, it’s sadly nothing like the same.

Even if you have Quiet hours set in the notification area in Windows 10, it only means that between the hours of midnight and 6am, your PC won’t give you notifications. You can’t say “make it quiet RIGHT NOW” and you can’t change the times. Rather limited functionality, wouldn’t you say?

Well, there is a workaround that needs a little more effort (~2 minutes) but is actually a good bit more effective, and lets you be somewhat more creative too.

You say Schedule, I Say Schedule

What we’re going to do here is use a core capability that’s been in Windows ever since NT 3.1; the task scheduling feature, also used in ToW 310. Also, with a neat 3^rd party utility called nircmd, we can issue simple commands to the system to do things like mute or unmute the system volume.

Using Windows Explorer (WindowsKey+E), navigate to your Program Files directory and create a new folder called nircmd. Agree to any nannying prompts informing you that superpowers will be required.
Get the nircmd download from the very bottom of this page; you’ll probably want the 64-bit version here, or the 32-bit one here. If in any doubt, press WindowsKey+X then choose System from the menu, and you’ll see which version of Windows you’re on, therefore that will dictate what you need.
Open the ZIP file from your download above, select all the files within and Copy them, then navigate to your newly created folder and paste them in there, once again succumbing to enforced nagging/prompting.
Now go to the Task Scheduler in Windows (press Start and start typing “sched”…) then Create Basic Task from the menu on the right.

Give it a name, like Mute –>Nex
Choose a Daily schedule –>Next
Select a date and time to start (eg 23:00) and choose 1 day recurrence ->~~Next~~ you get the idea
Start a program
click on the Browse button to the right of Program/script and navigate to your \Program Files\NirCMD folder and choose the NirCMD.exe command, then add mutesysvolume 1 as an optional argument:

Now complete the task creation, and test it out (if you like) – just right-click your new task, and hit Run, and you should see the icon in your system tray go from to
Repeat the process above to create the UnMute task, firing at (say) 07:00, and with the mutesysvolume 0 argument.

If one’s not enough for you, it’s possible to create multiple schedules depending on your preferences, by opening the task and adjusting the Triggers tab to set additional schedules (so you could have it mute earlier in the evening from Sun-Thurs but might want to allow later music playing on a Fri/Sat, for example).

Now, sleep soundly.

Tip o’ the Week 341 – Project PCs to other PCs

Posted on August 19, 2016 by ewand

Have you ever been in a meeting where you need/want to show something on your PC but… (any of the following apply):

· There’s no wireless projection, it’s all cable-only and someone else is already plugged in

· You can’t reach the cable

· You didn’t bring the right adapter to fit the micro-HDMI/mini-DisplayPort/VGA etc port on your laptop, to the appropriate one on the cable to the projector or screen

· The person presenting is too precious to pass the baton to you to present

· It’s taken too much A/V faffing about already to get to the point where you’re at, and you don’t want to rock the boat by asking to quickly plug in your machine

· You’re not using Skype or anything that might let you present virtually..?

Assuming that at least most of these elicit a nod of the head, there’s a new feature in Windows 10 (Anniversary Update) that could be of interest – one that lets you project the output from another device onto your PC screen, notably phones or other PCs, by turning your machine into a wireless display.

The simplest way to use this function would be to enable one laptop to receive the entire contents of another laptop’s screen, into a window or the destination’s machine’s full screen – maybe for collaboration (where the destination machine could be allowed to interact with the host via keyboard & mouse, even pen or touch), or simply to provide a conduit for projection.

There are 2 stages – on the destination machine, type project at the Start menu and choose Projecting to this PC to open the settings dialog. It’ll only work if your destination machine has WiFi capabilities, as the technology being used is Miracast, meaning your PC can receive screen mirroring from any device that supports it (though Google have removed mirroring from some Android phones, and Apple have never supported the standard in their kit). This effectively turns your PC into a Miracast Receiver.

You can choose when you’d like the setting to be available and (assuming you’d like to leave it on all the time) whether you’d prefer random coffee shop Herberts to be prompted to present a one-time PIN before connecting.

After configuring the destination PC appropriately, on the source machine, just go to the Notifications (WindowsKey+A or swipe from the right) then choose Project, then Connect to a wireless display.

Now, instead of just seeing other Miracast receivers and the odd random audio device, you should also see the name of the destination machine, and you’ll be able to choose if you’d like the destination machine’s keyboard/mouse etc to be able to control the source machine, or simply mirror the display.

The destination machine will run the “Connect” application and will be able to display the source in a window or in full-screen mode.

The screenshot below shows the Connect app running on one laptop, displaying the output that is itself full-screen on a Surface 3 (running Plumbago).

If you’re using a Windows 10 Mobile device, you could use the new Connect functionality to run Continuum on your phone via your PC (frankly a bit pointless unless you want to just see what it’s like or demo it). Continuum won’t actually display what’s on your phone screen onto the PC in the same way that screen mirroring on other phones might, so if you’d like to show people what your phone looks like (so they know that there’s more than just iOS and Android), you could use the Project My Screen app on the PC to mirror the phone output in an emulator-like environment, using a USB cable.

Tip o’ the Week 340 – Windows 10 Ink Workspace

Posted on August 12, 2016 by ewand

One of the new features of Windows 10 with the Anniversary Update* is the Ink Workspace, which shows up on your taskbar if you have a pen-equipped device, like a Surface. If you don’t have a pen-capable device but you’re a bit insane, you can still make it appear (right click on your taskbar to see the option), though good luck in trying to emulate Ink with just a mouse. Surfaceers, unclip your pen and go.

The Ink Workspace is designed to be a starting point for many ink-related capabilities: see more about it here.

There are some quite cute sticky notes that you can scribble on-screen, a one-screen-sized sketchpad that’s at least handy & interesting but of somewhat limited use (seriously, use Plumbago, which has recently been updated to support OneDrive sync, and will show up in the “Recently used” list if you have it).

The Screen Sketch function lets you doodle on-screen and save grabs for future reference, and also surfaces he new Ruler function that is showing up in other ink-enabled apps – tap the ruler icon, and you get a rotate-able, moveable, virtual piece of plastic to help you draw straight lines on-screen.

Other apps are being updated to support Ink, as with only a few lines of code, they can integrate the Ink Toolbar and fit into the Ink Workspace, too. A variety of other apps are also being suggested through the Workspace, leading to the Collections section of the Store. See here for a quick preview.

One example of a newly ink-capable app is Maps. It’s getting an inking menu that will let you drawn on the map and measure distances between drawn points, which is quite cute. Insiders on the Fast Ring have the new Maps app already; in time, it’ll surely percolate out to everyone else.

Whatever happens to other apps in future, inking within Windows is getting a good bit more mainstream, and that’s great news for anyone with a pen or even a touch-oriented device.

*if you don’t have the Anniversary Update yet, you can wait for it to appear on Windows Update, or force it by downloading the installer, here.

Tip o’ the Week 339 – Happy Anniversary!

Posted on July 29, 2016 by ewand

It’s exactly a year ago that Microsoft launched Windows 10. And the free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8 users is due to run out… don’t delay, act today (yes, really, today).

And as of 2^nd August, the Windows 10 Anniversary Update will be available to everyone who’s already running current Windows 10 build, based on the Windows 10 November Update. In the meantime, there are a few offers of note to celebrate the anniversary – like the 3 free months of Groove Music (UK | US). See more here.

What’s new in the Anniversary Update?

Well, you could look at the beautiful but relatively content-light website, here. Or if you’re a mobile user running Windows 10 Mobile (hello?), check here. In truth, there are a multitude of updates, many seemingly incremental but collectively a significant step up in user experience. The Groove music player, for example, now sports a mini-player that pops out from the task bar, allowing you to control the currently playing music.

If you bother to sync your email & calendar from your work email account into the (much-improved) built-in Windows mail & calendar apps (as opposed to using Outlook only), then if you click on the time & date part of the Taskbar, the pop up will show you the next events as well as the calendar.

If you have a microphone on your PC – most likely built-in if you’re using a laptop, or part of a webcam you might have attached to a desktop – then you can also use Cortana at the lock screen: it’s actually a really cool thing to be able to pick up your tablet without unlocking it and ask Cortana for the weather or how the traffic is on your drive to work. Try switching it on (go into Cortana, click the settings icon and you’ll see the ability to enable the Blue One under lock screen) and have some fun looking like a loony as you sit and talk to your PC.

The Edge browser gets a series of extensions and loads of other usability improvements, like the ability to swipe left and right on a touch screen to move back & forth (handy on a tablet); restoring functionality that was part of Windows 8 with the Internet Explorer modern browser but which was lost when Windows 10 replaced the default browser with Edge. See here for a list of the feature improvements in the latest builds of Edge.

If you’re on the Insiders program, Fast or Slow, you’ll already have build 14393 pushed out to your Windows 10 machine (check Windows Update to be sure): if not, you’ll be offered the upgrade sometime after 2^nd August. Insiders will already have seen a couple of update rollups happen since 14393 was released, which suggests that it’s the last build before the final release, and any further updates will just be shipped via Windows Update.

If you’re not on Insiders, you might want to join so you can grab the latest build of Windows before the weekend arrives. If you’re still unsure, check out MJF’s non-reviewer’s review on the Anniversary Update.