Recent News - Software - Page 2

Surface Pen week continues - introducing Microsoft Journal

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It's turning into a bit of a scribbling week - after my look at what you can do with an ultra-mobile PC like the Surface Go and the Surface Pen a few days ago, we now have the debut of a new Microsoft Garage tool, Journal - useable with touch and a finger, but even better with a stylus/pen. Summary: Journal is off to a slightly rough start, but the page-based approach is intuitive and it has potential.

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Windows 10 Camera... 'powered by Office Lens'

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Admittedly not applying anymore to Windows 10 Mobile, but Windows 10 Camera (for example, for the Surface Go, which is evidently a mobile device of sorts) today acquired a bunch of extra useful modes for the professional. The new modes are 'powered by Office Lens', coinciding rather neatly with the demise of the latter as a standalone application. Admittedly you don't get all the OCR-in-the-cloud functionaity, but you do get the auto-crop and auto-contrast optimisations. See the examples below.

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'News and Interests' hits the Windows taskbar

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For anything which can run full-on Windows 10, a significant new UI and services element just hit the Dev Channel (my Surface Pro is on this, hence the screenshots below). See also the quote from Microsoft about this - adding weather and more to the taskbar is a nice touch providing one has the screen real estate.

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Office Lens UWP loses all cloud converters

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A day later than planned, but Microsoft has now thrown the server-side switch on Office Lens as a separate app on both Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 Desktop. From now on, it's a service inside the likes of Office (for all platforms). Which makes sense in a way and it's nice to have it integrated, but I for one will miss it as a general purpose OCR and archival tool. See below for links, quotes and screenshots.

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Merging purity, intelligence and flexibility - ProRAW on iOS 14.3

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For the last 20 years of smartphone cameras, from the earliest Symbian handsets (Nokia Nseries, mainly, then the 808 PureView) through the Lumias (1020, 950, mainly), and with iPhones and Android handsets also providing highlights here and there, users have had two main options in terms of phone imaging, both compromised. That changes this week, do please read on.

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(Android) Phone-PC integration moves forward with latest Your Phone announcements

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The original Microsoft vision was to bring as much of Windows to phones as possible, even extending phones to Continuum desktops to run 'as' PCs. Sadly, they gave up on Windows 10 Mobile and had to shift to plan B. Or C, depending on how you're counting(!) Regardless, Microsoft has been pressing forward with their 'Your Phone Companion' (Link to Windows) software for a couple of years now, buoyed up by a developing partnership with Android phone manufacturer Samsung. With the launch of the latter's Note 20 range yesterday, extra integration features were announced - see below for some interesting animations, demonstrating how it works.

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Microsoft switches out HERE maps for TomTom, what's the Mobile impact?

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The story so far: HERE Maps (née Nokia Maps, then Navteq) provided all the map data for the mapping and car navigation in Windows Phone for years*. Windows 10 brought a first party mapping client from Microsoft, but using all the HERE map data under the hood, on Desktop and Mobile. But over the last few years Microsoft has been getting cosier with TomTom, a rival map (and traffic data) supplier, and has now announced that future map updates will come from TomTom. Details below, plus I muse on how this affects Windows 10 Mobile and 'Windows 10 Maps' on our phones.

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OneNote now dark on Android, now caught up with Windows?

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With even the latest Windows 10 Mobile versions now out of official support, it really is time to think about the colour of the grass 'on the other side'. I've been using iOS and Android, alternately, for the last year, and thought it was noteworthy that the last major Microsoft/Windows service (arguably) is now dark on Android. Why dark? Pioneered on Windows Phone back in the day, dark themes save power and save your eyesight when needed!

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Microsoft's Surface refreshes, plus the Surface Neo and Surface Duo (phone)!

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At an event in New York today, Microsoft launched some new mobile hardware and a tease of what's around the corner (and definitely coming, this time!) See below for details, but there's a genuine mobile highlight in a brand new communicator, the Surface Duo, rivalling the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Fold, but without using fragile folding plastic screens.

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Introducing the AAWP application for Windows 10

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Having teased this last week, we can now happily let you know that the AAWP Universal Windows Platform app is now formally available in the Windows Store, for mobile, tablet and laptop/desktop (of course). Featuring a choice of light and dark themes, in all sizes and aspect ratios, plus quick and smartly cached access to all our content, both static and interactive. And naturally you can run it on any Windows 10 phone, tablet or laptop.

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