Thurrott Daily: November 10

Thurrott Daily: November 10

Tech tidbits from around the web.

11/10/2016 3:04:29 PM

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I’m heading to Amsterdam

I’m heading to Amsterdam tonight; my wife, daughter, me, and some other folks—including Mary Jo Foley—will be checking out the city over a long weekend and then heading over to nearby Haarlem early next week. Mary Jo and I are there for the IT Unity Connect show, which my employer puts on, and we’ll be having a meet-up, and doing Windows Weekly, Wednesday at the normal time at Wortell, which is basically between Amsterdam and Haarlem. So if you’re in the area, please plan to come by Wednesday starting at 6 pm local time.

I’ll post more information about the meet-up and live Windows Weekly show early next week.

Office Lens picks up some nice accessibility improvements

It looks like this one is IOS only for now. Microsoft explains.

Today, we are pleased to announce two new features for Office Lens—the Immersive Reader and the Frame Guide for iOS. Combined, these new updates expand our toolbox, which we first brought to OneNote and are now bringing to OneNote Online, Word for the desktop and Word Online.

Previously, you could capture an image using Office Lens and then insert the image into OneNote to take advantage of Immersive Reader. With today’s updates, the Immersive Reader is now built directly into Office Lens. We are also proud to reveal an all-new tool within Office Lens called Frame Guide, which empowers the visually impaired with cues that help them capture images in Office Lens.

Parallels Between Europe’s Antitrust Cases Against Google and Microsoft

I wrote a bit about this earlier today. Here’s what the New York Times later said about the same topic.

In 2009, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, charged Microsoft with unfairly bundling its Internet Explorer browser with its Windows software, a move that officials said reduced consumer choice.

In April, the Europe competition authorities charged the search giant with unfairly using Android, which holds a roughly 75 percent share of the region’s smartphone market, to promote its own digital services over those of rivals.

In all, Microsoft has paid $3.4 billion in fines to the European Commission for its antitrust abuses.

If found to have broken Europe’s tough competition rules, Google could be fined up to $7.5 billion, or 10 percent of its annual revenue, though European officials have typically levied much smaller penalties in previous cases.

Google’s Daydream View VR headset is now available

But remember you must own a Google Pixel or Pixel XL to use it, which really limits the potential audience. Google explains:

Daydream brings you on immersive virtual reality adventures powered by a smartphone. And now you can experience it all with Daydream View, a VR headset and controller made by Google available in stores today.

The Daydream app, available on any Daydream-ready phone starting with Pixel and Pixel XL, lets you launch your favorite VR experiences and browse from an ever-growing collection of apps, games and videos. Plus, the app brings new featured content front and center so there’s always something fresh when you put on your headset.

With Daydream, you can experience some of the most popular Google apps like Google Photos and Google Play Movies in virtual reality. Visit 150 of the world’s most amazing places like the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal with Google Street View. And with YouTube VR, you can watch the entire library of YouTube videos on a virtual big screen and experience hundreds of thousands of immersive videos from top creators.

 

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  • 214

    Premium Member
    10 November, 2016 - 2:18 pm

    <p>Have fun in Amsterdam! Did a long weekend there last Spring&nbsp;-&nbsp;got a cab ride from the airport to downtown in a Tesla…&nbsp;Zoom zoom! Who knew?</p>

  • 4841

    10 November, 2016 - 2:36 pm

    <p>Don’t forget to tell Dona Sarkar when you’ll be taking your flight back to the US so she can properly schedule another Creators Update Insider build release! :P</p>

  • 442

    10 November, 2016 - 3:15 pm

    <p>I just can’t get over the less usability of Office Lens to other similar "scanning" apps for the smartphones.&nbsp; While I can see arguably it’s as easy in many cases, I often fumble with it trying to determine what steps I’m at in getting the captures done right and saved without combining them, or accidentally deleting them.&nbsp; MS really needs to re-examine this part of the app.</p>
    <p>The EU really seems anti-business these days…</p>

    • 5234

      10 November, 2016 - 3:53 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#25434">In reply to </a><a href="../../users/Narg">Narg</a><a href="#25434">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>They’re only anti-business when it comes to businesses from outside the EU. &nbsp;If it were a business located within the EU, they’ll protect them from sovereign nations. &nbsp;Expect more of the same with Trump being president. &nbsp;The US should be thankful that they aren’t being ruled by unelected representatives and paying the Euro-tax membership fees to be part of the globalist club.</p>

  • 342

    10 November, 2016 - 7:26 pm

    <p>If Microsoft had chosen to include NO web browser by choice, which would have been their right to do versus including competitors browsers…how would the average person loaded ANY web browser, let alone a competing one? Also, since all web browsers are free…how exactly does competition come into this? They don’t make money off IE, except that maybe Bing is the default search engine.</p>

    • 1043

      11 November, 2016 - 9:52 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#25463">In reply to </a><a href="../../users/ndwilder">ndwilder</a><a href="#25463">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>Microsoft could have used the Store app for offering web browsers so the user could select the one they want. I also feel that this is what Linux distributions should do, let the user select the browser they want from the Store app, same for Office suites, media players, and other apps. Operating systems should only have 2 icons on the desktop by default, one for the file browser and one for the software store.</p>

      • 1184

        Premium Member
        11 November, 2016 - 12:41 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#25487">In reply to </a><a href="../../users/Patrick3D">Patrick3D</a><a href="#25487">:</a></em></blockquote>
        <p>I think maybe you’re forgetting that there was no store app in at the time.&nbsp;At the time the Internet was still a fairly new concept, at least for home users. Without IE "in the box" many users would have effectively been locked out of the Internet and the web in particular.&nbsp;You could maybe make some argument for AOL providing what the users needed through their floppy disk carpet bombing marketing strategy but can you imagine a world in which AOL was the primary gateway to the web rather than a browser like IE, Firefox, or Chrome?&nbsp;<em></em></p>
        <p><em>&gt;shudder&lt;</em></p>

  • 6014

    11 November, 2016 - 6:46 am

    <p>Oh Office Lens.</p>
    <p>Your lovely image processing.</p>
    <p>Your graceful integration with services I use.</p>
    <p>Your easy UI.</p>
    <p>And your inability to produce multi-page PDFs that require I use something else.</p>
    <p>*sigh*</p>

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