Ask Paul: September 14 (Premium)

Happy Friday. Here’s another round of questions and answers. Including one that might have solved a problem for me too.

Podcast interviews

Shane asks:

Early on with First Ring Daily when Brad was away you had guests on the show which your had tell about themselves.

Over time I’ve thought that I would love to see you and Mary Jo interview Leo. He seems to have had an interesting career and there is a lot to know and understand about him. I’m sure this would be a great show.

That’s a neat idea, thanks.

Regarding interviews in general, it’s a bit of work to set up, but I agree it’s nice to do when possible. I’ll mention this to both Mary Jo and Brad and see what we can do.

Duplicate Microsoft services

chrishilton1 asks:

I note your update on Microsoft To-Do this week. I’ve noticed these seems to be many duplicate/conflicting tools in Office 365 [like] Planner/Tasks/To-Do, Stream/Video, Teams/Staff Hub/People. I think some consistency and pooling of features would help users understand all these tools, or is the onus on me as admin to disable certain ones. If it is, which are recommended?

Ah consistency. 🙂 Perhaps my number one complaint about Microsoft (if you include this, as I do, in the broader context of “finishing the job.”)

So this type of issue has historically been a big problem at Microsoft. Just last week, someone asked about the various versions of Outlook (apps and services) that Microsoft now maintains and why they are all so different, both functionally and from a look and feel perspective. I often point to Microsoft’s multiple sync clients from a decade ago (one of Ray Ozzie’s few mistakes) as another classic example.

Related to this, not all of these tools offer the same integration across Microsoft’s ecosystem. For example, let’s say you really like Microsoft To-Do, as I do, and you wish to use the underlying service as elegantly as possible no matter which device you’re currently using. Well, To-Do doesn’t even integrate with Cortana on Windows 10. So you can’t use Cortana to create or edit tasks by voice, or otherwise, on your PC. That Cortana does integrate with Wunderlist, yet another to-do/task solution, which Microsoft acquired three years ago, is beyond frustrating. (Wunderlist is the predecessor to To-Do and will be phased out at some point, Microsoft says.)

As to your actual question, it’s hard to say. Just looking at tasks/to-do, you have a lot of choices (which is a nicer way of saying “the onus is on you,” though that is quite accurate). And the good news is that this isn’t something particularly hard to switch away from. If you’re managing hundreds of to-do’s, you’re doing it wrong. So while I may feel like Microsoft To-Do has a future (and I do), should Microsoft suddenly kill this thing one day, moving to another solution should be relatively easy.

Also, the answer may be as simple as understanding how you work. If you use Outlook.com regularly, you may just want to use the Tasks feature that’s built-in to that. But Tasks is not available on mobile (to my knowledge, it’s not part of the Outlook Mobile app, certainly). And if accessing tasks/to-do on mobile matters, maybe Microsoft To-Do is the better choice.

What I’d really like to see is Microsoft maintain a single to-do service that let you work from the same data across Outlook, To-Do, and elsewhere, rather than maintain all these different solutions. (In this scenario, I might use Outlook.com on the web on PC but Microsoft To-Do on mobile.) But that’s how I feel about Outlook too. These kinds of dreams are rarely realized.

Audio auto-play in Chrome

chrishilton1 asks:

I note that in a recent update to Chrome, Google disabled auto play of sound on videos. This puzzled me on your site for a while, as I couldn’t get sound to play on your video podcasts, but I browse other sites such as zdnet and the sound plays. Annoyingly they seem to be getting around the setting, but I still have to enable audio (click the volume icon in the tab at the top and enable audio) when visiting thurrott.com.

So I had to do a bit of research to figure this one out, but I think I have. I, too, am incredibly annoying but autoplay audio in videos, and have been bitten by ZDNet repeatedly, in particular. So this one will help me, too.

(As an aside, it is worth noting that the latest version of Microsoft Edge can literally block autoplay video too. This is an interesting example of a feature in Edge working more to my liking than is the case in Chrome.)

So here’s the deal. Google uses an algorithm called the Media Engagement Index (MEI) to determine whether Chrome believes that the autoplay video you are enduring is “wanted” or “unwanted.” If it feels that you would want to watch the video, perhaps because you have watched videos before on that site, it will be marked as “wanted” and you will hear audio. I believe this explains the ZDNet issue. I’ve certainly heard audio in their stupid autoplay videos before. But I’ve never “wanted” to hear it.

The good news is that you can configure this on a site-by-site base. When you hit a web page that auto-plays video with audio (I just experienced that here), click the site information icon at the left of the address bar and look at the Sound option. For me, on ZDNet, it was set to Allow. So I changed that to Block. To test that it worked, I viewed another ZDNet article. Voila. No audio.

We don’t use autoplay video on Thurrott.com. (We freaking better not.) But when I manually play a video, I do hear audio. If you’re not, check that site information button. I think the choice “Allowed (default)” is correct, but just “Allowed” will likely force the issue.

Thanks for this. I didn’t realize this control existed before.

TV Anywhere?

sabertooth920 asks:

Any thoughts on if tv shows will ever be available on Movies Anywhere, or if all the studios will ever get on board. It has been a fantastic service, regardless.

I can only speculate, of course, but I don’t see why not. Movies Anywhere began as a Disney-only service and expanded to include other studios. Moving to TV shows is a natural-enough expansion, though it might necessitate another branding change.

Shorter term, I’d love to see even more movie studios sign up. I love that Movies Anywhere exists, but it’s hard not to hope for it becoming a truly universal service for purchased movie access.

Wearables as health devices

christian.hvid asks:

The most significant Apple device launched this week is arguably neither of the iPhone models, but the new Watch – and specifically the ECG monitor. It’s been anticipated for a while now that smartphones and wearables would add various types of medical sensors (beyond the obligatory pulse monitor), and Apple Watch 4 may be the first real sign of this happening. Do you think this is Apple’s new growth market – after all, it’s almost limitless – and do you see Samsung and others follow suit?

For sure. To be fair, previous-generation Apple Watches were already pretty impressive in this regard, as are various Fitbits and other wearables. And the capabilities will simply grow each year. I don’t see this year’s improvements as being more useful than last year’s.

There’s also a new line of reasoning that Apple Watch, previously considered “Tim Cook’s Folly” by some, has suddenly catapulted into a worthy follow-up to Steve Jobs’ string of hits. But I think this thing is just somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. It’s very useful for people who want health monitoring, for sure. But so are other devices that aren’t tied to an iPhone. And the ECG capabilities of Apple Watch can’t ever match the sonogram-based echocardiograms that people get at hospitals where you can see your actual heart function. There’s a real danger to misdiagnosis, too, just as there is when you Google your symptoms.

This doesn’t diminish the value for those in the Apple ecosystem, I know. And I love the democratization (of sorts) of personal health monitoring. But when we start getting into health issues, it always reminds me of safety features in cars. They always start with the most expensive vehicles. And then make their way to the unwashed masses and their less expensive cars later.

Personal data on OneDrive

lwetzel asks:

What are you thoughts on allowing personal (as in bank account, credit card, mortgage, etc.) information to be stored on OneDrive?

It all comes down to trust. And I mean that broadly. Trusting Microsoft, of course. But also trusting its technology and that personal information will not be compromised in an electronic attack.

I do trust Microsoft. And my trust in cloud computing is something that has evolved over the years. For my own data, I have basic requirements around encryption and (lack of) ease of access, whether it is/was on a NAS or server of some kind in the basement or in the cloud. I used to put really sensitive things in encrypted and password-protected ZIP files. The theory was that, combined with the inherent protections in the platform, this would protect against anything other than a professional or even state-sponsored attack. In which case, we’re all screwed, I guess.

I don’t worry about that stuff anymore. And in the sense that much of what I do is transparent and public anyway, the notion that my tax returns, credit card history, or whatever might become public isn’t all that scary to me. That someone might get into my accounts and access my money, steal my identity, or whatever is, of course, quite scary. But these things are protected by layers of security that include 2FA/two-step authentication. And it’s more likely that I’ll just be annoyed trying to access my own data than that someone will try to steal it.

EU copyright laws

christian.hvid asks:

As you know, the controversial new EU Copyright Directive – including the much debated Article 11 (“link tax”) and Article 13 (“upload filter”) – was approved by the Parliament this Wednesday. What’s your take on this? Will it destroy the Internet as we know it, or will it just shift the balance slightly in favor of copyright holders? Or will sites vulnerable to this legislation simply shut EU citizens out, as has partly been the case with GDPR?

As a content creator who has been stolen from on numerous occasions—and this runs a gamut from outright theft of entire articles to other bloggers trying to emulate my writing style—I’m a bit sensitive to this kind of thing. Coupled to this, I’ve witnessed decades of change in the ways that content is created and published, and consumed, from print and paper books to long-form web articles to the nonsense slideshow-based posts we all whittle time away on today. Theft has never been easier. And content has never been cheaper. And that’s directly impacted me. I earn less now than I did two years ago, and much less than I did five years ago. This industry is going down the tubes.

So my initial reaction to this is that I appreciate that some regulatory body is trying to do something positive for content creators. And I also realize that because it is the EU, this will be slow-moving and much-debated topic before it ever becomes law. And while I’m not really on the side of the critics who complain of a coming disaster, I see their point as well. It’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. And I witness this almost every single time I post a Premium article and someone on Twitter simply cannot believe that I have the temerity to try and be paid for my work.

On a related note, Mary Jo and I were talking recently and we both sort of arrived at the same place, which was that we got into this business when you could make money by writing, and that we will exit this business at a time when you cannot. The transition from paper to digital is wonderful on so many levels. But the impact on those who create content, despite all the advances, is kind of awful overall.

So… It’s too early to really know. But this is something I will be following closely. I certainly have a vested interest in it.

Live Tiles

Lewk asks:

Do you still like Live Tiles? If so, do you think that they would have more value if they were enabled to be pinned to the Desktop instead of the Start Menu? Personally, I’d love to have the Weather and News apps Live Tiles on my Desktop, instead of hidden away in the Start Menu.

Live tiles are part of a list of features and functionality that date back to Windows Phone 7 and Microsoft’s work to not just be different from iPhone (and Android, which was then just copying the iPhone) but to be better than iPhone. And, as part of this work, Microsoft came up with a number of user interface innovations and features that really did seem to make Windows phone “better.”

I certainly fell for it. And live tiles, in particular, do make tons of sense on a phone: You lift the phone up, signing in with your finger as you do, and the home screen appears, showing you live updates on tiles. This at-a-glance functionality was user-friendly, and it prevented you from having to go in and out of apps repeatedly—what I call “whack a mole”—to see what was new. Oftentimes, the tile was enough: A weather update or enough of an email message to know whether it could wait for later or was important.

But as Windows phone failed and Microsoft jammed these innovations into Windows on the desktop, a new reality emerged: Live tiles just don’t make any sense at all on a PC. There’s no “at-a-glance” interface on your PC, though Microsoft tried with Windows 8’s full-screen Start experience.

At one point, I kind of wondered if Microsoft would put live tiles on the desktop (sort of like Active Desktop), on a sidebar (as with Windows Vista’s Sidebar), or even in the taskbar, replacing the mostly static icons. But the interface we use on PCs and Macs was honed over decades, and these kinds of live updates are actually more distracting than useful on a system we use mostly for work.

So I don’t see this ever happening. And I sort of view this in the context of “the right tool for the job.” I use a PC for work, and I don’t want the distractions, and I think most other PC users fall into this camp as well. A phone or tablet is different, for a number of reasons.

And, for whatever its, worth, Apple and Google have made a number of innovations on their phone platforms that I feel largely eliminate whatever advantage live tiles once had. In particular around notifications, which are available from a swipe, so you can see what’s important across the phone. Or by long-pressing an icon, so you can see what’s important for that particular app. Most people have simply just moved on (as has Microsoft).

Thanks everyone,

Paul