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Whisky Tango Foxtrot – Microsoft Buys LinkedIn
This was the WTF on the top of my day…
I’ve been a LinkedIn member since the very early 2000’s. Back in the day, you had to be INVITED to join LinkedIn, and you couldn’t connect with just ANYONE. You really had to have done business with a person or had to have worked with them; and you had to know their email address, too. If you didn’t know them, LinkedIn wouldn’t let you connect. In situations like that, you had to have a common contact between you and your desired connection "introduce" you; and then the person you were trying to connect with would very often either ignore you, or decline the connection. Back in the day, actually MAKING a connection on LinkedIn was a BIG deal.
LinkedIn used to be… USED to be… VERY exclusive.
Today, it was purchased in total by Microsoft (MSFT) in a $26.2B (that’s Billion with a “B”), all cash deal, that is likely going to be 2016’s most outrageous and totally over paid deal of the year.
No New Windows 10 Builds until it Works…
Apparently, there’s a nasty bug that Microsoft is chasing…
During a beta period, a tester or test manager should always expect to find bugs and, more importantly to expect run with buggy software. It’s never really end user ready, despite the fact that you’re opening your user base up to a wider audience.
Case in point – Microsoft has opened up Windows 10 to its Windows Insiders. You can get prerelease builds of Windows on the Fast, Slow and Release Preview rings.
Get Your Free Windows 10 While You Can
Apparently, Microsoft was serious about Windows 10 only being free for a year…
Sometimes I really have to wonder if the senior leadership team at Microsoft is asleep at the wheel or not; because this just seems stupid.
When Windows 10 was released last year on 2015-07-29, Microsoft said the upgrade would be free to all Windows PC’s running Windows XP and higher for a year. Well, a year will be up on 2016-07-29, and Microsoft is holding firm to that statement.
Microsoft Releases Surface Hub
The long awaited update to Microsoft’s Perceptive Pixel PC’s has finally shipped.
This is a huge deal for the enterprise…
One of the things that I like the most about my current job and role in IT is that my company has a Windows 8.x powered Perceptive Pixel PC. It sits in one very specific conference room, and quite honestly, I tend to live in that room, mostly because of this particular PC.
Initial Impressions of Windows 10 Mobile
Well… I’ve upgraded my BLU WIN HD LTE handset…, and… yeah.
Introduction
Ok… I’ve got a few thoughts on Windows 10 Mobile, and I need for everyone to understand the justification behind them, so… bear with me a moment. This may sound a bit critical, but in the end, I don’t think anyone can blame me…
I started my mobile Windows journey in 1997 with the Casio E10, a WindowsCE powered handheld device that had a 320×240 pixel, 4 gray scaled LCD that received electrical power via 2 AAA batteries. WindowsCE itself was released by Microsoft in 1996 at COMDEX. The OS was meant to power handheld computers and act as an embedded OS for other industrial applications. Comparatively speaking, while the devices weren’t really cutting edge, even for the day, they (and the Palm Pilot) were an advancement in computing technology that were the precursors to all mobile devices including all smartphones on the market today.
I got involved early, becoming quite the expert in nearly all versions of WindowsCE, PocketPC and Windows Mobile, prior to it being totally scrapped and changed for Windows Phone. In fact, I became so competent, I was able to craft my own option ROM’s for PocketPC devices to use after a hard reset (so all my third party apps would install, as hard resets were a common practice to resolve technical glitches caused by bad third party apps). I also got into flashing alternative ROM’s and OS builds on my Windows Mobile devices. You couple that with a lot of my desktop Windows experience, and I feel I have a solid basis from which to rate an evaluatory impression on Windows 10 Mobile…
Here it is – meh. And honestly, I’m being generous. Here’s why…
Uninstall QuickTime for Windows – QUICK!
That is, if you want to remain virus free…
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been a bit absent from Soft32.com, not because I wanted to and not because there wasn’t cool stuff to write about, but because real life intruded. It’s always an interesting time when real life gets in the way, especially for those of us that have routines. Thankfully, though, I didn’t have THIS problem to deal with – more malware.
However, if you’re an iDevice user on the Windows side of things, you’ll remember that iTunes historically always wanted you to install QuickTime for Windows. It used to play all video out of iTunes via QuickTime.
That, my friends, has changed.
Windows 10 Mobile Released
There’s at least some good news for those that have Windows Phones…
The last couple of days has been kinda brutal on Windows Phone. With Nokia essentially killing all of its Windows Phone apps, including HERE Maps, it’s been a rough week.
That is, until now… well… maybe.
If you have one of the following Windows Mobile devices, you need to stop everything and take a trip over to this link on your Windows Phone. When you do, Internet Explorer Mobile will open to a page for Upgrade Advisor. Tapping Get App will take you to the same page in the Windows Phone Store where you can download the app to your phone.
Upgrade Advisor is an app that will check to see if there’s a Windows 10 Mobile upgrade available for your device. Currently eligible devices include the following:
