Microsoft loves you and wants to protect you. So every time you receive an email with a link in it, Microsoft Outlook helpfully rewrites it so that it goes through their "safelinks" system. Safelinks allow your administrator, or someone at Microsoft, to stop you visiting a link which is malicious or suspicious. Rather than going to example.com, your link now goes to safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=example.com. Hurrah! If you accidentally click on a naughty link you won't cause chaos…
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I quite like the new Outlook for Windows. But it has a couple of annoying bugs. One of which is, when it is maximised it doesn't let you unhide your bottom task bar. I've set up Windows so the taskbar disappears whenever my cursor isn't at the bottom of the screen. When my mouse touches the bottom, the bar appears. Lovely! But Outlook breaks this functionality - which I'm pretty sure existed back in Windows 95. Microsoft have received several complaints about this, but done nothing. Anyway,…
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The MS 4000 keyboard is the best typing experience that I've ever found. I have one in my home office, one in my work's office, and one spare. But, at some point in the last 18 months of working from home, my work keyboard has gone walkabout. Oh well, a good excuse to buy a new one! Except - sadly - Microsoft have discontinued it. Don't get me wrong, you can buy a "4000" branded keyboard - but it is a radically different design. And change is scary. So I'm buying up old models on eBay. If …
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This is a slow, and very silly, way to experience an ancient browser. I'm aware that you could spin up a virtual machine, or pay for a browser testing service. But there's something nice about running a browser in a browser. Like wheels within wheels and fires within fires. Using Copy's v86 it's possible to recompile x86 code to browser native WASM. This means you can load up Windows 98 in your browser! (There are a bunch of other operating systems available) Before going any further, open…
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A decade ago, Stephen Elop made the announcement that Nokia was adopting Windows Phone 7 as its platform of choice. Being the mobile nerd that I was, I live Tweeted the press conference. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentRight, where can I watch thus #Nokia press conference? Is there a mobile friendly live stream?❤️ 0💬 0♻️ 007:31 - Fri 11 February 2011 Let's take a look back to see what Elop and I got right or wrong. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentSo, looks like Microsoft kills another Linu…
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I love my MS 4000 keyboard. it's one of the best pieces of hardware developed by Redmond. It has some drawbacks, sure, no USB ports, weird function keys, no backlight - but the real problem with it is its heft. It's a chunky-monkey that's really only suitable for leaving in a fixed location. It's far to big and bulky for a laptop bag - and life's too short to type on a non-ergonomic keyboard. So, time to try the inelegantly named "Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop" - a wireless keyboard with…
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I've written before about my love for the MS 4000 Ergonomic Keyboard. It's the only keyboard I'm comfortable typing on for extended periods of time. Sadly, one of mine has started to get a bit old and frail - the letters are rubbing off and the keys are getting a bit spongy - so I sprang for a new one. On getting the new one out of its box, I couldn't help but notice that it had undergone some fairly substantial cosmetic changes. All the keys are in the same position, and the functionality…
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Three years ago, I wrote about the deficiencies in Microsoft's Tag system. It was painfully obvious even then that MS had no desire to back the "standard" they'd tried to create. They couldn't even be bothered to leverage the then-new Windows Phone to get the reader into customers' hands. Their terms and conditions at the time said We will also use commercially reasonable efforts to make these basic features available until at least January 1, 2015, and provide two years prior notice before …
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After an entertaining discussion at BarCamp Berkshire about video games, I decided to treat myself to an Xbox 360. After several happy years with a Nintendo Wii, I was keen to see what the new state of the art was. I picked the current top pick console and, I must say, while the games are great the console is somewhat of a disappointment. I picked the limited edition Xbox 360 320GB Star Wars Kinect Console with Kinect Star Wars - Limited Edition (Xbox 360). Yay! Star Wars! Hardware It…
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No. (N.B. I work for a mobile advertiser - but this is my personal blog. This post isn't written on their behalf. Naturally I'm biased.) (N.B. I'm in India and jetlagged to hell - this may not make any sense!) Wild headlines abound - but very few people seem to have read the original Microsoft sponsored paper. The 75% claim is based on... one app, running on the very first Android hardware (Magic & Passion), not disclosed whether the phones were running Android 1.5 (what they…
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I'm in love with my keyboard! The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is a dream to type on. Large, well spaced keys, split keyboard, and a whole host of extra media buttons. There's only one tiny problem. Two of the buttons don't work in Linux - specifically, the keyboard scroll buttons. This is a long standing bug in Linux, but luckily it is fairly easy to fix. Using Florian Diesch's tutorial at Ask Ubuntu, I've come up with this simple guide to get your keyboard working. (more…) …
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I've never been a fan of Microsoft's proprietary 2D barcode system. With the latest news that their tag reader and creator will support QR codes, it looks like the writing is on the wall for the multi-coloured blobs. Further evidence of this can be found on Microsoft's latest XBox poster which contains a rather prominent QR code. Here it is in more detail. When scanned, it goes to a Google URL shortner! If Microsoft's own marketing department doesn't have faith in the MS Tag - or their…
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