With ZTE facing the threat of losing access to Android after being slapped with a ban from buying parts from American companies by the DoJ, fellow Chinese phone maker Huawei may find itself in a similar position, now that it, too, is being investigated for violating U.S. sanctions in Iran.
Despite having sold its phones here for years, 2018 was supposed to be Huawei’s big coming out party in the U.S. At CES, I sat through a presentation about how Huawei was expanding into home wifi and had even signed Wonder Woman herself as the company’s new brand ambassador.
Facebook’s Messenger Kids, the social network’s new chat app for the under-13 crowd, has been designed to give parents more control over their kids’ contact list. Today, the app is gaining a new feature, “sleep mode,” aimed at giving parents the ability to turn the app off at designated times. The idea is that parents and children will talk about when it’s appropriate to send messages to friends and family, and when it’s time for other activities – like homework or bedtime, for example.
The app, which launched last December, has not been without controversy.
Some see it as a gateway drug for Facebook proper. Others whine that “kids should be playing outside!” – as if kids don’t engage in all sorts of activities, including device usage, at times. And of course, amid Facebook’s numerous scandals around data privacy, it’s hard for some parents to fathom installing a Facebook-operated anything on their child’s phone or tablet.
But the reality, from down here in the parenting trenches, is that kids are messaging anyway and we’re desperately short on tools.
Instead of apps built with children’s and parents’ needs in mind, our kids are fumbling around on their own, making mistakes, then having their devices taken away in punishment.
The truth is, with the kids, it’s too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube, so to speak. Our children are FaceTime’ing their way through Roblox playdates, they’re texting grandma and grandpa, they’re watching YouTube instead of TV, and they’re begging for too-adult apps like Snapchat – so they can play with the face filters – and Musical.ly, which has a lot of inappropriate content. (Seriously, can someone launch kid-safe versions?)
Until Messenger Kids, parents haven’t been offered any social or messaging apps built with monitoring and education in mind.
I decided to install it on my own child’s device, and I’ll admit being conflicted. But I’m using it with my child as a learning tool. We talk about how to use the app’s features, but also about appropriate messaging behavior – what to talk about, why not to send a dozen stickers at once, and how to politely end a conversation, for example.
Unlike child predator playgrounds like Kik, popularity-focused social experiences like Instagram, or apps where messages simply vanish like Snapchat, Messenger Kids lets parents choose the contact list. And, as a backup, I have a copy of the app on my own phone, so I can spot check messages sent when I’m not around.
With the new sleep mode feature, I can now turn Messenger Kids off at certain times. That means no more 8 AM video calls to the BFF. (Yes, we’ve discussed this – after the fact. Sorry, BFF’s parents.) And no more messaging right at bedtime, either.
To configure sleep mode, parents access the Messenger Kids controls from the main Facebook app, and tap on the child’s name. You can create different settings for weekdays and weekends. If the child tries to use the app during these times, they’ll instead see a message that says the app is in sleep mode and to come back later.
The control panel is also where parents can add and remove contacts, delete the child’s account, or create a new account.
Facebook suggests that parents have a discussion with kids about the boundaries they’re creating when turning on sleep mode.
[gallery ids="1629819,1629820,1629821,1629822"]That may seem obvious, but it’s surprisingly not. I’ve actually heard some parents scoff at parental control features because they think it’s about offloading the job of parenting to technology. It’s not. It’s about using tools and parenting techniques together – whether that’s internet off times, device or app “bedtimes,” internet filtering, or whatever other mechanisms parents employ.
I understand if you can’t get past the fact that the app is from Facebook, of all places. Or you have a philosophical point of view on using Facebook products. But Facebook integration means this app could scale. In the few months it’s been live, the app has been download around 325,000 times, according to data from Sensor Tower.
Messenger Kids is a free download on iOS and Android.
With the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, Microsoft is launching a number of new features for its desktop operating system today. Most of those apply to all users, but in addition to all the regular feature updates, the company also today announced a couple of new features and tools specifically designed for its business users with Microsoft 365 subscriptions that combine a license for Windows 10 with an Office 365 subscription and device management tools.
According to Brad Anderson, Microsoft’s corporate VP for its enterprise and mobility services, the overall thinking behind all of these new features is make it easier for businesses to give their employees access to a “modern desktop.” In Microsoft’s parlance, that’s basically a desktop that’s part of a Microsoft 365 subscription. But in many ways, this so much about the employees but the IT departments that support them. For them, these updates will likely simplify their day-to-day lives.
The most headline-grabbing feature of today’s update is probably the addition of an S-mode to Windows 10. As the name implies, this allows admins to switch a Windows 10 Enterprise device into the more restricted and secure Windows 10 S mode, where users can only install applications from a centrally managed Microsoft Store. Until now, the only way to do this was to buy a Windows 10 S device, but now, admins can automatically configure any device that run Windows 10 Enterprise to go into S mode.
It’s no secret that Windows 10 S as a stand-alone operating system wasn’t exactly a hit (and launching itat an education-focused event with the Surface Laptop probably didn’t help). The overall idea is sound, though, and probably quite attractive to many an IT department.
“We built S mode as a way to enable IT to ensure what’s installed on a device,” Anderson told me. “It’s the most secure way to provision Windows.”
The main surprise here is actually that S mode is already available now, since it was only in March that Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore said that it would launch next year.
Another part of this update is what Microsoft calls ‘delivery optimization” for updates. With this, a single device can download an update and the distribute it to other Windows 10 devices over the local network. Downloads take a while and eat up a lot of bandwidth, after all. And to monitor those deployments, the Windows Analytics dashboard now includes a tab for keeping tabs on them.
Another new deployment feature Microsoft is launching today is an improvement to the AutoPilot service. AutoPilot allows IT to distribute laptops to employees without first setting them up to a company’s specifications. Once a user logs in, the system will check what needs to be done and then applies those settings, provisions policies and installs apps as necessary. With this update, AutoPilot now includes an enrollment status page that does all of this before the user ever gets to the desktop. That way, users can’t get in the way of the set-up process and IT knows that everything is up to spec.
A number of PC vendors are now also supporting AutoPilot out of the box, including Lenovo and Dell, with HP, Toshiba and Fujitsu planning to launch their AutoPilot-enabled PCs later this year.
To manage all of this, Microsoft is also launching a new Microsoft 365 admin center today that brings all the previously disparate configurations and monitoring tools of Office 365 and Microsoft 365 under a single roof.
One other aspect of this launch is an addition to Microsoft 365 for firstline workers. Windows 10 in S mode is one part of this, but the company is also updating the Office mobile apps licensing terms to add the company’s iOS and Android apps to the Office 365 E1, F1 and Business Essential licenses. For now, though, only access to Outlook for iOS and Android is available under these licenses. Support for Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote will launch in the next few months.
After a brief delay (though Microsoft won’t confirm or deny this), Microsoft today announced that the Windows 10 April 2018 Update will be available as a free download to users worldwide on Monday, April 30, with the broader rollout starting May 8.
As with every Windows release, there’s plenty of new features, cosmetic tweaks and bugfixes here. But since Microsoft now tests all of these through its Windows Insider program ahead of the wider launch, there are no real surprises here (except for maybe the name, which is obviously not “Spring Creators Update”).
As Microsoft’s general manager for Windows product marketing Aaron Woodman told me ahead of today’s launch, the company sees this updates a continuation of the overall Windows 10 journey. According to Woodman, the overall idea behind this release was to ensure that “people can do their best work on Windows.”
“When you think about the release, there is a theme being pulled through,” he told me. “How do we help customers really get things complete and save time and be more efficient on Windows than on any other operating system.”
Indeed, after having used the update for a while now, it very much feels like Microsoft’s overall vision for Windows 10 is really coming together. The most obvious manifestation of that is the new Timeline feature, which is the highlight of the release. It was actually supposed to be in the Fall Creators Update from October 2017, but it simply wasn’t ready for a wider rollout then.
The overall idea here is simple: users now jump between desktop and mobile all day long, but it’s hard to pick up where you left off when you go back and forth between devices, even if you’re just talking about a desktop and a laptop. With Timeline, Windows 10 users get a view of their recent activity from the last 30 days, no matter whether that’s in Edge on Android or Office 365 on another Windows machine.
Timeline is built right into the existing task switcher and ideally it’ll allow you to, for example, jump right back into a document you were working on in the office when you get to your laptop at home. This feature has a lot of promise, but I haven’t actually found it all that useful yet, mainly because most developers have yet to support it. While Edge is a perfectly fine browser, I mostly use Firefox and Chrome, and those don’t appear in timeline yet. If you’re a heavy Office 365 users, though, this feature is likely a godsend.
In Woodman’s view, Timeline is a good example for where Windows is going, though. “One of the big changes you see with Windows Timeline is that it embraces the end customer over the individual machine,” he told me.
Another major new feature Microsoft is highlighting is Focus Assist, which basically mutes notifications for you. You can set it to automatically mute notifications at specific times or turn it on at will. You can also choose to still receive calls and emails from specific people even when you are in focus mode. While this isn’t going to wow most people, it’s surely useful, especially if your company has adopted Slack or a similar tool that’s meant to make communications easier but mostly just leads to constant distractions. When you turn your notifications back on, Focus Assist will present you with a summary of what you’ve missed.
Also new is support for system-wide dictation. Microsoft isn’t putting this front and center with this release — and you’ll have to use the Windows Key+H shortcut to actually start it — but if that’s something you’ve always wanted, your time has come. Dictation will work in any text field.
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft is also launching an updated version of its Edge browser with this release. You can read more about that here, but the highlights of the updated Edge are full-screen support for books, PDFs and Reading View pages, as well as support for a new grammar tool that can analyze sentences for you. Also new is the ability to save your address and payment preferences to make filling out payment forms easier (something Chrome and others have long done), as well as the ability to print clutter-free versions of articles you are reading on the web.
Oh, and you can now finally mute noisy tabs, too!
In addition to these consumer-centric features, the company is also announcing a number of features for Windows 10 business and enterprise users today. For the most part, these will make the life of IT admins easier. You can read more about those new features here.
As you can see, this isn’t a major overhaul of Windows 10 — and with the semi-annual updates, that’s no real surprise. As I noted above, it’s starting to feel like Microsoft’s overall vision for Windows 10 is coming into focus. Not everybody is going to love an operating system that increasingly relies on cloud services for some of its more advanced features (like Timeline), but that’s pretty much the way Microsoft is going here and that’s also where there is some obvious room for innovations.
Google Tasks has been around for nearly ten years. While digital to-do lists are great for keeping yourself organized, Google’s attempt always felt like a half-effort. With no official mobile app, you had to turn to a third-party app to access your tasks from your smartphone or tablet, or you had to pull up the…
It was just a matter of time. Microsoft confirmed this week that it’s following the industry’s lead, transforming its gun emoji into the water squirting variety. The company unveiled its design for a new, benign firearm that looks like cross between a martian ray gun and Super Soaker.
In a tweet revealing the new emoji, the company said it had evolved the design “to reflect our values and the feedback we’ve received.” The changes come as a response to growing concerns around gun violence in the U.S. The software giant is the last of the major tech firms to fall in line with a movement that includes Apple, WhatsApp, Samsung, Twitter and, most recently, Google and Facebook.
Notably, Microsoft actually had a far less realistic take on the gun emoji until a few years back, but it swapped its sci-fi ray gun out for a revolver, citing concerns over cross-platform consistency. “Our intent with every glyph is to align with the global Unicode standard, and the previous design did not map to industry designs or our customers’ expectations of the emoji definition,” the company said at the time.
Of course, consistency is key here, with regards to intent. Sending someone a playful squirt gun only to have it viewed as a real firearm (or vice versa) is a recipe some serious emoji misunderstanding. Unfortunately for Microsoft, that initial change arrived just as Apple was switching to a squirt gun, a move that helped set this whole recent trend. So much for sticking to its guns.
Microsoft has not indicated when the emoji will change over in Windows 10.
Lost device finder Tile today is making good on its previously announced partnership with Comcast by introducing a way for Comcast Xfinity customers to locate their Tiles using Comcast’s TV remote, the Xfinity X1 Voice Remote. This is also the first video and voice partnership with Tile, which has been steadily expanding its integrations with third parties, including most recently Bose, Samsonite, Boosted Boards, and others.
The company has said its goal is to “blanket the world” in smart location through its partnerships, which have also included those with access points and airport Wi-Fi.
With the Comcast partnership in particular, Tile users can speak into their voice remote and ask for the location of one of their Tiles – the small dongles that can be attached to things like bags, purses, keys, wallets and more.
To use this feature, you have to say “Xfinity Home,” (yes, this is how you talk to your remote), “where are my keys?” or “Sam’s backpack?” or whatever other label you’ve assigned your Tile device.
The last known location and the address of the missing Tile will then appear on the TV screen.
To use the feature, Xfinity customers will have to download the Xfinity Home app on their iOS or Android device to add their Tiles following the instructions in the app.
The companies say that, later this year, the feature will become available to all Xfinity Internet customers, too.
Though there are a number of lost item finders on the market, Tile has become one of the biggest in the space, having sold 13 million Tiles to date, as of this January. It hasn’t provided an update on revenue in recent months, but said it had earned $100 million in 2016.
One the company’s bigger efforts lately has been on expanding its network. Tiles work beyond their Bluetooth connections by creating a community where all users with the Tile app on their phone can share information back to the network about nearby Tiles, including those from other users. That means it’s to Tile’s advantage to integrate its technology in as many places and products as possible – as this brings on more customers, and more places where nearby Tiles can be found.
Comcast was one of several new partnerships announced this year, but it was one of the bigger names. The other notable brand working with Tile now is Bose, whose SoundSport Wireless and QuietControl 30 headphones will ship with Tile’s technology embedded inside.
While the ONE Smart Keyboard Pro doesn’t have a sweet demo tune nor can it play barking dog Jingle Bells without some help, it can teach you or your kids how to play piano. The elegant keyboard has 88 weighted keys that simulate a true mechanical piano and connects to your phone so you can learn to play at your own pace.
The Keyboard Pro costs $799 and is essentially a compact teaching keyboard. It can connect to your iOS or Android devices via an oddly shaped USB B cable and once it’s paired with the app you can run through simple songs – think Greensleeves – and more complex sheet music. This keyboard is weighted but not progressively which means that each key offers the same resistance, a consideration that might be important to some more experienced players. Further, you can connect a USB cable and connect the keyboard to your computer to use it as a MIDI controller.
Again, this is a very austere keyboard. It doesn’t do much aside from teach you how to play which, in the end, is what most of us need. Because it doesn’t have the expansive bells and whistles of a Casio and because most of the smarts are in the app itself, it’s a bit of a hard sell for most people. However, if you’re looking to learn, the ONE works.
This larger and more complete version of the One Smart Keyboard offers quality workmanship and design. The entire system is surprisingly sparse with nothing but a power button and volume on the front of the keyboard. There is an input for a sustain pedal as well as a few output jacks for headphones and that’s about it. Don’t expect to pick out instruments or pitch shift with this keyboard. Once you fire up the app you have access to teaching exercises and games that let you follow along on the LED-lit keyboard as you run through songs and scales. Finally, you can buy sheet music for $3.99 or so that you can learn to play on the ONE. There is also free sheet music available for those who want to play a little classical.
[gallery ids="1629054,1629055,1629053"]I found the entire system to be quite usable and my kids, once they figured out how to slow down the music, jumped right in learning little songs. Nothing can quite teach you how to play piano like a human teacher – there aren’t enough smarts in this app to make adjustments based on your skill – but it’s the electronic equivalent of buying a Teach Yourself Piano book and sitting down in front of grandma’s old upright. I’m especially pleased with the quality of the keyboard. I’ve already had a few MIDI keyboards over the years including models from Casio and Yamaha and this one is on par with those. The teaching feature is the main draw here, as I noted before, because there is little else you can do with this keyboard right out of the box. However, if that’s what you’re looking for in a keyboard and you don’t want to sample bodily noises so you can play Farting Clair De Lune at the school talent show, this might be the model for you.
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