Amazon has announced that it will no longer offer an unlimited storage plan in its Amazon Drive consumer service. In its place, Amazon will price cloud storage at $60 per 1 TB. If you look around, this really isn't a bad deal. Compare to other services out their like Dropbox for one, that has the same offer for $99.
Now, Amazon is offering storage plans of 100 GB ($20 per year) and 1 TB ($60 per year), and anyone who wants additional storage can pay another $60 per 1 TB. Additionally, all Amazon customers get 5 GB of free storage. And if you’re an Amazon Prime member, you get unlimited photo storage. (Which makes this service a good option for those who wisely choose to backup their phone-based photos to multiple places.)
The change is effective today, Amazon says, and customers who are already paying for unlimited storage will retain that perk until their current subscription expires. At that time, they will be switched to a 1 TB plan at $60 unless auto-renew is disabled.
I really love the thought of the Microsoft Surface Hub but I hate the price!
Published on May 31, 2017
Surface Hub engineer Jordan Marchese, walks us through updates to Microsoft Surface Hub with Windows 10 Creators update. For users of Surface Hub, Jordan demonstrates updated experiences including the new welcome screen; start menu and intelligent Whiteboard; single sign-on for easier access to your content, Office Apps and personal meetings; improvements to ending your Hub session and more. For IT
I am trying to get over the hump on this one. I love the idea of it but I can't get over the cost vs. useage. I also really like a REAL keyboard not a screen keyboard but having the dual screen and note taking functions seems like a neat idea to me.
My first reaction to reading the announcement on this product is that with the combination of image recognition and using location information this would be a great tool to put together an app for self-guided tours of places that we visit.
Of course this comes on the heels and just coming back from a trip out west where I drove from Las Vegas through the Mojave Desert to Palm Desert to visit my mother and her sister. Stopping and taking pictures along the way could have been enhanced by information that could have been pulled up about those places that I was taking pictures of.
My wife and I also enjoy doing self-guided walking tours when we visit Charleston South Carolina and Savannah Georgia and I can't help but Wonder all being able to point your phone at a certain building and being able to pull up the information on that building or monument, Park or Vista would bring much more enjoyment to our tour.
I am looking forward to seeing how this progresses as Google makes this application available.
The first thing that struck me is that the application interface much different. It is more Applesque in it's swirl feature for accessing the different applications. You no longer swipe right to access the application interface but you need to press the watch button to wake the watch and then a second time to open the menu.
Taking your finger and twirling clockwise or counter-clockwise allows you to scroll through the menu. Then tapping on the app icon will launch your chosen application. Running your finger across the watch face from left to right closes the application interface.
From the base screen, sliding your finger from top to bottom opens the settings menu which is quite a bit cleaner than the old version. The five main settings that you may wish to access are all on the same screen so it's very quick and easy to be able to go to act Lee where you want to.
Sliding your finger left to right or right to left on the screen brings up the change watch face menu. I'm not sure why this motion seems so prominent comma I never did spend much time changing my watch faces at all. Though I am sure there are many people that love to change them for whatever occasion that they are currently in.
All in all, my first impression is very positive to the changes in this version. I'm just sorry that I can't take advantage of all the new features of the new operating system since the watch does not have the hardware built-in to be capable of doing some of the things that comes along with the new operating system.
The Fall Update has been named Fall Creators Update. This is part of Microsoft’s new plan for updating its current operating system semi-annually. While not committed to any specific dates, expect it to be delivered in October of 2017.
One change will be a new design language called Microsoft Fluent Design System. This is the most current version of what started as the “Metro style apps”. This version adds shading, blur effects and animations to the Windows interface and to apps.
Windows Story Remix is another addition that is designed to blend photos and videos into stories with a soundtrack, theme and movie transitions. This should be the long need replacement to Microsoft’s Movie Maker which though works for what it does, doesn’t have a lot of features. I can’t wait to get my hands on this new addition.
Other new features announced work not just with Windows but with mobile devices running Microsoft apps on Android and iOS devices:
Timeline – Let’s you jump pack in time to open apps and documents as though you had never left them. Timeline allows you to jump back in time to find what you were working on. It works by using a scrollbar allowing you to scrub through a history of open apps, documents and more. “The Timeline feature essentially allows the user to rewind their system to a previous point in time, similar to how you would rewind a movie. Rewind back to the point in which you wish to resume from, and your system will restore itself as if it had never progressed passed that point.”
Pick Up Where You Left Off – This is a Cortana feature that already exists in current Window’s 10 Builds. The idea is that Cortana would track what you’re working on and offer to resume on a document when you switch from a mobile device to a PC or vise-versa. This is similar to Apple’s handoff feature in MacOS.
Clipboard – seems like Microsoft is running a theme here, with the clipboard now being able to be shared between devices as well. OneClip- For those who were living under a rock in May of 2015, you likely missed out on the original hype for OneClip. In short, it was a Microsoft Garage project that leaked to the public, available on a plethora of platforms including Windows, Android, and iOS. Shortly after it had leaked, Microsoft pulled the service from the public, denying access to anyone outside of Microsoft. The main goal of this function is to clip once and paste everywhere. This is all part of Microsoft focusing on productivity enhancements that will improve the way that we work between our devices.
OneDrive Files On-Demand - Microsoft executives say this is the single most requested new feature in the new update. It brings back the "placeholders" feature that was abruptly dropped in early preview releases of Windows 10. With this update, Windows 10 users will once again be able to open File Explorer and see a full representation of all files stored in OneDrive, regardless of whether they're synced locally.
Learn about Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) solution from Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of Enterprise Client & Mobility, as he covers all things EMS and shows you the capabilities in action.
Sophos Central Wireless is still not ready for primetime. It is still not on par with any of the other top wireless competitors. So if you wish to use Sophos Access Points in conjunction with the Sophos Firewall products do that. They are best used in smaller configurations. These are great products for small offices that only need 1-5 AP’s. While they do support larger configurations they don’t have a real strong wireless connection or able to handle extremely dense configurations. They are reasonable and there is some exciting new functions coming down the path.
One of these is an upgrade to the firmware that will allow the access points to be used as such but they will also be able to work as firewall/routers as well. If you need more power just add more access points. This will probably require better wireless access point technology as well but it is something that we can look forward to.
Artificial Intelligence has been coming along and with Sophos’s recent purchase of Invincea, they are currently working on integrating the machine learning engine into Intercept X. This will provide a greater degree of protection that is continuously learning from the malware that is ceaselessly being produced. There may be an increase in price for those of you that haven’t invested in Intercept X yet but those of you that have will get the upgrade at no cost.
Further development of Intercept X will see more of the features of Sophos Central Endpoint being incorporated in Intercept X. Looking at this in the long term I think that this is the right direction. Having the ability to break out the Intercept X functions though to allow it on sit on top of other anti-virus packages makes it a nice way for us to increase protection on non-Sophos protected systems until we can exchange their current endpoint protection software with a Sophos exclusive product.
Sophos Central Mobile has finally reached parity with the on-premise version. What great news especially since we don’t have to worry about setting up the server. Sophos Central provides hosted services that are constantly being monitored and updated. As new features are developed they are added to the system at no charge and without any sweat off our brow.
I am excited about being here for the Conference. II is always great seeing the PAC group and discussing our experiences both with Sophos as well as with other aspects of our businesses. As the week progresses I will be posting some of the the things that are coming up and that Sophos wants us to be excited about. Probably nothing new to me since we are discussing these things in our meetings but for all of you it could be very compelling to look at some new products to increase your security levels.
Here is an email we sent out today. Let me know if you are interested to be on our mailing list.
Microsoft Teams is upon Office 365 Groups and provides an automated/easy method of accessing shared assets for an Office 365 Group. Microsoft describes it as “the best solution for persistent chat among group/team members.”
Office 365 Groups is a service that provides cross-application membership for a set of shared team assets, like a SharePoint site or a Power BI dashboard, so that the team can collaborate effectively and securely.
Microsoft Teams is available in the following Office 365 commercial suites: Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, and Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, and E5 plans. Microsoft Teams is also available to existing Office 365 Enterprise E4 customers who purchased E4 before its retirement.
Microsoft Teams is available in all Office 365 Education suite licensing: Office 365 Education, Office 365 Education Plus, and Office 365 Education E5, as well as existing Office 365 Education E3 customers who purchased E3 prior to its retirement.
We have been testing it internally for several different group functions to see how it works and if it has a place in our communications. Time will tell.
Microsoft is sending out emails attempting to generate interest in this product.
Cale Hunt from windowscentral.com wrote and interesting article describing 6 reasons you should be using a VPN especially in any personal financial or company communication. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection provides a secure point to point connection with the servers your are accessing. When you use a VPN your data is encrypted so even if someone could capture your data stream they won’t be able to read it.
Earlier this week, Google rolled out a new tool to help users around the globe differentiate between real and fake news. Tested on news stories in a handful of countries over recent months, the “Fact Check” tag adds additional information to some of the technology giant’s search and news results. As a Google blog post explains:
This label identifies articles that include information fact checked by news publishers and fact-checking organizations… so people can make more informed judgments
The snippet that’s added reveals the claim and who made it, along with the name of the organization that checked it and what they concluded.
For anyone that likes automating their electronics is much as they can, IFTTT is an application that probably is at the heart of how they do it. IFTTT is a platform for automating some of the test performed by smart devices around your home, but the company has also been working with news organizations to connect with their readers.
To highlight that work, IFTTT has launched a new collection of “Applets for News.”
So what is an Applet. IFTTT’s CEO Linden Tibbets explained that it represents the evolution of what used to be called recipes.
“We’re able to include much more functionality into an Applet, because Applets are both more advanced, and at the same time we made sure they were simpler — Applets are simply the switch [to multiple actions],” Tibbets said.
That might be hard to wrap your head around if you’ve never used an Applet before, so let’s get concrete. The news collection includes Applets created by publishers and by IFTTT itself, and it allows users to do things like automatically send to Slack trending business articles from The New York Times, or save to Instapaper hot stories from the world news subreddit or get an email any time TechCrunch writes about a specific company.
“A lot of media and news organizations are starting to come around to the realization that it’s not just about driving people to one destination, or to web and mobile,” Tibbets said. “It’s really about having a presence across every surface area where people are interested in consuming news.”
I thought with Windows 10 Creators Update beginning to roll out that I would start to highlight some of the messaging it's coming across about the differences in the new version compared to the old and any other information that I may come across about how the update is being done.
Mollie Ruiz-hopper from blogs.windows.com, wrote an article describing what’s new in the Windows 10 Creators Update. She also discusses how to get the creators update and some other articles describing some of Microsoft’s other announcements including the Surface Dial.
Thursday, June 8, 2017 at 5:21AM 
Amazon has announced that it will no longer offer an unlimited storage plan in its Amazon Drive consumer service. In its place, Amazon will price cloud storage at $60 per 1 TB. If you look around, this really isn't a bad deal. Compare to other services out their like Dropbox for one, that has the same offer for $99.
