News Archives - Page 15 of 16 - Chipp.in Tech News and Reviews

Windows 11 may soon use your voice for speech output

Posted on February 24, 2024February 24, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft is working on a new accessibility feature in Windows 11 that it calls Speak for Me. Here is what it does: the main idea behind the accessibility tool is to have text that you type spoken aloud using either integrated voices or your own.

Twitter user Phantom spotted the integrated feature in Windows 11 build 26063. It is not enabled by default in the build, but interested users may enable it using ViVeTool.

Here are the required steps to unlock it:

Download the latest ViVeTool release from GitHub.
Extract the archive to the local system.
Open an elevated command prompt, e.g., by opening Start, typing CMD and selecting “run as administrator”.
Navigate to the ViVeTool directory.
Run the command vivetool /enable /id:44950080,47123936,47405131,47976395,48002155,48339425,48624087,48812316,48900033
Restart the system.

Speak for Me should now be accessible via Settings > Speak for Me.

Speak for Me

Toggle the Speak for Me preference to On to enable the feature. The keyboard shortcut Windows-Ctrl-T turns the assistive speech feature on and off then.

Windows 11 gives you two voice options: pick a natural voice that is provided by the operating system or use your own voice. Using your own voice requires giving Microsoft permission to record the voice.

Note all Windows 11 users may like the idea. Those who do not, may want to pick natural voice instead. Once you have given Microsoft permission, you need to read phases and sentences aloud. This takes some time, but progress is saved.

Microsoft uses your voice data then to create a personal voice. This takes about 2 hours according to Microsoft. The company promises that it will inform users once the voice is ready for use.

Use the keyboard shortcut to display the interface. It opens a text field. Anything you enter there may be read aloud using the selected voice.

Closing Words

The option to create a personal voice is interesting. Microsoft has not revealed plans to extend the feature, but it is just a small step to integrating a user’s recorded voice as one of the available voices on Windows.

This would allow Windows 11 users to use the voice in Narrator and other areas of the operating system.

Speak for Me is an interesting feature, but it is limited at this point. Microsoft has not said anything about the target release for the feature. Windows 11 version 24H2, or Windows 11 2024 Update, is the most likely target at this point

NVIDIA App: new unified app for NVIDIA graphics cards

Posted on February 23, 2024February 23, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

NVIDIA unveiled the NVIDIA App yesterday. The new application is available as a beta release at the time of writing. It promises to unify functionality that NVIDIA’s current generation of programs offer.

The company plans to replace these programs, notably GeForce Experience, NVIDIA Control Panel, and RTX Experience, with this one in the future.

The public beta of the NVIDA app is available already. It does not include all features yet. NVIDIA notes in the announcement that it does include “many of the top features” from the existing apps already.

NVIDIA App system requirements

The beta application is compatible with Windows 10 and 11 operating systems only at the time. It requires 600 MB of disk space, 2 GB of RAM, and the GeForce 551.52 or later driver.

The app has the following CPU and GPU requirements:

GPU:

GeForce RTX 20, 30, and 40 Series GPUs
GeForce GTX 800, 900, 1000, 1600 Series GPUs
GeForce MX100, MX200, MX300, 800M, and 900M GPUs

CPU:

Intel Pentium G Series, Core i3, i5, i7, or higher
AMD FX, Ryzen 3, 5, 7, 9, Threadripper or higher

The NVIDIA App: functionality

One of the core features of the app is the discovery and installation of drivers and related NVIDIA software. It allows users to install the latest graphics card driver on their devices and also other NVIDIA software, including GeForce NOW or NVIDIA Broadcast.

Driver releases provide summaries of new features and fixed issues. These help users find out more about a release without having to read the full documentation.

All driver related articles are accessible from a single entry point in the NVIDIA app.

The NVIDIA App introduces a new game overlay, which provides access to “gameplay recording tools, performance monitoring overlays, and game enhancing filters”. Filters include new filters powered by AI, but these are limited to GeForce RTX users and about 1200 games at the time.

Filters like RTX Dynamic Vibrance or RTX HDR promise to improve the visual quality of games using AI.

Microsoft is also working on integrating AI into Windows to improve graphics. Called Super Resolution, it promises to improve performance and visuals of games on Windows devices.

Gamers get a new performance overlay, which they may customize. They may add or hide certain performance metrics in the new software.

There is also the new GPU Control Center. This allows users to tune games and driver settings from a single location. Customizations support making global changes and also specific changes to specific applications or games.

Other options include signing-in to redeem bundles and rewards. NVIDIA says that this is optional.

The future

NVIDIA is working on integrating features of the NVIDIA Control Panel that are not yet available in the NVIDIA App. The new app will also get features from GeForce Experience and RTX Experience. These include GPU overclocking and driver rollback options.

The classic NVIDIA programs remain available throughout the beta period. NVDIA appears to have plans to drop support for these apps eventually, but has not yet announced an end of support date.

Some features won’t make the cut. NVIDIA lists Broadcast to Twitch and YouTube, Share Images and Video to Facebook and YouTube, and Photo Mode 360 & Stereo captures specifically.

Closing Words

The new application promises to unify NVIDIA’s offerings for Windows. It is too early to say how good it really is at this point. It should be clear that it will include Telemetry as well. NVIDIA will likely continue to release standalone drivers for its graphics cards.

How to hide the new permanent sidebar button in Microsoft Edge

Posted on February 20, 2024February 27, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

A recent Microsoft Edge update changes the browser’s sidebar functionality to the worse. Up until now, Edge users could disable the Copilot button that triggers the sidebar entirely. Now, when Edge users disable Copilot’s icon and thus the sidebar icon in the Edge toolbar, they get another button.

This one, a generic sidebar button, cannot be removed anymore. There is no option in the preferences to hide the button. Whether that is a case of “introduce a feature and add an option to customize it later on” remains to be seen.

Edge users may also notice that the Copilot button activates the AI chat interface now on hover. This behavior cannot be turned off either.

The official release notes do not reveal these changes.

Note that there is a workaround which requires making a change to the Windows Registry.

Update: Microsoft added a new preference in Edge 122 that allows you to disable the sidebar button. Load edge://settings/sidebar to get there and toggle “show sidebar button” to off to remove it from the toolbar of the browser.

The new Edge sidebar button

If you disable Copilot in Microsoft Edge, you get the new Edge sidebar button instead. The fastest way to disable Copilot in Edge is to load edge://settings/sidebar in the browser’s address bar to load the Customize Sidebar preferences.

Select Copilot on the page to display the preferences for the AI. There you find the “Show Copilot” option to turn it on or off.

Good news is that the generic sidebar button does not open on hover. Bad news is, that there is no switch in the preferences to disable it.

How to hide the new Edge sidebar button

If you do not use Copilot nor the sidebar in Microsoft Edge, then you may follow the steps below to turn off the generic sidebar button in Edge after you have disabled Copilot.

First, to disable Startup Boost:

Open Microsoft Edge.
Select Menu > Settings > System and Performance.
Turn off Startup Boost.
Close Microsoft Edge.

Then, add a new value to the Registry to turn off the sidebar icon:

Open the Start Menu on the Windows system.
Type regedit.exe and select the Registry Editor result.
Confirm the UAC prompt by selecting “yes”.
Use the hierarchical structure on the left side to go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge
- If a key does not exist along the way, create it with a right-click on the previous key and the selection of New > Key from the context menu.
Right-click on Edge and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value.
Name it HubsSidebarEnabled.
Close the Registry Editor.
Restart the system.

Note: you can also kill the explorer.exe process and restart it in the Task Manager.

There is no sidebar icon anymore in Microsoft Edge on the next start of the web browser.

Evernote makes 14 premium features available to free users, but there is a catch

Posted on February 15, 2024February 15, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Long-standing note taking service Evernote announced today that it is giving free users access to 14 premium features. These features were only available to personal or professional subscribers previously. Now, they are available to all Evernote users.

Note that personal subscribers benefit from this change as well. Six of the features were limited to professional subscribers.

Evernote

Evernote’s premium features that are now free

Here is the list of features that are now free:

Note history and restore — option to view and restore old versions of notes.
Offline notes and notebooks — access notes while offline. Updates are synced the moment Internet connectivity is restored.
PDF annotation and export — annotate PDF documents, e.g., use highlight, reactions or anonymize content, and export notes or entire notebooks as PDF documents.
Business card scanning — scan business cards to add the information to notes.
Spreadsheet preview — view spreadsheets added to notes in Evernote.
Boolean, geographic, document & image search — use new search options to find content. This includes finding text in PDF and Word documents, images or scanned documents.
Email notes and share notes via email — options to use email to add notes to Evernote and to share notes via email.
Customize global shortcut keys and the create button on mobile.
Create custom templates.

The elephant in the room

While it is great to see that Evernote is pushing previously paid features to free and personal users, there is still one issue: free users are limited to one notebook and fifty notes. Evernote imposed the restriction at end of 2023.

While 50 notes may be sufficient for some users of the service, many may run into the limit quickly, if they use Evernote regularly. One option to deal with it is to delete old notes regularly. May work for some users, but one of the great features of note taking services is that you can keep a history of notes, if you want to.

Considering that Evernote charges $14.99 per month for its cheapest plan, many users may prefer to use an unrestricted service. I mentioned alternatives in the linked article above. If you want a recommendation, try the open source Joplin app. You can import Evernote notes into it and never look back.

This was not the first time that Evernote reduced functionality for free users of the service. Back in 2016, Evernote restricted free user access to 2 devices from unlimited.

It is also interesting to note that the cheapest plan cost $29.99 per year back then, a sharp contrast to the current pricing.

Closing Words

Note taking apps are useful, there is no doubt about it. While the good old system of using paper notes won’t die anytime soon, digital notes offer several advantages. Search, the option to look up previous versions, and the ability to store thousands of notes need to be mentioned.

Now You: do you use a note taking app?

A new look is coming soon: Google informs about new sign-in page

Posted on February 9, 2024February 9, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Google users who open a sign-in page on the company’s website receive a notification currently. It reads “A new look is coming soon. Google is improving its sign-in page with a more modern look and feel”.

A click on the dismiss button closes the notification on the sign-in page. There is no link or button to get more information on the change.

The current sign-in page uses multiple pages for the process of logging in to a Google account. Users need to type or paste the email address or phone number first, and then the account password to sign-in. Other authentication options, including using a Google Titan security key, are also supported.

The reason for the “a new look is coming soon” announcement

The announcement offers barely any details. Google does not reveal when it is going to change the sign-in page nor reveals how it will look like. The only information is that the page will change and that its appearance will change.

You may wonder why Google is making the announcement to users. While Google does not reveal its reason, it seems likely that the company wants users to be prepared.

Many may look critically at a different sign-in page. Some may suspect foul play or a successful attack on Google.

The announcement may help reassure some users and organizations. When the new Google sign-in page lands, users who have seen the notification may use it to log in without worrying too much about the change.

It is likely that Google is going to announce the new sign-in page officially on one of its blogs or websites shortly before or after the new page goes live.

Still, some Google users may use a search engine or interactions with an AI to make sure that the change is legitimate.

Making sure it is Google’s sign-in page

It takes just a few clicks to verify the legitimacy of a webpage. First step is to look at the URL in the address bar. Is it a Google domain? The current sign-in page starts with https://accounts.google.com/, which you may verify quickly.

It may be necessary to click or tap in the address field in some browsers, as some information may be omitted.

Next step is to click or tap on the icon on the right of the address. This displays information about the connection. Look for “Connection is secure”, “Connection secure” or a similar message. If you see this, you are on the “real” Google sign-in page.

Now You: do you verify sign-in pages before logging in?

First look at Firefox’s new Tab Previews feature

Posted on February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Tab previews allow you to hover over open tabs in the Firefox web browser to get a preview of the page’s content. Mozilla added the functionality into Firefox Nightly this week. Reason enough to take a look at the feature.

Tab Previews are only available in Firefox Nightly at the time of writing. The feature is disabled by default, but you may enable it.

This is done by setting the preference browser.tabs.cardPreview.enabled to true on about:config. A restart of the Firefox web browser completes the process.

Tip: you may set this feature to off in Firefox Stable later on to turn off tab previews. This restores Firefox’s display of the page title and URL then when you hover over a tab.

How Tab Previews work in Firefox

Hover over any open tab in Firefox and you see a thumbnail of the page after 1 second. The snapshot displays a screenshot of the top of the page. In other words, it ignores the actual position on the page.

It may look cut off as well, as you can see on the screenshot above. Still, hover over any tab and you do get a preview of the page.

Tab previews is a handy feature at times, especially if you have multiple tabs with the same title open. Think ten eBay auctions that have similar titles.

The 1 second delay is set by Mozilla. There is a preference that supposedly changes it, but it does not seem work right now. Check browser.tabs.cardPreview.delayMs on about:config to change the delay.

Comparison to Google Chrome

Firefox is not the only web browser that introduced support for tab previews recently. Google’s Chrome browser displays tab previews as well now in the Stable version.

Hover over any tab in Chrome and you get a screenshot preview of the tab. Google displays the same information as Firefox plus a tab’s memory usage.

There is one difference though. Firefox displays a screenshot of the top of the webpage all the time. Google Chrome, however, displays a screenshot of the actual position on the webpage.

It is possible that Firefox’s tab previews feature will also support this in the future. It is in development and it may change in the future though.

Closing Words

Not every browser user likes tab previews. It should be easy enough to turn these off in Firefox once they land in stable.

Now You: tab previews, yay or nay?

Google Maps shows weather information now on Android

Posted on February 7, 2024February 7, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Google is rolling out a new feature on Google Maps that shows weather information on Android. Whether this is going to take away usage from dedicated weather apps remains to be seen.

Google Maps on iOS displays information about the temperature and air quality index already. Google is now rolling out the same feature to Maps on Android.

A small and easy to overlook widget in the left corner of the screen displays the current temperature and air quality index when enabled. An icon depicts the weather condition, e.g., rain, sun or clouded, and the temperature in either Fahrenheit or Celsius. Below that is the air quality index, again with a quality indicator.

A tap on the widget displays additional information. You get the weather forecast for the next hours among other information, including the chance of rain.

A tap on the air quality section displays an overlay on the map that uses colors to highlight the quality of air in the region.

Google Maps: weather information widget

The weather widget is only displayed when nothing is selected. Once you make a selection, e.g., by tapping on a place, you won’t see the information in Google Maps.

Google seems to roll out the feature over time. If it is not available on a device, you may want to see if you have the latest Google Maps version installed. Also, weather information is not displayed if you select anything on Google Maps or have any character in the search field. You need to clear any character in the search field before the weather widget is displayed.

The display of weather information on Google Maps is useful but also limited. It can be useful, even when you check out a place that is nearby. While the actual temperature or air quality index may not be that useful, the forecast may be. You can now check how the weather is going to be in a few hours.

As for places far away, it can be useful as well, but not as much. The main limitation is that the forecast is limited to the next few hours. It does not help much if you want to visit the place tomorrow or next week.

Tip: users from the European Union may allow or disallow the sharing of data between Google services.

Closing Words

The Android version of Google Maps features the same weather widget as the iOS version now. The information is useful, but it is also limited, which makes it less useful than it could be. A forecast for the next one or two days would improve the usability significantly.

The information seems to be pulled from weather.com, at least that is what Google links to when you open the details view.

The web-based version of Google Maps shows weather information as well.

Now You: do you use Google Maps?

Amazon launches the AI Clerk Rufus

Posted on February 2, 2024February 2, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Amazon launched Rufus to a small audience in the United States today. Rufus, a “generative AI-powered expert shopping assistant”, adds something to the shopping experience on Amazon that has been missing until now.

Online shopping, as comfortable as it is, lacks interactions with clerks. Even simple questions may remain unanswered on Amazon and other shopping sites.

Amazon maintains a question and answers section on its site for products, and these help sometimes. While it may be easy enough to find out if a particular shoe is available in a specific size, questions about the difference between AMD and Intel laptops may not be answered at all on Amazon’s website at the moment.

Getting the answer or information is often not a problem at local stores. Ask the clerk, and if the clerk is knowledgeable, you will get an answer.

Amazon introduces Rufus for exactly this. Rufus is a conversational AI that is designed to help shoppers on the site shop and buy products.

The AI was trained on Amazon’s product catalog, customer reviews, the questions and answers of the community, and information from “across the web”.

In other words, it may answer some of the questions that users may have about a particular product on Amazon. It is still necessary to look closely at the AI before you start using it.

Rufus, the AI clerk

Rufus may “answer customer questions on a variety of shopping needs and products, provide comparisons, and make recommendations based on conversational context” according to Amazon.

Amazon announced Rufus on its About Amazon website. Rufus may help shoppers in several ways. It may answer broad questions, such as “what to consider when buying running shoes” to very specific questions, e.g., if a pair of running shoes are durable.

Amazon gives a few general examples regarding Rufus’ capabilities:

Learn what to look for while shopping product categories
Shop by occasion or purpose
Get help comparing product categories
Find the best recommendations
Ask questions about a specific product while on a product detail page

Rufus is available in the official Amazon mobile app for a small subset of U.S. customers. Amazon plans to roll out Rufus to all U.S. customers in the coming weeks. No word on expansion to other markets outside the United States at this point.

Amazon published a short video on YouTube that announces the AI.

Closing Words

Rufus adds something to Amazon that was missing until now: the option to communicate with “someone” to get answers to questions or advice. Whether Rufus is capable of filling the missing role of clerks at Amazon remains to be seen. It may take years before it is mature enough to be of use to the majority of Amazon shoppers.

AI’s like Rufus may replace store clerks in the long run. Think of talking to an Android instead of a human when shopping at Footlockers or another store.

AI introduces the risk of false information. While human clerks may also give bad advice, AI may hallucinate and this introduces another dimension to interactions.

There is also the risk that shopping sites manipulate AIs to push certain products. Again, this may also happen in Stores, but with AI, it is turning into large scale operations.

Now You: would you communicate with AI tools while shopping?

Microsoft Edge and Bing insignificant for regulation in the EU

Posted on January 24, 2024January 24, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) will come into force in March 2024. The EU identified several products and services as gatekeepers. These fall under the new regulation.

One of the main goals is to level the playing field and avoid abuses of power. Six companies and 22 services and products are gatekeepers according to the EU.

The EU opened four market investigations into Bing, Edge, Microsoft Advertising and iMessage to determine if these services will be added to the list of gatekeepers.

A Bloomberg report now claims that all four won’t be considered gatekeepers by the European Union. The report cites “unnamed officials at the EU as “people familiar with the matter” as its source.

According to Bloomberg, the four mentioned services are “dominant enough to be hit by the regulation”. While some of the services are popular in other regions of the world, Apple’s iMessage or Microsoft’s Bing are popular choices in the United States, they are not dominant enough in the European Union.

Microsoft Bing, for instance, has a market share of less than 4% in Europe according to Statcounter. Similarly, Microsoft’s Edge web browser has a market share of less than 6% in Europe according to the company.

While these stats are not 100% accurate, they make the argument for adding these services to the list of gatekeepers difficult.

The final verdict is expected in February 2024.

No free pass for Microsoft

Microsoft’s Windows operating system and its LinkedIn social network are gatekeepers, according to the EU.

Microsoft announced changes that it plans to make available to users from the European Union and European Economic Area exclusively in the coming months.

The changes give users control over certain features of the operating system. They include the ability to remove Microsoft Edge and Bing Search in Windows, among other changes.

Microsoft’s Windows operating system ships with Microsoft Edge as the default browser and Bing Search included. Some links open only in Edge by default, but this is changing soon for users from the EU.

To sum it up, Windows users from the EU and EEA will gain control over Edge and Bing, even though both services are not (likely) considered gatekeepers.

The EU’s target is Windows. Specifically, Microsoft’s use of the operating system to favor its services, Bing Search and Edge are just two examples, over others.

Would Microsoft’s web browser stand where it is standing right now market share wise, if not for the integration and pushing in Windows?

Closing Words

Some Google and Meta products and services are also considered gatekeepers. Meta announced this week that it will give EU users control over data sharing between some of its services.

Google too is disabling data sharing between its services by default for users from the EU.

It is unfortunate that the rest of the world is not getting the same improvements.

Now You: what is your take on gatekeepers and the DMA?

Unlink Facebook, Instagram and Messenger accounts in the EU

Posted on January 23, 2024January 23, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Facebook, Instagram and Messenger users from the EU, EEA and Switzerland may soon unlink their accounts to stop data sharing.

Meta, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp parent company, announced that users from the EU, EEA and Switzerland will soon have the option to unlink some of their services. The announcement includes some surprises, among them an option to unlink Facebook data from Marketplace activities, and Facebook Messenger from Facebook data.

The improvement comes as a response to Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The EU identified gatekeeper companies that dominate certain services on the Internet or on user devices. New regulations for these companies aim to improve user rights and competition in the market.

Google users from the EU may also unlink services to stop the automatic exchange of data between them. Now, it is Meta that announces similar functionality for some of its main services. The company says that it has “assembled a large cross-functional team staffed by senior employees from around the globe and across our entire family of apps” to introduce these changes to the platforms.

Meta products affected by the change

Meta mentions Facebook and Instagram only in the announcement. WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, is also considered a core platform service by the DMA, but not mentioned by Meta.

Facebook and Instagram users who connected their accounts will see an option to unlink these in the coming weeks. They can:

Keep the two accounts linked and have information shared between Facebook and Instagram.
Unlink the accounts to manage them as separate accounts. This ends data sharing between the two accounts.

Facebook Messenger users may choose to use Messenger as a standalone product. They may create a new account in the application to use it as a standalone messenger app.

Core services, including private messaging and chat, and voice and video calling are available then.

Facebook Marketplace users may unlink Marketplace from their Facebook information. Users who do that may continue to use Marketplace to buy and sell products. Communication between buyer and seller, on the other hand, happens exclusively via email and no longer Facebook Messenger or Chat.

Facebook users who play games on the site may block games from accessing their Facebook information. This limits availability of games. Only “some single-player games” may be played in that case. Multiplayer games, personalized game suggestions and in-game purchases are not available in these cases.

Closing Words

Facebook plans to roll out these changes in the coming weeks. Only users from the European Union, European Economic Area and Switzerland will get these options. The changes will roll out gradually and users will be notified about them once they reach their accounts or devices.