Category: News

Ice

Copilot Vision monitors your online activity for your own benefit

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Copilot Vision is an experimental AI-feature that, Microsoft promises, is going to revolutionize the online life of computer users.

Microsoft says that Copilot Vision sees the pages that users are on, reads the content of the pages, and is there for users when they have questions about current or past content, or want to have a discussion about it.

Browsing is no longer a “lonely experience with just you and all your tabs” according to Microsoft. How awfully nice.

Good news is that Copilot Vision is an opt-in experience. It is only available for select Pro subscribers at the time of writing and can be enabled under Copilot Labs. Furthermore, it will only work “on a select set of websites initially”.

Microsoft has come up with examples to demonstrate the usefulness of Copilot Vision.

  • Use it to plan a day at the museum, by “pointing out all the information you need to know before you visit”.
  • Tell you which products on a page match your needs and preferences.
  • Help you learn new games, for instance Geoguessr.

And privacy?

Copilot Vision is opt-in, which means that users have to enable it before it starts monitoring activity.

Microsoft says that Copilot Vision data is only kept during sessions and deleted afterwards. This means that everything a user said during a session and the context is deleted. Copilots responses are logged, however, according to Microsoft to “improve safety systems”.

Closing Words

Is Copilot Vision a useful tool? Who is it for? The examples that Microsoft provided do not sound overly spectacular. Telling me which products I most likely like on a page? Maybe on a page with thousands or products and endless scrolling for a preselection, but otherwise?

There is also the question of trust.

  • Do you want an AI to monitor your browsing, even if it is just for a session?
  • Do you trust Microsoft to delete the data after the session?
  • Do you believe that the answers that Microsoft logs do not contain personal information?
  • That Copilot Vision won’t get enabled automatically, by error.

Now it is your turn. Could Copilot Vision be a helpful tool in the future? Or do you see issues and problems that it could cause first and foremost? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Thunderbird Android

Thunderbird financials: doing really well

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

The team behind the open source email client Thunderbird has released the annual report for the 2023-2024 period. The report covers major developments as well as an overview of financials.

And it could not look better. Financial contributions reached 8.6 million US Dollar in 2023, which is an increase of nearly 35 percent when compared to 2022’s 6.4 million US Dollar.

The project received donations from over 300,000 individuals according to the report. The median amount donated was 11,12 US Dollar and the number of big — over 1,000 US Dollar — donators was just 56 in the period.

Donations from five countries — Germany, the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Japan — accounted for more than 63 percent of all donations.

The expenses chart is interesting, especially when compared to Mozilla’s expense chart. More than 68 percent of expenses go to personnel, and almost 14 percent to infrastructure and operational services. Donation processing fees eat up more than 7 percent, which means that more than 600,000 US Dollar are wasted on fees. Marketing makes up 2 percent of expenses.

The bulk of revenue flows directly into the Thunderbird project and related services.

Major development took place since 2023

The organization has released two major versions of Thunderbird for the desktop since 2023. First Thunderbird 115 in 2023 and then a year later the big Thunderbird Nebula release.

K-9 Mail for Android was finally turned into Thunderbird for Android, which marked a major development step in creating a true cross-platform solution.

Development on add-on services began in 2023 as well. The team focused its efforts first on services that would add value to Thunderbird and align with its own values and goals. The following services were created as a consequence:

  • Appointment, a calendar scheduling tool
  • Send, based on Firefox-Send, a file transfer tool.
  • Thunderbird Sync, a file synchronization tool to sync settings between all devices.

Development picked up pace between 2023 and 2024, and so did community contributions, which suggests that it is heading in the right direction.

Now you: do you use Thunderbird as your email client or another application? What is your take on the development? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

WhatsApp finally has an answer for annoying voice messages

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

I have to admit that I do use WhatsApp for communication with certain relatives and friends. Some of them have the habit of sending voice messages instead of text messages.

If you are like me, you dislike this a lot. I have to play the messages to listen to them, and may have to replay them, if something is not clear. To play a message, I need to either use headphones or play the message in a location where it does not bother anyone else.

Related:

WhatsApp: set an optional username and Pin for protection against unwanted messages

Voice Message Transcripts

WhatsApp has announced a new feature that puts an end to this. It is called voice message transcripts and will transcribe voice messages to text for you.

Here are the details:

  • Voice Message Transcripts are disabled by default.
  • Long-press on a message and select the transcribe option to start the process.
  • WhatsApp says the processing happens on the local device.

The feature is rolling out to all users of WhatsApp in the coming weeks. To enable it, go to Settings > Chats > Voice message transcripts. If you do not see the option at this point, check at a later point again.

You may also set the preferred language for the transcriptions. Note that this may require a download of a language pack to the device for the selected language.

Once enabled, long-press any voice message and select transcribe to get a text version of the message.

WhatsApp notes that there may be issues during the process. The app displays “Transcript unavailable” as an error message then.

This may have different causes, including:

  • The transcript language does not match the voice message language.
  • Some words are not recognized, likely because of background noise.
  • The language of the voice message is not supported.

Closing Words

The new option is useful, but it still requires manual action for each voice message. It would be great if WhatsApp would implement an auto-transcribe feature, as it would improve the process further.

Do you use WhatsApp? What is your take on the feature? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Will Google be forced to sell its Chrome web browser?

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Google could be forced to sell of the company’s Chrome web browser and be required to make changes to other company products and services, including Android and AI.

Bloomberg reports that Justice Department antitrust officials will ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc to make the changes. The same judge ruled in August that Google has monopolized the search market illegally.

Why Chrome? According to Bloomberg, Chrome is the entry point for many interactions with Google Search. It is the default search engine on Chrome and most users keep it that way. Chrome is also a powerful weapon for Google to understand what users are searching for and what they do on the Internet.

Lastly, Google is using Chrome to support or promote other products and services. AI will play a much bigger role in the future, and what better way than Chrome to get it in from of hundreds of million of Chrome users.

Google may also be forced to “uncouple its Android smartphone operating system from its other products”. This includes search and Google Play.

Bloomberg says that the government has options to remove Chrome from the deal if Google makes other changes that “create a more competitive market”.

The judge planned for a two-week hearing in April 2025 and a final verdict by August 2025. Google already said that it is going to appeal the verdict.

Closing Words

The forced sale of Chrome and some of the other changes would have a major impact on Google’s business. With Chrome sold, it might have to broker a deal with the company that acquired the browser to make Google Search the default search engine. Considering that it pays millions to Mozilla and billions to Apple for that, it would probably cost Google a lot to remain Chrome’s default search engine.

The final verdict is less than a year away, but that won’t be the end of it. Google will appeal, which means that it could years before anything comes out of it.

What is your take on this? Should Google be forced to sell Chrome or make changes to any of its other services or products?

Kagi Translate

Kagi Translate: text and website translations by Kagi

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Kagi has launched Kagi Translate, a free translation service that it says offers better quality than Google Translate or DeepL.

Kagi, which started out as a service to revolutionize online search, has expanded into different areas since then.

Kagi Translate is the startup’s latest service. It offers the following features:

  • Supports 244 different languages.
  • Translate text.
  • Translate full webpages.
  • Free, zero tracking.

Usage is straightforward. You may either load the main Kagi Translate website and start from there, or prepend https://translate.kagi.com/ before the URL of the webpage that you want to translate.

Free users, those who are not signed in with a Kagi account, will see a captcha. Kagi Search users will have translate functionality integrated into the search engine soon.

Kagi says that it is using a “combination of advanced language models and precise output selection” and that this “delivers translations that surpass existing solutions”.

It claims that its translations are better than those of Google Translate (average) and DeepL (high). It remains to be seen if independent tests and reviews come to the same conclusion.

DeepL, the service which I use the most currently, lacks webpage translations and supports fewer languages than Google Translate, Bing Translate, or Kagi Translate.

While I won’t switch to Kagi Translate any time soon, I will keep an eye on the service and try it from time to time to see how it stacks up against other machine-based translation services.

Still, it is always good to have alternatives, especially if they are free and do not collect user data to make money out of that.

Have you tried Kagi Translate? What is your initial impression of the translation service? Will you continue using it? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Thunderbird Android

Thunderbird is now officially available for Android

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

The open source email client Mozilla Thunderbird is now also available for Android. This marks a big milestone for the makers and enables users to use the client on desktop systems and on mobile systems powered by Android.

With iOS support in the works, Thunderbird will be a true cross-platform email client that you can run on all major operating systems.

One of the main questions that existing Thunderbird users may have is this: how do I get my settings imported to Android?

Thankfully, Thunderbird’s team has published an easy to follow step-by-step guide that explains the entire process.

Note: the functionality requires manual steps. It also requires the latest version of Thunderbird 128 or Thunderbird Beta 132 or newer on the desktop. Only these versions come with the “export for mobile” option that is required.

Import email data from Thunderbird desktop to Android

All the latest version of Thunderbird for the desktop include an option to export data specifically for mobile use.

Here is how that is done:

  1. Open the Thunderbird email client on the desktop system.
  2. Select Menu > Tools > Export for Mobile.
  3. Modify the accounts you want to export (Optional).
  4. Decide whether you want to include account passwords (Optional)
  5. Activate the Export button.

Thunderbird displays a QR code when you hit export. Keep the screen open and switch to your Android device.

  1. Open Thunderbird on the Android device.
  2. Activate the get started button on the first screen.
  3. Select import settings.
  4. Scan the QR code that Thunderbird on the desktop shows.
  5. Select next, if you have selected multiple accounts for export.
  6. Repeat the steps 4 and 5 until all accounts have been added.

If everything went well, Thunderbird for Android should have imported the account settings from the desktop client. Thunderbird for Android should start looking for new emails immediately.

You can check out the full blog post to find out what is new and supported in Thunderbird for Android.

Firefox

Mozilla celebrates Firefox’s 20th birthday with a video that teases upcoming features.

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Mozilla has published a video to celebrate the 20th birthday of its Firefox web browser. The video showcases some of the existing features of the web browser and also upcoming features.

As far as new features are concerned, there is none that has not been mentioned before. Still, it is a good opportunity to see these features in action in the video. It is only a minute in size.

Here is the list of features that Mozilla teases in the video:

  • New Firefox profile manager and profile customization options.
  • Improved sidebar customization options.
  • Creation and management of tab groups.

The two big upcoming features are support for tab groups and the improved profile manager. All Chromium-based browsers support tab groups already. They may be used to improve tab management.

I use tab groups to differentiate between different tasks for the most part. What I like is that I can collapse tab groups so that an entire group takes up little space in the browser’s address bar.

Yes, some prefer to use bookmarks or other means to keep an eye on tabs. That is perfectly fine as well. Tab groups do not take anything away from that, but they add an option for users who like them.

Firefox Profiles gets an upgrade

The second feature improves the accessibility of the profile manager in Firefox. While Firefox supported profiles for a very, very long time, it was never put right in front of the user like in Chrome or Chromium.

Again, not ever Firefox user uses profiles. One reason for that is likely that it is difficult to find out about profile support in first place. You can stumble upon profiles in Firefox or on the Web, but there is a good chance that many Firefox users do not know about this feature at all.

If done right, this could be an introduction to profiles for lots of Firefox users.

I have to admit that I do not use profiles. I see their use, but I switch between so many browsers that these browsers are somehow like different profiles that I use. But, some users will certainly find this helpful.

What is your take on 20 years of Firefox and the features that Mozilla is teasing. Is this something you are looking forward to? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Opera One R2 interface

Opera One R2 launches with the promise that you can keep on using your classic extensions

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Opera Software introduced several new features to development editions of its browsers in the past couple of months. I reviewed the new tab management and dynamic themes feature just recently.

Today, Opera Software announced the launch of Opera One R2, the next stable version of its web browser. This release is feature-packed, and it includes some good news for users who want to keep using their classic extensions.

The details:

  • Opera One R2 is available for all supported desktop platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac).
  • It introduces several new features, including dynamic themes and the tab management feature.

Existing users may select Opera Menu > Update & Recovery to download and install the update. New users may download the installer from the Opera website.

Opera One R2: the changes

Opera published a long post on the official blog that details all the changes of the new release. Most of it talks about AI, but there are also changes that are not AI related or at least locally processed instead of in the cloud.

Since I have reviewed one of the features already, I will summarize it quickly only in this article. You can check out the links at the top of the page for detailed reviews.

Dynamic Themes is a new option to customize the look and feel of the browser. They support more than just colors and setting a background image. You may use them to add music, animated backgrounds or change UI elements such as colors. They use the device’s GPU for “smooth rendering”.

Tip: you can reduce animations in the browser in the Settings > Features > User Interface section.

Tab improvements

Opera One R2's Split Tab feature
Opera One R2’s Split Tab feature

While Opera has not introduced support for the new AI-powered tab management feature in Opera One R2, it does introduce the following new features:

  • Split Screen – This enables you to display two tabs side by side to display two sites at once. This is not a unique feature, as browsers such as Vivaldi or Edge supported this for a well.
  • Tab Traces — a memory for the five recently used tabs. Opera adds an underscore to these tabs so that you may identify them quickly from a list of tabs open in the browser.

AI features

Asking Opera's AI Aria to identify an image
Asking Opera’s AI Aria to identify an image

A few AI features are now also available for stable Opera One users.

  • Image generation — Use AI to generate images. The process is started from the AI command bar or sidebar chat in Opera. Limit is 5 images per day for anonymous users and 30 per day for Opera account users.
  • Image understanding — Aria may provide information about images that you upload to the AI.

Other new features

There is more!

  • Control music and video from the sidebar – You may now control playback of media from Opera One’s sidebar. Pause or skip media using the feature. You may also add your “preferred streaming service” to the sidebar.
  • Detachable videos and video calls
  • Multithreaded Compositor – Manages the rendering of the user interface efficiently.
  • Support for Manifest V2 extensions remains – Opera announced plans to support Manifest V2 extensions independently of other browsers.

Now you: what is your take on these features? Anything that you find interesting or would make you switch to Opera? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Chrome

Google Chrome 130: fixes 17 security issues

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Google released a new stable version of its Chrome browser today. The new version is a security and feature update.

As far as security is concerned, users no longer have to worry about 17 security issues, as Google patched them in the new release.

Three of the publicly disclosed one are rated high, which comes second only to critical. Google makes no mention of exploits in the wild, which means that it is not aware of attacks targeting any of the fixed issues.

Chrome users may want to upgrade the web browser to the latest version as soon as possible. This is done automatically on most systems, but you may speed up the installation on the desktop by selecting Menu > Help > About Google Chrome.

Windows users may also run winget upgrade google.chrome.exe to upgrade the browser from the command line.

Did you know?

Chrome for Android may move and delete Tabs automatically

You can check out the full list of disclosed vulnerabilities that Google patched in Chrome here.

As far as new features or changes are concerned, there is little information from Google about those.

Developers may check out the Platform Status page for Chrome 130 to get an overview of development related changes.

The Enterprise and Education lists some of the changes that apply to users.

Here are the most noteworthy ones:

  • Chrome is going to start to display “small chips” after certain user actions. The example that Google gives is that when users add something to the reading list, Chrome displays a Toast that confirms the action and offers a link to the reading list side panel.
  • Some users get a new account menu when they select the avatar in Chrome for iOS on the new tab page.
  • PDFs display “seamlessly” in Chrome 130 for Android now.
  • Chrome freezes a tab that “has been hidden and silent for more than 5 minutes and uses a lot of CPU” when Energy Saver is enabled. TAbs with audio- or video-conferencing functionality and tabs that control external devices are exempt.
  • Chrome’s URL parser parses non-special URLs correctly now.
  • Chrome on Android supports third-party autofill and password providers now.

Google has also started to turn off classic extensions for first users.

Microsoft Office 2016 and 2019 support ends in one year

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Next year will be crucial for many Microsoft customers. The company will end support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025.

Next to that, it will also end support for Office 2016 and 2019 on the same day. This means that any of the included applications won’t receive updates anymore after that date.

This includes Word and Excel, but also Skype for Business 2019, Access 2019, or OneNote 2016.

Here is the full list:

Office suites: Office 2016, Office 2019

Office applications: Access 2016, Access 2019, Excel 2016, Excel 2019, OneNote 2016, Outlook 2016, Outlook 2019, PowerPoint 2016, PowerPoint 2019, Project 2016, Project 2019, Publisher 2016, Publisher 2019, Skype for Business 2016, Skype for Business 2019, Visio 2016, Visio 2019, Word 2016, Word 2019

Productivity servers: Exchange Server 2016, Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business Server 2015, Skype for Business Server 2019

While the programs continue to work after the end of support date, bugs and security issues will accumulate that won’t get fixed by Microsoft anymore. Microsoft won’t offer technical support either anymore.

Note: There is a good chance that micro-patching service 0Patch will support the two Office versions with updates after support end. A subscription is available for about $25 plus tax per year.

Customers may upgrade to a new version of Office, e.g., Office 2024, which Microsoft released recently, or subscribe to Microsoft 365, which includes Office applications.

The “End of Support: Know your options” table by Microsoft shows products that run out of support and Microsoft’s recommendations.

Obviously, there is no mention of Office alternatives that users may switch to. LibreOffice is probably the best option when it comes to that. It is an open source Office application that comes with pretty much the same apps as Microsoft Office. And it is free to use.

It offers good compatibility with Office document formats, but compatibility is not 100%. While most home users may not notice these differences and issues, Enterprise and business users may.

Do you run any of the applications? What will you do once support runs out? Feel free to leave a comment down below.