Skype

Skype is getting the Anti-Windows treatment: Microsoft removes all ads

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Is anyone still using Skype? Microsoft has just released a new development version of Skype and it comes fully loaded with new features and improvements.

Probably the biggest one is that Microsoft is removing all ads from Skype. The company announced the new Skype release on its Answers website.

There, Microsoft bids farewell to “ads in Skype channels and beyond”. It confirms that Skype is going ad-free, which means that users will no longer see ads in channels, in chats, or elsewhere.

We’re excited to announce that Skype is now ad-free! Our latest update removes all ads from Skype channels and the entire Skype platform, ensuring a smoother, decluttered and more enjoyable user experience.

Note: The change has not yet landed in stable versions of Skype. Microsoft has not revealed when it plans to make that version of Skype ad-free.

The new beta version of Skype includes other improvements, some of which are definitely noteworthy:

  • OneAuth for Skype supports Android and iOS now. The system unifies sign-ins. In other words, if you are signed into a Microsoft app, you will automatically be logged into Skype as well.
  • Revamped AI Image Creation. Now accessible via the chat window or the top bar. Microsoft says it does offer an enhanced user interface and better navigation as well.

Closing Words

I have to admit that I have not used Skype in a long time and I do not know how popular the solution still is. It is probably miles away from its prime, but it could still be the go-to tool for millions of users.

These will benefit from the removal of ads. While it is unclear when the change lands in the stable version of Skype, it cannot be too far away.

What about you? Do you still use Skype or do you prefer a different platform for chat and calls? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Cassettes

This private media converter runs locally in your browser

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Sometimes, you may need to convert a file to another format. Maybe it is because the original file format is not supported by your application or a service, or because you would like to reduce its size.

Plenty of tools exist to do that using dedicated programs on all major operating systems. Many are easy to use, but it may still be necessary to download and install a program before it can be used.

File Converter is a free private online service that supports media conversions without all of that. Just launch the dedicated website of the service and start converting. There is no need to install software or extensions, and the developer says that everything happens right in the browser.

The main file converter interface.

In other words, you do not need an active Internet connection to convert files. In theory at last. Here is why:

  • To access the site, you do need to be online (there is no offline mode)
  • Furthermore, the FFMpeg WASM file needs to be downloaded.

Good news is that your files are not transferred to a server on the Internet during the process.

As far as file support is concerned, it is pretty good. The service supports a wide range of image, video, and audio file formats. To name a few: job, png, webp, webm, mp4, or mp3.

Use of the service is super-simple. Drop files on the designated area on the webpage, or click on it to open a file browser. Once you have added at least one supported file, pick the desired output format from the convert to menu.

Last step is to click on the convert files button to get the process started. Since it happens locally, performance depends on the local machine.

What are the downsides?

There are not many, but if you have converted media in the past you may have noticed that I did not mention customizations.

The reason for that is simple: there are not any. You cannot change anything, including:

  • Quality of images or audio files.
  • Resolution of videos.

If you need that, you need to find a different tool for the job.

Also, the digital file needs to be on the local device already. This is true for the majority of converters, maybe even all though.

Closing Words

If you need to convert a batch of media files to a different format, without changing anything else about them, then File Converter may be a suitable tool for the job.

If you need more control, you could check out the native FFMPEG or other programs, such as Handbrake for video, fre:ac for audio, or XnConvert for images.

What about you? Do you use online or offline media converters? If so, which do you use and why? Feel free to leave a comment with your preferred tools below.

Windows 11 Start Menu Companion Phone Link

Microsoft should add an option to hide the Windows Start menu

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

I use the Windows Start menu a few times per year. It is been replaced by the taskbar and other means to launch programs.

While I run a few searches per year, which open in the Start menu, I do not really use it for anything else. Also, I prefer to use the third-party tool Everything Search for searches, as it is better in most regards.

I have no need for the Start menu anymore

The Windows Start menu offers just a few functions:

  • Launch pad for installed apps.
  • Interface for search results.
  • Shutting down, logging out, or switching users.

I do not need these, with the exception of the occasional use for searches. Also, Microsoft is adding more and more elements to the Start menu that I do not need or want.

I’m talking about the recommendations section that you cannot disable fully, as well as various placements for what I would call advertisement for Microsoft-owned subscription services.

Launch pad for installed apps

All apps that I use regularly are pinned to the taskbar. To launch apps not pinned there, I have the following options:

  • Runbox: using Windows-R to launch, is fast. You need to know the name or shortcut though.
  • Terminal: not as straightforward as Runbox, still might appeal to some.
  • Search: the Search is linked to the Start menu, but it does not need it.
  • File Explorer: manually launching an executable, e.g., a portable app that is not listed in the Start menu by default anyway.

Interface for search results

Search and Start menu are two separate functions, but they are linked as they use the same hull.

It would probably be easy enough to separate them, or split them again. Also, tools like Everything offer a better search experience in many cases.

Sign out or shut down

Windows offers plenty of options to do these, including:

  • Right-clicking the Start button.
  • Using Ctrl-Alt-Del.
  • Running shutdown /f from the command prompt window.

The Start menu is not going anywhere, quite the contrary

Microsoft works constantly on changing the start menu of its Windows operating system. It introduced the dual layout of the start menu in Windows 11 and has tweaked it since then.

It is also working on adding new account functionality to the start menu and extensions, which display content on the sides.

I do not really know how many Windows users use the Start menu on a regular basis. Many might. An option to hide the Start button would be an option to give users the option.

What about you? Do you use the Start menu on Windows? If so, for what specifically? Feel free to write a comment down below.

Google is testing a compact mode in Chrome

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Whenever there is an option to turn on a compact mode, I pick it. The main reason for that is that compact mode removes whitespace so that more content is displayed on the screen at the same time.

Google is testing a compact mode for its Chrome web browser. An experimental flag was added in Chrome Canary that adds the mode to the browser.

Compact Mode reduces the height of the user interface elements tabstrip and other toolbars, including the bookmarks toolbar. Google says that this frees up space for web content.

Here is how you enable it:

  1. Load chrome://flags/#compact-mode in the browser’s address bar.
  2. Set the status of the experimental flag to Enabled.
  3. Restart Google Chrome.
  4. Right-click on a blank spot on the tabstrip and select Toggle Compact Mode.

The change is immediate, a restart of the browser is not required. Repeat the steps listed above to restore the regular interface of the Chrome browser.

Chrome Compact Mode vs. Normal Mode

Here is a before and after screenshot for comparison:

The normal Chrome user interface
The normal Chrome user interface
The new Compact interface of the Chrome browser
The new Compact interface of the Chrome browser

The height of the toolbars is reduced, which means that they take up less space. It is a useful feature for users who want compact toolbars to free up room for web content displayed in the browser.

Note: Google lists compact mode as a prototype right now. Since it is an experimental flag, it is not guaranteed that the feature will make it into stable Chrome. It could change before it lands or it could be pulled entirely by Google before Stable users can set their sights on the feature.

Closing Words

I prefer compact modes, but this is not enough to convince me to make Chrome my default browser. It would go too far to list my reasons here, but I prefer browsers that are not run by advertising companies.

What is your preference? Compact Mode all the time or do you prefer other modes? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

X Data Sharing AI Grok Setting

X’s AI Grok uses your data for training by default – here is how you can turn that off

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

If you use X, you may have heard about the AI Grok already. Currently, xAI and Grok are playing catch-up with the current AI allstars. Plans are to push Grok to first place by the end of the year.

Whether that is going to happen or not remains to be seen. What is clear is that Grok, like any large language model, needs access to as much data as possible.

One source for such data is X itself. If you use X, your data on the site is used to train and fine-tune Grok by default.

X says that it is using posts, interactions, inputs, and results to train the AI on the site.

Block X from using your data to train the AI

If you do not want that, you may make a change in settings and also delete your conversation history.

Here is how that is done:

  1. Click on this link to open the setting directly on X.
    • If you prefer, you may also go there manually (Menu > Settings and privacy > Privacy and safety > Grok.
  2. Uncheck “Allow your posts as well as your interactions, inputs, and results with Grok to be used for training and fine-tuning”.
  3. Optional step: click on Delete conversation history to delete all interactions with Grok.

Note: Grok access is limited to X-subscribers at the time of writing. Your data may still be used to train the AI, even if you are not a subscriber or have used Grok in the past.

Once you have made the change, Grok will no longer use your posts on Twitter for training.

Now you: do you use X? What is your take on the default setting? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Microsoft Bing

Microsoft working on next step to make AI centerpiece of Bing Search

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

In some years from today, search engines will likely look completely different. The traditional way of showing links to websites that match the search query best, at lest according to the search engine that you are using, is being phased-out.

The replacement comes in form of AI generations. AI takes the user’s query, generates a response and returns it to the user.

Microsoft revealed a new experiment that it runs on Bing currently that is shifting towards this.

When a user runs a search, Bing will use an AI-generated response for the search results page. It is the first thing that the user sees. While there are regular web links attached afterwards, most searches tend to focus what happens above the fold.

So, AI generates a result and Bing shows it to the searcher first. This includes links to sources and Microsoft says that this will drive more traffic to sites than regular search pages. The claim is not backed up, though.

AI generated results do not work equally well on all types of user searches. Search for something new or unique, and you may not get an answer that you find sufficient.

Search for common knowledge, and you may get an answer that you find useful. AI may still hallucinate and display answers that are factually incorrect.

The future of search

For sources to be included in the answers of AIs, they need to allow them to be crawled. Any source that does not, either for exclusive deals with certain companies or for other reasons, won’t have their pages linked by the AI.

While Microsoft says otherwise, it seems clear that this new type of search format benefits larger websites more than smaller ones. Lesser known sites will be pushed further down still, which will likely reduce traffic further to them.

Google, Microsoft, and other search companies are interested in keeping searches on their properties. Direct answers, integrated tools, and other services are added constantly to search engines to keep searchers, and their eyes on ads, on the search engine’s site.

Plenty of smaller publishers have given up in the past already. Remember Freeware Genius? An excellent site for freeware recommendations. The site was heavily punished by Google Search for unknown reasons and died because of that.

Samer, the creator of the site, never found out why his site tanked in first place.

The trend will continue. Bing, Google, and others will use AI to keep searchers longer on their sites.

What about you? Do you find AI results useful?

AMD Frame Latency Meter

AMD released a new open source tool that works on Windows PCs, even those with NVIDIA cards

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

AMD has released the first version of Frame Latency Meter, an open source tool for Microsoft Windows devices that is measuring the latency of the mouse.

Technically, Frame Latency Meter helps getting insights into a system’s performance by measuring the mouse’s response time from the moment it is moved to the moment the frame is displayed on the screen.

Who is the target for the tool? This is an advanced tool that aims at game developers, but also power gamers who like to squeeze as many FPS as possible out of their rigs.

Here are the details:

  • Frame Latency Meter is compatible with devices running Windows 10 or 11.
  • It works on AMD, Intel, or Nvidia devices.
  • Data can be exported to CSV files.
  • Hotkeys are available and configurable.
  • Screen capture region can be customized.

The main advantage of AMD’s tool is that it does not require any special equipment.

AMD has a quick start guide on the project’s GitHub repository. While you can simply run the program after download, it does not need to be installed, you end up with the default configuration.

AMD suggests the following steps:

  1. Configure the primary monitor to run the game on — Set to free sync or a manual refresh rate. AMD suggests to start with 60Hz first.
  2. Run the application.
  3. Press the right Alt-key to set the capture region bounding box. (only shows if the game is running in windowed mode).
  4. Run the game.
  5. Use the shortcut Alt-T to enable and disable the capturing.

In theory, you could use the tool to optimize gaming performance on any Windows system that meets the requirements.

Most gamers won’t, but it is nevertheless an interesting tool, especially for game developers who want to make sure their games run fine. Game developers who used high speed camera setups in the past may want to give this a go to see how it stacks up. It is a much cheaper option, after all.

Gamers who want to optimize their systems may run game-specific benchmarks to do so. This is a good way of adjusting game settings to improve performance.

What about you? Do you play computer games on your Windows systems? Feel free to leave a comment down below to let us know.

Windows 11: Microsoft bundling controls for recommendations and offers

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

One of the main points of criticism in regards to the ever increasing number of recommendations and offers in Microsoft’s Windows 11 operating system is that they cannot be managed from a central location.

If you want to turn them all off elegantly, you either have to go through various sections, or use a third-party application like WinAero Tweaker, or O&O’s ShutUp10++, or one of the many other tools that help users do that.

Recommendations & offers in Windows 11 Settings

Windows 11 Recommendations & Offers Setting
New group of Settings to control ads and promotions in Windows 11. Image source: Phantom of Earth

Microsoft is working on introducing a central location for recommendations and offers. While it is doubtful that this will cover all promotions that Microsoft throws at users nowadays, it at least merges related settings from various locations into a single group in the Settings app.

Discovered by Phantom of Earth and published on X, Recommendations & offers provides the following options at the time of writing:

  • Personalized offers — Get personalized tips, ads, and recommendations based on Windows activity.
  • Allow websites to access my language list.
  • Improve Start and search results — By tracking which apps get opened.
  • Show notifications in Settings.
  • Recommendations and offers in Settings — Allow Windows to show product recommendations and offers in Settings.
  • Advertising ID.

The new group is found under Settings > Privacy & Security. You do need to run the latest Beta of Windows 11 and may need to enable it by running the command .\vivetool /enable /id:49666228,48433719 from an elevated PowerShell prompt.

Closing Words

Clearly, this new group of Settings is still inferior to what tweaking apps offer. It may still expose more of these settings to users who do not use the tweakers or configure their systems using Registry tweaks or policies.

What is your take on this new group of settings? Move in the right direction? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Ice

This free Windows app promises to make your PC run cooler

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Heat is a major problem for electronic devices, especially in the Summer months. Overheating may lead to a whole range of issues, including crashes or reduced performance.

To combat this, PC users have discovered thousands of solutions. From pointing a fan at the PC during the hottest hours to liquid cooling systems or reducing the voltage and frequency of core components such as the processor.

Camomile is a free app that promises to do the latter. It reduces voltage and frequency of the processor to bring down its temperature. I took the app for a test and it surely dropped the temp from 43 degrees Celsius to 36 degrees Celsius in a matter of minutes.

The app displays the current temperature in its interface. I ran several other temperature apps beside it to check the accuracy, and it was good.

Camomile App for Windows interface
App drops temperature of the processor when run

This comes with a bit of a trade-off, as it works similarly to energy-saving techniques. In short, performance may drop slightly when the app is doing its work.

Still, if you are in a dire situation, with CPU temps reaching much higher degrees than I experienced, then you may not mind as much.

Lowering has additional positive effects, including:

  • It may extend battery life.
  • It may reduce the fan noise.

Wayne mentioned the app over on Betanews. Some users reported that Malwarebytes was flagging it as a PUP. Similarly, Dr.Web and CrowdStrike Falcon are flagging the software as well. I did not notice any issues during installation of afterwards.

It does not offer much in terms of functionality. You can enable cooling mode and disable it. Other than that, it displays a temperature graph and temperature information for other components.

Closing Words

There are numerous ways to cool down PC components, especially in the Summer months. Sometimes, all that is needed is to get rid of the pesky dust to get the fans operating at full capacity again.

At other times, you could consider installing more fans or fans that are more powerful than what you have currently. While water-based cooling solutions are cool, they also require a level of expertise that many PC users shy away from.

An app like Camomile may also be sufficient. Surely, you may also use different tools for the same purpose. With that said, Camomile is easy to use and it certainly does reduce the temperature of the processor by a few degrees when run.

What about you? How do you fight heat in Summer to keep your PCs and devices going?

Microsoft continues to abuse Windows for advertising

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

If you’d ask a 100 Windows users whether they wanted ads displayed to them on a regular basis, chance is that the vast majority would answer with “no”.

This is not keeping Microsoft from pushing the boundaries and introduces more ads in Windows. While Microsoft uses terms such as recommendations, many of them are at their core still ads.

Up until now, most recommend to use Microsoft services, including Game Pass, OneDrive, or Microsoft 365. These are all subscription-based services. While they offer value, it is clearly not for everyone.

Microsoft is already pushing OneDrive via the recently introduced Windows Backup feature. This is not a full backup solution, as it limits backups to a few folders and some data.

While free to use, apart from the Microsoft account requirement, Microsoft is pushing two services with its recommendations:

  • Microsoft accounts, as these are required to make use of the OneDrive backup feature.
  • Microsoft 365 and OneDrive subscriptions, to increase the default 5 gigabytes of storage.

The first is obvious. You need a Microsoft account to use it. Microsoft has not made it a secret that it prefers this account type over local accounts. Among the reasons are better customer retention and that it gathers more data about customers.

The default 5 gigabyte limit is shared across several services, with backup being one of them. It is relatively easy to get near the limit, considering that Pictures, Music, and Video folders can be backed up.

Add the fact that backups will run automatically starting with Windows 11 version 24H2, and you end up with lots of customers who need more storage for the backup solution. This in term brings in revenue for Microsoft, as subscriptions increase.

Backup ads in the Notification area

Reports suggest that Microsoft is pushing a rather scary sounding notification to user systems. It states “Your PC is not fully backed up” and shows a yellow exclamation-mark image.

It is interesting to note that Windows Backup will never fully back up the system. Microsoft’s notification may lull some users into a sense of security when they activate the “back up now” button.

These backups won’t help if Windows fails to boot, for instance after a botched security or Windows update.

You need a full backup solution for that, and that is something that Microsoft does not offer.

While you can dismiss the notification, it will reemerge eventually. There does not seem to be an option to turn it off entirely, at least not in the Windows Settings or in the Backup app.

Closing Words

The recommendations seem to generate enough revenue or other positive effects for Microsoft to ignore the criticism surrounding them. Whether there will be a breaking point remains to be seen.

For now, expect more recommendations / ads in Windows going forward.

Do you mind this on your systems, or are you unaffected?