Google is shutting down Keen, a platform you may have never heard of

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

It is not uncommon for Google or Microsoft to shut down services or programs. In fact, there are entire websites dedicated to services and products that these companies shut down.

Google’s latest target is Keen. Keen was developed as a competitor to the incredibly popular Pinterest. As you may know, you can join Pinterest to create collections of “things” that you like. From classic game consoles over your favorite recipes to furniture and holiday destinations.

These collections may be explored by others. Add social features to the mix, and you got a highly addictive foundation.

Keen was not Google’s first rodeo. Remember Google Plus? It was another failed attempt by Google to establish a strong social service foothold.

Keen promised to do things just a tad different when compared to Pinterest. The service allowed users to “curate, collaborate & expand everything” that they were into.

The service was available on the web and on Google Play. Registered users could create so-called “Keens” and add links, text, images, or web searches to them.

Keen shutdown

Keen allowed users to collaborate and Google added machine learning to the mix to power recommendations.

Keen launched with some fanfare in 2020. While it did get an initial push, as anything that Google does to a degree, it seemed to underperform. The platform got fewer and fewer updates, and nothing really happened to it since December 2021.

Keen shutdown

When you open the Keen website today, you get a popup that informs you that it is shutting down on March 24, 2024.

Both the Keen website and Keen application won’t be accessible anymore after that date. Google says in the farewell message that Keen “was always intended as an experiment”. Keen users may use a data export tool to export their date before March 24, 2024.

All data, including posts, uploads, like, follows, and comments, will no longer be available after March 24, 2024.

Closing Words

Keen is the latest product in a long list of products that Google killed over the years. While there were lots of duds among them, some are missed by some users even today. This includes Google Reader, Google Specialized Search, or Picasa.

Now You: do you use any social media sites?

Mozilla reassures users that it won’t kill Manifest V2 support in Firefox

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Mozilla confirmed this week that its Firefox web browser will continue to support the extensions Manifest V2 next to the new version Manifest V3.

Google announced several years ago that it would move Chrome’s extensions manifest to a new version. The manifest defines the capabilities of browser extensions. Google’s initial draft drew the ire from users, privacy advocates, and developers alike. The company’s engineers made several adjustments to Manifest V3, which addressed some criticism but not all of it.

It now plans to end support for Manifest V2 extensions later this year in Chrome. Most Chromium-based browsers will share the fate. In fact, the only option to avoid this is to spend engineering time on reintroducing support for Manifest V2 in the browser engine after removal by Google.

Mozilla is in a better position this time. The organization’s Firefox browser uses its own browser engine, which gives it more control over its set of features. While Mozilla has been pushing Firefox towards improved Chromium compatibility in the past, it has made decisions in the past against this if it thought that it would be in the best interest of the organization.

Firefox Extensions

In the case of Manifest V2 and Manifest V3, Mozilla published a statement about the future of Manifest V2 shortly after Google’s announcement regarding the change. Summed it, it confirmed that Mozilla would not follow Google’s implementation to the letter. Firefox would continue to support Manifest V2, and thus all extensions that relied on it, next to Manifest V3.

In other words, Firefox users would get the best of both worlds. Future compatibility with Manifest V3 extensions and also backwards compatibility to make sure that extensions continued to work.

Not all extensions can be ported to Manifest V3. Some may be ported, but with an impact to the functionality. Especially content blockers and other security tools are on the receiving end in this regard.

Mozilla reiterates its stance

With Google’s deadline to end Manifest V2 support in Chrome coming closer and closer, Mozilla published an update on its stance regarding the change. Mozilla confirmed that it has not changed its strategy at all.

While Firefox is supporting Manifest V3 extensions to a degree already, it will continue to support Manifest V2 extensions as well. Firefox continues to “support MV2 extensions for the foreseeable future” according to Mozilla.

Mozilla keeps a back door open, but you cannot really blame the organization for doing so. The organization promises that it will inform developers and users at least 12 months before making a a change in this regard, if it decides to re-revaluate the decision.

Closing Words

Firefox continues to support Manifest V2 extensions for the foreseeable future at the very least. It is too early to say if the decision will have an impact on the browser’s usage numbers. Once Google launches the change in Chrome, users with Manifest V2 extensions installed will notice that they cannot use these anymore.

These have several options, one of them is migrating to a browser that continues to support them. It will be especially interesting to see how content blockers behave after the changes land.

Now You: What is your take on the Manifest V3 push by Google?

Office

Microsoft Office 2024 and Office LTSC 2024 announced

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft announced Microsoft Office 2024 for consumers and Office LTSC 2024 for organizations this week. These will be the latest perpetual Office releases. In other words: customers buy these versions once without any recurring costs.

While that sounds like a good deal, perpetual Office versions are supported for only five years by Microsoft. While they may be used after support ends, it comes with risks as security issues are not fixed anymore by Microsoft.

Another factor plays a role. Whereas Microsoft 365 Office apps get constant feature updates, this is not the case for Office 2024 and any other perpetual version of Office. There is no technical reason for this limitation. Microsoft does so to cut costs and push its subscription-based business.

What we know about Office 2024

Microsoft 365

Microsoft does not reveal much about Microsoft Office 2024 or Microsoft Office LTSC 2024 at this point.

The consumer version will be sold for the same price as Office 2021, the last perpetual version of Office that Microsoft released.

The main edition of Office, Office Home & Student 2024, will therefore retail for $149.99. Microsoft Office Home & Business 2024 will retail for $249.99.

Microsoft 365 Personal is available for $69.99 per year. The business editions of Microsoft 365 start at $6 per month and user, but the cheapest version does not include desktop versions of Office programs. The Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan is available for $12.50 per month and user.

Here is the price overview:

Office 2024 Home & StudentOffice 2024 Home & BusinessMicrosoft 365 HomeMicrosoft 365 Business
1-month$149.99$249.99$69.99$12.50
1-year$149.99$249.99$69.99$150
5-years$149.99$249.99$349.95$750

If you just look at the price, it is cheaper to buy a perpetual version of Office.

The main downside to buying one is that it won’t get any new features after release. Some features are also Microsoft 365 exclusive, especially for business users as Microsoft notes:

While Office LTSC 2024 offers many significant improvements over the previous Office LTSC release, as an on-premises product it will not offer the cloud-based capabilities of Microsoft 365 Apps, like real-time collaboration; AI-driven automation in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; or cloud-backed security and compliance capabilities that give added confidence in a hybrid world

Microsoft plans to increase the price of Office LTSC editions by 10% according to the announcement. Furthermore, Microsoft Publisher will not be included anymore in the bundle, as it is being retired.

Closing Words

It is good that Microsoft is giving customers the choice between the subscription-based Microsoft 365 and the perpetual version Office 2024. It is not as good that Microsoft is limiting functionality and blocking any new features from landing in Office 2024 editions after release.

Price-wise, perpetual licenses are still cheaper, if you compare the retail prices. Discounts may change this one way or the other.

There is also LibreOffice, which is free and works well in many cases, but not in all.

Now You: do you use Office?

Google

Google turns Safe Browsing real-time checks on in Chrome

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Announced last year, Google has now enabled real-time Safe Browsing checks in its Chrome web browser.

Safe Browsing is a security component of the Google Chrome web browser. Its main purpose is to warn users about malicious websites or downloads. This includes protections against known phishing websites and malware.

Google Chrome used a local list of known malicious sites by default previously. This list was updated every 30 to 60 minutes by the browser. This meant that there was a short period in which new known threats were not blocked by the browser.

Google calculated that “average malicious” sites exist for less than 10 minutes. In other words, a good portion of malicious sites do not exist anymore when Chrome updates the local Safe Browsing list.

Chrome users could switch the security setting to enhanced to get real-time checks. This new real-time checking of threats is now available in all Safe Browsing modes.

Safe Browsing changes

Chrome Safe Browsing

Google Chrome uses a Safe Browsing list on Google servers now to check any site that is getting opened against it. This improves the protection of users. Google estimates that this should improve the blocking of phishing attempts by 25%.

The change is rolling out to Chrome desktop users already. Android will also get the change “later this month” according to Google.

The option to enable Enhanced Protection is still available. This includes real-time checks as well, but also use of “AI to block attacks, provides deep file scans and offers extra protection from malicious Chrome extensions”.

What about privacy?

Google says that the new real-time nature of Safe Browsing checks is privacy-preserving.

Here is what happens in Chrome when a site is visited (according to Google):

  1. The cache is checked to see if the site is known to be safe already.
  2. If it is not in the cache, Chrome needs to check it against the remote Safe Browsing list.
  3. Chrome starts by obfuscating the URL locally into 32-byte full hashes.
  4. The hash is then truncated into 4-byte long chunks.
  5. These are encrypted by Google Chrome and transferred to a “privacy server”.
  6. The privacy server removes “potential user identifiers” before forwarding the encrypted hash chunks to the Safe Browsing server.
  7. There the data is decrypted and checked against the database.
  8. If a match is found, Chrome shows a warning to the user.

Google entered into a partnership with Fastly to “operate an Oblivious HTTP privacy server” that sits between the Chrome web browser and Safe Browsing.

The main idea behind Oblivious HTTP is to block the receiving server from linking requests to specific clients. Google published a blog post on the Chrome Security blog that offers additional information on the implementation in Chrome and server infrastructure.

Closing Words

Real-time checks should improve protection for users without impacting their privacy. Other browsers who also use Safe Browsing may not be affected by the change if they download Safe Browsing lists instead of using real-time checks.

Those who use Chrome but do not want these real-time checks can turn off Safe Browsing

WingetUI 3.0 Stable is now available

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

A new version of WingetUI, a universal UI for package managers, is now available. WingetUI 3.0 features a fully redesigned interface that the developers promise is more responsive and visually pleasing.

Packages should load faster under in the new version, and the application’s package importing and exporting functionality has also been improved.

You can check out my review of WingetUI to find out more about the software. Only this much: the app gives you access to several popular package managers, including winget, but also others such as Chocolatey. You may use these to install new programs on Windows machines, upgrade installed programs, and also uninstall applications.

These operations work in batch mode or for individual apps.

Note: the application will be renamed to UnigetUI in the future. This is done to reflect that it supports multiple package managers and not just winget.

WingetUI 3.0

WingetUI 3.0

The latest version of the open source tool requires .NET 8. Missing components will get installed on Windows machines during installation.

The new interface looks different when compared to the old. The main access points were moved from the top to the sidebar. There you find the options to discover packages, view installed packages and package bundles, check software updates, and more.

Some sections displays filters when opened. When you launch discovery, which you use to find new apps, you get a list of filters to customize the output. These allow you to change the search mode and filter by package manager.

It still takes just a couple of clicks to install one or multiple applications. The assortment of optional actions does not appear to have changed and is still displayed at the top. You may use them to install apps as an administrator or skip integrity checks. These may still look confusing to new users, as only a few have text labels. You may hover over them to get a tooltip though.

One of the best features of winget, and thus also WingetUI, is the ability to upgrade all supported applications at once. WingetUI checks for updates on launch and displays all of them in the update section.

Closing Words

The new version of WingetUI worked well during tests. It had a slight display problem on a laptop that used the recommended 200% scaling. If you check the screenshot, you will notice that the sidebar’s scrollbar overlaps it slightly.

Other than that, it worked well during tests. You may still use winget for all the operations, but this requires running commands from Terminal. Also, you do not get extra access to other package managers and tools.

In closing, WingetUI 3.0 improves the application further without taking anything away from it. You can download the latest version from the project’s GitHub repository.

translate

Mozilla adds new languages to Firefox Translations

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Mozilla’s Firefox web browser supports native language translations since Firefox 118 in desktop and Android versions of the browser. This feature, called Firefox Translations, supports additional languages now.

One of the main distinguishing factors between Mozilla’s implementation of a translate feature in Firefox and that in other browsers is that Firefox’s runs locally.

Translations happen on the local device. All that is required for that is the downloading of a language pack for each language. Google, Microsoft, and other browser makers use cloud-based translation services. The consequence here is that information is submitted to company servers. Google and Microsoft know about the text that gets translated. Not a problem for some, but if you value privacy, you may prefer Mozilla’s implementation.

Firefox Translations improvements

Firefox's translate feature

Firefox Stable supported a good dozen languages up until now. These were Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Portuguese.

The Estonian language is added to the list of fully supported languages.

Mozilla added support for additional languages, but these are limited to being translated. In other words, Firefox cannot translate other languages into these languages yet.

The additional languages are Finish, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian, Turkish and Ukrainian.

Firefox Translations

Support for these new languages is added remotely to Firefox, an update of the browser is not required. You should see the languages listed already on about:preferences#general under Translations.

Support for additional languages in development

Mozilla is working on adding support for additional languages to Firefox. Users who run development versions of Firefox gain access to additional languages or capabilities.

The focus is on European languages, with Persian (Farsi) being the exception.

Dev users get full access to Czech and Persian (Farsi). Additionally, support for translating Catalan, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk) are also available. Lastly, support for translating languages into Hungarian, Russian, and Ukrainian is also available.

Closing Words

Firefox’s translation feature supports many European languages already. Several are still missing, including Danish, Swedish, and Croatian among others.

Support for non-European languages is lacking severely at this stage. These still require the use of other translation services at the time of writing and the foreseeable future.

Now You: which translation service do you use? (via Sören Hentzschel)

Speedometer 3.0: new browser benchmark released

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Speedometer 3.0 is the latest version of the browser benchmark developed in a joint effort by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla.

Browser benchmarks were a craze for many years on the Internet, but popularity has gone down significantly in the last years.

When Google launched Chrome, it hammered home the fact that the browser was offering better performance with browser benchmarks. It was true at the time and brilliant marketing.

Mozilla, Microsoft, and other browser makers scrambled, but they had huge troubles closing the gap to Chrome.

Today, browser benchmarks are niche again. Developers and organizations may use them, but they play little role for regular Internet users. One reason for that is that browser makers have stopped using them for marketing for the most part. And the reason for that is that the gap is not as large anymore as it was 15 years ago.

Speedometer 3.0

Speedometer 3.0

Speedometer 3.0 is a browser benchmark by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla. Visit the benchmark’s website in any browser and hit the “start test” button to run it.

The benchmark runs automatically from that point on. It make take a minute or two to complete the test and a score is displayed in the end. This score depends largely on the performance of the device and the browser that you use.

Speedometer 3.0 replaces the second version of the benchmark. Apple and Google collaborated in 2018 to release it to the public.

The new iteration improves “how Speedometer captures and calculates scores” and it comes with “an even wider variety of workloads”. In essence, the developers of Speedometer have updated the workloads used to test the performance of the browser to take into account changes in the last six years on the Internet.

This means that a different set of frameworks is used in the tests. New browser and JavaScript APIs are tested, and more complex computations are run as well.

You may check out Google’s post on its Chromium blog for the company’s take on the changes. Microsoft published its take on the benchmark update here.

Closing Words

Most web browsers share a common core. This is true for all Chromium-based browsers. Performance, therefore, is nearly identical when it comes to the likes of Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, or Opera. Mozilla with its Firefox web browser and Apple with its Safari browser use different engines, and results may differ more on the same machine because of that.

Unlike computer benchmarks, which may show tweaking potential, browser benchmarks come with little optimization potential. Apart from installing the latest drivers on the machine, there is little one can do to improve the performance of a browser to get better scores in benchmarks.

With that said, it is still interesting to see how your browser or system performs.

Now You: do you use benchmarks?

YouTube try searching to get started

About YouTube’s Try searching to get started message

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

More and more YouTube users see the “Try searching to get started” message when they open the YouTube website. Usually, YouTube displays a list of recommended videos when users launch the site. What is displayed there depends on whether you are signed-in or not.

If you are signed-in, you see recommendations based on past searches, played videos, and also subscriptions. Users who are not signed-in see general recommendations instead.

It appears that Google is changing the YouTube experience for anonymous users. These see the aforementioned message when they load YouTube in a web browser.

In other words, YouTube suggests not a single video for users who are not signed in to the site.

While YouTube suggests to search for videos to help it generate a feed of recommended videos, it does not appear to work that way at the time of writing.

Even if you run searches and play videos, YouTube continues to show the message on its frontpage.

Some users may also see “Your YouTube history is off” instead, even though they are signed out.

A click on the update setting button opens the personalization settings & cookie page on YouTube. While it is possible to enable the YouTube history there, even if you are not signed in, it does not seem to have an effect.

YouTube displays the try searching to get started message after confirmation on the page.

The meaning of “Try searching to get started”

Google published no confirmation of the change at this point. It is clear that logged out users are affected by this.

It is another option to stop binging so much on YouTube, but not that helpful for users who want to see recommendations.

Google is already being criticized on Twitter, Reddit, and other sites for the change. The main point of criticism is that it appears that Google is pushing users to signing in to continue getting video recommendations.

Recommendations are also not shown in private browsing windows. It is unclear if this is an error on YouTube’s part or a deliberate rollout of the feature.

Since the proposed action, “searching”, does nothing at the time, it looks more like an error. Still, it is possible that this is the new default for users who are not signed-in to the site.

Closing Words

There is a good chance that logged out YouTube users will watch less content on the site. The constant barrage of recommendations stops, which leaves manual searches and related videos as the only option of exploration.

Google will likely post an official statement at one point. For now, it looks like a half-baked implementation of the change.

Share

ShareX 16 launches with screen capturing and recording improvements

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

ShareX 16.0.0 was released this week. The latest version of the open source screen capturing, recording, and sharing program for comes with a huge list of changes and improvements.

ShareX is a popular option when it comes to recording or capturing the screen on Windows. It supports a ton of capturing methods, from fullscreen and region to scrolling captures and even automated captures.

The application’s post-capturing options are equally impressive. These include options to edit images locally, use OCR for text detection, and upload the captures to the Internet. ShareX is a power-users tool.

Note: the release is already available on GitHub, but not on the official website.

ShareX 16.0.0

ShareX 16.0 interface

The latest version of ShareX comes with a long list of changes. Notable is that the developers have rewritten the application’s scrolling capture mode from scratch to improve it.

This allows users to capture an entire website or application, and not just the visible part.

The improved capturing mode has an entirely new algorithm that provides better detection and combining accuracy. It has a fallback option to the old algorithm if it fails. Some options were removed and the new algorithm tries to automate the process as much as possible to make things simpler and easier to use.

The entire process of combining images should perform better on user systems as well.

Scrolling capture has a few new options as well. It is now possible to delay the start, set the scroll delay and amount, and use automatic uploading or saving.

The new feature works well with Windows 11’s new super resolution feature.

Other changes in the release

Here is a list of other changes in the release:

  • Video editor improvements — added AV1, NVENC H.264 & HEVC, QuickSync H.264 & HEVC, and AMF H.264 & HEVC encoders. There is a new “use bitrate” option to set a custom bitrate and to skip using the audio encoder for the files GIF, WEBP, PNG, or APNG.
  • Image editor — supports “proper” undo and redo now. Also new is a “load image from URL” button and the keyboard shortcut CTRL-C is now used to copy the image to the Clipboard.
  • Image beautifier — New tool to apply image effects to captures. This includes shadows, padding and margin, or making changes to the background.
  • Image effects — added several image effects to various sections, e.g., auto resize option to Shadow effects.
  • OCR — improved upscaling of images before applying OCR.

Closing Words

ShareX is an excellent image capturing and recording tool. The new version improves the program in several key areas. While I still prefer PicPick, ShareX is clearly an excellent tool when it comes to recording or capturing screens on Windows devices.

Now You: which screen capturing software, if any, do you use?

Tabs

Exclusive: Mozilla CEO confirms that Tab Groups are coming to Firefox

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

More than eight years after Mozilla decided to remove tab groups from Firefox, the organization confirmed today that tab groups will make a comeback.

When Mozilla launched Firefox’s Panorama feature, which introduced tab groups in Firefox years before Google implemented the feature in Chrome, it was ahead of its time.

Tab groups improve tab manageability by allowing users to put multiple tabs into groups in the tab bar. These groups may be collapsed to free up room on the taskbar.

While Mozilla did introduced Tab Groups before Google, it was Google that made them practicable to use.

Current implementations in Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers are easy to use. It is an elegant solution. Panorama on the other hand showed tabs of the active group only to the user.

Mozilla announced the end of tab groups in Firefox about nine years ago. The organization cited low usage, a lack of quality, and high maintenance costs.

Mozilla CEO confirms Tab Groups

This month, something remarkable happened. Firefox user Belfox published a letter to Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers. In it, they asked Chambers to consider adding a tab grouping feature to the browser.

Firefox lacks proper tab grouping support. All Chromium-based browsers support it, thanks to the shared codebase. Belfox noted that tab groups was the top requested feature on Mozilla’s Connect website.

Nothing happened for about a week, but then, Chambers replied to the user on the Mozilla Discourse website.

She wrote:

Hello! Thanks for reaching out. I have some good news! I checked in with the team, and they have prioritized the work and have a people assigned to work on it.

In other words; Mozilla’s CEO confirmed that a team is working on tab groups and that it is a development priority.

The response is remarkable. Not because of confirming that tab groups will (likely) come to Firefox. It is remarkable because it is the first time in a very long time that Mozilla’s CEO communicates directly with the community.

Not with a letter or blog post, but in a discussion.

Chambers confirmed that Firefox would become a priority at Mozilla again after taking over the reigns from Mitchell Baker. It seems that she is making good on the promise.

This direct interaction with the Firefox base could help bring management, developers, and users closer together again. It gives hopes to a community, of which no small part felt neglected in recent years.

Closing Words

Firefox is getting tab grouping support, which is good news for users of the browser. The CEO partaking in discussions about the browser and responding to user requests is even bigger than that.

Chambers remains CEO for a limited time only. A successor has not been found yet and it remains to be seen if the future Mozilla captain will follow her lead.

Mozilla is also working on bringing tab previews to Firefox.

Now You: do you use tab groups?