ICYMI: February 24, 2016

Good morning! 

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The biggest story of yesterday and why you should care today:  The Mobile World Congress offerings are beginning to get sifted into assorted buckets like "Which devices can boast of Microsoft partnerships?" and "Which Android device should I buy?" and "Which phones are available now?"

To answer a few of those questions:

Microsoft released a Sway showcasing a few Windows 10 mobile phones: HP's Elite x3, a Windows 10 Mobile device that comes with Continuum for phone, so you can seamlessly use as a phone, notebook or desktop; the VAIO Phone Biz; and two already-announced phones, the Alcatel Fierce XL and the Trinity Nuans NEO. They also highlighted the following 2-in-1 devices: the Alcatel Plus 10, the Huawei Matebook, the Lenovo Flex 4 and Yoga 710, and the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S.

CNET's slideshow of products you can buy now includes: the Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition (looks like an iPhone, runs on Ubuntu); the HTC Vive VR headset (in this case, "now" means "February 29"); the LG G5 smartphone; the Garmin Vivofit and Vivoactive wearables; and Lenovo's entry-level tablets, the Tab series.

And Gizmodo offers a calendar of which phone is available when.

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The most useful tech news: Gizmodo offers a guide for reducing the amount of data you're gobbling as you stream Netflix, YouTube or Spotify on your phone. You can use OneNote to improve your reading and writing skills, thanks to the free add-in Learning Tools.

Find out which apps are Cortana-compatible with one easy trick. (Yeah, we covered this too -- it doesn't hurt to see someone else's approach.)

And mark your calendar for March 9 or March 10: Microsoft is offering webcasts with live demos of Office 365 and Office 2016. Here's what you can expect:

This live demo of the Office 365 productivity platform is an interactive session where the audience decides which solutions and content to explore. You’ll see the best of Office 2016, plus the scenarios that will most resonate with your business priorities, including:

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The most amusing tech news: In a year where the Oscar nominees were not the most diverse group of working thespians, Bing's "Find Your Oscar Nominee Look-alike" has the potential to create a lot of very amusing results.

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What we published yesterday: 

​Apps and software: What I use on Windows 10 -- "Now that Windows 10 has been on the market for seven months I wanted to give you an idea of the software that gets me through each day."

In praise of the humble archive mailbox -- "I like archive mailboxes – a lot. Because they are available to multiple devices rather than just Outlook (on a mobile device, you can fire up a browser to access the archive if you need to), archives are so much better than the alternative of using PSTs (all of which I would cheerfully eliminate)."

How to check a machine for Windows 10 compatibility -- "It is possible to run the Windows 10 setup in a scan only mode which will return a result related to if an upgrade is possible."