Your weekend reading: All our weekly content in one place update from April 2016
We published a lot of juicy content this week. Sink your teeth into all of it, now handily listed in one place for your weekend reading pleasure.
April 8, 2016
We know, we know -- it can be really hard to keep up with the volume of stories we're posting on the site. This is where we come in: we're scooping up all our content and putting the links in one place so you can see what we posted this week, and what it all means for you.
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We looked at a few new hardware products:
My First Week with Surface Book — Although Surface Book has been on the market since last fall, it was only in February of this year that issues relating to power and sleep were finally resolved with the February 2016 system firmware and driver updates. I can vouch that those updates do indeed work for Surface Book but getting them fully installed took a weird turn last week which I will explain later.
HoloLens Re-Experienced -- This device is set to revolutionize so many industries that I am not even sure we could sit and list them all right now however, now that HoloLens has started to ship to developers we are quickly going to learn just what type of creative applications are possible.
Surface Book Unboxing — These unboxing images of the Surface Book accompany the My First Week with Surface Book article.
The HP Spectre 13.3: You Can't Be Too Rich Or Too Thin — Are you in the market for a computer that's even thinner than a AA battery? Then HP has exactly what you're looking for in the latest escalation of the laptop design competitions.
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There was a Windows 10 update:
Inking in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update — Walk through a one on one demo of the new inking features that will arrive this July as part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
Hands-On with Windows 10 Build 14316 — Windows 10 Build 14316, which was released earlier this week to Windows Insiders testing Fast Ring builds, is the most feature rich build we have had in some time as testers.
PC - Windows 10 Insider Preview Build Tracker for 2016 — We've updated with the most recent information.
How-To: Get a Detailed Battery Report in Windows 10 — If you want a closer, detailed view of the way your batteries are performing on your Windows 10 device then you can use the powercfg command to generate a lengthy report about those batteries.
Build 2016 – New Features for Windows 10 Mobile in Anniversary Update — Last week Microsoft spent a lot of time in its Day 1 Build 2016 keynote talking about Windows 10 and the Windows 10 Anniversary Update that is expected this summer around 29 July 2016.
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Rod Trent continued his superlative Microsoft Band coverage:
Customizing App Notifications for Microsoft Band — With the April 2016 update, Windows Phone and Android users can use the updated Microsoft Health app to create a custom notification environment.
Quick Tip: How to Fix Pretty Much Every Microsoft Band Issue with Windows 10 Mobile — More and more I’m hearing Microsoft Band owners reporting moving their Windows 10 Mobile upgrades back to Windows Phone 8.1. And, in doing so, all of their Microsoft Band issues just go away.
Death Watch: Band 2 Tears and Rips — As many have reported throughout the communities for the last several months, eventually the strap material for the Band 2 will tear at the juncture where the screen components end just inside the flimsy strap.
New Training Day? App Seeks to Limit Injury Due to Over Training — The Microsoft Health app and dashboard tells you, based on your activity output, how long you should wait before performing this activity again.
Not Quite a Bug: Workaround for New Microsoft Band 'More Tiles' Feature Limiting Tiles — The Band can now store up to 20 tiles at a time – which is a great considering the number of community-created web tiles has exploded.
New Microsoft Band Community Facebook Group for Filling Up Your Activity Card — We’ve created a special Microsoft Band Community Facebook page. By “Liking” this page you can locate and connect with other Band owners. Who knows? You might actually become friends through participating in the group.
The Activity Challenges Available in New Microsoft Band Facebook Connection — This feature is essentially a connection to Facebook where Microsoft Health locates other Band owners in your Facebook friends list and auto-creates your group of potential competitors.
Use Microsoft Band to Analyze and Record Engagement and Emotions — Available now only on for Android users, a new app called Emotionalyze uses the breadth of the Microsoft Band 2’s sensors and records your emotions to YouTube videos.
Microsoft Band App Provides Discreet Reporting for Domestic Violence — A new app/service for Microsoft Band owners reads skin temperature and heart rate to detect specific levels of stress that are indicators of domestic violence situations. When the apex is reached, a pop-up will display on the Microsoft Band screen, allowing the wearer to discreetly ask for help through a tap.
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We wrote on browsers and best practices:
Summarize and Murphy Bots Join Skype — Those four bots, Bing Images, Bing News, Bing Music and Getty Images were basic search bots. All you could do is type in a search phrase and the bot would return up to three results.
Microsoft Edge Pauses to Stop Flash in its Tracks — Turns out there is another little feature in Microsoft Edge, the version included in build 14316 of Windows 10 which was released yesterday, that should make the fledgling browser a candidate for safest on the web.
Take Back Control Over Microsoft Edge Favorites with EdgeManage — Emmet Gray has released a new app (including source code) that allows Windows 10 users to take back control over Microsoft Edge Favorites management. Called EdgeManage, the application opens the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) database where Edge stores Favorites now and allows you to view your web Favorites and manipulate them with ease.
Automatic for the People: How a Few Tools Can Ease Tax Prep — I'm a big fan of reducing aggravation and tedium; I am also a big fan of being a law-abiding citizen who correctly prepares her taxes. So, to meet these two goals, I decided it was time to farm out the irritation to the cloud. Thanks to a combination of free services, I am able to keep and organize most of my relevant tax information. Read on to find out how.
Six Ways to Master the Google Play Store — If you want to be a true Android insider, there’s more to it than that. Learning the ins and outs of the Google Play Store will help you discover apps that you didn’t know you needed and streamline the process for those all-important updates.
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And a handy reminder that ICYMI rounds up all the tech news you might want to follow up on, plus a list of what we've published in the last 24 hours. This week, we covered: how Flash is being dimmed in browsers worldwide; what's worth paying attention to in the newest Windows 10 update; Google to make several smart homes dumb.
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