Newsletter Archives

• The twists and turns of Office Fast Account Switching

  Posted on May 16, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.20 • 2022-05-16

  MICROSOFT 365

  

  By Peter Deegan

  Fast Account Switching lets you quickly “change hats” between work, home, and other Microsoft accounts in Microsoft 365, Office 2021 and 2019, and now the browser-based Office.com apps.

  Most of us have more than one online life, usually a work account — and a personal account and possibly more for other work or voluntary commitments. For Office users, that means separate Microsoft accounts and switching between those accounts to see recent documents and online storage related to that part of your life. In the past, and still in Office for Mac, changing accounts meant reopening the Office app.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.20.0, 2022-05-16).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365 AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Accounts, Office 365, tips

• Will Intel be a dominant chip company going forward?

  Posted on May 16, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  SILICON

  

  By Brian Livingston

  All the headlines seem to be bad for Intel lately — poor yields on bleeding-edge technologies, disappointed customers, lagging performance compared with competitors from around the world, and on and on.

  The truth of the matter is a bit more complicated.

  Most of the stories you’ve been reading in the mass media about Intel are telling only half the tale — if that.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.20.0, 2022-05-16).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Silicon Apple Silicon, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Intel, Samsung, Silicon, TSMC

• WebChangeMonitor — stalk your favorite websites for changes

  Posted on May 16, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  My husband and I get asked a lot about how just two people can keep thousands of computer programs up to date on our website.

  Simple: We can’t — but we try real hard. Luckily, we get assistance from software developers’ emails, RSS feeds, open-source project trackers, and good ol’ fashioned complaining.

  Another tool we’ve started using lately is WebChangeMonitor, by German software developer Martin Halle. It’s a great little program that allows you to be notified when a change occurs on a webpage. Pretty handy for us when we want to know whether a developer has updated their version of an application, but the program can be helpful to anyone in so many other ways, too.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.20.0, 2022-05-16).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Flight Simulation, Website Monitoring

• May updates fix risks to networks

  Posted on May 16, 2022 at 02:42 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  PATCH WATCH

  

  By Susan Bradley

  It’s looking like consumers may have an issue-free month — if they don’t run Windows 11 machines — and businesses will have to decide whether they want to patch sooner versus later.

  Once again, we have a vulnerability that has already been used and abused, but the good news for home and consumer users is that the vulnerability under fire is seen only in Active Directory domains.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.20.0, 2022-05-16).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Patch Watch .NET Framework, Active Directory, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, browsers, Patch Lady Posts, Patch Watch, Windows Update

• The one thing you need to know about the metaverse

  Posted on May 9, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Max Stul Oppenheimer • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.19 • 2022-05-09

  LEGAL BRIEF

  

  By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq.

  Nike is trying to convince a court that the metaverse is a real place, where the rules of the real world (as I think of it) do not apply.

  If it succeeds, it will be a revolution in thinking on a par with the introduction of the theory of relativity. Because the one thing you need to know about the metaverse is this — it is not real. The tools that create the metaverse create projections into the real world, but the metaverse itself is no more real than Pandora.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.19.0, 2022-05-09).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Legal Brief AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Legal Brief, metaverse, nonfungible token, Trademarks

• Are Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) good or evil?

  Posted on May 9, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  A programming technique that Google says will speed up websites is actually slowing them down, according to major Web publishers and browser makers who are actively blocking it or working around it.

  The technology is called Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP. The search giant has been working on the technique since at least 2015. But AMP has become a hot potato only recently.

  Last year, publishers and Web developers began realizing that Google was favoring its own AMP systems and silently diverting to itself a large cut of websites’ advertising revenue, according to a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of 16 US states.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.19.0, 2022-05-09).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Google searches, Online advertising, Public Defender

• How to use two-factor authentication the right way

  Posted on May 9, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Lance Whitney • Comment in the Forums

  SECURITY

  

  By Lance Whitney

  Two-factor authentication is still one of the best ways to protect your accounts. But there are right and wrong ways to use it.

  More websites and companies now offer two-factor authentication (2FA) to better protect your logins and accounts. The idea is to use a second form of authentication so that you’re not solely dependent on your password. The goal is to prevent your account from being accessed and compromised in case your password is ever leaked or stolen. And here’s how that can happen.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.19.0, 2022-05-09).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Security AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Multi-factor Authentication, security

• Is firmware patching important?

  Posted on May 9, 2022 at 02:42 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  ON SECURITY

  

  By Susan Bradley

  Firmware patching has always been fraught with concern.

  Until very recently, applying firmware updates often meant launching the update process from a DOS prompt. You often received warnings that if your computer lost power during the process, your machine might be bricked. This is such a daunting thought that, for servers, I would often update the firmware when I initially installed the server and never touch it again.

  But firmware is nothing more than software, and — like every other kind of software these days — attackers find vulnerabilities in firmware. Recently, researchers found security issues in Lenovo consumer notebook firmware.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.19.0, 2022-05-09).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, On Security AskWoody Plus Newsletter, firmware, Patch Lady Posts, Surface firmware

• A lifetime of achievement

  Posted on May 2, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.18 • 2022-05-02

  EDITORIAL

  

  By Will Fastie

  We are pleased — and excited — to announce the creation of the TameYourTech Crystal award.

  We are even more pleased to present the inaugural award to Fred Langa for his lifetime of achievement in the field of personal computing journalism.

  As a further celebration of Fred’s career, we are happy to bring all our newsletter readers four of Fred’s LangaList columns, previously available only to Plus members.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.18.0, 2022-05-02).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Editorial AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Crystal Award, TameYourTech Awards

• Removing MFA

  Posted on April 25, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.17 • 2022-04-25

  Look for our special issue on Monday, May 2!

  MICROSOFT 365

  

  By Will Fastie

  How many times have articles in this newsletter told you that multifactor authentication (MFA) was a good idea and suggested that you turn it on?

  A lot. It’s good advice.

  Just the other day, I turned on Microsoft 365 MFA for one of my clients. It’s too embarrassing for me to describe the mistake I made. Suffice it to say that it was an accident, because I didn’t intend to turn it on.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.17.0, 2022-04-25).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365 AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365, Multi-factor Authentication

• Apple’s M1 processors are shaking up how you compute

  Posted on April 25, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  SILICON

  

  By Brian Livingston

  After defining the smartphone market with its iPhone for years, Apple Inc. has shaken up the tech territory by designing its own M1 silicon to revive the Mac product line.

  With the original M1 appearing in MacBook Air shipments as of November 2020, the latest shipment in March 2022 of the so-called M1 Ultra — with performance rivaling that of some longtime powerhouse leaders — has created an entirely new class of personal computers.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.17.0, 2022-04-25).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Silicon Apple Silicon, AskWoody Plus Newsletter

• Get more OneDrive with these tips

  Posted on April 25, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  MICROSOFT 365

  

  By Peter Deegan

  There are a few tricky ways to beat the 365 plan quota, to get more than one terabyte of OneDrive space for nothing and save local disk space by pushing files to OneDrive.

  Most Microsoft 365 plans, including Family, Personal, and most Business plans, include one terabyte of OneDrive storage. That’s 1,000 GB, more than enough for most people. But if you need more, there are cheaper – or even free – options available that are legitimate, inside the bounds of Microsoft’s rules.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.17.0, 2022-04-25).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365 AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365, OneDrive, tips
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