Microsoft released Windows 11 last year, and since then, the company has been working on the first major update. Multiple reports now indicate that upgrade could arrive in September. The Verge and Windows Central report that Windows 11 22H2 will start rolling out on September 20, based on anonymous sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans. There’s no (public) scheduled event around that time, but the company will hold an in-person Ignite conference between October 12-14....

You can see that the contact list has a slick new look… you can customize the size of the people on the buddy list. You can even drag people to the Vista Sidebar so you can easily see their status, or click on them to start a conversation (in a regular conversation window) It’s also got an abundance of bouncing, animated smiley faces for all your emoticon needs: When you receive a message, they animate for a few seconds before going back to normal size:...

You should use this feature with caution, of course, since it will increase the size of the email and if you choose a really obnoxious image it will also annoy whoever you are sending the email to. Note that this feature is different from the Stationery feature in Outlook, which we’ll cover at another time. Adding a Background Picture Open up a new email, click on the Options tab and then the Page Color drop-down button, and then the Fill Effects item at the bottom of the menu....

Artificial (Emotional) Intelligence In 1995 Rosalind Picard published a paper and a book outlining the fundamentals of affective computing. The idea is to imbue computers with emotional intelligence (EQ) in addition to the analytical intelligence that makes them so useful. Affective computing allows a computer system to scan a human being’s emotional indicators such as facial expression, vocal tone, body language, and words for information about their mental state. Once the computer is confident about what its user is feeling, it reacts in a way that’s (hopefully) beneficial to the user....

Source: Business Wire, CNBC

Microsoft has been working on a Windows Subsystem for Android, allowing Android apps and games to easily run on top of Windows 11. Now the feature is rolling out to more countries. That’s not the only improvement rolling out to Android apps. Microsoft revealed last week that the Subsystem is being updated to Android 12.1, with improved desktop integration and a revamped Settings page. The upgrade is still being tested with Windows Insiders, but it should roll out to everyone once all the bugs are worked out....

The ads are sneaky, and they don’t show up right away… this screenshot was taken from Bernie Zimmermann’s blog, but I’ve personally checked the source code for the extension and found the problem definitely exists—not to mention the Mozilla bug report explains it in detail. If you want to see the offending code for yourself, browse down into your Firefox profile’s extensions folder, find the {efa1abef-cb1c-4e40-9bc5-e2e69a3fb329}\chrome\content folder, and you’ll see the st_ads....

Changing in Windows 7 Simply right-click on the start menu orb button, choose Properties, then check the box for Use Small Icons on the Taskbar tab: Changing in Windows Vista Right click on the start button, and select Properties: Then click the Customize button: Now scroll down all the way to the bottom. You should see a checkbox for Use large icons, which you’ll want to uncheck: Ahh, much better, especially if you pin your favorites to the start menu:

Open Excel 2007 and under the Data tab select Get External Data and From Web. This will open up the New Query window where you enter in the URL of the site you want to get data from. There will be yellow arrow icons next to the table data that can be imported, click the areas of the data you want to import which turns the box to a green checkmark....

Turns out you can disable all the extra keys at once with a single registry entry, which I’ve provided as a downloadable registry hack. Manual Registry Hack Just open up regedit.exe through the start menu search box and navigate to the following key (create if it doesn’t exist) Create a 32-bit DWORD value called NoWinKeys and set the value to 1. You’ll need to log on and back off for the changes to take effect....

MS-DOS officially ended with the launch of version 6.22 all the way back in 1994, but the FreeDOS project has kept the old-school OS alive and well over the years with full MS-DOS compatibility. And for the first time in six years, FreeDOS has received a major update, bringing it from version 1.2 to 1.3. The update adds the new Kernel 2043 and an 8086 version with FAT32 support. It also features support for the new FreeCOM 0....

Jinni is a cool new site that really allows you to search for video entertainment in a very specific way. You can choose from Movies, TV, Short Films, and online videos to find specific genre’s or what you’re in the mood to watch. Jinni’s search and personal recommendations help users make sense of all the video out there with a one-stop service for choosing and getting linked to watch online or off....

Installing Screamer Radio Installation and setting up Screamer Radio is a breeze. First select your language and hit OK. Next you will be asked if you want the radio presets to be updated every time the application is started. It is always good to stay current, so you should probably accept the recommendation. Using Screamer Radio That was quick set up. Now we are ready to start looking at what this has to offer....

First we’ll use the du -sm command to give the results in MB: Now we can see that the results aren’t sorted, so we’ll sort them by the sort -nr command, which sorts by numerical value in reverse. Finally, we’ll run the results through head -10 to get the top 10 results: This is the command we are going to run: Here’s an example of the output: Useful stuff.

People have been increasingly frustrated with what the main Instagram Feed has become. What used to be a place for photos from your friends has turned into a lot of stuff you might not want to see. You can get to the “old” feed from the “Following” tab, but that’s annoying to do every single time. RELATED: What Is Instagram Reels, and Is It a TikTok Clone? The Instagram web app acts essentially like the native app, but the feed is a lot cleaner....

Turns out, del.icio.us provides a very useful URL history page that gives you all the information about everybody who has bookmarked your page, including a grand total. Manual Check Browse to http://del.icio.us/url/ and then enter in the link in the box to see how many times it’s been bookmarked. Use the Bookmarklet Browse over to http://del.icio.us/help/urlhistory to get a bookmarklet (near the bottom of the page) that will give you a button to simplify the process....

But when you create the configuration file in the \bin\debug directory, it gets overwritten immediately when you do a new build. That’s slightly annoying. The proper way to add this file is to add new new configuration file called App.config to your project, which Visual Studio will automatically copy and rename to the same name as your executable’s name when you do a build. There’s a really simple way to do this....

Before we dive in, let’s get the obvious out the way. You’re going to need a phone with wireless charging to use a wireless charger. It’s understandable to assume all phones have this technology built-in nowadays, but that is not the case. A simple web search can tell you if yours does. Qi Is Key For a brief period, there were a couple of different wireless charging standards vying for prominence, but that didn’t last long....

When you install add-ons for Google apps like Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Forms, you may need to give permission for access to your Google Drive. Here’s how to see and manage apps that are connected to your Google Drive. Permission to access your Google Drive can include the ability to create, edit, or open files as well as see documents where you use the add-on. You can view and manage the apps that are connected to your Google Drive, make them the defaults, see their product pages, or disconnect them....

Putting your PC to sleep is a great way to save energy while still making sure you can resume work quickly. But what can you do if your PC keeps waking up on its own? Here’s how to figure out what’s waking it up, and how to prevent it. When you put your PC to sleep, it enters a power-saving state where it shuts down power to most of the PC’s components, keeping just enough power trickling to keep the memory refreshed....