Should you keep using Windows XP?

Mae Watson's aging computer still works fine. She asked if she should give up XP before next spring.

Microsoft will stop supporting Windows XP on April 8, 2014. That's less than nine months away.

The end of support means the end of updates--even security updates. When an exploit is found after that date, too bad; it will not get patched. Gradually, Windows XP will become less and less secure.

And it may not be all that gradual. Malware authors love to use outdated software as a path into your PC--and the more people there are using an outdated program, the more they love it. Besides, an outdated operating system makes a more tempting target than an out-of-date .pdf reader. A year from now, it will be hard to pick a more tempting target than Windows XP.

Long-time readers might accuse me of inconsistency. I covered this subject back in 2011, and gave very different advice, suggesting that an upgrade was a good idea but not an absolute must. "After 12 years, there may be little left in XP to patch. Besides, malware written in 2014 probably won't be designed to exploit an old and outdated OS."

I was wrong. It looks like a great many people will still be using XP next year and beyond, making it all the more dangerous.

Now that I'm telling you not to stick with XP, what should you do? Here are some suggestions:

You could buy a new PC. That will certainly solve the problem, and your new computer would almost certainly be better than your current one. Unfortunately, this is the expensive choice.

Or, for considerably less money, you might be able to upgrade from XP to Windows 8 (or to Windows 7 if you can find a copy). I say "might"because your hardware may not support a newer operating system. To find out, download and run the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant. This will tell you what you'll need to change before the transition.

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Finally, you can switch to Linux, which won't cost you a thing. You can try Ubuntu  Linux--the most popular variation and the one I recommend as a Windows replacement--before you make the decision to give up Windows. It installs like a Windows application, giving you a dual-boot system where you can choose either operating system.

How to sync your iPhone and iPad using iTunes

As more and more of our data moves to Apple’s iCloud and other server-based services, it’s hard to believe that just a few years ago we relied solely on iTunes to keep our devices up-to-date with our content libraries. Even though iTunes’ role in managing iOS devices has diminished, Apple hasn’t completely abandoned syncing. Here’s a guide to doing it right.
When you first sync your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad with iTunes, you must physically connect it to your computer via USB. (After you’ve synced for the first time, you can also enable Wi-Fi sync, which lets you connect to iTunes via Wi-Fi only.) Depending on what categories you select to sync, you can then load music, movies, apps, TV shows, ringtones, podcasts, books, and photos onto your device from your Mac. These might be ebooks you’ve bought on Amazon or music you’ve ripped yourself, in addition to any iTunes-purchased content.
In contrast, iCloud syncs only content you’ve purchased from iTunes and apps and app data from the App Store. iCloud lets you re-download, over the air, your purchased music, movies, apps, TV shows, ringtones, podcasts, and books from the iTunes or App Store. (If you subscribe to iCloud’s $25 per year iTunes Match service, you’ll also be able to sync up to 25,000 songs you own but that aren’t on the iTunes Store.) All other content that you’ve purchased or ripped elsewhere won’t be synced via iCloud, nor can Apple’s cloud service sync with your iPhoto or Aperture library.
If you have no content on your computer that you want to keep on your iOS device, you may not need to use iTunes at all. The majority of folks, however, will likely want content from both iCloud and their computer, and in that case they’ll need to use iTunes.

Here’s how iTunes offers a real advantage:
It lets you keep full backups of your app data so that you can restore a device faster than you can via iCloud: If you plan to buy a new iOS device, you can restore your purchased apps and content via iCloud—but that process can be very slow. If you use your computer and iTunes, however, a full iOS device restore will take minutes, not hours.
You can make encrypted local backups of your device: Want to make sure no one can crack open your backups? iTunes offers an encrypted-backups option that protects your backups with a password. (iCloud also encrypts your backups, but you again have to access them from a server, rather than store them locally.)

You can encrypt local backups with a password if you check the ‘Encrypt local backup’ checkbox.
You can easily rearrange your home screens and app layouts: Even in iOS 6 and Apple’s upcoming iOS 7, rearranging apps on new home screens can be a pain. iTunes offers a clickable rendition of your device’s home screen, where you can drag apps, create folders, and more, all with the click of a button.
You can add files to your apps: iTunes’ app file sharing lets you drag and copy files from your computer to specific apps on your iOS device; you can then view them on your iPhone or iPad. While Dropbox’s, Mail’s, and iOS’s respective ‘Open In’ commands make it relatively simple to add files to other apps on your iPhone or iPad, sometimes you might want to add a large file without sending it through Dropbox or Mail to add it to do so.
You can copy apps and their data: iCloud sync stores only your app’s data (game high scores, text files, saved passwords, and such) on its servers, not the apps themselves. When you need to restore your device, iCloud turns to the App Store to get the app. But if, for some reason, an app of yours gets removed from the iTunes Store, iCloud won’t be able to restore it.
If you sync your device with iTunes, however, all those apps and their data get copied to your computer for future restores, regardless of whether they’re still on the store. Granted, this takes up more space on your computer’s hard drive, but it ensures that an app you rely on won’t mysteriously vanish if you restore or upgrade your device.
If you want to enjoy your non-iTunes-purchased music, videos, books, or photos on your device, you must first make sure to import that content into iTunes on your computer.
To add an external media file to iTunes, simply drag it to the application’s Dock icon on your computer. Alternatively, with iTunes open, choose File > Add to Library and select the files.
When it comes to your photographs, iTunes sources images from either iPhoto, Aperture, a folder on your hard drive, or (for Windows users) Photoshop Elements 3 or later. To sync your images with your device, you’ll either need them to be in one of these programs or you’ll need to create a folder for them.
Not all media files play nice with iTunes: If you’re having a problem adding your content, check out our tips for troubleshooting music, video, ringtones, and ebook uploads.
Syncing your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad with your computer is really quite easy. Gather  your device and its USB charging cable, and make sure you have installed the latest version of iTunes on your Mac. Plug in your device, and iTunes should launch, displaying your device’s summary screen.
If iTunes doesn’t immediately display your device, click the Devices button in the upper right corner of the iTunes window. (If you’re syncing more than one iOS device with the same computer, you’ll instead see a button called X Devices, where X is the number of devices you have.) Alternatively, select your device from the iTunes sidebar. If the sidebar isn’t visible, choose View > Show Sidebar.
To find options for what you can sync and how you sync it, click the tabs at the top of the iTunes window.
The summary screen offers a brief overview of your device, displaying its name, capacity, phone number (if applicable), serial number, and iOS version number. (Click the Summary tab if it isn’t displayed already.)
Here you can control how you back up your device. By default, iTunes asks you to choose one option (iCloud or your computer) for backing up. Still, if you choose to back up automatically via iCloud, you can always make an additional manual back up to iTunes by clicking the Back Up Now button you see here.

Check out an overview of your device in the summary screen.
Other options include syncing only checked songs and videos, syncing SD video over HD video, converting high-bit-rate music to lower-quality (and smaller) files for your device, and  specifying accessibility settings.
Additionally, if you’d like to use Wi-Fi Sync to connect your device wirelessly to iTunes in the future, click the ‘Sync with this [device type] over Wi-Fi’ checkbox.
The Info tab, at one point, was the main way to sync your contacts, calendars, and mail between your computer and your device. Now that most people have Google and iCloud accounts, however, this information usually syncs seamlessly over the air. If you’re using a service that won’t wirelessly sync with your device for whatever reason, you can manually sync it here, but most users should be able to ignore this pane entirely.
Click the Apps tab to see syncing options for all your apps. By default, any you’ve downloaded directly to your device are copied to iTunes when you sync (or if you’ve turned on Automatic Downloads in iTunes > Preferences > Store). On this page, iTunes lets you pick and choose the apps you’d like to sync, as well as rearrange your home screens.

Prune and rearrange apps during an iTunes sync using the Apps tab.
Make apps appear and disappear: A comprehensive list of all the apps you own shows up in a column on the left side of the pane; this includes iPhone-only apps, as well as iPad-only and Universal apps. You can sort these apps by name, kind, category, date, and size by using the pop-up menu above the list. To load an app onto your device, click the Install button to the right of the program’s icon; to remove the app, click the Remove button.
Below the list, you’ll see a checkbox that allows you to automatically sync any new apps you’ve purchased on your computer in the iTunes Store. (If you have Automatic Downloads enabled on your device, this checkbox is irrelevant, as any new purchases you make on your laptop or desktop will automatically download directly to your iPhone.)
Organize your home screens: On the right side of the Apps window is a preview of your device’s home screens. You’ll see a large, editable screen, as well as numbered thumbnails representing your other screens. Click a thumbnail to reveal it in the editing window. Here, you can click and drag an app’s icon to change its location. Or, if you see an app you’d like to remove, mouse over it and click the X that appears in the top left corner of the app icon.
Create folders: Still overwhelmed by your apps? Create folders to organize them. Drag one app onto another app; after a slight delay a folder appears with the two apps inside of it. The folder name is editable and you can rearrange icons within the folder.
Add files to some apps: Scroll down further on the Apps tab to access the File Sharing section. Some Apple and third-party apps allow you to add files from your computer via iTunes. (If you have no apps that support file sharing, this section won’t appear.) Click an app in the Apps list to see any files associated with it. To add a file, just drag it from your desktop or click the Add button.
Click the Music tab to see your options for tunes. To add nonpurchased music to your device, click the Sync Music checkbox. iTunes lets you choose between two options: copying your entire music library or copying selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres. You also have the option to include or exclude music videos and voice memos.

The Music tab lets you choose what tunes to sync with your iPhone or iPad: either everything or selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres.
Check for space: If you’re wary of sticking your whole music library on your device, you can preemptively see how much space it will take by looking at the capacity bar at the bottom of the iTunes window. When you select the Entire music library option, iTunes estimates how much space the files will take up and adjusts the bar accordingly. You can also see how many songs you’ll be loading in the upper right corner of the pane.
Fill extra space with surprises: If you decide to pick and choose, iTunes loads a complete list of your music for your perusal. Under the ‘Include music videos’ and “Include voice memos’ options, choose whether you’d like to fill any remaining free space with randomly selected music. Mix and match artists, playlists, albums, and genres by selecting the appropriate checkboxes.
For iTunes Match customers only: If you use iCloud’s $25 per year iTunes Match service, you won’t be able to sync your computer’s music. That’s because iTunes Match takes over the Music app when enabled, allowing you to stream music from your digital library rather than storing it locally on your iPhone, iPod, or iPad. iTunes will let you sync any voice memos you’ve made, but nothing beyond that. If you want to sync and store music on your device, just go to Settings > Music on the device and disable iTunes Match. When you next plug in your device, you should have access to all music sync options.
The Tones tab lets you sync ringtones you’ve created or purchased from the iTunes Store. (If you don’t have any, this pane won’t show up.) If you want to sync all your ringtones, select All Tones; otherwise, click Selected Tones.

Sync any ringtones you’ve purchased or made to your iPhone via the Tones tab.
When you click the Movies tab, you see a list of all the movies you have loaded into iTunes, represented by name and a movie poster or selected screenshot. This might include the latest movie you downloaded from iTunes to watch on the plane, as well as projects of yours that you’re carrying around just in case you catch a movie producer in an elevator.

The Movies tab lets you add movies to your device.
Click the Sync Movies checkbox, and you can automatically include all videos, selected videos, playlists, most recently uploaded videos, or unwatched videos. If you’ve rented movies from the iTunes Store on your computer, they appear at the very top of the screen. Transfer a movie to your iPhone or iPad by highlighting it, and then clicking the Move arrow. If you decide you don’t want to load the film on your device, click the arrow a second time.
As with the Movies tab, you see a list of your television shows, grouped by series, in the TV Shows tab.

In the TV Shows tab, you can add any shows you’ve purchased from iTunes.
Click a show and, in the right column, you see a list of its episodes, organized by season. When syncing manually, you can choose only individual episodes or seasons of selected shows. You can also copy over playlists that include TV episodes. If you choose to sync automatically, however, you can copy over an entire series (or your entire television library). You can also filter within that series to sync only unwatched or newly added episodes.
If you’ve rented TV shows on your computer from the iTunes Store, they appear at the very top of the TV Shows tab. Transfer one to your iPhone or iPad by clicking the Move arrow. You can remove it from your device by clicking the arrow a second time.
The Podcasts pane presents you with a list of all your subscribed podcasts, grouped by series. (If you haven’t subscribed to any, this pane won’t show up for you.) That said, this is one case when iTunes syncing may not be necessary. If you already have the Podcasts app on your iPhone or iPad, that will probably suffice.

Sync your played or unplayed podcasts automatically via the Podcasts tab.
Clicking a podcast displays a list of the show’s episodes, organized by date in ascending order. You can choose to sync your podcasts manually or use iTunes’ automatic options, which offer syncing for the most recently uploaded or unplayed episodes for selected shows or all shows.

The Books pane divides books and Audiobooks into two sections. Choose to sync All books or Selected books. You can peruse a list of your ePubs and PDFs if you want to pick and choose. The Sync Audiobooks pane is organized much the same way.
You can sync any books and PDFs you’ve added to iTunes via the Books tab.
Unlike your other content, your photos and personal video files are only linked to iTunes, rather than stored there. (Your original files remain in Apple’s iPhoto, Aperture, or the image folder you’re syncing with.)

The Photos tab syncs your images from iPhoto, Aperture, or a folder.
To sync photos, go to the Photos pane and choose the application or folder iTunes should link from. For example, if you keep all your images in iPhoto, enable the Sync Photos from option and choose iPhoto in the pop-up menu.
You can sync images according to how they are organized in that application. For example, if you use iPhoto, you’ll see images organized by date. Otherwise you can select only your Pictures folder or a custom folder of your choice.

Unfortunately, you can’t sync your iPhone or iPad with more than one program or with multiple folders. You have to choose one. As with all the other media panes, you can sync your entire photo library to your device or choose selected albums, projects, and (in iPhoto’s or Aperture’s case) Events, Faces, or images with certain star ratings. 

Young's Seafood rebuilds IT department using LANDesk

Frozen fish food company Young's Seafood has deployed LANDesk's Total User Management to rebuild its IT function, following a decision to move IT back in-house.

"With the launch of the new Young's IT organisation and services, it was important that our technology aligned closely with and empowered our business as a whole," said Bill Dougan, principle transition consultant for Young's.

Dougan, who runs the Blue Prairie consultancy, was brought in as an outside consultant to unify IT and create a Young's "flavour" for IT that understood the needs of the business. The food company's previous outsourcing contract was a commodity IT service, but this did not fit in with how the business wanted to use IT.

"We have moved from IT as a cost to IT as an enabler. This is a key mindset change. Young's is now in a position to deploy a new ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. It now has the in-house capabilities to shape services that meet business requirements, instead of using an outsourcing model."

He said Young's selected LANDesk because it needed an IT service delivery tool to support the new IT organisation. The tool needed to encapsulate best practices, while also offering the flexibility to deliver niche capabilities for the business.

Gary Allwood, IT lead service delivery and operation support for Young's Seafood, said: "LANDesk will improve our IT support capabilities by allowing user self-service, automating software management and facilitating control of all end user devices."

Young's Seafood IT team has deployed Total User Management to support employees on both mobile and fixed devices. The software automates common support processes and manages software licences.

Ten fabulous Finder commands you should be using

Think the Finder’s menu commands are simple and straightforward? Think again. Add to your desktop repertoire by using hidden menu (and keyboard) commands. All you need to make them appear is the right magic key: Shift, Option, or Control.

The standard Open command changes to Open in New Window when you hold down the Control key, or to Open in New Window and Close with the Option key pressed.
Want to open a folder? You’ve got options. Select a folder in a Finder window, open the File menu and press the Control key to change the Open command to Open in New Window. Not only do you get to keep the original window around for further work, but also the new window displays the folder’s contents the way you last left it—say, in a short-but-wide, Icon-view window in the lower right of the screen—instead of using the current window’s settings. If you prefer to use the keyboard, press Command as you double-click a folder to get the same effect.

When you want to open a folder the way you left it, but don’t want to be stuck with two open windows, use the Option key to change the Open command to Open in New Window and Close. The original window will close as the new one opens.

With a file selected, pressing the Option key changes the Open command to Open and Close Window. It sounds like a practical joke, but is merely practical, since it opens your document and closes its no-longer-needed window in the Finder. Another approach for this clean-as-you-go procedure is pressing Option when you double-click a folder or file.

A document usually knows what app created it, so when you double-click the file, that app opens. But what if you don’t have the parent application, or if the default program is one you’d rather not use? A JPEG image, for instance, can be opened by Apple’s Preview, Adobe Photoshop, or any Web browser. A text file might open in Microsoft Word, Apple’s TextEdit, or Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit. You can override the default by using the File > Open With command and choosing from the submenu. Or, Control-click (or right-click) on a file, and choose the Open With command in the contextual menu that pops up.

To make the program you choose the new default when you open a particular document, press Option to change the contextual menu’s Open With command to Always Open With. Forever afterward, that document will open in the app you chose from the contextual menu.

Bonus tip: Want to always open a certain type of file in a specific program? You might want, for instance, JPEGs to always open in Photoshop so you can edit them, instead of in Preview. Select any JPEG and choose File > Get Info. In the Info window’s Open With section, select an app from the drop-down menu, click the Change All button, and click Continue in the confirmation dialog box.

You use File > Get Info on Finder items, right? It opens the Info window for the selected item, which provides all sorts of…well, info. You’ll find the basics of kind, size, and created and modified dates, and you can change things like the item’s icon or label color. But press Control, and the menu command changes to Get Summary Info. Press Option, and you get Show Inspector (or Hide Inspector if it’s showing). What’s the difference?

Select three documents and choose File > Get Info to see three individual Info windows (left). Press the Control key to reveal the Get Summary Info menu command that opens a single aggregate window (top right). The Option key reveals the Show Inspector menu command, which opens the Inspector window (bottom right), which changes in response to what you select in the Finder.
If you have only a single item selected, there’s no difference between Get Info and Get Summary Info. But say you want to move several large files to a USB stick and you want to know if they’ll fit. There are other items in the folder, so checking the folder size won’t help.

Instead, select all the files and use the Control key to reveal Get Summary Info. Select this, and you get a single window, titled Multiple Item Info, that summarizes the group selection, including the files’ total size. You can also use this window to set some options on all the selected items at once. For example, you can change their label color, lock or unlock them, set the Open With application, and even change their icons. (How do you change the icon? Click the icon in the top of the Info window of a file whose icon you like, and choose Edit > Copy. Select the icon in another file’s Info window, and choose Edit > Paste.)

The Finder’s Inspector window is a hidden gem. Select an item, or multiple items. Hold Option to change the File menu’s Open command to Show Inspector. The window that appears when you select this seems, at first glance, to be a duplicate of the Info window. But a closer look reveals that it has a different title bar—thin and squared off instead of the standard height with rounded corners. And, sure enough, it behaves like a palette rather than a window, remaining on top of all other Finder windows. But that’s a minor convenience.

Its real power is that it changes to reflect whatever selection you make in your Finder window. So, you don’t have to open and close individual Info windows to inspect file and folder information.

Sure, you can copy and paste files and folders in the Finder with the Edit menu’s basic Copy and Paste commands (Command-C and Command-V, respectively) . But there’s another option—or should I say “Option”? Use the Option key to change the Finder’s Paste Item command to Move to Here. (Its keyboard shortcut, Command-Option-C, adds Option to the standard Copy shortcut.) This is much easier than dragging an item to a new location when the target window isn’t already open. For more details, check out this article I wrote about special uses for the Copy and Paste commands.

Your current window shows your folder’s contents, but you want to move up to see what else is in its parent folder. So you select Go > Enclosing Folder (or press Command-Up Arrow). But if what you really want to do is to peruse the enclosing folder without losing the current window, press the Control key to change the command to Enclosing Folder in New Window (or press Command-Control-Up Arrow).

You can change or close all your Finder windows in one fell swoop just by adding the Option key. For example, select the Window menu and then hold down Option. The Minimize and Zoom commands change to Minimize All and Zoom All. Use the same trick to change File > Close Window command to Close All.

Bonus tip: Click on the red, yellow, or green button at the top of any Finder window while holding down Option to close, minimize, or zoom all open windows.

Say someone has explained that you can fix a wonky program by deleting its preferences files. Here’s a quick way to get to those files in your Library folder without drilling down through many folders: Select the Go menu and then press Option to see Library appear in the list of options.

On a big screen, you may have to drag a long way to move an icon into the Dock. Instead, select the icon, and press Shift to change the File menu’s ‘File > Add to Sidebar’ command to File > Add to Dock.

When you’ve made one or more selections in a List view window that has no empty space at its bottom, it’s not easy to deselect everything. That is, not unless you use Option to change Edit > Select All (Command-A) to Edit > Deselect All (Command-Option-A).

There are two basic organizational options for a Finder window: sorting, which puts things in order by name, size, kind, modified date, and so on, and arranging, which groups things according to certain aspects. You can use both options to, say, group things according to type—folders in one group, documents in another—and then sort items within those groups by something like creation date. The View menu provides only an Arrange By command, and you’re stuck sorting things by clicking on columns in List view windows—unless you press Option to change the command to Sort By.

Install any version of Windows using any Windows disc you can find

Reader Chris needs to reinstall Windows 7 Home Basic on his laptop. Just one problem: he lost his recovery discs.

A more common problem is when you need to reinstall Windows and you never had recovery discs to begin with. Few manufacturers provide them anymore, and many new PCs don't have optical drives even if they did.

Thankfully, there's a way around this. All you need is a Windows ISO file (basically the entire Windows operating system in a single container) and the free Ei.cfg Removal Utility. The latter deletes a key file inside the former, thus allowing you to install any version of Windows.

Let me explain that a bit further. Windows 7 and 8 installation discs are version-specific; they're designed to match up with your product key. That's why you can't use, say, a Windows 7 Home Premium product key to install Windows 7 Professional, even if you have a disc for the latter.

Likewise, even if Chris somehow laid hands on a Windows 7 Home Premium disc, his Home Basic license key wouldn't work. That's where Ei.cfg Removal Utility comes in: It effectively creates a "universal" Windows ISO, one that will install whatever version matches your product key.

From a high-level perspective, the process would work like this: Borrow a friend's install DVD, copy the ISO file from it to your hard drive, then run Ei.cfg. When it's done doing its thing, use the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool to put that tweaked ISO on a flash drive.

Now, just boot from that flash drive and choose the version of Windows you want to install. Enter your license key and you're good to go. (Don't bother trying to sneak an upgrade; remember, your key will work only with the version of Windows that came with your PC. In Chris' case, that's Windows 7 Home Basic.)

Can't find an install disc or don't have an optical drive? There are "official" Windows 7 SP1 ISO downloads available from the Windows 7 Forums.

Chrome rich notifications go live for all Windows users; good luck using them

Richer notifications are now available in the latest stable version of Chrome for Windows, version 28.

Chrome has offered notifications outside of the browser window for some time, first introducing the feature for Gmail in 2011. The difference now is the richer-notifications feature lets developers of Chrome apps and extensions send interactive pop-up notifications to your desktop. Hangouts could, for example, send you a chat pop-up notification with options to reply, email, or call the person you’re chatting with.

The new feature also adds the oft-discussed notification center to Chrome for Windows, which allows you to get updates on the desktop from online services—even when the full Chrome browser isn’t running.

Although richer notifications and the notification center are activated by default, you won’t see anything new unless you’re using a Chrome app or extension that has enabled the feature.

Google did not provide a list of which apps and extensions the feature currently works with, but after publication, a Google representative contacted us to offer three specific examples of Chrome apps with rich notifications that Windows users can try out.

A Google spokesperson told PCWorld that richer notifications have to be enabled on a per-app basis. You can enable Gmail, for example, to send desktop notifications by clicking on the gear icon on the right-hand side of your inbox and selecting Settings>General.

Scroll down to “Desktop notifications” on the next screen and turn on notifications for mail and chat. These are the same settings that have been around for two years, so most users probably already have enabled them.

A Google spokesperson said the richer notifications should appear by activating this feature but, in my tests Wednesday, I couldn’t see any interactive features in the Gmail version.

I also tried getting notifications using the Hangouts extension for Chrome that puts Hangouts in the Windows taskbar. But again, no richer notifications. Checking out forums and sites around the Web, it seems other users are also coming up empty in the search for richer notifications and the notification center.

Update: After this story went live, a Google representative contacted us to offer three specific examples of Chrome apps with rich notifications that Windows users can try out. They are:
Ouistiti: A simple example application that prompts you to take a photo with your Webcam every day.Checker Plus for Gmail: Desktop rich notifications for new email.Checker Plus for Google Calendar: Desktop rich notifications for calendar events.

Examples of desktop rich notifications for Checker Plus for Gmail (giving you the chance to mark the message as read or delete it), left, and Ouistiti (giving you the chance to take a webcam shot or to remind you to take it later).
Richer notifications, once they do work, are part of a larger push from Google to take features from Chrome OS and put them in Chrome for Windows and Mac that create a mini-OS inside your PC’s regular operating system.

Beyond richer notifications, Google is working on bringing packaged apps to Windows, which are Chrome-based apps that act as regular desktop apps. Packaged apps also come with a separate app launcher that allows you to launch specific Chrome apps right from the taskbar. This feature currently is only available to users in the Chrome Dev update channel.

Another long-anticipated service expected to land on Chrome for PCs is Google Now, the company’s take on a personal digital assistant that delivers information as you need it. The service can, for example, alert you when to leave for an appointment across town based on current traffic conditions, or let you know about the flight status for an upcoming trip. Google Now was spotted in Chrome Canary, the alpha build of Chrome, back in March, but was not operational.

The Richer notifications feature isn’t the only significant change to the latest stable edition of Chrome for Windows. The new build is also using the Blink browser engine first announced in April after Google split with WebKit. The new version of Chrome also fixes more than 15 bugs and security fixes affecting Windows users.

By now, most people should be using the updated version of the Chrome browser. If you want to verify you’re on the latest build, type chrome://chrome in your browser’s address bar. The version number at the top should be 28.0.1500.71m.

How Microsoft is using live data to redefine the Office 'document'

Microsoft is planning an overhaul of our Office documents, weaving live data into the once-static fabric of our Word files and Excel spreadsheets. It’s a bold experiment that could kill the very definition of an Office “document”—but it could also spell the rebirth of Microsoft’s productivity suite in the age of cloud-driven collaboration.

At its Build 2013 conference in June, Microsoft evangelized tools that will enable app developers to automatically use Bing’s search capabilities in documents—for example, they might enhance a travel guide with live demographic information on Belize. And Microsoft’s new PowerBI tools, announced Monday at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference, can import data from both public and private sources to provide more up-to-date context in documents.

Both developments reveal a sea change in the way we’ll interact with Microsoft Office in the future. In the current regime, you create an Office document, save it, and then email it to a colleague, who quite likely prints it out. Indeed, the documents we create today represent just a slice of information within a brief snapshot of time.

But all this can change once Office begins hooking into living data. Office docs won’t simply document the past: They’ll also accurately reflect the ever-changing present.

MicrosoftKelly Waldher, Microsoft
”In the past, people would send around a static spreadsheet or a static PDF, with static data,” Kelly Waldher, director of Office 365 product management for Microsoft, said in an interview. “What PowerBI offers with Office 365 are a couple of new elements: real-time updates and real-time data.”

Microsoft has connected its SQL Azure cloud database to SharePoint Online, creating shared PowerBI workspaces that partners and coworkers can access, Waldher said. With a live data source powering the document, you can be sure you’re getting the most up-to-date information—and therefore the best information to base decisions on. This model assumes that documents will no longer be printed out or archived in a dead, static format, since doing so would rob them of the contextual intelligence that live data offers.

Microsoft understands that its vision will first be enabled within business environments, where enterprise tools can make sense of big data. But it’s not hard to imagine a future where a college paper on climate change might feature an interactive map that plots average mean temperatures for various cities. With consumers increasingly turning to the cloud for data storage, people will place less value on older, static documents, and more on up-to-date responses to changing conditions. That preference could extend way beyond Microsoft, and into the greater information ecosystem as a whole.

Microsoft sees its Bing search technology as the foundation for a number of capabilities.
At Microsoft’s Build 2013 conference, Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Information Platform & Experience group, announced “Bing as a platform,” taking what we know as Microsoft’s search engine, and making it available to developers as a third-party API. “The unbounded knowledge of the Web is now available to your applications,” Pall said.

One of the tricks Microsoft executives showed was the capability to scan a block of text for keywords—such as “Valencia, Spain”—and hotlink the text to Bing-curated data. It exemplified how we might take an otherwise static document and enrich it with the Web at large.

This past March, Microsoft launched a preview of its Data Explorer tool, which allowed users to pull data from various sources and put it into Excel documents. For example, you could tell Excel to pull a compilation of credit card complaints from data.gov, or to pull a list of World Cup winners from a Wikipedia article. By itself, that capability wasn’t terribly exciting.

MicrosoftThe number of songs we listen to and purchase has declined, data reveals.
But on Monday, Microsoft renamed Data Explorer as “Power Query,” and surrounded it with a number of equally robust tools: Power Map for geolocating data; Power Pivot for flexible data models within Excel; and Power View, which allows Excel to parse data itself and to attempt to present the most relevant views automatically. Microsoft has also developed a number of BI “live sites” where customers can interact and share data.

Microsoft corporate fellow Amir Netz did a wonderful job of putting it all in context. (Netz’s presentation is archived here; fast-forward to 4:03:05 for the BI demo.) In a demonstration that used a database of popular music as an example, Netz typed in “top rock classics” as a query. The responses were automatically sorted into a track list from the 1970s and 1980s, cross-indexed by the number of weeks each song appeared on the chart. Highlighting certain words auto-suggested other choices. Highlighting “songs,” for example, suggested a list of “albums” with the same characteristics, providing avenues for further exploration.

“When I typed ‘top rock classics,’ it understood I meant rock,” Netz said. “And when I said ‘classics,’ it understood that I meant music from a certain era—the ’70s and the ’80s—and not the 1950s.”

Asking for the number of songs by year automatically generated a line graph tracking how the number of popular songs people listened to decreased between 1970 and 2000. Netz finished up by asking PowerBI to determine the best song of all time (Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours”) and the best artist of all time (Mariah Carey). This assessment was based on what the database “knew” about each artist. Netz finished with a “king of the hill” visualization that tracked which artist dominated during which year.

”It is the beginning of a conversation with PowerBI,” Netz said, as he input a query into the search box.

MicrosoftMadonna ruled 1987 in this “king of the hill” visualization.
If Microsoft’s vision takes hold, static documents loaded with static data will seem increasingly irrelevant as time goes by. Imagine a PDF from your travel agency that answers the basic question, “What are the best countries for me to visit in Europe and the Middle East for a summer vacation?” In today’s version of the document, the answers are fixed. But we should be able to ask that query at any time, and receive answers that reflect a multitude of variables—exchange rates, hotel availability, weather, and political stability.

MicrosoftAre natural-language queries the future of data interaction?

We already live in a world where the living Web and other information sources dynamically respond to changing conditions. Take, for example, the Max tool from Netflix, which asks you questions to determine which movie you want to view. The Netflix database constantly updates itself with new movie titles, and uses information gleaned from everyone’s user searches to make other recommendations.

So at what point will traditional Office “documents”—spreadsheets, Word documents, and the like—begin to go away, victims of their own irrelevance? We don’t need to store Word documents that list the 20 bands that have the most number one hits, because that information is already stored in a database somewhere. But we will store our own analyses that machines can’t provide: the fable of Beowulf and Grendel analyzed in a historical context, for example.

If Microsoft’s vision of live, connected files becomes reality, the document of tomorrow could evolve into a framework, a predefined query. We may not know what the 100 highest-grossing movies of 2010 through 2020 will be, but we can create a document that’s preformatted to access that information—and to do so in a way that will let us quickly determine whether a sequel is primed for box-office success.

If that happens, seemingly disparate technologies—Office, Bing, and Azure—will become more closely tied to one another. And what we mean by “documents” will move far beyond today’s traditional definition.

As a result, live data sources will serve as increasingly tangible barriers that prevent data from migrating off of Office to other platforms. Indeed, while Google Apps and Apple’s iWork might let you open Microsoft’s PowerPoint format, you may not find the same level of support for Microsoft’s highly involved living-data technologies. For business users, at least, it may pay to remain under Microsoft’s umbrella.

Test Run: Using E-Mail Data to Connect the Dots of Your Life

The Obama administration for over two years allowed the National Security Agency to collect enormous amounts of metadata on e-mail usage by Americans, according to one of the latest leaks of government documents by the now-famous whistle-blower Edward J. Snowden.

But what is e-mail metadata anyway? It’s information about the people you’re sending e-mails to and receiving e-mails from, and the times that the messages were sent — as opposed to the contents of the messages. It’s the digital equivalent of a postal service worker looking at your mail envelope instead of opening it up and reading what’s inside.

That sounds harmless, but it turns out your e-mail metadata can be used to connect the dots of your life story. I learned this from participating in Immersion, a project by M.I.T.’s Media Laboratory, earlier reported by my colleague Juliet Lapidos. Immersion is a tool that mines your e-mail metadata and automatically stitches it all together into an interactive graphic. The result is a creepy spider web showing all the people you’ve corresponded with, how they know each other, and who your closest friends and professional partners are.

After entering my Google mail credentials, Immersion took five minutes to stitch together metadata from e-mails going back eight years. A quick glimpse at my results gives an accurate description of my life.

In an Immersion chart, each person is represented by dots. The more you’ve e-mailed with the person, the bigger the dot gets. In my results, the biggest dot was my boss at my last job; the second biggest was my long-term former girlfriend. The medium-size ones were some of my closest friends. Lines that connected some dots showed friends of mine who knew each other.

One can imagine that mining the metadata of a person suspected of a crime is an effective tool to track down his accomplices. But considering how easily and quickly this can be done, it’s not hard to assume that the government collects these records on just about everyone. That seems to be the point that Immersion is trying to make.

After being thoroughly disturbed, I removed Immersion’s permission to access my account and asked the project to delete my metadata. But it left me with the feeling that more about me is already known than I’d like, and it’s already too late.

The Times’s technology writers offer their first impressions on new Web services, apps and other products.

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MIT researchers can see through walls using 'Wi-Vi'

If Google Glass isn't enough to get you worried about technology, how about a device that can see through walls using Wi-Fi?

 

Researchers at MIT are experimenting with a system called Wi-Vi, which they say can track moving objects through walls by using the inexpensive, nearly ubiquitous wireless system. Wi-Vi could be built into a smartphone or a special handheld device and used in search-and-rescue missions and law enforcement, according to Dina Katabi, the MIT professor who developed Wi-Vi along with graduate student Fadel Adib.

 

But Katabi thinks consumers might use Wi-Vi, too. For example, someone walking outdoors at night who thought they were being followed might use it to detect a person behind a fence or around a corner, she said.

 

There's no need to worry about the person in the next hotel room watching you dress, at least not yet. The display has very low resolution today, more like a radar tracking an airplane than an X-ray showing details. An MIT video shows how it looks. But Katabi says she and Adib are working on higher resolution and the system might someday show recognizable faces. Before then, society might want to develop policies around how it could be used.

 

"Like all technologies in the world, it depends on us how we use them," Katabi said.

 

Wi-Vi works by sending Wi-Fi radio waves through a barrier and measuring the way they bounce back. It's similar to the way radar and sonar work, but without the expensive, bulky gear and restricted frequencies that radar requires, according to Katabi.

 

Every time a Wi-Fi signal is reflected off an object, the shape and makeup of that object affects the signal that comes back. But when Wi-Fi hits a wall, most of the signal gets reflected off the wall and only a faint bit of it reflects off the people on the other side.

 

To get around this, Wi-Vi transmits two Wi-Fi signals, one of which is the inverse of the other. When one signal hits a stationary object, the other cancels it out. But because of the way the signals are encoded, they don't cancel each other out for moving objects. That makes the reflections from a moving person visible despite the wall between that person and the Wi-Vi device. Wi-Vi can translate those faint reflections into a real-time display of the person's movements.

 

The key benefits of Wi-Vi over current ways of seeing through walls, such as radar and sonar, are cost, power and size. At the heart of the technology is its encoding scheme, which can be implemented in silicon, Katabi said. Wi-Vi could be built into a cellphone soon, and for not much more than the cost of a regular Wi-Fi module, she said.

 

"All the components we use are ones typically used in a Wi-Fi handheld device," she said.

 

Because of its underlying technology, Wi-Vi also wouldn't represent a big drain on batteries, Katabi said.

 

Bringing wall-penetrating vision to handheld devices could open up a lot more uses for it. Current radar-based systems used in the U.S. military are so big they need to be transported on trucks, Katabi said. Even the Army might need a more portable tool for seeing through walls in certain settings, she said.

 

Wi-Vi's capabilities might also help searchers find people trapped in collapsed buildings after earthquakes. Police could use it to detect the number of people in a room and their movements, preventing an ambush when they raided the room. Used with a gaming console, it could allow players to walk away from the console into another room and keep playing the game, Katabi said.

 

Because of its low resolution, Wi-Vi could actually enhance people's privacy rather than erode it in some cases, Katabi said. For example, it could be used to remotely monitor whether an elderly parent had gotten out of bed or gone into the kitchen, without installing video cameras that the parent might find intrusive.

 

But whether in the hands of police or of ordinary people, a widely available tool to see through walls raises questions that the law hasn't answered, said Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

 

"Your location is something that's worthy of privacy," Fakhoury said. "We know that, even within your house, where you go can reveal a lot about yourself."

 

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