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Microsoft’s latest Beta release for Edge — build 142.0.3595.33 — delivers a pragmatic but meaningful tweak to the browser’s Autofill behavior while continuing a longer-term push toward faster WebUI code and deeper Copilot integration, all shipped as part of a staged rollout that prioritizes controlled exposure and compatibility. Background Microsoft published official Beta-channel release notes for Microsoft Edge showing version 142.0.3595.33 as the October 21, 2025 Beta release. The notes...

Windows 11’s Alt + Tab shortcut no longer has to be the same cramped, tab-filled grid many of us tolerate—Windows now exposes useful built-in controls to limit or remove tabs from the Alt + Tab view, and a mature third‑party tool, Alt‑Tab Terminator, can replace the system switcher with a searchable, keyboard‑first interface that accelerates real work. This piece explains exactly what you can change, walks through safe setup options, compares the native tweaks with the Alt‑Tab Terminator...

Microsoft’s awkward paperclip mascot has been given a new lease on life — not as a standalone help feature but as a playful Easter egg inside a very modern, voice-first AI persona called Mico, the new visual face of Microsoft Copilot, and the internet has predictably exploded with amusement, nostalgia, and suspicion. In a short, viral clip shared by Microsoft’s CEO, the company’s corporate VP of product and growth for Microsoft AI demonstrated Copilot’s voice mode avatar Mico reacting in...

Oppo’s renewed partnership with Google promises to make the Find X9 Series and ColorOS 16 a showcase for mobile-first AI — combining Google’s Gemini models (including the Nano Banana image tool and Gemini Live capabilities) with Oppo’s new AI Mind Space and a privacy-first Private Computing Cloud — a move that pushes sophisticated generative and multimodal features deeper into the smartphone but raises important questions about availability, data handling, and the limits of cloud vs...

OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Atlas browser is a bold reinvention of the browser as an agentic assistant — but its debut has reopened a high-stakes debate about prompt injection, covert exfiltration channels, and how much trust we should grant assistants that can read, remember and act on behalf of users. Atlas ships a persistent ChatGPT sidecar, optional “browser memories,” and an Agent Mode that can open tabs, click, fill forms and perform multi‑step workflows. OpenAI has responded with...

Microsoft's 2015 bet — that the company needed a radical rethink of what a phone should be — reads today like both a frustrated plea and a surprisingly prescient strategy note: reject the me‑too handset, fuse mobile with PC-grade productivity, and invent a pocket‑sized form factor that plays to Microsoft’s strengths in software, continuity, and enterprise services. The intervening decade has been messy, instructive, and uneven: Windows Phone collapsed under app‑market economics, Surface...

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas browser, YouTube’s new Shorts time‑limit, Mozilla’s experimental new‑tab widgets, a Wikimedia Foundation warning about falling human pageviews, and two consequential Windows 11 security regressions together make October’s tech headlines a compact snapshot of 2025’s biggest themes: AI pushing into core consumer software, platforms wrestling with attention and attribution, and legacy OS vendors fighting a steady stream of regressions introduced by aggressive patching...

Last Halloween's little audio prank turned into a UX lesson: Discord re-enabled its seasonal Halloween Event Sound Pack by default last year, confusing and alarming users who assumed their PC audio had broken — and this October the company has added an in-client pop-up to warn people up front before the spooky sounds start. Background Seasonal UI flourishes — themed icons, limited-time stickers, special ringtones — are a familiar way for consumer apps to add flavor and engagement. Discord's...

Microsoft’s latest Copilot refresh recasts the assistant as a social, opinionated, and operating companion: an optional animated avatar called Mico, an opt‑in “Real Talk” conversation style that will push back politely instead of always agreeing, new group collaboration features and Learn Live tutoring, health-focused grounding, expanded connectors and persistent memory, plus deeper Edge integrations that let Copilot act on and resume research. Background / Overview Microsoft unveiled this...

Microsoft’s Copilot has been given a new face: an animated, intentionally non‑human avatar called Mico arrives as the centerpiece of the Copilot Fall Release, a consumer‑focused update that pairs personality with functional upgrades including long‑term memory, shared group sessions, new connectors, and voice‑first tutoring capabilities. Background Microsoft’s history with persona‑driven assistants is long and instructive. Early experiments such as the Office Assistant (commonly remembered as...

Microsoft has formally announced that Office Online Server (OOS) — the on‑premises product that delivered browser‑based Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote to enterprise datacenters — will be retired and reach end of support on December 31, 2026, forcing organizations that require in‑browser editing without using Microsoft’s cloud to choose between migration, expensive workarounds, or operating unsupported software. Background / Overview Office Online Server was introduced as the on‑premises...

A quietly disruptive bug in Windows 11 25H2 is leaving Azure‑joined users with German umlauts locked out of the OneDrive desktop client — a reproducible failure that prevents sign‑in and full access to cloud files and that appears to surface when a user’s display name (or the resulting C:\Users\ folder) contains special characters such as ä, ö, ü. Background The issue was first publicized by a German reader’s report and subsequent blog posts that reproduced the problem across multiple...

Galleri 5’s premiere of what is being billed as India’s first AI-powered OTT serial marks a watershed moment for the country’s media ecosystem — but the story behind the launch is as much about cloud partnerships, corporate acquisitions, and technical tradeoffs as it is about a new way to tell old stories. The first installment of the 100-episode Mahabharat reimagining, Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, went live on major platforms this month, and industry filings and press material show Galleri5...

Microsoft’s latest Windows 11 preview fundamentally reshapes the Start menu into a single, scrollable hub that promotes the All apps list to the main surface, adds two new browsing modes (Category and Grid), folds a Phone Link pane into the Start chrome, and ties Copilot and File Explorer more tightly into everyday discovery — a set of changes arriving to Windows Insiders now through a phased, controlled feature rollout. Background Microsoft has been iterating the Windows 11 Start experience...

Microsoft has quietly changed File Explorer in Windows 11 so that the Preview pane will no longer render files that Windows marks as coming from the Internet — a sweeping, security-first move that blocks inline previews for files bearing the Mark‑of‑the‑Web (MoTW) and forces users to open files in their native apps if they want to inspect contents. Background File Explorer’s Preview pane has been a productivity shortcut for years: click a file, skim its content, and move on without launching...

Microsoft has issued a clear — if not fully satisfying — response after users flagged that the new Gaming Copilot in Windows 11’s Xbox Game Bar appeared to be capturing screenshots and OCR’d text from games and sending that data off the machine, with at least one forum poster claiming the data included material covered by an NDA. Background / Overview Gaming Copilot is Microsoft’s AI assistant for players, integrated into the Xbox Game Bar overlay on Windows 11 and offered in a beta to...

Microsoft’s new animated avatar Mico is the most visible symbol of a deliberate — and risky — design shift: give Copilot a friendly, non‑human face that makes voice conversations feel natural, while pairing that personality with stronger controls for memory, group collaboration, and “real talk.” Background For decades Microsoft has experimented with embodied digital assistants — from the Office Assistant “Clippit” (better known as Clippy) in the late 1990s to the voice assistant Cortana —...

Microsoft’s latest Copilot “Fall Release” recasts the assistant as a deliberately human‑centred companion — a bundled set of a dozen consumer‑facing upgrades that add personality, long‑term memory, group collaboration, browser‑level agency, and health and learning workflows to Copilot across Windows, Edge and Microsoft’s mobile surfaces. Background / Overview Microsoft has steadily moved Copilot from a feature inside Office and Edge into a platform‑level assistant embedded across Windows...

UBS’s field checks at Oracle’s AI World suggest a broadly positive but measured story: “stable, healthy” cloud spending is underpinning demand, and the largest hyperscalers — Amazon (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft (Azure) — are positioned to capture the bulk of that growth, albeit with different upside and risk profiles. Background Cloud spending has moved from optional IT modernization to a near‑universal requirement for enterprises building AI, analytics, and modern SaaS. Over the past...

Simpson Associates has taken a decisive step to scale its Microsoft-centric data and AI practice after securing strategic growth capital from Beech Tree Private Equity in a transaction announced on 24 October 2025, a move that funds accelerated organic expansion, investment in agentic AI capabilities, productisation and a buy‑and‑build M&A programme. Background / Overview Simpson Associates is a UK‑headquartered data transformation services firm based in York with an additional office in...