One of a phone’s most used features is its camera, and yet relatively little was known about the Surface Duo’s camera. However, in a private Q&A livestream held by the Microsoft Store today, Microsoft has revealed a little more about what we can expect from the unique handset’s camera.
A series of screenshots detail the camera app that the phone will ship with, and there’s nothing unusual here. The app follows the traditional camera app layout that we have come to expect: the view from the lens covers the whole screen, with a large circular shutter button overlaid on top of the image. More interestingly, we can also see the different shooting modes, though these aren’t groundbreaking either with users being able to take one of a: photo, video, slow-mo, portrait or panorama. At the top of the UI are options for switching the flash on/off and setting a timer for a photo to be taken.
Unfortunately, the screenshots do little to reveal exactly how good the Duo’s 11MP performs; it seems as though we will have to wait until nearer the handset’s 10 September release date to find that out. It seems unlikely that the camera will be a major selling point of the device though, with it’s unique, hinged, dual-screen design seeing to that.
Dictation is now available in Word for Mac. This feature enables you to save time and stay in flow by using speech-to-text to quickly get your thoughts into your document.
Prerequisites
In order to use the Dictate feature, you need:
A microphone-enabled device or an external microphone
Insider build 16.32 (19120802) or later installed
To be logged into an account associated with an Office 365 subscription
A stable internet connection
For best results, use a headset or microphone recommended for dictating. Also try eliminating background noise from your environment.
Configuration
Make sure your microphone-enabled device is on and confirm that the language is set to the one you’d like to dictate by clicking the down arrow on the Dictate button. We currently do not auto-detect the language you’re speaking.
If you have problems with your microphone-enabled device, check the sound input settings in System Preferences or dictation troubleshooting instructions.
Start Dictation
1. To turn on Dictation, click Home > Dictate.
2. Click on the Dictate button and wait for the red dot to appear.
3. Start talking and notice that the spoken text appears on your screen. If you see a mistake, simply move your cursor to fix it and move it back to continue dictating. You do not need to toggle off the Dictate button while making corrections.
4. When you’re done, click the Dictate button.
Tips & Tricks
When dictating:
Speak clearly and conversationally, but feel free to pause in between thoughts.
Add punctuation by saying the name of the punctuation mark you want to add out loud.
Period
Comma
Question mark
Exclamation point/mark
New line
Semicolon
Colon
Open quote(s)
Close quote(s)
To turn the microphone on without having to always go to the Home tab, you can add the microphone button to your Quick Access Toolbar.
This feature is powered by the Microsoft Azure Speech Services and built-in directly to Word.
Microsoft launched today a new service that provides Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) customers a straightforward way of communicating with its real-world threat analysts during a security incident. The Experts on Demand feature is now available to everyone as part of the Microsoft Threat Experts threat hunting service.
The Microsoft Threat Experts offering was unveiled in February of this year as a Microsoft 365 feature. That service was meant to detect threats and help customers ask for advice from a threat expert through a button in Windows Defender ATP. With the new feature, security departments within an organization can consult a threat analyst when they receive alerts about acute attacks such as a dangerous kernel device,
The new feature can be accessed from the Microsoft Defender Security Center app in the Actions drop-down menu. Through this service, Microsoft’s security analysts can provide security operations teams with guidance and insights to “understand, prevent, and respond to complex threats in their environments.” The targeted attack notifications feature, another Microsoft Threat Experts capability, is designed to notify organizations about critical threats against their networks on time. This notification includes information on the timeline, the scope of a breach, and the methods of intrusion. Dustin Duran, Principal Group Manager at Microsoft Defender ATP Research, described in a blog post how the new ATP endpoint protection capabilities helped one of its customers spot a malicious file in a single machine and found indications of a new campaign from an advanced adversary that targeted it. Then, the organization’s security team consulted with Microsoft Threat Experts, which, in turn, validated the security team’s findings. Finally, it was found that the “initial malware infection was the result of weak security control,” which granted users unrestricted administrator privilege.
Earlier this year at its Build 2019 developer conference, Microsoft announced IE Mode for its upcoming Chromium-based version of Edge. Now, you can finally use it.
The feature allows you to open a webpage in an Internet Explorer tab within the Edge browser itself. You’ll need to enable a flag called ‘Enable IE Integration’ first, and then when you have a page open, you can go to More tools -> Show this page using Internet Explorer to change the tab you’re in.
Start writing or type / to choose a block
It’s worth noting that the flag was actually discovered a few weeks ago, but enabling it at the time would only launch IE as a separate application. Now, there’s a new option in the dropdown list, so you can choose between Default, Disabled, IE Mode, and NeedIE.
IE Mode is already available in the Dev branch; however, you won’t find it in Edge for Mac. This is because Internet Explorer isn’t supported on Macs, so it was deemed unnecessary.
Another new feature added is a flag called ‘Limit media autoplay’, which will block certain sites from autoplaying video. If you want to check out the Edge Insider builds, you can find it here.
Microsoft today announced the Fluid Framework, a new platform that will let developers create faster and more flexible web-based distributed apps. Promising to “break down the barriers of the traditional document as we know it”, it promises co-authoring at speeds never before achieved by anyone.
The Fluid Framework allows you to take content from the web or from different apps, deconstruct them, and reconstruct them into different modular components, allowing members of the team to work together in a more efficient way. It also allows for “intelligent agents” to work with real people to “co-author, fetch content, provide photo suggestions, identify experts, translate data and more”.
The Framework could allow you to work on a document with authors from around the world that speak different languages, providing real-time translation. The example used was if you’re writing an HR manual. After various authors worked together on it, another team could use various calculations in that document, and it all sort of seamlessly works together.
Microsoft said that the Fluid Framework will be available to developers later on this year with an SDK, when the firm is also planning to provide Microsoft 365 experiences with the Fluid Framework.
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