Microsoft is apparently working on a revamped Xbox Store that uses the same design language as the new Xbox app on Windows 10. If the new Store codenamed “Mercury” could soon be available in preview for select for Xbox Insiders, Russian website Community managed to get early access to it and published some screenshots of the redesigned storefront today.

Windows Central, which previously reported on the “Mercury” app, confirmed the authenticity of the screenshots today. The redesigned Xbox Store is apparently running on a Windows 10 PC, but it shows Xbox One games as well as other sections dedicated to Movies & TV and Xbox One apps.

Overall, this new design looks much better than the current Xbox Store on the console, with a better Fluent Design implementation and rounded corners that are consistent with the new Xbox app on Windows 10. We’re glad to see Microsoft starting to harmonize Xbox experiences across platforms, and it would actually be great if the Windows 10 Microsoft Store could get a similar revamp.

In addition to a fresh coat of paint, we also hope that this revamped Xbox Store will be faster to navigate than the current version, which could use some performance improvements. Anyway, there are some exciting times ahead for Xbox enthusiasts, and Microsoft may have more to share soon during the June Xbox 20/20 Update, which will be dedicated to Xbox platform improvements.

Microsoft is currently working on a new Microsoft Edge feature that will run Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) at startup on your PC. First spotted by Techdows, the feature is currently hidden behind an experimental flag on the Microsoft Edge Canary channel, and once enabled will bring an option in the installation prompt of the PWAs to automatically run them on your system’s startup.

If you’re running the latest version (85.0.535.0) of Microsoft Edge Canary, you can access this experimental flag by heading to edge://flags, search for the “Desktop PWAs run on OS login” flag and enable it. Finally, you need to restart your browser to apply the latest settings. Once you enable this flag and check the PWA installation prompts, Microsoft Edge will automatically move your PWAs to the startup folder located on your PC. Apparently, this feature will work on all platforms including Windows and Chrome OS.

Considering that some PWAs are now just as good as native apps, this new feature should be pretty handy for Microsoft Edge users. Do you think that having a couple of PWAs that automatically launch when you first boot your machine will eventually improve our workflow? Sound off in the comments down below.

If you’ve been using Microsoft’s Xbox Console Companion UWP app this week, you may have noticed that the latest update added a giant ad for Microsoft’s new Xbox app that launched with Xbox Game Pass for PC last year. The message mentions that “the new Xbox app is replacing the Console Companion,” so it looks like the days of the old UWP app are now numbered.

Microsoft’s Xbox Console Companion app debuted as the universal “Xbox” app on Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile back in 2015. This app has been pretty much neglected in recent years, though it still has some exclusive features such as the ability to stream games from your Xbox One to your PC.

The Xbox Console Companion app also integrates Xbox Lives features that the new Game Pass-focused Xbox app lacks, such as Clubs or Looking for Groups. However, the new Xbox app remains a better experience overall, adopting the same design language previously seen in the new Xbox Game Bar. The app also received a speed and performance boost earlier this year after dropping the Electron framework in favor of React Native.

It’s not clear yet when the Xbox Console Companion UWP app will be officially replaced by Microsoft’s new Xbox app. The latter still has to be installed manually via the Microsoft Store, and even if it recently dropped its “beta” tag, it still lacks some of the Xbox Live social features still present in the Xbox Console Companion app. Anyway, it’s nice to see Microsoft consolidating its Xbox experiences on Windows 10, and the new Xbox app is already a pretty solid game launcher and digital store for Xbox Game Pass subscribers.

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Microsoft Corporation

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Like the rest of the (quarantined) world, I’ve been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons quite obsessively the past few months. Decorating my island and home with furniture and items, talking to my favorite island residents, digging up fossils, and catching bugs and fish has been quite addicting for me.

Admittedly, that means I’ve spent over 100 hours in the game. But, it also comes at the neglect of my Xbox and other game consoles. Games I’ve meant to finish like Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 were all put to the side. With the release of Minecraft Dungeons, though, that changed.

My colleague Laurent recently reviewed the game, and with it being part of Xbox Game Pass, I thought I’d give it a try, too. It helped me put down Animal Crossing for a while, and make Minecraft Dungeons my newest gaming addiction.

A satisfying game, just like Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

I’ll admit it, I’ve never been a fan of Minecraft. The game’s mechanics were always hard for me to understand. Gathering materials and pushing a combination of buttons to craft was a bit too frustrating for me. I never found myself going too far in the game. Minecraft Dungeons, though, changed that. It’s the Minecraft game for the rest of us that is satisfying to play.

Although the genres of the two games I am comparing are completely different, just like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it doesn’t take much understanding to play Minecraft Dungeons. This is what makes it so fun and addicting. You can just pick it up, play, and enjoy yourself.

Indeed, as Laurent said in his review, the game is all about accessibility and simplicity. This is a dungeon crawler without complex RPG mechanics, and there is no class system for your character. Defeating dungeons in the game is as simple as moving the analog stick, pressing the A button to melee, and using arrows and timing your moves to defeat enemies. You’ll get different loot from defeating certain enemies, and you’ll also get certain artifacts that will help boost your powers. As you level up, meanwhile, you’ll unlock better weapons and get enchantment points to power up these weapons to make the game easier to play.

For me, someone who played Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the past few months, that’s what is most satisfying about Minecraft Dungeons. As you progress through a dungeon and clear enemies, you get to visually see the progress you make. A bar on the bottom of the screen will even fill up and show you your status to your next level up.

This is all similar to the satisfaction of playing Animal Crossing. In that game, you get to make friendships, add items to your home, and island, with the goal of getting a 5-star island rating and an increasing score from the Happy Home Academy every week.

The second point is that as you level up in Minecraft Dungeons you get better weapons and more enchantments. That’s similar to the Nook Miles program in New Horizons where, as you spend more time playing the game, you get Nook Miles to redeem for certain items to decorate your island — or a pass for Nook Miles adventures for finding fruit, bugs, and more. Both games reward you as you play more.

The idea of the comparison is that Minecraft Dungeons is a game that is easy. Just like Animal Crossing, there’s not much to it. Anyone can play it, there’s a co-op mode with friends, and you get satisfaction and fun exploring dungeons and leveling up your character without worrying about crafting and the complicated mechanics of the other Minecraft games.

I play it anywhere my laptop goes

One of the biggest selling points of Animal Crossing and the Nintendo Switch is being able to play the game anywhere you go. As a portable console, the Switch is able to go everywhere you do. Well, for me on Xbox and Windows 10, the same applied to Minecraft Dungeons, too.

Being an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber ($15 per month,) I have access to the game on both my PC and my Xbox, for no additional cost or extra purchase. At night, I explored the game’s mysterious dungeons while sitting in bed and playing on my Xbox One. During the day, and after work, I played the game on my Surface Laptop 3. The game still doesn’t support Xbox Cloud Sync, though, which means I had to replay some levels between switching devices, but it’s not something that ruined the experience since I’ve been playing the game slowly and haven’t gotten too far.

It’s this level of accessibility that made Minecraft Dungeons quite great for me, and fun to play. I didn’t have to sit in front of a TV to enjoy the game. Plus, the game isn’t that graphically demanding and runs great on a Surface Laptop 3 — getting about 20-30 frames when the settings are turned down, and a playable 15-20 when setting to high settings. It’s plenty playable, even without a dedicated graphics card.

The game that keeps on giving

Animal Crossing doesn’t really have a story mode, and it’s rather about replaying the game consistently and repeating the same tasks each day to get satisfaction and reward of building up your island to a 5-star rating. This gives it big replay value, and oddly enough, this is another area where Minecraft Dungeons gets me.

Although Minecraft Dungeons does have an underlying story of putting an end to the Arch-Illager’s reign of terror, there’s a lot of replay value to the game, too. You can replay certain missions at higher levels and get better weapons and loot. I found myself trying the higher levels just to challenge myself and to get some higher weapons. I also went looking for hidden entrances to secret dungeons, where you can find the best loot.

Though I slowly played the game, I am close to finishing the main story in less than seven hours of playing. It’s a far cry from the hundreds of hours I’ve put into Animal Crossing, but I do find myself trying to beat all the difficulty levels in Dungeons before trying new levels. There’s still a lot of replay value and it’s the game that keeps giving.

More DLC on the way, and I am glad

As you probably heard, there’s more DLC on the way for Minecraft Dungeons, soon. This adds additional replay time and new levels to the game, and I am glad. These will be included at no additional cost with the $30 Hero Edition of Minecraft: Dungeons, too.

It’s a bit like how Nintendo treats Animal Crossing: New Horizons, this means they’ll always be something to do in the game. For no extra cost outside the $60 of the game, Nintendo is adding seasonal events to Animal Crossing each month. So far, this includes the Bunny Day event, International Museum Day stamp hunt, and Wedding Season. Each of these events offers new items and new gameplay opportunities, just like the DLCs in Minecraft offer new worlds to play.

Looking at everything all together, Minecraft Dungeons is quite enjoyable. It’s really fun to pick up and play, and it will likely become your next addiction. With $15 per month GamePass or the game’s low price of $20, there’s also the added bonus of being able to play it on most modern PCs — without having to go out and buy a console, like the Nintendo Switch.

Give it a try and play today by buying it via the links below, but you can also get it on the PlayStation Store here and Nintendo Switch here.

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Minecraft Dungeons

Developer:
Xbox Game Studios

Price:
Free

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Minecraft Dungeons for Windows

Developer:
Xbox Game Studios

Price:
Free

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic led to increased competition between Microsoft Teams, Slack, and the video conferencing app Zoom. The latter clearly outshined Microsoft’s own Skype app due to a killer feature: the ability to display up to 49 participants in a single screen of the gallery view.

Microsoft recently updated Teams and Skype to make them display up to 9 thumbnails during video calls, but Microsoft Teams will soon match Zoom’s ability to show up to 49 participants at a time. Jared Spataro, CVP of Microsoft 365 announced the news to the Wall Street Journal, though there’s no ETA for this feature yet.

If Microsoft will likely keep iterating fast on Microsoft Teams in the coming months, The WSJ report included other interesting details about Microsoft’s attempts to outclass its Slack and Zoom rivals. As an example, Microsoft reportedly sent a team of 50 staffers to help the New York School district, which was already an Office 365 customer, transition from Zoom to Microsoft Teams.

A team of 50 Microsoft staffers worked around the clock with administrators and teachers across New York’s school district, the nation’s largest, to convert them to Microsoft Teams, the company’s rival conferencing and collaboration software. Microsoft also gave the district expedited access to features that made Zoom so instantly popular, such as the ability to show more people on the screen at once and a raise-your-hand button. Microsoft counted more than 110,000 Teams users inside the district a month later, when the department allowed Zoom access again.

Slack’s CEO recently complained that Microsoft was “unhealthily preoccupied with killing us,” though really Microsoft isn’t the first company to copy a popular feature from a competitor. Facebook infamously copied Snapchat’s popular Stories format after failing to acquire the company a couple of years, and this wasn’t the end of Snapchat. However, Microsoft’s key advantage with Teams is that the app is bundled with several Microsoft 365 subscriptions, so commercial customers already using Office 365 apps have no reason to use Slack or Zoom when they have a free, versatile alternative with Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft has started to roll out an update for the Outlook for Windows client that will let you store some settings into the cloud. According to an update posted in the Microsoft 365 Admin center (via Petri), this new feature will bring the possibility to configure your Outlook settings, save them in your cloud profile, and get them synced to the other Windows devices connected with the same account. Starting this month, the rollout has begun with Microsoft 365 Monthly Channel, and the feature will go live for all Windows desktop clients in late June.

The feature, once it finally arrives on Outlook on your PC, will bring cloud syncing support for a handful of settings including, Calendar, Ease of Access, General, Groups, Mail, People, Search, and Tasks. To enable this feature on your machine, you’ll need to head over to File > Options, and then click General under Outlook Options. Finally, you’ll need to check Store my Outlook settings in the cloud, and hit the OK button to get started. However, once the rollout process completes within the next few weeks, this feature would be enabled by default for everyone, and it will be up to IT admins to disable it manually via roaming settings in the Outlook group policy template.

Last month, we reported that Microsoft is also working on syncing Outlook signatures to the cloud, and the feature was expected to release this month. However, the software giant has now delayed this feature to the end of July for the Microsoft 365 Monthly Channel, and everyone else should get it in late August. Once it becomes available, Outlook will read your existing default local signatures to make them available across devices. Moreover, the capability will be enabled by default, and third-party add-ins that provide a similar functionality will no longer work.

Build 85.0.531.1 rolled out to Edge Insiders in the Dev Channel earlier today. This build mainly contains fixes and refinements but does add a new setting that allows the browser to predownload websites so that they load faster when visited.

Here’s the release notes:

Added features:

• Added a setting to enable preloading of certain webpages for faster searches and browsing.

Improved reliability:

• Fixed an issue on Mac where new installations of Edge sometimes crash on launch.
• Fixed an issue where closing the browser too soon after importing data from another browser sometimes causes a crash.
• Fixed an issue where pasting content when Information Protection is enabled sometimes crashes the tab.
• Fixed an issue where attempting to restart Edge on Mac to apply an update gives an error message instead of updating the browser.

Changed behavior:

• Fixed an issue where tabs sometimes appear at their minimum width, even when there’s space for them to be larger.
• Fixed an issue where scrolling down a page sometimes causes it to jump back up to the top.
• Fixed an issue where unpinning and re-pinning Edge to the Taskbar sometimes creates a shortcut to the wrong profile.
• Fixed an issue where the … menu button sometimes disappears at small window sizes.
• Fixed an issue on Mac where Shy UI sometimes disappears while being interacted with.
• Fixed an issue where the highlighted word sometimes doesn’t match what’s being dictated when reading PDFs aloud.
• Fixed an issue where printing a PDF sometimes doesn’t center the content on the printed page, leading to cut-off content.
• Fixed an issue where the default printer is sometimes forgotten or reset.
• Fixed an issue where the Immersive Reader toolbar sometimes disappears when the window isn’t wide enough.
• Fixed an issue where translating content in Immersive Reader sometimes leaves grammar markings from the previous language on the page.
• Fixed an issue where Youtube videos embedded on webpages aren’t shown in Immersive Reader when they should be.
• Fixed an issue where clicking the “Complete sign in” button sometimes doesn’t enable sync until the browser is restarted.
• Fixed an issue where Application Guard windows sometimes don’t get proxy settings applied properly.

Known issues:

• Users of the Kaspersky Internet Suite who have the associated extension installed may sometimes see webpages like Gmail fail to load.  This failure is due to the main Kaspersky software being out of date, and is thus fixed by making sure the latest version is installed.
• Some users are seeing favorites get duplicated after we made some previous fixes in that area. The most common way this is triggered is by installing the Stable channel of Edge and then signing into it with an account that has already signed into Edge before.  Fixing this should be easier now that the deduplicator tool is available.  However, we’ve also seen duplication happen when running the deduplicator on multiple machines before either machine has a chance to fully sync its changes, so while we wait for some of the fixes we’ve made to come to Stable, make sure to leave plenty of time in between runs of the deduplicator.  We hope that this will be improved now that version 81 is released to Stable.
• After an initial fix for it recently, some users are still experiencing Edge windows becoming all black.  Opening the Browser Task Manager (keyboard shortcut is shift + esc) and killing the GPU process usually fixes it.  Note that this only appears to affect users with certain hardware and is most easily triggered by resizing an Edge window.
• Some users are seeing “wobbling” behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other.  Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices.  This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy’s behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off by disabling the edge://flags/#edge-experimental-scrolling flag.
• There are some issues where users with multiple audio output devices sometimes don’t get any sound from Edge. In one case, Edge becomes muted in the Windows Volume Mixer and unmuting it fixes it.  In another, restarting the browser fixes it.

Edge Insiders are basically volunteer testers that opt-in to try out new Microsoft Edge features before they’re added to the public version. Are you an Insider? Let us know what you think of this latest build in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Microsoft content.

One of the best parts of the Microsoft 365 subscription for businesses and enterprises is that Microsoft is always updating the core apps and improving them. This was on showcase at Build 2020, where the company made multiple announcements around Microsoft Teams, and more. Here’s a look back at some of those announcements, and the new productivity tools coming your way soon as part of Microsoft 365 (via ITProToday.)

Updates to Microsoft Teams

We’ll be starting first with Microsoft Teams, which is the biggest part of Microsoft 365. On this front, there were a lot of improvements discussed for developers, but we’ll be going back and looking at the stuff which will make a difference in your productivity. These include a new experience for apps, templates, contextual search, and more.

First off, Microsoft said it is working to improve the app search and app suggestions in Teams. Coming later this year, users will be able to “pop-out” their personal apps, so they can still access Teams while working. The option will be available via a right-click and will put apps in a floating window, similar to pop-out chat.

Additionally, there is a new template ability in Teams, coming in the next few months. Thanks fo this feature, admins creating teams will have different types of templates to choose from. These include event management, crisis response, hospital ward, and bank branch. Microsoft says each template will come with pre-defined channels, apps, and guidance on how to utilize and customize the team.

Finally, there is contextual search in Teams. A long-requested feature, Microsoft says it will be coming “soon.” Thanks to this, you’ll be able to search your chats and channels more easily and find a specific message, chat, file, and more. It’ll be accessed by clicking CTRL+F, and search results will be much more refined.

Some other smaller updates for Teams include a jump in the limit in users in meeting chat from 250 to 350 people.

Microsoft Lists

Secondly, there is a new Microsoft Lists app coming to Microsoft 365. Set for release later this summer, Lists isn’t to be confused with Microsoft To-Do, which is a consumer product. Lists is rather similar to SharePoint lists and is designed for the work-life.

The new app will help you track information at work and get it at quick glance. Such situations include tracking laptops, inventory, and more. Users will have full control and can review items, add details, track issues, and more. It will be available on the web via an app, and also in Microsoft Teams. They’ll also be multiple views available, such as a gallery view, a calendar view, and grid. Each of these views is designed to put emphasis on your list, and give you a customized experience.

Yammer, and more

Wrapping things up will be Yammer. Looking just at Yammer, it will get deeper integration with Outlook, allowing people to interact with Yammer notifications directly through Outlook on the web and emails. This will be available in the coming months.

There are also updates to products outside the Microsoft 365 scope that fall under the Microsoft umbrella but still relate to productivity. That includes Microsoft Edge. It will get some features like contextual search, better PWA support, Pinterest and OneNote in Collections, and more.

This all shows that once you buy into Microsoft 365, you’re getting plenty of value. Microsoft has your back and is always improving on the subscription service. Keep it tuned to OnMSFT as we continue our Microsoft 365 coverage and dive deeper with featured stories, how-tos, guides, and more.

Last week, Keivan Beigi, the developer of AppGet, provided a detailed account of how Microsoft copied the core operation of his package manager to create their own Windows Package Manager (Winget). Microsoft has now finally responded to the controversy regarding whether the company drew inspiration from AppGet to build its new Windows Package Manager, or not.

In a recent blog post, the software giant has acknowledged that WinGet is largely inspired by the open-source tool, and the company has borrowed some critical functionality for the package manager from AppGet. In addition, Microsoft has credited Beigi for the role that he specifically played in developing WinGet. Even though the Redmond giant didn’t issue an official apology, the company readily admitted that AppGet “helped us get to a better product direction” and that Microsoft had “failed to live up to this with Keivan and AppGet”.

Andrew Clinick, Microsoft’s program manager who is currently overseeing Windows Package Manager, has even listed some features borrowed from the core functionality of AppGet:

• No scripts during install – something that we completely agreed with and don’t allow with MSIX
• Rich manifest definition within GitHub – the power of being open combined with rich declarative meta data about the app is so important to meet goal #1
• Support all types of Windows applications installers
• Seamless updates for applications in the repository

Clinick has also admitted that he had a meeting with Beigi last year, where they had an initial discussion about the fundamental functionality of WinGet. He has even gone ahead to thank Beigi and acknowledged that Microsoft’s Windows Package Manager was inspired by their conversation held last summer at Microsoft HQ.

In a comment on GitHub, the Canadian developer says that he is currently in discussions with Microsoft over this matter. “Thanks @aclinick for the blog post, it means a lot. There are a few areas Andrew and I have been discussing, hopefully we’ll have something to share with you guys soon,” the comment reads.

The fubotv streaming service finally launched an official app for Microsoft’s Xbox One consoles this week. The app is completely free to download however users will need to have an active fubotv account to access its content.

Fubotv offers a wide variety of on-demand and live content and boasts cloud DVR support which allows users to save live content for viewing at a later time. 4K content is also available for those that own a 4K television and an Xbox One S or Xbox One X console.

Here’s the full app description:

NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA, college football, European and MLS soccer. Plus acclaimed TV series, live news and award-winning movies. Enjoy Cloud DVR and dedicated sports navigation to watch what you want, when you want.

• 100+ LIVE CHANNELS: The most sports for the least money.™ fuboTV has over 100 channels. More than 30 of them have live sports. Get CBS, CBS Sports Networks, FOX, TNT, NBC, regional sports networks, FS1, NBCSN, NFL Network, NFL RedZone, NBA TV, beIN Sports networks, Golf Channel, Pac-12 Networks, Big Ten Network, Olympic Channel and beyond. More are always being added.

fubo has over 100+ channels. More than 30 of them have live sports. Get CBS, CBS Sports Networks, FOX, NBC, regional sports networks, FS1, NBCSN, NFL Network, NFL RedZone, NBA TV, beIN Sports networks, Golf Channel, Pac-12 Networks, Big Ten Network, Olympic Channel and beyond. More are always being added.

• EXTENSIVE SPORTS COVERAGE & MAJOR EVENTS: NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA, PGA, NASCAR, NFL, you name it, we got it. That’s over 30,000 pro and college events — regional to international. Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup Playoffs, FIFA World Cup, the Winter Olympics and more. Stream it all live. We have the industry’s best regional sports coverage!
• NEW SPORT ALERT: BINGE-WATCHING: fuboTV has over 10,000 hours of on-demand TV shows and movies. So you can catch up on acclaimed series and blockbusters from SHOWTIME®, FX and more. PLUS with a fuboTV account you can log in and stream entertainment from 25+ other apps. Including CBS, TNT, FOX, NBC, beIN, Bravo, E!, FX, Nat Geo and USA.
• NEVER MISS ANOTHER PLAY: 30 hours of Cloud DVR space are included with every account. Need even more? Upgrade and get up to 500 hours of Cloud DVR space. Record anything, start watching on one device, and finish on any other. Forgot to hit record? No problem. You can replay nearly any game, show or movie that aired in the last 3 days with 72-hour Lookback.
• WATCH ON ALL YOUR DEVICES: fuboTV is compatible with all your devices including iPhone (excluding NFL games), iPad, Apple TV and many more. Log into as many devices as you want. Up to two devices can stream at the same time on one account.

Fubotv joins an ever-growing library of Xbox streaming apps which include the likes of Disney+, Netflix, YouTube, Mixer, Twitch, Amazon Video, and the recently launched HBO Max.

What streaming apps do you use on your Xbox One console? Share your recommendations with the community in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest and YouTube for more tech news.

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Fubo: Watch Live TV & Sports

Developer:
fuboTV Inc.

Price:
Free

On LinkedIn, Kathleen Hogan, the Chief People Officer at Microsoft, shared some of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s remarks to employees on the Black Lives Matter protests, unrest, and the situation ongoing here in the United States.

In the May 28 remarks, Nadella mentioned to employees how believes that while everyday racism is not new, it is “far too often the experience and reality in daily lives, particularly for the Black and African American community.” The SEO also mentioned reading an Op-ed from the New York Times and opened up on how the situation is “not something to just leave behind when you log in to work.”

Although the quoted segments are careful and do not mention it specifically, Nadella hinted at the death of George Floyd while his neck was facing the knees of a white police officer in Minneapolis. On this, Nadella said to employees, “It’s not just any one incident, but it’s all the things that have led to the incident that absolutely need to change.” The CEO also mentioned how it is incumbent to use platforms for change. Segments of these are below.

“Our identity, our very existence is rooted in empowering everyone on the planet. So, therefore, it’s incumbent upon us to use our platforms, our resources, to drive that systemic change, right? That’s the real challenge here. We can’t do it alone. I’m grounded in that, I realize that, but together I think we can, and we will drive change.”

“We need to recognize that we are better, smarter and stronger when we consider the voices, the actions of all communities, and you have my assurance that Microsoft will continue to advocate to have all those voices heard and respected.”

As for how this impacts employees directly, Nadella called for employees to come together. He wants employees to check in with each other, ask how they’re doing, and to have empathy for what other are feeling. These remarks are seen below.

“My ask to each of you is to come together. Ask a colleague how they are doing today. Give each other grace as they’re navigating unseen circumstances. “Have empathy for those who are scared and uncertain, and join me and everyone on the senior leadership team, in advocating for change in our company, in our communities, and in society at large.”

Nadella’s remarks also make it clear that Microsoft is interested in partnerships and programs for the good. He points to the company’s Criminal Justice Reform Initiative, which invests in partnerships that are focused on reforming policing.

Nadella is not alone in his remarks and plenty of other big giant corporate voices have gotten behind the Black Lives Matter movements. Apple SEO Tim Cook sent a letter to employees on Sunday. and Google SEO Sunda Pichai mentioned on Twitter that Google “shares our support for racial equality in solidarity with the Black community.”

Last year, Microsoft and TomTom announced an expansion of their existing partnership to bring TomTom’s maps and traffic data into various mapping scenarios across Microsoft’s cloud-based services including Bing Maps and Azure. In a blog post this week, Microsoft has finally announced that the transition of Bing Maps data will finally begin today, as previously announced. The change affects all regions with the exception of Japan, China, and South Korea.

With this broadened integration, TomTom is now a leading location data provider for Bing Maps and Microsoft Azure. However, Microsoft indicates that all applications that use the Bing Maps API will continue to function normally, except for older versions of Windows 10 (released before Windows 10 v1703).  Microsoft notes that the drastic change should make the service even better.

Microsoft has already rolled out these changes to Bing.com users, as well as Microsoft’s first-party products back in March 2020. Today, the Redmond giant has officially started the migration process for all the Bing Maps “Basic” and “free” accounts, and Microsoft plans to automatically migrate all “Enterprise” consumers to the new data source (TomTom’s mapping data) by the end of August.

Microsoft has introduced a new feature in the Microsoft Edge Canary channel to make it easier for you to protect your online accounts from hackers (via Deskmodder). The new built-in Password Monitor, a feature that was announced during the March 30 Microsoft 365 event, constantly checks your passwords for potential data breaches.

Those running the latest version of Microsoft Edge Canary (85.0.531.0) can access the Password Monitor setting “Show alerts when passwords are found in an online leak” by heading to Settings > Profile > Passwords. Once enabled, your browser may take a couple of minutes to scan and immediately display a notification (as shown above) if your credentials are listed in a database of compromised passwords.

You can then click the “View details” option to open a dashboard in Settings, which lists all your leaked credentials and directs you to the respective websites to change your password. Once you change the password and save the new credentials to autofill, you can now continue browsing with the peace of mind that your password is no longer compromised.

It is worth noting that the feature is gradually rolling out for all Microsoft Edge Canary users, so there is a possibility that you may not see it today. As of this writing, there is no ETA for Password Monitor to land in the Stable channel, but the feature should go live on the Dev channel soon.