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While the Windows 10 Creators Update rolls out ahead with early access, Microsoft officially started sending out the Windows 10 Creators Update to PCs on April 11, but advanced users got Windows 10 Creators Update on April 5, about a week before the date.

And Microsoft gave April 25 as the date when the Windows 10 Creators Update will begin rolling out to Windows phones.

Albeit, the company would prefer if users didn't try to force-install the Windows 10 Creators Update. Instead, it's encouraging everyone but advanced users to wait for the Creators Update to become available via Windows Update.

The reason for the warnings according to Microsoft, is that it wants to iron out any issues for specific hardware configurations before making the upgrade available to PCs via Windows Update.

It hopes to achieve this using the feedback mechanisms in Windows Insider builds, as well as general feedback from users currently running the Creators Update.

Microsoft cited an issue as an example with certain Broadcom bluetooth radios that are having connectivity problems. And the company has temporarily blocked anyone else with the same radio from getting the Creators Update over Windows Update.

Also the Anniversary Update had several issues in the early days, like Kindle devices triggering the dreaded BSOD, broken webcams, and the rather infamous freezing problem.

The Creators Update is perhaps Microsoft’s best Windows 10 update yet, as such many users want the new update as quickly as they can get it, but need not to risk crashes or other bugs on their machines.

Why you must not force-install the Windows 10 Creators Update?



Whether an individual business or partnership, you'll need to have an online identity. And establishing this will be the basis of your brand existence on the Web. First, you'd need to think this through, so your branding remains consistent over time and across the board.

While some of the ways you can figure out how to create an identity is to review your goals and intentions for social media, your target audience, what this audience cares about, what information you can offer and the type of content that would match your business’s personality and culture.

Is your company a suit-wearing corporate entity or is it more lax with employees wearing Rue21?

Social media is one of the most effective ways to get word out about your business and its products and services. Having a presence on social media can also help build brand trust among your customers and prospects. The more involved you are, the better the engagement from users. But getting to this point isn’t always simple or clear cut. If you’re trying to establish your social media presence, then you need to know the following hacks.

Creating a Content Plan

After you’ve figured out your brand’s purpose, it’s time to start planning out your content goals. This is very important, since your content is the voice of your brand. It needs to resonate with your company, as well as your audience. It’s a good idea to have a content calendar in place that’s planned out a month in advance, so you never run out of content ideas. Your goals should also be set annually, with milestones along the way. It’s all about metrics, so keep track of how your campaigns are faring and make tweaks along the way as needed.

Having Meaningful Interactions

One mistake entrepreneurs make is using social media as a bullhorn for their promotions. They forget all about the social aspect of these sites. Make sure you’re actually engaging with users on your pages and others. Keep watch on conversations revolving around your brand and its industry. Join in conversations, so you’re seen and add value to the lives of prospects.

Build Facebook Groups

When used properly, Facebook groups can really help your social media campaign succeed. This works for both B2B and B2C businesses. Make sure your group targets a particular niche, so that it attracts the right people. The more targeted it is, the hotter your leads will be. Once it’s created, start curating content for it. This will help increase organic traffic and encourage user engagement.

Buy Facebook Ads

Building a community on Facebook is a slow process, but there are other methods that can speed up engagement. You can use Facebook ads to promote your page and brand. Just $1 per day is enough to create a powerful impact on your social media campaign. Use Facebook’s targeting tools to pinpoint the demographic of your audience.

As an entrepreneur, social media is your best friend. If you don’t ignore it, it will continue to treat you well.

Social Media Hacks Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Before now, streaming of video from services that don’t support Chromecast means tab casting with poor video quality, with lots of stutter and random jumps in audio. And since cast tab mirroring from a PC is currently the only way to get Amazon Video on Chromecast, given that quality is so terrible, Amazon Video has become essentially unavailable.

The Chrome Dev Channel now got improvements with the "Cast a tab" feature by forwarding the video content bitstream directly to the Chromecast device when a video is full-screened.

This simple feature allows the video quality to remain intact, and it works with any unsupported video online, especially beneficial for Amazon Video users since the service is unlikely to support Chromecast due to the availability of Fire TV.

The feature is now available through an experimental flag in recent versions of Chrome for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chromecast.

And for Chromecast device owners who want to give it a spin: Go to chrome://flags/#media-remoting, enable the highlighted flag, restart Chrome, go to https://vimeo.com, play a random video, click "Cast..." in the Chrome menu and fullscreen the video to enjoy the experience.

Improvements coming to Chrome Cast Tab Mirroring for better video-streaming



The Wikimedia Foundation, the parent company of Wikipedia.org, has launched an open collaboration project, "Wikitribune", featuring professional and community-based journalists as contributors for creating fact-checked stories for the web.

Wikitribune is harping on the same formula that made Wikipedia popular to produce same result for battling fake news stories online.

While, this follows the recent criticism of social media sites including Google and Facebook for their role in spreading demonstrably false stories ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia co-founder is hoping the formula that made Wikipedia popular will have the same effect, describing it as news "by the people and for the people" with content featuring full transcripts, video and audio.

Wikitribune's page stated that enough money has already been raised to hire at least five journalists, through a crowdfunding campaign. Albeit, when the first issue will be out remains unknown, but its expected to be free and in English.

And perhaps, the fact that this is first time that professional journalists and community-based contributors will work side by side as equals writing stories as they happen, backed by a community checking and re-checking all facts, may certainly make a big deal.

Wikitribune: Open Collaboration to fact-check News stories online



Mozilla introduced Webmaker in 2012, a program to help people everywhere make, learn and play using the open building blocks 
of the web; while the tool remains available, Mozilla has stated that its team will no longer be providing support.

The company had afterwards set up Mozilla Learning in 2015 to greatly improve the educational tools and programs, and reach even more learners across the globe.

Now, What’s next for Webmaker tools? Mozilla Webmaker has grown substantially over the years. And with growth often comes change.

Mozilla, thus has granted the tools and community programs separate space, names, and attention, to ensure they become even more potent resources for teaching Web literacy and improving the open Web.

The learning programs is live at https://teach.mozilla.org, the new home for those interested in teaching the Web. Where educators and activists can find teaching activities, guidelines for hosting events, and information on Mozilla Clubs, a new initiative focused on teaching Web literacy to small groups of learners that meet regularly in classrooms, libraries, coffee shops, and anywhere else.

Albeit, the site is still evolving, you can expect more activities, resources, and tools to be added over time.

While the new Webmaker app is a free, open source tool that will allow users to create custom Web content easily and quickly, no coding required.

It’s also a tool for empowering individuals and strengthening the open Web: the app’s functionality and scope were informed by months of research across the globe.

The Webmaker tools suite comprises: X-Ray Goggles, Thimble, Appmaker, and Popcorn Maker. With X-Ray Goggles now available on teach.mozilla.org, users are still able to install X-Ray Goggles to inspect and remix the code of their favorite web pages.

Mozilla Learning: Whither Webmaker tools is Dead?



Instagram, the Facebook-owned company announced a new offline mode for its Android app at the company's F8 developers conference, unlike "YouTube Go" on Android which cater for slow connections, the offline mode offers the ability to view content that has already been uploaded in your feed, like posts/photos, unfollow users, as well as save images and videos.

While Instagram isn't the first to offer offline mode, the feature is most befitting, as it isn't just practicable for users to snap an Instagram photo and upload it straightaway.

And reason may be that you're in a rush, or the scenery you're shooting is pretty remote and there isn't a data connection.

The offline mode address this problem across the platform allowing for the liking of photos, comments, saving, and once data connection is re-established, the actions made will be uploaded to Instagram's servers.

It's specifically beneficial for countries or regions where internet access may be limited, as the company noted that around 80 per cent of its users are outside of the United States.

However, there isn't support for Instagram stories at present, owing to the large amount of data required by the feature. And Instagram hasn't made it possible to upload images as new posts in the offline mode.

The feature is only available on the Android app, but the company has promised bringing the offline mode to iOS devices in coming months.

Why Instagram Offline Mode on Android really matters?

Earlier in the year, it was rumored that Microsoft is experimenting with a purported low-cost version of its hugely popular Windows operating system, and to be known as Windows 10 Cloud, with references appearing in recent Windows 10 test builds.

Now, there's a leaked document detailing the hardware specs for Windows 10 Cloud-powered laptops from Microsoft, which appears to be the best evidence on its plan to launch a Chromebook competitor.

The spec document obtained by Windows Central detailed “recommended minimum spec” for the supposed Chromebook-killer presumably handed out to Microsoft’s partners.

Some of the note worthy lines in the docs include reference to: "Cloudbooks" (dubbed “Edu Cloud device”), 24hrs standby battery life, quick boot and resume cycle, and minimum of a quad-core Intel Celeron processor to go along with it.

While the invitations circulated by Microsoft for an education-focused launch event in New York on May 2 suggests strongly of a Chromebook competitor in the offing.

The leaked document also notes that its performance benchmarks uses the Intune device management policies specifically designed for the classroom.



In comparison, Microsoft target's 10-plus hours of “all day” battery life, with cold-boot times of 20 seconds and resume times of under 2 seconds in line with the “performance benchmarks”. And coupled with a quad-core chip, like a Celeron, or higher; 4GB of RAM, and at least 32GB of eMMC or SSD storage.

Albeit, touchscreen capabilities are listed as “optional,” which is probably the major advantage a Chromebook has over a typical Windows PC.

Microsoft's docs confirms rumored Windows 10 Cloud; Chrome OS alternative



While the use of Authenticator to sign-in to Microsoft Account isn't working for logging in to Windows 10 PCs, it's still available for website sign-ins that require Microsoft Account, such as Outlook.com, Skype.com, and OneDrive.com, etc.

Now, instead of the Authenticator for two-step authentication, Microsoft Account owners can use the app to sign into the Account anywhere without a password.

The Microsoft Authenticator app for Android and iOS makes it possible for users to sign into Microsoft Account without a password, albeit, it takes a bit more or at least as much steps as required by two-step authentication.

Before now, Microsoft two-step authentication app is somewhat complicated, making something that's supposed to ease login even more difficult.

When a user tries to log into Microsoft account, instead of requiring you to enter an authentication code on your PC, the app will pop-up an alert to let you authorize the login with a tap on your mobile device.

As usual, it follows the process that requires you to enter your email address on the first page, and then when you get to the second page click “Use the Microsoft Authenticator app instead” at the bottom of the page.

Next, you’ll be shown a two-digit number on the webpage, and a notification on your phone, which on tapping the notification, will display the three two-digit numbers. Then simply choose the corresponding number from the webpage, and then tap Approve.

However, you'd need to download and install the Microsoft Authenticator app from the App Store or Google Play, and add your Microsoft account, to get started.

Microsoft bypass two-step authentication with app access to Account



Facebook has unveiled Spaces, a new app that will enable users of the social network to join a shared, immersive video call with friends in virtual reality, represented by a personalized avatar.

The app works with Oculus Rift, allowing people to hang out around a virtual reality table, share three-dimensional drawings and use the Rift’s built-in microphone to chat.

And for users without a Rift headset, they can as well join in Spaces by using Facebook Messenger video calling functionality.

For instance, a group of friends living miles apart can act as though they’re hanging out together with Spaces.

While Spaces is Facebook’s first attempt at social virtual reality, and shows the power of combining the social network with Oculus hardware, Facebook Spaces is actually pretty simple - simpler than even Oculus Rooms, which have multiple destinations in a single space.

That's the reason Spaces is limited to just four participants and you can't move around too much once you're in a space.

Albeit, it's pretty impressive and enhances social interaction between people who are Facebook friends, and that's the most important priority.

For now, however, there are just about clip art-like objects that you can grab and play around with (or use as props for your selfies.) Also, you can view 360-degree photos and videos, check out posts from Facebook friends and, yes, use the VR selfie stick.

But that will eventually change, as more people make use of the app they'll really know what types of experiences to build next.

How Facebook intends to pitch VR to mainstream Internet users



The Shadow Brokers (TSB), a hacker group that published several leaks on the National Security Agency (NSA) hacking tools including zero-day exploits, has released details on malware designed for breaking into Windows computers.

The malware is targeted at enterprise firewalls, and tied to the NSA's Tailored Access Operations, it's capable of making millions of Microsoft users vulnerable to malicious third-party software.

The NSA hacking tools enable attackers to break into and even control all versions of Windows computers, with the possible exception of those running Microsoft's latest software version, Windows 10.

Albeit, TSB is business-oriented hacking group trading in information, and ready to sell to the highest bidder, it appears to be highly competent, as no customer of the Broker is allowed to gain a significant advantage, thus forcing the customers to continue trading information.

While reports suggest that the leak started at least in the beginning of August, with the initial publication haven commenced on August 13, 2016, as revealed in a Tweet from the Twitter handle, @shadowbrokerss ‏, announcing a GitHub repository containing references and instructions for the decryption of the content of the file.

Microsoft, however, maintains that the exploits disclosed by Shadow Brokers have already been patched in its previous software updates, and customers with up-to-date software are not at risk.

NSA Hacking tools: Are Windows users at risk?

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