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This past October 20th, 2021 Amazon announced the general availability of their new AWS Panorama appliance. Adding to their ever increasing number of on-premises solutions, AWS Panorama shows exactly how seriously AWS takes the hybrid cloud market. What is AWS Panorama? The AWS Panorama appliance is a computer vision (CV) appliance that uses Machine Learning (ML) to…

The Surface brand is full of products that tried something different. The classic Pro put a different spin on a tablet, the Studio with a twist on the desktop, and then there is the Duo, the two-screen foldable that is Surface in name but it does not run Windows. When I took a look last…

Test Base for Microsoft 365 is a platform which allows you to script and automate your application compatibility testing. Hosted in Azure, and based on Azure virtual machines, this service allows the easy onboarding of applications through a dedicated area of the Azure portal. To validate apps in Test Base, you should: Sign up for…

Experiencing a disaster is one of the worst possible events for both businesses and their IT departments. However, there is one worse event – failure to recover from the disaster.  While every IT department should have a disaster recovery (DR) plan, that doesn’t mean every DR plan will work. In the best case, a failure…

Accessibility is one of the fundamental elements required when creating inclusive technology. When developing a platform that over a billion people worldwide use daily, it’s vital to understand the impact poor usability and accessibility can have. Poor usability can cause irritation for the average user, but it can be a complete blocker to those who…

As part of Windows 11 Insider Preview build 22478 in the Dev Channel, Microsoft is starting to test a new way to update the servicing stack in Windows. What are Update Stack Packages? Update Stack Packages deliver changes to the Windows 11 update experience before a monthly cumulative update (CU), or yearly feature update, is…

Welcome to my third post discussing all things Windows Insider Program (WIP). My first post went over the business angle. My second described more of the history and various Channels available to ‘Insiders.’ This post will walk you through joining the Windows Insider Program on a device, and the distinct options you have in joining…

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) is much more than a traditional antivirus service. Now being offered in Plan 1 and Plan 2, the full offering you get with Plan 2 not only provides antivirus capabilities but also extended detection and response, attack surface reduction rules to harden the OS against common threat mechanisms, and threat…

Have you ever been scrolling through a large Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and stopped because you came across some cells with important data and it whips right past you? Well, Microsoft Excel engineers have been working to enhance this aspect of Excel for a long time. When they set out to ‘put the idea to code’…

With Microsoft Intune Service Release 2109, released the week of 27th September 2021, there have been some significant improvements in how targeting for App Protection Policies can be achieved. These new capabilities come alongside an array of new Intune capabilities available in this new update. What are Microsoft Intune App Protection Policies? According to Microsoft,…

The Microsoft Teams desktop client is getting a long-awaited feature update that lets you send quoted replies to messages in chat. And it is rolling out now. It might sound like a first world problem, but when chats get long, it can be difficult to keep track of conversations without the ability to quote messages…

This month’s Patch Tuesday for includes a cumulative update (CU) for Windows 11, which was made generally available October 4th. In total Microsoft released patches addressing 71 CVEs in Windows, Edge, Exchange Server, .NET Core, SharePoint Server, and many other products. Two of the CVEs patched this month are rated Critical, and 68 Important. And…