On Friday, Microsoft announced that the 21-year-old calling and messaging service will shut down May 5. The software company is encouraging Skype users to migrate to its free Teams app. “This is obviously a big, big moment for us, and we’re certainly very grateful in many ways,” Teper said. “Skype pioneered audio and video calling on the web for many, many people.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/28/microsoft-is-retiring-skype-in-may-encouraging-people-to-adopt-teams.html
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Microsoft is shutting down the Xbox Avatar Editor app, reports PureXbox. The Xbox Avatar FAQ says that “due to low engagement and our shift in focus towards delivering other player experiences,” it’s discontinuing the editor as of January 9th, 2025.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/26/24306394/xbox-avatar-editor-discontinued
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Have you ever pasted text into your beautifully formatted Microsoft Word document, only for it to ruin everything? Well, the days of the should finally be over, as Microsoft Word will now merge the text’s formatting with your document by default.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/13/24155312/microsoft-word-default-paste-option-merge-formatting
An updated version of Notepad currently rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels is adding two more modern features to the old app: spellcheck and autocorrect. Per usual, spellcheck in Notepad highlights misspellings with red squiggly underlines, and right-clicking the word or pressing Shift + F10 will pop up a short menu of suggested fixes.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/windows-notepads-midlife-renaissance-continues-with-spellcheck-and-autocorrect/
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Wunderlist was both full of useful features and whimsical in a way few apps manage. Then, long story short, Microsoft bought it in 2015, morphed it into Microsoft To Do (a very good and much less delightful tasks app), and killed Wunderlist forever. But a group of the folks who made Wunderlist in the first place, led by co-founder Christian Reber, set out to bring its spirit back to life.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/13/24071136/superlist-tasks-app-wunderlist-productivity-tool
In a blog announcing the change, Microsoft executive vice president Yusuf Mehdi said it was a "transformative" moment and compared it to the addition of the Windows key nearly 30 years ago. He added that it would "simplify" and "amplify" user experience.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67881373
The lawsuit claims "millions" of articles published by the New York Times were used without its permission to make ChatGPT smarter, and claims the tool is now competing with the newspaper as a trustworthy information source. It alleges that when asked about current events, ChatGPT will sometimes generate "verbatim excerpts" from New York Times articles, which cannot be accessed without paying for a subscription.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67826601