Monthly Archives: May 2020

Google has released a new feature on Chrome, which gives the ability to group together related tabs.

Group tabs make working or viewing multiple web pages easier, providing better management of tabs and navigation across web pages, as well as saving space on smaller screens/devices. Google is working on this feature being collapsible, allowing the group tabs to expand or shrink when clicked on.

This feature is currently available in the Canary build of Chrome 85, and it is not enabled by default. The feature will be rolled out to all users in future, but to enable this feature now:

• Make sure you are running Chrome Canary 85.0.4148.0
• Launch the browser and type chrome://flags into the address bar
• Search for Tab Groups using the search box
• Click on the drop-down box next to Tab Groups and Tab Groups Collapse
• Set both to Enabled

You can check the feature is working by grouping some pages into a tab, and then clicking its label to expand and collapse it.

UPDATE – Zoom has extended the date for these security requirements to September 27th, 2020.

Zoom version 5.0 is now available. Please update your version of Zoom, if you have not already done so.

Zoom must be updated before May 30th. Those on an older version of Zoom will be forced to update before entering meetings after this date.

This update enables GCM encryption across the Zoom platform, providing increased protection for meeting data. There are new features which allow ‘waiting rooms’, the ability to lock meetings, remove participants and report users that misuse the platform. This is a welcome update, prompt from the security concerns users previously had with Zoom.

For more information on Zoom 5.0, please see here. To download Zoom 5.0 go here.

Microsoft has announced that its new home sites feature for SharePoint is now available.

SharePoint home sites are a landing site created for your organisation. Which neatly displays news, events, content, conversations and videos related to your teams’ activities and your organisation.

Home sites are built on communication type sites on the Modern version of SharePoint, and are designed to be interactive amongst team members featuring a “we space” and “me space” (the latter of which allows individual personalisation).

You can see a demonstration of home sites in Microsoft’s keynote presentation here. See here for how to create a home site, and you can install templates from the SharePoint ‘lookbook’ here.

Contact us on customising and leveraging your SharePoint experience.

Twitter has confirmed to all its employees that they can work from home indefinitely if they wish.

In early March, Twitter encouraged its employees to work from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. Twitter was like many companies, including Google and Microsoft, who supported employees to work from home before the official warning was given.

Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, has stated that Twitter will decide when to reopen their offices, which does not look likely before September. And once their offices are reopened, employees who can work from home will have the choice when they want to return to the office, if ever. All employees will have an allowance of up to $1,000 for supplies to work from home.

The company also announced that all in-person events will be cancelled for the rest of the year, and plans for 2021 will be assessed later this year.

This is a very interesting development, which raises the question if other companies – particularly tech companies – will start to follow suit in the near future, and if our known way of working will change completely to become more flexible and home-based.

Last year, we developed a custom reusable template for Mailchimp, which can be used easily for campaigns and mailouts.

It is based on Mailchimp’s platform’s language, which means it’s very flexible and is fully editable in Mailchimp’s WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Thus no coding is required to edit and (re)use the template!

The template caters for the client’s (Housing Justice) monthly newsletter, which has to cover multiple aspects and topics of their operations and engagement. Buttons can be turned on/off, stories can be added/removed, and sections can be shown/hidden. It also links with their Eventbrite account, for increased engagement with their events specifically.

See their March newsletter here, created and sent autonomously: https://mailchi.mp/housingjustice/wns-network-march-newsletter-1038553

It has been concluded that the .org domain will stay public and not be sold on to a private organisation.

The suffix .org is one of the original seven top-level domains from the birth of the internet, and is significant for this as well as its association with charities, NGOs, and nonprofits.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-profit organisation that oversees all domains on the internet. The .org domain registry is currently owned by the Public Interest Registry (PIR), a subsidiary of the Internet Society. Both organisations are non-profit, which is why the recent plan to sell the PIR, and thus the .org domain, was so controversial.

The proposal was to sell the PIR to a private equity firm – Ethos Capital – for more than $1 billion. ICANN has rejected this due to the lack of wider support, aside from Ethos Capital themselves. There were over 30 groups who wrote to oppose the deal, alongside numerous negative general feedback. ICANN stated there was “virtually no counterbalancing support except from the parties involved in the transaction and their advisors”.

One of the major deciding factors to reject the offer was ethical reasoning. ICANN’s ethos is to make decisions “for the benefit of the Internet community as a whole”. Many board members disapproved of the deal, claiming that it did not adhere to ICANN’S ethos.

There were also concerns as to the amount of debt the PIR would incur. Ethos Capital was planning to leverage the buyout of the .org registry, requiring the PIR to take out a $360 million loan to help finance the transaction. Despite the company’s profits amounting to higher than this, the potential of such a financial burden is not desirable.

Although this controversial deal will not proceed, there is still an opportunity for the Internet Society to come back and submit another proposal addressing these concerns. The Internet Society responded to the ruling, stating that “despite ICANN’s decision, our work to connect the unconnected and strengthen the Internet will continue”. It isn’t clear if the Internet Society will try again to sell the PIR after the surge in negative responses.