Microsoft updates Sway for Windows 10 with recycle bin, full screen mode, more textures and groups nesting.

Microsoft Sway

If you suffer from severe lack of arts talent like me, you will probably like Sway, a digital storytelling app made by Microsoft to give life to your photos. Put them all together with some text, videos and some other stuffs and you get a beautiful and professional presentation to show to your friends, family and colleagues. And again, you don't have to be a professional artist or be a PowerPoint specialist to use Sway. With that said, Microsoft has updated Sway for Windows 10 today that adds more styles and background textures, groups nesting and the usual performance improvements and bug fixes. Check the full change log below. Note that Sway is not a universal app yet, so, sadly, you won't find it in the Windows Phone store. 

We're all familiar with the Recycle Bin in Windows where all our deleted items are stored and I'm sure we all have stories of items deleted accidentally. Thanks to the Recycle Bin we're able to recover those items. Microsoft has ported the Recycle Bin feature to Sway. It work the same as on the PC in that sways that are deleted end up in the Recycle Bin for 30 days. Where it gets really interesting is that way that you delete on the web, Windows 10, iPhone and iPad will all go to the Recycle Bin. You can also choose to permanently delete them to empty the Recycle Bin, just make sure you really want to do that by checking what's in there before clicking that OK button.

Here's what's new:

• More Styles and Background Textures — Customize your Sways with additional styles featuring a variety of new background textures. 
• Groups in Groups – Nesting groups of content in other groups allows new format combinations, particularly in Sway’s presentation-oriented layout. 
•  Miscellaneous — We've made additional performance improvements and bug fixes.

Download Sway in the Windows Store.

Microsoft OneNote for iPhone gets support for Touch 3D.

This is my second post about a Microsoft app receiving a cool update on another mobile platform, namely iOS, the Apple mobile operating system that powers the iPhone and iPad. The Microsoft app getting updated is OneNote, the note taking and to-do app.

The update adds features that cater for both phone and tablet version of iOS, especially the iPad Pro where OneNote will now support Apple Pencil letting you draw and OneNote will take care of converting hand drawn shapes "into crisp, perfectly regular polygons and circles." Better yet, line thickness will be proportional to your stroke speed. The faster you draw, the thinner the line gets. Microsoft also improved the drawing palette.

With the recent release of the iPhone 6S/6+S and their new features, Microsoft was quick to update OneNote to take advantage of one of selling points of the 6S/6+S, the Touch 3D which, basically, allow users access to a contextual menu after a long press on the app icon. With this new feature, users will be able to create new notes and access recent notes by simply doing that long press on the icon without having to open the app first.

Microsoft OneNote for iOS is available free for download in the App Store.

Apple announces the iPad.

The highly anticipated slate-type device has been revealed to the world by Steve Jobs yesterday. I must admit that it is the first time that an Apple product gets my attention to the point that I'm planning on actually buying the device. With prices starting at $499, it's worth considering. Why? Well, it's thin as opposed to the devices in that category; Has wifi and, most importantly, 3G connectivity. And here are the specs:

Weight: 1.5 pounds
Display: 9.7 inch with multi-touch; 1024x768 resolution
Connectivity: Wifi, UMTS/HSDPA;Bluetooth.
For more specs, check it out here.

All you need to know about the iPad including Steve Jobs keynote and videos can be found here and here.

What do you think about the iPad? Is it worth the purchase now or wait for 2.0 to come out or Apple to drop prices?