Turning a WordPress Blog into a PWA
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are web apps that feature a native Windows app experience, and can use features like push notifications. The addition of Service Worker support in EdgeHTML makes this all possible. Other platforms (iOS, Android) have had this support for a while. PWA’s can be defined to run as standalone, run in browser, or minimal UI. Microsoft has been using Bing crawlers to find existing “high quality” PWA enabled sites and will be automatically adding some of these to the Windows Store (and later letting site owners to claim these apps and augment them).
I decided to get a head start on this technology and have gone through the process to produce a PWA for digitalmediaphile.com which runs on WordPress. It took some “fiddling” so I am sharing the process here. Continue reading
Alexa you aren’t doing very well with weather forecasting
All of my Alexa enabled devices are configured with the correct geo location, but I’ve had doubts for some time as to the accuracy of weather forecasts. We have a winter storm heading this way, I’ve got email alerts from Accuweather, FEMA is sending notices, but Alexa thinks the weather will be fine.
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Cortana, IFTTT, Invoke all together now
Microsoft just announced that Cortana now works with IFTTT. Cortana has had an appalling lack of third party skills (still does) but at least IFTTT offers some hope to folks who have services and devices that are not natively supported by Cortana but which have IFTTT support.
One of the neat things Cortana and IFTTT can do is post to Facebook, Twitter, etc. I can be working in the kitchen and ask Cortana/Invoke to TWEET or post to Facebook.
I’m sharing the recipes for these for others to play with below.
Twitter:
Where is the Surface Pro LTE Recovery Image (How to get)
Microsoft’s latest addition to the Surface Pro family is the Surface Pro LTE. If you are a road warrior, this is THE Surface SKU to get. While it may not be an “always connected PC” (ACPC) officially, it sure seems so to me. It’s being offered to Business customers only, in the Microsoft Store online, and through partners. Note that if you aren’t a business, you will have to jump through some hoops to register to your personal Microsoft Account, but this can be done.
Microsoft offers downloadable recovery images for all their Surface SKU’s, and while the Surface Pro LTE has been in sale and shipping since early December, it isn’t listed in the dropdown to register a new device (as of 1/25/2018):
You actually can download the BMR recovery image today, using a strange work around.
