Tag: reviews

Mastering Email Searches with Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot has been my favorite chatbot since it released under as Bing Chat in 2023.

One of the most interesting new features which has been included in the AI chatbot is the ability to search through your emails through context on the Copilot website. You do not have to open the email client or go on the website and use the chatbot already included in it. You can just simply go to the web version of Copilot.

To get your inbox connected to your Copilot account, you have to follow these steps.

In the chat window here, there is an icon that is here with the arrow.

Click on the icon and these options will appear.

These options allow you to connect your email account to Copilot. As such, you are training the AI model with your data and making it more usable to your specific needs here.

On my computer, I tend to have Microsoft OneDrive, Outlook and Gmail as connected to my Copilot AI.

To start, all you simply need to do is write out a prompt about emails and give context about your search. This isn’t just about keywords anymore, but you can write in generalities which makes this more precise than the old systems here.

Copilot Emails

When you get a result here, it will give you the list of emails according to your search. Links are included in search and when you click on it, it opens the web client to your inbox.

This is a very powerful feature in Copilot. Instead of opening your email client with tons of emails to sync into your inbox, you can simply search for them here. Instead of just looking at keywords, you can put context into your search, making it easier to see what you are looking at here.

In the image above, Copilot sometimes will organize your prompt’s answer into a chart. This is the most optimal way in order to look at your emails.

What makes this so powerful is that you continue the conversation. In earlier versions, you only had keywords to work on. Now, the AI provides recommendations at the end of each answer, giving you more opportunities to optimize your emails.

Writing specific prompts also allow you move beyond keywords in your search. Here is a clear example of how powerful Copilot is.

As you can see here, Copilot is capable of more than just listing your emails in chronological order or according to specific topics. It is able to be a secretary and provide context to each individual email in your inbox.

In comparison to earlier generations of Outlook, such a tool is going to make many White-collar professionals more efficient in their jobs. It will even add newer insights to their professional careers that they wouldn’t ordinarily have.

Copilot is an amazing tool which makes something so mundane and ordinary into something that has greater potential to unlock creativity and productivity in more workers.

What makes the Battlefield series special in comparison to other FPS Games

Simply put, it is the combined arms nature of Battlefield which makes it so enduring. There are so many video games that having shooting in them. However, only one truly integrates vehicular combat and infantry combat together.

This is why in its opening week in this month; players will once again complain that this is not the game, they though it was. However, it is simply Battlefield, a series uniquely standing out amongst a crowd of imitators.

The Call of Duty crowd are always complaining on the streams about how slow it is. Some players enjoy that sandbox experience. Think of it is as similar to Arma rather than the run and gun games.

The run and gun games are really boring and I stay clear of them. What I want is teamwork and strategy.

This is why I have gravitated towards RTS games and in the Battlefield 2 era, I loved the idea of the Commander mode.

Battlefield 6 is that type of game for a person who wants to be more than just a frontline soldier. I think the only game that I really enjoyed the frantic run and gun battles was in the Star Wars Battlefront games. However, those games were different in their maps, vehicles and weapons. Star Wars lends itself to such frantic style of gameplay. However, modern combat is more grounded in the realities of combat in the here and now. Call of Duty is simply too quick for me.

Battlefield provides what Call of Duty cannot, a sense of cohesion in the chaos. How much cohesion is up to the players. Some play in clans or groups and act like squads with precision. Most of the time it’s just organized chaos in here. However, that’s really the way I like it.

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 looks interesting, but the gameplay is simply too fast for me; the game seems to try to recreate the arena shooters of the 1990s, where reflexes were the key to victory.

Battlefield 6 will be successful simply because it is trying to appeal more than players with fast reflexes. Everyone can play a role; sometimes a player wants to be more than soldier running and gunning.

This is why I am looking forward to enjoying this game.

The Google Empire: Why we need more search engines other than Google

The usage of “network” effect to basically dismiss calls for other search engines or any other institution is a common phrase. The people who use it to say there is something transhistorical about Google and that people should be just accept Google. The thing that Google has is the ability to just control the access to information and also installing their search services on every Android device here. Microsoft got in trouble for the same thing, but now they are basically the underdogs here in the search space with Bing, which is good but is basically unable to gain traction because Google keeps people within their systems. This means that people only see Google and not other competitors.

I use Google’s products as they are not incompetent at making email services such as Gmail. However, they are often used as the only service and the “nerds” or power” users are trying to use other products. For example, think about DuckDuckGo or other search engines such as Bing as I mentioned earlier. However, Bing is the only one that is capable of challenging Google. In the early 2010s, its market share was higher than it is now but it is unable to get beyond a small percentage.

We need more search engine choices.

Why is that we allow people to congregate in the “best”

This best is being propped up with all sorts of trickery and manipulations. The most important thing that can happen now is that we need to break up the app stores of both Google and Apple. This duopoly has allowed for the ossification of many aspects of the internet. It has led to the decline in the quality of desktop sites. Previously, desktop sites had all their charm and qualities. Now it the same throughout and it is not interesting now. Even the corporate sites, the front page of a company’s brand have become little more than portals to their social media sites.

We need competition and while we may have alternatives, we do not currently have competition.

Search engines should be an area of competition and growth and not beholden to only one company. The internet is a space without any limit in space only bandwidth. We should have many choices.