Over the next 12 months, Microsoft is rolling out a series of updates for its OneNote apps on Windows with the intention of creating a single user experience. At the moment, there are two versions people can use: The OneNote app installed with Office and the OneNote for Windows 10 app available in the Microsoft Store. Microsoft will update the OneNote app with features currently exclusive to its counterpart pre-installed on Windows 10, though, and it will also give the program a visual refresh.

Microsoft originally intended to kill the OneNote app when the one for Windows 10 became available, but it changed its plans and revived the app in 2019. It upgraded the note-taking program with a bunch of new features and bundled it with Office installs a year later. Now, the tech giant says it will update OneNote with visual elements that it'll share with other Windows apps as part of Microsoft's efforts to give Windows 11 a more seamless look. The merged OneNote application will also gain access to the latest Microsoft pen and ink features, as well as a new navigational UI layout option. 

Those already using the app installed with Office don't have to do anything but wait for the upcoming updates to roll out. As for those using OneNote for Windows 10, Microsoft will send them an in-app invite to upgrade to the other application once it's ready. The company says it expects to start sending out invitations in the second half of 2022, and it now advising organizations to make their personnel use the OneNote app, so they don't have to migrate next year.

Microsoft

You now have a chance to purchase a seat aboard one of Virgin Galactic's space tours — provided you can afford to pay $450,000 for it. The company has reopened ticket sales less than a month after Richard Branson, its founder, flew with other "mission specialists" for Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed spaceflight. It made the announcement alongside its financial results for the second quarter of the year, wherein it also said that the private space corporation "made meaningful progress towards commencing commercial service in 2022."

Virgin Galactic is giving you three consumer options to choose from. In addition to a single seat that costs almost half a million, it's also selling multi-seat packages for groups and offering full-flight buy outs. The current iteration of the company's VSS Unity spacecraft can seat four passengers in addition to two pilots, so selling full flights isn't out of the realm of possibility. Virgin Galactic will prioritize its "significant list of early hand-raisers," though it will create a follow-on priority list for customers interested in reserving future flights.

As CNBC notes, its next scheduled flight will have members of the Italian Air Force onboard. After that, the company will take a break until mid-2022 to refurbish VMS Eve, its jet-powered carrier aircraft. Since there will be one more scheduled test flight after that period, that means Virgin Galactic is delaying its first official flight for paying astronauts again. Earlier this year, the company was hoping to launch its first commercial flight in early 2022, but it now told CNBC that its new target is sometime in the late third quarter of 2022.

Walter Isaacson, the author behind the 2011 Steve Jobs biography published shortly after his death, is currently writing Elon Musk's life story. Fox Business reported back in June that the famous writer was in talks with Musk about the possibility of writing a book on him. The author was reportedly yet to make a decision back then, but now Musk has confirmed on Twitter than Isaacson is writing his biography covering his work on Tesla, SpaceX and his "general goings on."

As CNET notes, there's already an official published biography on the entrepreneur entitled Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future. It was written by Ashlee Vance and was published in 2015. Since then, though, Tesla has launched the Model 3, which became the world's best-selling electric car. It was also only later in 2015 that SpaceX first achieved the successful landing and recovery of a rocket's first stage. In 2017, the private space company made history when it successfully relaunched its reusable Falcon 9 rocket for the first time. Four years later, SpaceX launched four astronauts to the ISS on a Dragon capsule used in a previous mission on top of a reused Falcon 9 booster.

Isaacson's Jobs biography was adapted by Aaron Sorkin into a film starring Michael Fassbender and directed by Danny Boyle. He also wrote biographies on Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who's known for her work in CRISPR gene editing. While he didn't respond to Musk's announcement, he has been retweeting SpaceX-related content since June.

Disney's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser promises fans the "most immersive" experience ever when it launches in 2022 — one that won't be cheap. The entertainment giant has revealed details and prices for the Star Wars adventure, including the fact that it will cost two guests in a standard cabin at least $4,809 for a 2-night voyage. Suites will obviously cost more, though visitors will pay less per person the more people there are in their group.

Disney describes the experience as "part live immersive theater, part themed environment, part culinary extravaganza, part real-life role-playing game." According to the Galactic Starcruiser's official page, guests' journey begins at the Walt Disney World Resort terminal where they'll board a launch pad and rendezvous with the Halcyon. 

Once inside, guests will encounter "story moments," wherein they'll play a real-life choose-your-own-adventure type of game, wherein they can decide how their story will unfold. They can, for instance, choose to follow the First Order or join the Resistance, choose to join a smuggling ring or to aid a stowaway. They can interact with familiar characters who'll serve as NPCs and take lightsaber lessons to take on foes. Participants can also go on missions if they want to delve deeper into their story. According to ComicBook, each trip on the Starcruiser will be one-of-a-kind, so those who can afford more to go on more than once could enjoy unique experiences.

IMDb's free, ad-supported streaming service finally standalone mobile apps for iPhones, iPads and Android in the US. The Amazon-owned subsidiary released IMDb TV apps for LG Smart TVs, PlayStation 4, NVIDIA Shield and TiVo Stream 4K in March, following its recent expansion to Roku. Up until now, though, you'd have to fire up the IMDb app to access the service's offerings on mobile

The standalone apps' release could give the service a bigger reach and put it on the radar of more potential viewers. Amazon may have big plans for IMDb TV in the future, after all. According to reports that came out last year, the company is looking to make the free service available internationally. Mexico and the UK may be the first regions to get access to the platform outside the US, and if all goes well, IMDb TV could expand into Latin America and other European countries. 

IMDb TV offers free access to popular shows and movies like Chicago Fire, All in the Family, Wolf of Wall Street and How to Train Your Dragon. It also gives you access to Amazon Originals made especially for the platform, including the crime drama Leverage: Redemption.

IMDb

Fandango has revealed Vudu's fate more than a year after it purchased the streaming platform from Walmart. No, Vudu isn't going away. In fact, it's merging with its parent company's own streaming service, FandangoNow, to form a single platform that'll take on Vudu's name. Fandango told TechCrunch that it decided to retain Vudu's branding, because it has a following that's significantly larger than FandangoNow's. According to data from the NPD Group, Vudu is in over 75 million TV-connected devices in the US and has more than 60 million registered users. 

As a result of the merge, Vudu will replace FandangoNow as Roku's official movie and TV store. Roku devices will automatically update the app, and owners will be able to purchase the media they want using Roku Pay. The new Vudu will offer more than 200,000 movies and TV shows they can purchase, including new releases like F9: The Fast Saga, Pixar's Luca, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Peter Rabbit 2, The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, A Quiet Place Part II, Disney's Cruella, Godzilla vs. Kong and In the Heights. Next Tuesday, Black Widow will arrive on the platform. If you'll recall, Scarlett Johansson sued Disney for the movie's simultaneous release in theatres and on Disney+, which reportedly cost the star over $50 million. 

Even though only the Vudu branding will remain, FandangoNow customers won't lose access to their purchased content. They can now transfer their accounts to Vudu, where they'll be able to access their TV and movie libraries like usual. 

Before the US election last year, a team of researchers from New York University's engineering school launched a project to gather more data on political ads. In particular, the team wanted to know how political advertisers choose the demographic their ads target and don't target. Shortly after the project called the NYU Ad Observatory went live, however, Facebook notified the researchers that their efforts violate its terms of service related to bulk data collection. Now, the social network has announced that it has "disabled the accounts, apps, Pages and platform access associated with NYU's Ad Observatory Project and its operators..."

The researchers created a browser extension to collect data on the political ads the website shows the thousands of people who volunteered to be part of the initiative. Facebook says, however, that the plug-in was made to avoid its detection system and calls what it can do "unauthorized scraping." The extension "scrape[d] data such as usernames, ads, links to user profiles and 'Why am I seeing this ad?' information," Facebook wrote in its announcement. It also said that the extension collected data about Facebook users who didn't install it and didn't consent to take part in the project.

The company wrote that it made "repeated attempts to bring [the team's] research into compliance with [its] Terms." That apparently included inviting the researchers to access its US 2020 Elections ad targeting data through FORT’s Researcher Platform. Facebook said the data set on the platform could offer more comprehensive information than what the extension can collect, but the researchers declined its invitation. 

As The Wall Street Journal mentioned in its report last year, Facebook has an archive of advertisements on its platform, which includes data on who paid for an ad, when it ran and the location of the people who saw it. However, it doesn't contain targeting information, such as how it's determined who sees the ad. On its website, Ad Observer researchers wrote: "We think it's important to democracy to be able to check who is trying to influence the public and how." 

Facebook is adamant that it disabled the project's access to its platform because it knowingly violated the website's terms against scraping. It blocked the team's access to its platform, it said, in order to "stop unauthorized scraping and protect people's privacy in line with [its] privacy program." After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it agreed to an updated policy with the FTC, which pushed the social network to limit third-party access to its data. We asked the Ad Observer team for a statement and will update this post if we hear back. 

Perhaps Google has started preparing for the launch of its upcoming Nest camera products, which is why they showed up on the company's store for a very brief period. While the listings are no longer available as of this writing, The Verge was able to catch a glimpse before they disappeared. Apparently, the tech giant will launch a battery-powered Nest camera good for indoors and outdoors, another camera that comes with floodlights and a wired camera for indoors. There's a battery-powered Nest doorbell among the leaked products, as well.

Google (screenshots courtesy of The Verge)

Unfortunately, the listings didn't link to individual product pages and only took curious users back to the main Google Store page. We'll have to wait for official information to know more about the devices. By releasing a battery-powered Nest doorbell and a floodlight-equipped camera, however, Google will finally be able to offer a veritable rival to Amazon's security devices. When the tech giant first announced that it'll launch a new Nest lineup back in January, it didn't say when the products will be available. It did say, however, that the lineup is for 2021, so they'll most likely be out for purchase in the coming months.

You can now grab the first-gen Echo Show 5 for $45 on Amazon, if you didn't get the chance to do so on Prime Day in June and on Black Friday last year. The Alexa-powered smart display is also currently available for $45 on Best Buy, but you now have another option if you'd rather purchase it from Amazon for Prime shipping or any other reason. While you can get a refurbished version for less elsewhere, this is the lowest price we've seen for a brand new device that originally retails for $80.

Buy Amazon Echo Show 5 (1st Gen) at Amazon - $45

At $45, that also makes this smart display $45 cheaper than the second-gen Echo Show 5. And, as we mentioned in our review of the newer device, its changes are pretty minor. Instead of a one-megapixel camera, you now get 2 megapixels, which isn't that much of an upgrade. The newer smart display also comes in a light blue option, while its predecessor is only available in black and white. That's pretty much it, though — the display's resolution remains the same, and it still doesn't come with features its bigger counterpart, the Echo Show 8, has.

As we said in our review for the first-gen Echo Show 5, it's meant for those who want a smaller Amazon smart display that's also a decent alarm clock. It has a sunrise alarm feature, which slowly brightens the screen 15 minutes before the time you set, and it has ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts the screen's brightness based on your surroundings. You can also use it to display photos and watch videos, though, if you don't mind the smaller screen. The device supports Amazon Prime, NBC and Hulu, and you can always access YouTube using its built-in browsers.

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Google has rolled out a few updates for Chrome OS meant to make devices running the platform a more effective tool for communicating with friends and workmates. Chrome OS version 92 will make Google Meet a pre-installed Progressive Web App on all Chromebooks and computers running the software, allowing users to get on a video call right from the Launcher. Google says it also made performance improvements for the app, including the ability to adapt video calls to different network conditions and to adjust video performance during screen sharing.  

Since some people's employers or schools may prefer Zoom, Google has also teamed up with the business messaging app to release a version of the app tweaked to work better on Chromebooks. That app is now available on the Google Play Store. Chrome OS now also supports eSIMs, giving users the option to use one if they need cellular connectivity. The feature sounds especially useful for travelers who need to switch between networks while they're overseas. It's obviously only available on eSIM-compatible devices, which aren't that many at the moment, though we're hoping the feature's arrival means more Chromebooks will come with eSIM support in the future. 

The latest Chrome OS also adds a new emoji keyboard shortcut on Chromebooks. By pressing Search or Launcher key + Shift + Space, users can bring up the compact emoji picker where they can see their most recently used emoji. Finally, the Explore app on Chromebooks now includes a digital magazine curated for families, and each edition includes educational apps for kids.