A new Windows 10 feature and a bit about my grandad

This week, I wanted to tell you a bit about a new Windows 10 feature – you might have noticed it if you use a Windows PC or laptop.

It’s called “News and interests” and it appears as a little weather forecast in the bottom right corner of your screen – down on the taskbar.  If you hover your mouse on it, a window will pop up full of news stories and other bits and pieces like weather, sports fixture times and traffic reports.  Each story is in its own little box that Microsoft calls a “card”. 

The types of news story you see will depend on what Microsoft thinks you’re “interested” in.  You can stop it showing you particular stories by clicking on a little cross in the top right of the story’s card – then it’ll learn over time what you’re interested in and what you aren’t interested in.  You can also speed up the process by clicking on “Manage interests” at the top of the window and choosing the topics you want to read about there.

Some people find this sort of thing useful – if so, enjoy 🙂

Others don’t give two hoots – in which case you can safely ignore it.  It’ll sit quietly on your taskbar unless you hover over it.  And if you do bring up the window by mistake, you can just move your mouse pointer off it and it will dutifully go back to sleep.

But for those of you (like me, actually) who find these things annoying, you can turn it off.  Here’s how:

1. Move your mouse pointer onto a blank part of the taskbar at the bottom of your screen and right click.
2. In the menu that pops up, hover your mouse pointer over “News and interests”.
3. Then click “Turn off”

And that’s it – all gone!

The things you find when you’re researching a book…

My grandad (on my dad’s side) was a professional rugby league player.  I remember a lovely photo of him holding my dad as a baby, with almost cartoon-style crossed plasters on the bridge of his nose from the latest break!

Anyway – as I was looking into the best way to find old newspaper articles for our book, Don’t Lose Your Story, I thought I’d try searching for Grandad Derrick.  It was quite emotional, actually.  He never really talked much about his time as a player – I knew more about after he retired and became a coach.  

There were stories about when he first joined Halifax (quite a feather in their cap, since Grandad had played for England by then!), a story of him not being able to play because he couldn’t get away from work (which made me chuckle), even the last article about him in 1971 when he lost his job as coach after a bad defeat.  It felt like I got to know a whole different side of my grandad.

If you’d like to read more about our new book (and if you’re interested, order a copy on free trial), the full information is here.