Enlarge / Teams looks good, but is unfortunately its chat is quite bulky in a vertical direction. (credit: Microsoft) After being in beta since November , Microsoft Teams is now available to anyone with a suitable Office 365 subscription. Teams is a group messaging application organized around chatrooms. Slack has become the darling of media and software development types, with its modern, Web-based take on what is actually an old-fashioned mode of computerized communication. Slack is text-heavy and line-oriented, much like the IRC that it mimics. Slack arguably brought IRC into the 21st century and added such niceties as persistent message storage so that you can see what happened before you even joined a particular channel. Slack also includes inline images and emoji. If instant messaging apps like Skype are an alternative to the telephone, Slack represents an alternative to standing around the office watercooler or hanging out in the break room. Teams builds on this same heritage, but it adds a Microsoft twist: Rather than being a standalone service, as Slack is, Teams is an integrated part of Office 365. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Microsoft’s Teams is almost an excellent Slack-killer, and it’s now live for O365
overThruster writes: The Wall Street Journal reports: “The rare sight of a giant squid swimming inside a marina was captured on video on the coast of the Sea of Japan. According to a manager at the Mizuhashi Fisherina in Toyama prefecture, about 250 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, one fisherman found a 3.7-meter (12.1-foot) giant squid swimming beneath fishing boats docked at the marina on the morning of Dec. 24.” The extraordinary close up video taken by divers shows the giant squid’s natural coloration as well as the action of its siphon propelling it through the water. Additional footage here. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
You loved Reading Rainbow as a kid. Everyone did! But since the show went off the air in 2006, your ol’ pal Levar Burton’s now trying to bring it back via the internet. He just needs a little Kickstarter help to do it. Read more… 
