Digital

Category: Meeting

  • Notes from Zoom meeting – 10th June 2021

    All (seemingly) enjoying ourselves

    Apologies (yet again), I seem to have a spurt in getting the notes out quickly, followed by a delay so that they become almost useless – except as a historic record – by getting them out “just in time”!!!

    Anyway thanks to Jim for the photo above, one of the best and shows we manage to have a bit of fun! Apologies from Jonathan, Margaret, Barbara, Christine and Owen – who were unable to join us.

    I’m pleased to be able to report that Fred and I finally managed to hook-up and have a chat about connecting to Signal, and I did manage to reply to Phil about his message on sending a post to this site. So, it’s not been a complete lack of activity. The other thing has been the stylistic changes to the website that I mentioned at the meeting. These have now moved on again, and I’ll talk about that this afternoon, coupled with a demo of accessing the website, as it’s apparent a couple of you have not managed to login.

    So what did we discuss. I went through a number of links which I’ve put on Flipboard – I’ll highlight some of them. The cookie pop-up problem brought to our attention by Owen – which we’ll return to this afternoon as well.

    The sharing of patient data by NHS England caused some discussion – it appears now that this does not effect us in Wales – they’ve put off the implementation date now to September 1st. This led on to a discussion on Patient Records in general and the workings of the Patient Information System in Wales – perhaps not working as well as it should with many disparate GP systems not working closely with any centralised system. Also noted that you are entitled to get a printout of your Patient Record, but the practice is also entitled to ask you for an administrative charge in providing it. Then we diverged into discussing Lateral Flow Tests, and I described how I’d been able to receive the test kits within 24hours from a website. It’s unlclear whether we (in Wales) are able to upload the results due to our NHS numbers not being in the same format as the English ones – and the same problem arises with the vaccination passports now being launched in England as an app. In wales there will be a website you can register your vaccination history, etc.

    The welcome news that one of our favourite websites – Have I been pwned? – has gone open-source, and will now benefit from additional data from the FBI. A suggestion that there are a number of privacy settings we should check/change on Facebook was highlighted, and a suggestion that it was now time to ditch Google Chrome – because of privacy considerations. It’s been announced that Google Photos now has additional editing facilities on iOS devices, and I suggested that those with Android phones might have a look and report back, to advise us what iPhone users might hope to expect. We also discussed the major internet outage that had occurred, and why it had come about. Finally, I shared a few links (all on Flipboard) of what Apple announced at its Developers Conference – a lot on privacy, security and health features on phones, tablets and in the Safari browser.

    So what did you have to say?

    Ann asked about Two factor Authentication, and how it worked – especially with the banks. I explained that the addition of a metric such as FaceID or TouchID (both Apple trademarks) the banks were ensuring much better that the person using their apps were the actual customers. The organisation trusts the device provider to ensure that the person is who they are through their personal credentials – face or fingerprint. If working on a browser they will challenge you to provide a code they send to the registered device they have for you. This is obviously not as secure – remember my SIM swap scam episode of 2019. The other way that the organisation you’re connecting to can ensure it’s you they’re providing access to is by using an Authenticator app, that sends a code to your phone that you then type into the box in your browser. Hence two-factor – the code (or Identity features) on a device different from the browser.

    Sianed advised us of the Census scam that had been going the rounds.

    John told us about an interesting photography programme he’d been watching – the Great British Photography Challenge – now available on iPlayer.

    Renee advised us that the NHS app discussed on the TV was not available in Wales.

    Phil had a Victor Meldrew moment and lamented the lack of telephone numbers on websites that made it almost impossible to connect to a person to discuss an issue. Fred suggested keeping a list of CEOs to address complaints to. Someone else suggested using the Companies House website – a good idea!! Someone then recounted the recent case where a worldwide undercover operation had revealed criminals.

    Jim wondered whether everyone was having as many Signal updates as he was, and on all devices – we are, and all is OK!!!

    Don told us about his garden camera, and advised us about the Cardiff Citizen Surveys – and the update to the Local Development Plan.

    David H was pleased to announce that his CAD system was now working and enquired about whether there were any recommendations about property contents only insurance. I’ve also noted that there was discussion on harvesting data from browser searches, and a comment “Zoom and the Arts” – but I have no idea what either of these referred to!!!

    Paul had some issues with Google accounts (again I can’t remember what these were); and advised that he had tried out Reader View (as discussed at the previous meeting).

    Mike was having problems with the volume on his equipment and I hope the advice we provided has helped in some way.

    Steve said he’d setup ICE and enquired about the website What 3 Words to provide exact locations. We experimented!!!

  • Notes from Zoom meeting – 27th May 2021

    Some very laid-back and happy folk – and you weren’t asked to smile by Jim!

    Apologies for the delay in writing the notes. I’d forgotten it was half-term this week with additional grandparent duties … no comment!!! Unfortunately Barbara and Jonathan were unable to be with us and sent their apologies.

    Thanks for the screengrab Jim – I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many of us smiling as this shot – someone must have said something funny, and it wasn’t me because I’m laughing more than most, and even I don’t laugh that much at what I say. My guess it was Phil.

    Anyway, I promised and failed to get another post out about Google and it’s changes to Drive storage. I did manage to get a link out to the Signal Group “just-in-time”, but only just, so I hope you managed to get Photos uploaded in “high quality” before the June 1st deadline. Any photos uploaded in this quality (ie not Original Quality) won’t count towards your 15Gb of free storage on Google Drive after that date. All photos, of any quality, will count moving forwards. To manage your Google Drive storage, I’m pointing you at this link – How to delete data and Free up Space in Google Drive. I hope it helps. Any problems let me (or Paul) know on Signal.

    And for a couple of you Fred and Jenny I think, you were having problems with Signal. It has to be linked to a smartphone app (iOS or Android phone). Install the app from Apple’s AppStore, or Google PlayStore and then see if you can see me amongst the Contacts that will probably be added automatically to your account. If not, add me, telno. 077 8552 4683, and send me a message. I will then be able to add you to the Group.

    Following-up from the last meeting – thanks to Steve for adding a post to the blog on Photo Albums. I followed up the future of meetings email I’d sent out to non-Zoom attendees and three responses indicated that they hoped to be able either by getting the time back, or with new equipment, to join us after the summer on Zoom if we were using it. However, a generally held opinion was that a split between in person and Zoom might be the way forward, and that we couldn’t really go back to the URC room we’d been using.

    I quickly ran through the articles of note on Flipboard, highlighting the numerous posts from Google that arose out of their Google I/O virtual meeting. I mentioned the advances in Digital Music that Apple’s Lossless Audio stream (to be followed also by Spotify at some later date) would bring, but noted that not all equipment would be able to make use of it. I commented on my problems with getting Apple CarPlay to work, including formerly the regulkar drop-out in service as I passed Cardiff Prison!!! I also commented on the closing of the Apple vs Epic courtroom drama in the US which could prove detrimental (imho) to the integrity and safety of the iOS experience – but that’s perhaps just me. [Spotify have also recently grumbled as well.] Then some good news – a recent courtcase in the UK means that McAffee will not be able to impose a renewal subscription upon a user who might have inadvertently chosen to install software (usually for free) at the time of hardware purchase. Then a couple of articles on GDPR – what it is, and NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) – the latter being something that Steve told us the Discussion Group had mentioned that very morning! Finally an alert about the sharing of NHS data (in an anonymised form – but not apparently if criminal enquiries were being requested) – which had not been at well communicated to the UK population with your rights to opt-out!

    I also tried to put people’s mind to rest about the WhatsApp “scare” message about changing person’s privacy settings. I’d researched this, found my settings HAD NOT been changed, and that the “scare” went back a long way – you can read this article to see the substance behind the “change”. I encourage you to search Snopes whenever you want to find out whether something is “fake news”,or not!

    Then we had an interesting discussion (arising out of the GDPR issue) on the problems of clicking on pop-up screens just to get rid of cookie permission requests. Owen came up with an interesting article that had references to a couple of apps, or strategies, to avoid these. He was going to look into this more. I had independently discovered SpeedReader or Reader Mode which seems to work on all the main browsers – Chrome, Brave, Firefox …

    … Edge and Safari which strips out the unwanted content from webpages. Here’s a link to how to implement it on Brave – it’s similar for Chrome and Edge.

    Your matters, around the screen …

    Jenny seemed delighted to announce she now had a part-time job from June to September editing a website that was connected to healthcare – policy and strategy. Whilst ticking all the boxes in the person specification, she was not confident of meeting the website matters so might be in touch …

    David H was enjoying his experiments with his free CAD program but had drawn some diagrams for the barn conversion … just in case!

    Don requested an update on how to get images and videos from wildlife and vehicle cameras. Paul suggested that the software provided by Garmin would probably do the trick, and I suggested that taking the SD-Card out of the camera and uploading to Google Photos using an SD-Card/USB reader should work.

    Owen (as previously mentioned) had come across software for controlling Cookie Popups and would report back on how he found it. Coincidentally, it looks as there may be legal challenges ahead as well!

    Margaret told us about the Hay Festival online. She also reported a recent case of two people having all their digital devices taken away by police on the basis of their IP address (taken from their router – which had been hacked) pointing to them being “guilty parties”. A wake-up call to us all to change our Router Passwords!

    Jim was still proceeding with his duplicate files purge. It was taking a lot longer thatn he’d anticipated, but the software (last meeting) was working well. He also reported on his experience of having hearing-aids fitted and the “magic” that seemed to be employed to detect what was required. Other reported similar experiences with NHS hearing tests and appliances.

    Phil had changed his broadband from VirginMedia to BT [I hope he doesn’t regret that decision]. All went smoothly except that he had to spend sometime reprogramming smart bulbs and Alexa. He also reported that he had a new car – a Toyota Yaris Hybrid – Paul suggested that he investigated the MyT app for Toyota to see if he could do “smart” things with that as well!

    Steve told us he’d now got both ICE and Libby set up and so far all was working well.

    Fred reported that anyone who was interested in vintage cars should make a point of going to Broadway this weekend.

    Ann updated us on her experience of using her USB Dual-drive gizmo. All was working well. She’d managed without doing almost anything to download (or upload??) stuff (technical term) from her laptop to her phone (or was that vice versa). It was a bit slow, but very handy for quick backups from her phone. She was interested in recommendations for a telephoto (zoom) camera for photographing birds for later identification at home. This prompted some discussion. I just summarised by saying that look for the quality in the lens as the foremost criteria, and the amount of optical (not digital) zoom that was available. Members noted that Panasonic, Canon and Sony did good cameras that might fit the bill, and more than one of us recommended going to the Cardiff Camera Centre in the arcades to try one out.

    Renee had installed the Libby app and had was reading magazines using it. I must try it out!!!

    As always, please advise if I’ve mis-reported!!!!

    There was no further time for me to talk about Google Drive management (see link at top of Notes) and Facebook Privacy settings – I will do a post on this asap.

  • Notes from Zoom meeting – 13th May 2021

    A lovely shot of you all – thanks Jim!

    I’m indebted to Jim for remembering each meeting to take these screenshots, this one is a particularly good one of the 15 of us meeting virtually yesterday. Christine, Marie-Christine, Jenny Sims and Phil had let me know they would not be attending.

    I’m also indebted to you all for your kind words and welcoming back, and can I thank Owen and Phil for stepping in to take the last meeting.

    I started the meeting by giving an account of the procedure I’d been subjected to at UHW. I won’t say more. The matter is now officially closed! Owen gave an update on Beacon, and told us the new system (Beacon 2) was now not going to happen, and he was working out how best our Cardiff U3A website could work with the existing old Beacon membership system. I then talked briefly about changes to the website to make the Search box (for Posts) more prominent; a subtle change to the placement of the Flipboard link to make it easier to find; and a brief introduction to the Guides that were available to read online. I also encouraged members to look at the Forums and Topics area of the website and to add their own Topic, or Comment upon an existing one. It’s a much better way of recording help required and advice given than Signal (or WhatsApp for that matter) can provide. Please consider using it.

    I then went through the Latest News items I’d stumbled upon and uploaded to the Flipboard magazine. I’m not going to mention any of them in particular again – go and look at the articles on Flipboard, and perhaps browse through old ones – I’m sorry there is no Search facility for Private magazines. The only drawback to a really good magazine interface.

    We then went “round the screen” …

    Barbara had taken her errant drive into the Apple store, having not had a satisfactory outcome from her visit to JLP (where she’d bought the MacBook as I recall). Success this time and she now had an external connector that had cost a bit, but which now enable her MacBook to read/write to her external disk. She also had a problem with her iPad seeming to shutdown when there appeared to be sufficient power – another trip to the Apple store was suggested as no one seemed to have a possible solution.

    David H retold his latest adventure … the re-discovery of a former life. His daughter had asked him to draw up plans for a barn refurbishment. He wondered whether he could find the CAD software he’d been used to using, was nearly scammed but had now found LibraCAD and he was working his way through the instructions/manual to find out how he could use it.

    Renee had downloaded and installed Libby (ref. last meeting) and had accessed the Library for her first book.

    Jonathan had no issues/problems – but his wife had! We then discussed the problem of an iPad either being too sensitive, or not accurate enough to record the correct key presses. Many of us seemed to have a similar problem. Some suggestions – clean the screen very thoroughly; the screen might be heat sensitive and this might be throwing the keypress off (we thought eventually this was unlikely to be the problem given the number of long figure-nailed folk using mobile devices); the co-ordinates might need to be recalibrated and Ann suggested that this could be done at the Apple store; we all thought it would be a good idea before any visit to accurately record where the problem on the keyboard was occurring. We hope Jules has success in finding out the problem, and for Jonathan reporting back on the solution!

    Don had proceeded with his creation of new Gmail accounts for his wife. Hopefully this will resolve any issues with her old account being “pwned”, and the AppleID issue. [Phil (from the previous meeting) felt that a password change on the old Gmail account would probably be sufficient for the first problem, and he suggested that the appearance of the Gmail address in the AppleID might not have been a case of someone having the account, but might have been that the email address had been given by Don or his wife when purchasing an earlier Apple device.]

    Steve had also downloaded Libby and was evaluating it. He’d prepared some text on photo books for the group, and I encouraged him to try and add the text as a Comment in this Topic.

    Fred reported that he was getting “end of life” warnings on his HP “all-in-one” desktop machine. We re-assured him that this was quite normal and he should only worry when things stopped working, and then then Neil at We Will Fix Your PC might be able to work wonders. [He fixes mobile devices and Macs as well.]

    Jim was working his way through old USB sticks, making sure he’d got the contents on his new laptop before discarding them. He was using a piece of software called AllDup to check whether the files already existed on the laptop.

    Finally Ann told us about her experiences online shopping from Curry’s where they would bring the goods to your car, in the car park, outside the store; but more particularly she told us about an initial purchase to buy a cable to re-charge her phone (which was unsuccessful as she’d got the wrong USBs (remember my last talk on USB cables – the links to read are at the end of the Meeting Notes – but then told us about a Sandisk Dual Drive USB Type-C device which could store 16Gb and which was only a few pounds and which might prove useful in transferring photos from her phone to the computer as long as she installed the correct software. We look forward to hearing the results!

    I contributed a rather interesting feature of Gmail which allowed you to create multiple addresses from your original address, and for adding an identifier to the end of the address that might be useful for filtering Junk mail when you have to provide an email address you don’t really want to have to. These links (on Flipboard as well) are How to create a Gmail alias and How to use Plus addressing in Gmail.

    I also mused over whether I’d been wrong NOT to use the email service offered me by Apple as my primary email account and have Gmail as my second account, rather than my primary address; no right or wrong, just a thought. The same would of course be true if I’d been a PC/Windows user – perhaps I should have been more actively promoting Outlook/Hotmail as the primary email service. Who knows!! The one thing I’m sure of is NOT to use an ISP service such as Virgin, TalkTalk, BTInternet etc.

    We closed the meeting by discussing what format meetings might, could and should take when Covid restrictions were lifted. It was felt that Zoom had worked well and that a regular cohort of members had experienced and got benefit from virtual meetings; it was a good tool for a digital group to use; that we ought to try and present any face-to-face meetings in the future in the same way as we had for the virtual (Zoom) meetings; that social (face-to-face) contact was equally as important and that members benefited from casual conversations outside the meetings and from being able to bring machines in with them; also the serendipity effect of the added things you can do in the city alongside a meeting – once you’re there; that we had a duty to consider those members who hadn’t felt they wanted to attend Zoom meetings; [I advised the group that I had sent an email to those members to try and find out if there was any reason why they hadn’t joined]; but above all we agreed that a return to the old room at URC was just not practical for large numbers, and that the quality of the WiFi just wouldn’t permit any pleasurable experience. We all agreed that possibly a hybrid-solution – one meeting Zoom, the next face-to-face, might be the answer.

  • Notes from Zoom meeting – 29th April 2021

    Somebody’s missing

    Thanks Owen and Phil for holding the fort for me. I understand that you had a great meeting and that Phil gave you a presentation on the subject on Online Reading and using the Library service, the PDF of his talk (with notes) is available here. Owen had to handle a number of “strange” Zoom problems. Beyond the call of duty – many thanks!

    Jenny opened the meeting with a report of the NPC’s Response to a House of Lords Select Committee – the Covid-19 Committee- and she advised that they will be lobbying to make sure that they are not by-passed in consultation in preference to the usual suspects, ie AgeUK. The report is on the Cardiff U3A website at this link – https://data.cardiffu3a.org.uk/documents/groups/computer/HoLReportBeyondDigital.pdf – I’m sure Jenny would welcome comments on the Report.

    Don needs to buy a new computer and hoped to view a Which? report at a neighbour’s house. He was also hoping that he could persuade his wife to get a new email address as it had been “pwned” and also that there was a problem with her AppleID – she needed to change it urgently!

    Paul then had problems with his audio.

    Renee had some success at date-stamping her photos for the iPhone – she had found an app Date Stamp Camera – which gave location, time and date on the photo. This might be of use to the Photography Group as well. The basic version is freel!

    Marie-Christine had no progress yet with BT and her “deliberate feature” problem. Owen commented that he thought all keyboards should have a key “Just Do It!”

    Stella advised that she was having problems with highlighting links so that she could highlight, copy and paste. Owen then shared his screen to demonstrate how that could be done.

    David H was thinking of re-furbishing his flat and was waiting for the Conservative party to offer the funds.

    Steve had prepared something on Photo Books for the website and was wanting to post it to Thought grazing. [I obviously had forgotten to give him rights – slapped wrist!] Owen thought he might have rights to post, and would look into to it. He also wondered about Chrome Books as a possible replacement for a Laptop – had Don thought about this as a possibility? Phil advised that they had been around for 8-9 years, operating system always up-to-date; data stored in the cloud. He thought at first they might be a good idea for us, but actually a laptop not much more expensive. Not a replacement for a tablet – a very different type of machine! Paul backed this up!

    Fred still “bouncing along” and visiting family in England; not much computing in terms of computing needs.

    Paul (after re-booting his machine) had reduced his Google Storage, and seen that he could reduce the amount stored as attachments to Gmail reasonably easily. Most of them advertisements. Photos for instance were still in gmail even though you’d saved them to Google Photos. Jenny asked how she could see how much of her storage was being used. Paul said that you could click on an image and select “Manage Storage”; the other alternative was to look at the bottom of the Gmail window – Owen suggested that perhaps he could do a presentation for a future meeting.

    Owen reported that quite a few members were not urgently requesting face-to-face meetings before the autumn. There was an “in memorium” page now on the Cardiff website.

    Phil then commented on Stella‘s “copy and paste” problem; he was a strong advocate of the MacBook Air (supported by Renee); he also suggested that the AppleID problem might be down to the Gmail account provided to Apple at the time of buying an Apple product; also a simple change of Password might solve the Gmail “pwned” problem. He then led a presentation on On-line Reading, which is referred to at the top of this post. You need to download an app called Borrowbox – but this has been superseded by a different app which you can use for magazines as well called Libby. He then went on to describe buying books for the Kindle, and he told you that you could load some books for Apple devices as well, [DIH: you don’t need to buy a Kindle device to read Kindle devices – you can just load them into the Kindle app which you can download to your mobile device – and buy them from Amazon]. Audio books can be obtained by subscription using Audible; Apple books can be bought as single purchases, some “classic books” are free.

    Owen reported that he was an Audible subscriber and it costed £7.99 a month which allowed access to one book a month, but you can for £6 get more. Renee advised that she thought the Library system seemed not to be working just yet. Jenny also reported that Grangetown Reading Club was able to lend books. Paul was quite excited by the prospect! Don advised that he’d been able to download old Parish maps through Llanishen Library, and Owen reported that the National Library had an online collection of Newspaper Articles.

    Owen then indicated that the group would send “good wishes” to me!!

  • Notes from Zoom meeting – 15th April 2021

    Belated notes from our meeting, I’ve been unavoidably occupied elsewhere – thanks for all your kind wishes.

    I started the meeting by reminding members that using the Forum/Topics was a good way of recording issues/problems that you might wish to look-up at a later date. That’s what we used to do when we had the Google+ Community available to us. I then said (incorrectly, and I’m grateful to Jim for the correction) that it was impossible to search on WhatsApp and Signal. It is, possible, but it’s not easy, and certainly you can’t pick-up a topic raised and discussed in a thread easily. I had added a few items as a result of queries raised at the previous meeting as Topics in the Photography and Computing and all things Digital Forums. I also noted that Marie-Christine had raised a Topic, which I’d been unable to answer – but during the course of the meeting that followed, Owen, and others, came up with a possible answer to her question. I also drew attention to a slight correction to my notes from the previous meeting that Paul had made on his TalkTalk Broadband contract.

    I then referred to the latest articles I’d added to the Thought grazing Flipboard magazine.

    We then went “round the screen” starting with …

    Owen who noted that the Committee had discussed mixed-mode meetings but there was nothing much further to report, but our comments had formed part of that discussion. He also noted (worryingly) that URC now did not have a working lift, so use of it as a venue for future meetings must be under threat.. He noted that the Third Age Trust were offering online IT “tutorials” in conjunction with Barclays’ Digital Eagles. He gave a doubtful update on any future version of Beacon for our membership system [this was later updated by email to … “not in the near future, if ever and legal process was being followed with the contracted supplier”]. In the meantime Owen was putting his coding-skills in operation to look at ways of enhancing the interface between Beacon and the Cardiff U3A website.

    David had recently done a switch from O2 to Sky on his mobile services. Not sure whether that included broadband as well?

    John reported that he used Google Photo Books, and was pleased with the results, he thought that 144 photos cost in the order of £79 for a book (soft cover) and £99 (hardback).

    Steve informed us he had been loking at Google Keep, Trello, and had starting using Flipboard. I agreed with him that Trello was a very good app to help with planning and organising things – my son relies on it a lot.

    Paul was looking at his Google storage plan and advised us to go to Google Drive on the web (through a browser) to do the deletions. He also wondered how to delete Google Accounts AND delete content. That’s not so easy as it sounds as Google likes to hold on to information. On the other hand Google is very good at passing content on to others when your account has become dormant because of death. We suggested that the “simplest” solution to an unwanted account might be just to delete the content and change the password.

    Because of an issue with RAW photos in the Photography group, Jim had researched ways of changing RAW images into JPEGs, and discovered MS Photos (and RAW Image Extension) as an easy way of doing that. He’d also discovered that his installation of the Outlook mail client had a very long safe senders list and he was looking at ways of “pruning” it, as well as adding certain users to it (ie me!!!!)

    Jenny updated us on the submission she’d been working on for the National Pensioners Convention to OFCOM on the switchover from copper to fibre, representing the need not to leave a vulnerable community excluded on the basis of cost, or availability. She had also been involved in a letter from the Gen Sec of NPC toOliver Dowden on the need for more skills training, and updated us that Jenny Philips (Digital Communities Wales) had recently given a talk to the Wesh NPC.

    Christine informed us of a scam text message she’d received – I advised the meeting that typing a telephone number in a browser search box would ofter give a quick indication of whether the message (or call) was a genuine one, or not.

    I then gave a presentation on types of USB cables, interfaces and standards. The relevant links to videos I showed are given below …

    From Kingston Technologies (recommended), What’s the difference between USB 3.1 Gen 1, Gen 2 and USB 3.2?

    Understanding USB Cable Types and Which One to Use

    USB-A vs. USB-C: What Is the Difference?

    Making Sense of USB-C and Thunderbolt Cables and Ports on Your MacBook

    What Is Thunderbolt 4? Is It Different From Thunderbolt 3?

  • Notes from Zoom meeting – 1st April 2021

    Another full screen with 16+ of us spurring the lovely sunshine for a chat! I started the meeting off by talking about the changes to Google Photos that will occur on June 1st and the 15Gb of free storage you get with Google Drive. I’ve written about these separately, so won’t include that content with these notes.

    I also touched upon the deletion of photos from Google Photos, on computers, the cloud and mobile devices, but again, I’ve written a separate post on that so won’t repeat anything here.

    I rushed through the new content on the Flipboard magazine, highlighting the post on Reddit, which was a response to the question Steve asked at the last meeting (he also asked about RSS feeds but I responded to that one in the last notes); the iOS 14.4.2 (or 12.5.2 for older devices) that Owen had alerted us to; and articles on the latest update to Audacity and a review of the “best” photo-editing apps – I can recommend Snapseed for anyone using Google Photos in particular.

    We then went round the screen (although not in the order of Jim’s screenshot above – many thanks again). I’ll only mention things that people raised …

    Owen opened a discussion about the possibility of mixed media (in person, face-to-face PLUS Zoom) that the Committee was going to discuss in the near future. The following suggestions were put forward, and Owen would welcome any further ones as well. Don suggested Alternate Meetings rather than joint ones. Jim suggested that there might be challenges with getting the sound quality right.I said that I thought the management of the meeting might prove challenging, and in particular Screen Sharing might be difficult. Steve commented on the number coming into such meetings. Paul highlighted the issue of remote attendees being able to see in person attendees. Phil suggested the setup would have to be – two laptops, two screens, two cameras and a high quality WiFi!!! We all agreed this would be unlikely at the URC 🙁

    Barbara would be grateful for any information on Google Photos and I promised to make available some links to articles I’d written in the past. [This prompted me to think that a lot of what we’d got on the old Google+ platform would still be relevant, and caused me to look after the meeting at this presumably underused resource.] After the meeting I resolved to do more actively with the Forums and Topics area of the website – so watch out, you’ve been warned – another place for you to look!!

    Paul retold his recurring story of negotiations with TalkTalk suggesting he was thinking of moving to Sky Central. He managed to reduce his fee to £22 for Broadband, TV – no premium channels, free calls and overseas calls) from £27pm. Seems like a bargain!!!

    David H had been alerted that his Google Photos account was at 85% storage capacity and he’d been asked to consider upgrading to Google One (Jim and I both have such accounts) which would give a total of 115Gb of storage. He’d started looking round for a method of transferring photos from the Google Photos Cloud to his desktop and had settled upon using the Mozilla Foundation’s free email client – Thunderbird to do that job. [Personally, I’m not sure why David couldn’t have just downloaded the photos, but perhaps I’ve forgotten to note something he said.]

    Jim mentioned that he’d been experimenting with the Intel Graphics Command Centre (see below) …

    … as a means to calibrate the displays on his devices so that the colours were comparable. I commented that I’d spent some time recently trying to do the same with a Samsung TV and after some time had completed the calibration, only to end up with a Profile that I couldn’t detect a difference from the supplied one!!!!

    Jonathan mentioned he’d recently been working on Photos Books using a process he’d been introduced to by Jessops (now sadly going into administration for the third time). The system he’d used was from a company called Cewe – I will include the details he supplied to me in a Forum called Photo Albums, and add a few other possibilities there as well – please feel free to add any you have chosen with a brief review of what you like, or dislike about it.

    Steven was interested at Paul’s TalkTalk pricing – he might be taking that further as it’s approaching his contract renewal time. I mentioned that anyone thinking of changing ISP should very seriously consider opening a Gmail, Yahoo mail or Outlook/Hotmail (Microsoft) account and use that as it would ease the pain of moving away from one ISP to another. You can setup forwarding from your ISP’s mailer to the chosen one before you move (or even if you don’t intend to move at this time), and inform everyone (I did so by putting a note in the Signature of my email) of your new email address.

    Don was doing just this email accounts thing at this very moment, and I quickly showed how to add a Google account to an existing account from the Icon displayed on a Google Chrome (or Gmail, Drive, or Photos) page.

    John also commented on Photo Albums, but I didn’t note down the one he was using. Perhaps you could add a Comment/Reply in the Photos Albums Topic? I have recorded he said it cost c.£30 for 28 photos, and you could get both hardback and softback editions.

    Phil noted that in his research recently for a new computer he’d realised that cloud storage was cheaper than hard disk storage. [My comment: you need to get the right balance. Cloud storage is slow – it’s OK for archiving stuff. I’ll set out my thinking/strategy in a Topic at a later date.]

  • Notes from Zoom meeting – 18th March 2021

    Another lively meeting that once again saw Google settings omitted due to lack of time. At the end of the meeting I declared my intention to start with that next time, and especially look at Google Photos, and for the “round the screen” to follow.

    Matters arising from the previous meeting. I mentioned that I’d put an article about the Pensions Issue for Women on Flipboard; I highlighted Jim’s Comment on the Meeting Notes that referred to his video; Fred reported that TalKTalk seemed to have got their act together in Cregiau – now he needed to get his act together with Signal!!

    I went briefly through the items I’d added to Flipboard highlighting articles on screen sharing in Zoom; deleting Fb posts; the free password manager now available with Dropbox; the differences between USB standards and cable-types [NB we agreed to hold a session on this at some stage]; on adware; deleting online accounts; and a tool you can employ to move photos from Apple iCloud to Google Photos.

    Member Issues.

    Marie-Christine was interested in the idea of deleting online accounts and “disappearing” from the Internet [This will be a good subject for a session at a later date].

    David H reported that the transition of his wife’s bank account away from M&S Bank had gone well [It’s interesting that a couple of banks, notably HSBC, have offered incentives to entice ex-M&S customers to join them].

    Don told us about his grandson tutoring him over FaceTime – something we’ve all got used to. He also advised us that an article had appeared in The Times on sharing Netflix access codes. They were clamping down on this and making sure that “families” were living in the same house!

    We advised Barbara that she might consider using speedtest.net, or uswitch.com, to test the speed of her internet connection and if it wasn’t performing as per spec. then to follow that up. She is with VirginMedia and as this is cable, she should rigorously challenge them if they’re not delivering the speed they should be as per contract.

    Stella raised the interesting issue of being advised on her TV that an insecure WiFi network was trying to access her TV. We re-assured her that there were many WiFi networks around every house and it was inevitable that you’d see more than just your network. As long as your network has a secure password then you don’t need to worry. In this case it was probably just a neighbour clicking on a network at random, or by mistake.

    Phil was enjoying his new MacBook Air; he had installed (just because he could I suppose) Parallels Desktop to enable him to run Windows 10 on it, as well as Ubuntu (Linux). Why spoil a lovely Mac is my comment!

    The problem Marilyn had been experiencing with her external Hard Disk was now resolved – she wasn’t really sure how! She was experiencing problems connecting to/using Signal. Hopefully that’s resolved itself too now.

    Paul‘s partner liked the old Windows 7 games (no comment); he’d found a way of installing them on Windows 10 and had put a link on Signal to inform anyone else of the solution. He was also cross at TalkTalk trying to increase the cost of his fixed-price contract before it came to the final date.

    Steve reminded us that it was easy to Mute yourself on Zoom and then unmute by using the spacebar; a practice it would be good for all of us to employ. He also had been getting some scams on Text messages – like the ones we reported on a few weeks ago. He also asked about RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Reddit – what are they, and are they of interest/use. I was able to answer immediately how I used RSS feeds – and described in this post I’d written on how I use them to prepare for meetings and the Flipboard magazine – and I promised to get back about Reddit, which I did in a Signal post; the text of which I include below …

    “A quite good explanation of Reddit is given here. You can perhaps think of Reddit as Bulletin Boards and Forums for everyone. Rather like the Forums and Topics on Thought grazing.”

    Renee was experiencing some problems with Virgin Media

    Owen was excited to tell us that Beacon Error Message 502 had now been fixed. I enquired when the new version of Beacon was likely to be ready. Sometime, never is probably the answer!

    Christine‘s problem with her WiFi had returned, it’s sporadic. For her, Renee, and Barbara it’s important to press the problem with VM. They may offer free WiFi extenders. VM is the fastest network you can get. Don’t give up on it, just make them deliver the service they’re supposed to.

  • Notes from Zoom meeting – 4th March 2021

    Nineteen of us for our Zoom meeting yesterday. Yes! I’ve managed to get the notes done quicker this time.

    I introduced the meeting, welcomed Barbara to her first meeting, did a demonstration on how the website worked and encourages members to take part either by writing a post, like Sianed last week, or to use the Forums and Topics. I showed how you could change some personal information under the Profile tab and highlighted the Noticeboard where changes to the site are recorded; the information available under Help and the Guides that are viewable.

    I then went on to run through the “latest news” that I had curated in the Flipboard magazine, mainly focussing on Facebook’s problems in Australia and Microsoft’s attempts to get Bing as a preferred search engine over Google. The best experience of Flipboard is on a tablet, so I’d recommend looking on your app store to see if you can install it on your tablet (or smartphone).

    Round the screen, not the one above which is a screenshot kindly taken by Jim, but the one I had in front of me …

    Mike reported he’d solved his Mouse problem by using a Mouse Mat. Who’d have thought such a simple solution would work. Once he told us, many of us remembered stories of mice not working properly without a mouse mat and as Mike’s table was shiny, it was likely that this has contributed to the battery usage. His keyboard, which I’d previously reported as being a problem too, is working fine as well.

    Marie-Christine had nothing to report.

    Owen reported that the Beacon Members Portal was playing-up for some members and he’d had to do a fair bit of user-support since renewal of membership started. Of the 780 members the branch had, over 600 had renewed so far.

    David H updated us on his Times subscription problem with Safari, Firefox and Chrome, but announced that it was now working with Brave. A really strange one – could it be something to do with the way browsers handled pop-ups. I don’t know. David is going to try Edge next to see if that works! He also reported that M&S Bank was closing – Owen provided this link to assist David find an alternative.

    Margaret reported that she’d tried to install LibreOffice on her Android tablet with no success. Owen came to the rescue again with a reference to Collabora for Android and iOS which enables Libra Office to run on those platforms. Refer to your relevant App Store for downloads and installs. She also told us about “the scam that wasn’t” – eBay have enacted their plan to move away from Paypal so an email to that effect wasn’t a scam. On another note a scam to try and phish personal information from a hacked contact list by saying someone was seriously injured in an accident – with links to follow-up – was just as low as you can get! Margaret also told us about an issue with women’s pensions which is highlighted in this BBC News post.

    Barbara told us about a disk drive problem she was having with her MacBook. The advice was to get in touch with John Lewis first, because that’s where she got it from, before going to the Apple Store. A phone-call now might be a good idea, to prepare the ground for the enquiry, for when we can visit the shops.

    John enquired as to whether the group had a view on whether anti-trust legislation on an international scale might now be more feasible given the number of bad instances of fake news and scams during the Covid pandemic. I certainly felt that something was more likely to happen in the US now and referred to a couple of articles I’d posted to the Flipboard magazine recently on what the new US President’s agenda might include.

    Jim had nothing to report. He had finished a video however that I’d be able to watch. I hope he doesn’t mind but here it is …

    [He’s added a Comment about the purpose of making the video in a Comment below this post.]

    Don told us about some work he’d done as a consequence of looking on the Money Saving Expert (MSE) website in respect of a Power of Attorney application he’d made online. He’d found the process to reclaim quite easy and had recovered £46 (I think). He also reported that following Sianed’s experience he’d purchased a Firestick and got the BT App and YouTube running on it. He had a Gmail project ahead of him as a consequence of his wife’s account having been compromised.

    Paul showed us a magnetic USB cable that held together. Awesome! Must have one – I’m afraid I can’t find the website.

    Fred advised that he had downloaded Signal and would be installing/joining shortly. He and the rest of his Close in Cregiau were having TalkTalk problems – actually BT OpenReach problems – and after many minutes trying to contact them reported that once he’d found an 0800 number, it was much quicker to contact them than the published 0333 number. There were bow OpenReach vans aplenty in the Close. This gave rise to a discussion on complaining and Barbara was of the opinion that using twitter was the best method of getting something done – she could be right!

    Ann asked a question about JPEG files. I was able to state categorically that a native JPEG file was not a bad image. It had just had some information removed from it through a compression algorithm in the camera. Usually this was to remove detail from highlights and shadows. Left at that you would probably not notice any problem. If the camera allowed you to decrease the amount of compression then there would probably be no difference at all. If you edited an image, as long as you saved at 0% compression (100% quality) then there would be no decrease in the quality of the image.

    Steve asked a question about Signal and whether it was an issue of privacy alone. I referred him to this blog post. I had also sent an email to the Group about my decision to move away from WhatsApp to Signal.

    Stella asked how she could delete an app from her iPhone. I showed her in a practical demonstration. Press down on the app, wait until you see the icon wiggle and the ‘x’ appear. Press the ‘x’ and it will be removed. You can then press on the Home button to stop the app “wiggling”.

    Christine announced success with her WiFi problem but she couldn’t be certain how she’d solved it. Barbara suggested that as a VM customer he might qualify for free Wifi extenders and encouraged her to follow that one up.

    Renee said that VM appeared to be slow today, I suggested that she (and others) might like to look at their ISP’s status page.

    For VM this would be – https://www.virginmedia.com/help/service-status

    You would get taken to something like this …

    You can also use this website to detect service outages – https://www.downdetector.co.uk – which links to many popular services.

    Phil was just so excited by his new M1 MacBook Air that he had very little to say apart from some comment about Bing, the Rhondda and someone singing. It had been a long afternoon.

    Finally Sianed introduced her post on LastPass. Anyone using LastPass, or thinking of using this password manager – which I recommend incidentally – should look at this blog post too, and if there are more than one user of the service in a family, you might consider taking out a Families membership which cover up to 6 people and an unlimited number of devices.

  • Notes from Zoom meeting – 18th February 2021

    I’m afraid the what had become the norm, delayed posting of notes has returned, so apologies for the late publication of these notes.

    We welcomed a new member – Steve Jones – and I notice that there are a couple of new members hoping to join us for our next meeting too. So you’ll all have to be on your best behaviour!

    I quickly followed up some issues from the previous meeting. Marie-Christine’s problem with Lightroom and Windows I’d dealt with in an email exchange but it might be that a bug-fix update to Lightroom was necessary to get a proper resolution. Jenny was not present at the meeting but Fred reported back on the National Pensioners Convention launch event on Tuesday 9th February. David Hughes had been challenged with his phone switching away from WiFi for calls and pushing his 4G calls bill up – we had advised on settings for WiFi calling and this now appeared to be working fine. Renee reported that her problems with alarm services and TV satellite were now fixed. Sianed was pleased to be able to report that she’d followed up our advice on howe to get her TV SMART once again by purchasing one of the many devices we’d suggested.

    I quickly ran through some of the more interesting “news” items I’d posted on the Flipboard magazine.

    I also quickly ran through the Thought grazing website, membership options (if people left the group, or if they were non-members but members of Cardiff U3A). I talked briefly about WordPress editing, commenting on posts and encouraged people to use the Bulleting Boards (Forums and Topics).

    We seemed to spend a lot of time talking about COVID-19 and Jabs at this meeting – I wonder why. To that end, there were less than normal problems, issues, challenges and questions to discuss.

    Marilyn had bitten the bullet and upgraded her iMac to BigSur. All was fine with her Lightroom Classic installation.

    Owen gave further information on the Pixel issue mentioned in a Flipboard post and suggested we might like to consider using Pixel Block as a way to prevent information about us to be sent back to marketing departments of shops such as Sainsbury.

    Stella was very unhappy about the WiFi service in her house and wondered about signal boosters. As she was using a 4G internet service to her router we felt that the problem should be reported to her ISP – Three – before any additional kit was purchased.

    David Hughes reported on his interesting adventure into the world of online paying-in of cheques which was both instructive and interesting. His other query related to shared access to the apartments in his community at Penarth. Several solutions were offered. Whilst the popular option of a Keysafe got a lot of support, the possible insurance aspect of this must be taken into account. An alternative suggested by Fred were using a MasterSuite from Tunstall key set (all locks would have to be changed). Fred suggested contacting the Local Authority as they might have a preferred supplier.

    Steve had a strange problem which seemed to involve phonecalls re-booting his WiFi. I’m not sure we really got the bottom of that one.

    Jim was using Animatica to create slideshows of images with music coming from audacity. I look forward to watching the outcome of this project.

    Paul had been looking at his Google file storage with the intended changes to the way Google was going to charge for what had previously been free high-resolution (ie not original quality) images. As with most of us the world of Backup’n’sync is a bit of mystery too!

    Christine was still suffering problems with her WiFi when trying to play online bridge. The devices seem to freeze after 1hr 10mins when using Zoom – and yes it’s a paid-for account! Would Powerline Adapters help? She also commented upon Facebook ownership of Content – I disagreed with her son’s interpretation.

    Don Roadblocks – games???? He reported that a grandson was happy to download animation software and create a Lego film in about 3hrs. Incredible!

    Mike was having problems with his Bluetooth mouse and keyboard dying. We suggested buying a pair that would share the same USB port on his computer.

    Ann was examining the cost of her phone contract and weighing up options. EE against Skynet; 4G vs. Broadband. We await her conclusions.

    Me – I’d been mainly working on cataloguing videos and changing them to .MP4 format and archiving them onto the family website.

  • Notes from Zoom meeting – 4th February 2021

    A large attendance yesterday, touching nineteen as shown above. We started with this – The Blue Ball – it’s mesmerising; the digital equivalent of those steel balls that swung on a cradle on execs desks in the seventies, remember them?

    I mentioned the emojipedia which I referenced in the last notes and offered to help anyone who wanted to get onto Signal at the end of the meeting. Then it was “round the screen” to find out what members had been up to, or were having difficulties, or issues, with.

    Margaret reported on two scams, one from Lloyds Bank (spelt Lloyd) and an “internet interruption” call/text which on traceback (which David H had done having received the same one) appeared to come from Caerphilly! On a more productive note she had been able to transfer a lot of treasured photos from her old laptop – which she’d been unable to upgrade to Windows 10 unfortunately (for a number of reasons, lapsed time, lack of memory) – to their desktop. I mentioned that Linux was still a possibility to revive the old laptop, we could look at that agin when we were all together in person. She also told us about a very pleasant experience attending virtually the Destinations Travel event, and informed us about the Stanfords Travel Writer Festival and the videos from the event which finished yesterday will be online from that site.

    Owen reported that following the last meeting, he’d replaced his Powerline Adaptors with new ones and was now getting much improved wired connection speed for his study.

    Don had been decorating for the past three weeks, that is when he wasn’t standing in the garden at a safe distance from the lead gas pipe he’d fractured in a wall, thinking it was redundant!

    Jim had got himself into “trouble” with Flickr for displaying a photo of some aubergines – this caused much mirth. He reported to me today that Flickr had apologised for slapping an “unsafe” rating on the picture, and it was now visible to everyone. He had also upgraded (on his new laptop) his copies of Audacity (audio editing) and PaintShop Pro (photo editing).

    LetterA 1B2

    Marie-Christine reported she was having a problem with her version of Lightroom and Windows. I offered to raise the matter on the Lightroom Queen Forum if she told me hat version of Lightroom, and the precise version of Windows she was having problems with.

    Fred reported that a switch to Signal was not getting any traction with his friends, and that he’d had an instance of PayPal phishing to contend with.

    David H added to Margaret’s description of the “internet will crash” scam. Someone asked where you should report such scams. The preferred method would appear to your ISP, in this case Sky, but Marie-Christine reminded us of Action Fraud (0300 123 2040) – is it a scam in itself? No it’s run by the police. Other tricks are to type the phone number of a caller into a browser and you’ll get an indication from Who Called Me? or Should I answer? Of course for an email you should look carefully at the email header address and type the domain into a browser to see if it’s genuine. David also asked whether it was possible to use WiFi for making telephone calls as the O2 signal in his apartment was so bad. The answer appears to be to activate WiFi calling for Android or iOS. David also reported that he was still not having any joy with his Times subscription on his iPad although it was working on his wife’s machine. I suggested that perhaps the subscription was limited to a fixed number of devices, and that perhaps deleting it from both machines and then re-installing it in order of preferences might solves the problem. Just a thought. Finally, he mentioned the possibility of adding people to a Netflix account and that his daughter had added them to her account and he was paying her £3 a month in gratitude – this being the cost of the extended subscription. It was pointed out that there was a similar option for Spotify, and the launch of Apple One scheme just recently was very similar. [NB The Spotify Family requires address verification; I’m not sure how this works but all members have to have “the same address” – work that one out yourself.]

    Mike had nothing to report.

    Renee reported some alarm issues ; problems with her satellite TV which required a factory reset eventually as the Italian channels had changed polarity (??) and just re-tuning didn’t solve the problem.

    Stella had nothing to report.

    John told us about the problems that have dogged them since he lost a bank card and the issues of not knowing whether a request to change details for a direct debit (because it use the former 16-digit number) was a scam or not. Just a nuisance. He wondered whether there were more scams at large currently because of Covid. Not sure. He reported with some delight success in transferring a SIM from an old phone to a new iPhone XR. There were some problems initially (with O2) but these were now resolved and he was getting the service he wanted at the reduced price of the service on the old phone. My standard advice is never to buy a phone on a plan, but to always save up for “the next one” when you purchase outright a new one. Also look at the plans that are available for SIM-only, or Pay as you Go. Measure up what you can get against the ones offered by GiffGaff (running on the O2 network and owned by them), which is my personal recommendation.

    Paul had nothing to report, having been too sore to think of anything else but finding a comfortable place to sit since his accidental encounter with his loft.

    Phil told us about a Facebook page – Strange things found in walls, including a safe and a gothic arch. He also told us about his experience (relating to Jim’s Flickr episode) of the poor performance of content-filtering for schools internet when he was working.

    Ted told us about Just Watch – a really useful website that tells you which streaming service you should look on to find films, etc. He also mentioned how useful he was finding the Snipping Tool in Windows to cut-out an element from an image. I was able to say that the Screenshot Utility in MacOS did the same thing, but there were also short-key sequences for the Mac that did the same thing.

    Sianed relayed the sad story of the Smart TV that had lost its smart functionality. For many of us that’s a cause for celebration as the smart functionality decreases with the age of a set as manufacturers don’t keep their apps up-to-date. So now she is in the happy position of using possibly an Amazon Firestick, a Google Chromecast (although Paul doesn’t rate it as there appears to a lot of US-content), a Now TV dongle, a Roku device or an Apple TV. Here’s a recent review of all of the ones available in the UK.

    Finally Jenny described the National Pensioners Convention (Wales) event that she was participating in on Tuesday (9th February). You are encouraged to sign-up and take part in the webinar – I’ve circulated details by email earlier. She particularly noted the work of the Good Things Foundation and the Carnegie Trust in supporting digital inclusion activity and projects. She recommended looking at the former’s website.

    I concluded the meeting with a gallop through home networking and router configuration which is all written up in this article which builds upon earlier ones.