Digital matters

Tag: Hints and tips

  • Screenshots on Windows and Macs

    It’s often useful to be able to send an image of your screen, or part of your screen to someone. In fact I use this facility all the time when creating these blog posts.

    On the Mac, it’s very easy …

    Press Cmd-Alt-3 to capture a complete screen

    Press Cmd-Alt-4 to draw a window that you want captured

    To be guided through the options you can

    Press Cmd-Alt-5 and from the Options screen decider where you want to save your Screen shots [I save them to a Dropbox folder so they’re available between my two machines], and also choose the option for the type of screen capture you want, or even to Record a series of actions.

    On the iPad/iPhone, it’s straightforward too. You can capture a screen by Pressing the Power Button and the Home Button together [It works best if you press the former just before you press the latter].

    To take a screen shot in Windows, I suggest you follow the advice in this post. Or alternatively watch this video …

    Jim has sent me this note as well …

    “It might be helpful for your notes if I run through my Windows 10 sequence. The relevant key on my laptop is labelled SYSRQ/PRTSC, so I have to press the ALT key at the same time to print the screen. This puts the image onto the clipboard, so I then have to save it somewhere. I usually go to Paint Shop Pro and paste it as a new image. One thing I am investigating is what happens if you have two pages at once on the screen. At the moment I can only print one of the pages, depending on which I click on.“

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  • Problems with Two-factor authentication on a Mac during a recent upgrade

    John raised the problem he’d had with implementing Two-factor authentication on his Mac during a recent upgrade (to High Sierra, I think). Now Two-factor authentication is generally a good thing when you’re talking about access to cloud based services, eg OneDrive, eMail, Google Drive, iCloud – but it seems a bit OTT when you’re talking about an operating system as protection to prevent access to services running on the hardware. But Apple doesn’t make this clear.

    When I was doing my High Sierra and iOS upgrades the other day I was prompted to ask whether I wanted to implement Two-factor authentication, but was also advised that some of my devices wouldn’t support it and I would lose access to services if I chose to implement it. That was enough to warn me off, so I didn’t. John was not scared off – possibly because he didn’t get the warning that I got – and has had to make a trip to the Apple Store to try and get it sorted.

    Two-factor authentication is a “good idea”, don’t get me wrong, but Apple’s implementation is a bit clunky it would appear.

    https://www.macworld.com/article/3130566/security/the-apple-two-step-my-disastrous-attempt-to-use-apple-s-two-factor-authentication.html

  • Protecting a USB stick

    The subject of protecting a USB stick came up – I’d forgotten to provide the solution! As I suggested, in an earlier post, the answer is to create a Folder on the USB stick and protect the folder, not the stick.

    Two articles here I think provide the solution. The first one proposes encrypting the contents and is probably the easiest, you must remember the encryption key though!!

    A number of other alternatives are also provided in the second article …

    http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/password-protect-folder-windows/

    … for me. I’d prefer to put stuff I’m worried about on a USB Disk (not a stick) and use the security software provided by the drive manufacturer, eg Western Digital.

    http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/faq/id-3114794/password-protect-folder-windows.html

  • Spams and scams

    In the meeting yesterday the quite common topic of spams and scams came up, as did the enquiry “Can I find out whether one of online accounts could have been compromised” – these are the ones that you should consider changing your password, if you haven’t already.

    Martin Lewis’ website – Money Saving Expert provides a comprehensive guide to all things scam, and includes a link to the “Have I been Pwned” website which tells from your email (account) address whether there are any websites you subscribe to which have been hacked. Try it … hopefully you’ll get a null result!! If you don’t, don’t panic. Look at the date of the compromise. It could be that you’ve already changed the Password.

    https://haveibeenpwned.com/

    The second article is from Which? Always a good resource to check, even its “free” pages …

    http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/l/internet-scams?gclid=Cj0KCQjwvabPBRD5ARIsAIwFXBkjRe6ivtypKkT59hf_S5LAGat1qxrZgu8YVaxOVVExq_WFZtDErwQaAnnEEALw_wcB

    Finally, Martin Lewis mentions the use of a Password Manager to remember your passwords and even to generate secure passwords – I don’t use that facility with LastPass – the password manager I use, rather preferring to use the “template” approach I describes a couple of weeks back.

    https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/stop-scams

  • Here's one for the Mac users, but it's not a problem unique to Mac users.

    Fed-up with selecting the wrong contact from you address book? Time for some tidy-up. This article also shows how you can sort out duplicates held on your iOS (iPhone/iPad) device by using iCloud, Apple’s cloud storage, where you can hold your contacts, so that means that if you’re an iOS/PC user you should be able to clean your iPhone contacts as well.

    https://9to5mac.com/2017/02/09/how-to-remove-merge-duplicate-contacts-macos-ios/amp/