I don’t have a photo of attendees this time as Jim was “elsewhere” in poetic, or creative writing, mode. I received apologies from him, Sally, Don, Christine, Sianed, Jenny and Paul. If I’ve forgotten anyone, my apologies!
I started off by advertising that Margaret Richards was looking for volunteers to man Hubs (mainly in Libraries, I believe) to promote u3a in its 40th anniversary year. I also commented that Owen’s re-modelling of the Cardiff u3a website was now complete and he was hoping that groups would volunteer to keep their pages up-to-date. I said that as a group I was sure we would want to do that. Training would be provided.
I then reported on the progress (or lack of it) on WiFi at URC. Obviously and as reported subsequently on Signal and through eMail, I was unable to make the progress I’d hoped for and that’s why the next meeting would be held in Sight Life. Hopefully we might be able to return to URC after Christmas.
Not much news but I encouraged you to to look at the James Webb Space telescope images which are amazing.
Going round the screen, the following was noted.
John was busy taking and editing photos
Stella had upgraded her broadband with Three in the past year to a 4G Router but had to return to the shop because devices were not recognising passwords. However with her iPhone and a QR code it recognised immediately. When she tried pressing the WPS button, connections were made. Hurrah! Owen reported that he’d had problems with his 4G Router app. A changed password for admin then forced him to change back to factory settings. Duh!
Owen reported that he hadn’t made much progress with discounted software for u3a members. The charity that had provided the service before the lockdown was Charity Digital Exchange. There didn’t appear to be a national scheme for u3a members anymore.
Fred commented that he had taken part in a number of hybrid (in-person/zoom) meetings with the Institute of Government. I commented that a large organisation would quite probably have facilitators and technical support to assist/service the meeting – a luxury we would not have. I was however trying to work out a way of providing a reasonable experience and if it failed we would revert to alternate Zoom and in-person meetings possibly..
David reported that he now had increased fibre broadband speed. Whilst on holiday he’d noticed that access to his bridge tuition site was better, so perhaps there may be a solution to hand???
Anne commented that when dealing with internet connection problems that you needed to take it easy (or was she saying that I needed to take it easy – notes unclear). Anyway she mentioned that if WPS doesn’t immediately work (ref. Stella’s problem) a re-boot of the router can almost certainly work.
I seem to have run out of notes, so if I’ve forgotten someone, or something, again my apologies. I rather forgot (don’t say … “as usual”) to write these up immediately after the meeting.
It’s always worth reviewing which search engine you should use, as it is the browser of choice to “surf the web”. The reasons you might wish to consider which search engine you might wish to use are greater privacy, enhanced security, minimise adverts being displayed, or to get more meaningful pages being displayed, but first we’ll look at the web browser you might want to use.
First things first. If you’re using Internet Explorer you must seriously consider moving to Edge as Microsoft are removing support for Internet Explorer and one day you’ll find it just doesn’t work. If you’re using the initial release of Edge you should also upgrade to the latest version. It’s faster, more stable and uses the same code base (which is the open source Chromium) as some of the other browsers I’ll talk about later.
The next thing to remember is that Google is not a Browser. If you have a Google app on your smart device, it’s just Google’s “convenient” way of getting you to use their search engine and capture lots of useful marketing data from you! Google’s browser is called Chrome, and it uses the same code base as Edge (as mentioned above) – others include Brave, Opera and Vivaldi.
Chrome is by far the most popular browser accounting for more than 80% of the internet browser traffic, it has a wide range of useful extensions, and if you can be bothered to create a Google account and navigate through the preference screens, you can make it reasonably private – but you may wish to install the AdBlock Plus extension – an advert blocker, to stop intrusive adverts appearing on your web pages. [Another way of doing this is to look for Reader View, created for users with visual disability originally, which simplifies the view of a page on your browser screen.
But why use Chrome when you can use another browser which has built-in privacy. I’m talking about Brave. You can deploy many of Chrome’s extensions in Brave and virtually everything you see looks like Chrome, but without tying you to Google. I seriously recommend you look at Brave.
If not Brave, why not Microsoft Edge. The complete re-write of Edge using Chromium and with the support of Microsoft behind it makes this an excellent choice for those who use a lot of Microsoft applications (eg Office 365 which you can run in the browser, just as you can run the Google apps in Chrome) and is growing fast in popularity even if it’s Preferences menus are a bit tricky to work your way through.
If you’re an Apple user, I suggest you look no further than Safari, although all of the others can run on MacOS. It’s optimised for the Apple platform and integrates well with the other apps in the Mac/iPhone/iPad ecosystem.
That leaves two “outliers”. Firefox was one of the first browsers growing out the original work done on Netscape, it’s open source and has a huge and committed user-base. I have nothing to say against it, and nothing much to say for it either. It’s a good solid internet browser.
So we turn to Search Engines. You want to find something out on the internet – you just google it, don’t you? Well you can, but there are other choices as well, and this is where privacy concerns might suggest you might want to look at an alternative.
I’ll be upfront. I’ve been using DuckDuckGo (often in combination with Brave) for a couple of years now. I value the fact that my activity on the internet isn’t tracked and the results that are returned are not slanted towards my prior search history, and most importantly my activities are not farmed off to marketing agencies.
There’s nothing wrong with Google Search – it’s the most popular on the internet, but that’s by default rather than choice. The results are presented well, but there is a slant towards promoted results and results based on previous searches. You can change your search preferences a bit, deploy an ad blocker (see above), but why should you haver to!
DuckDuckGo is now presented as an alternative search engine in most, if not all, browsers and exists as an app on smart devices as well. Give a try! It’s my default search engine on my Apple devices.
The only real alternative to Google Search and DuckDuckGo is Microsoft’s Bing. The service has its origins in Microsoft’s previous search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search and later Live Search. Bing is now the code base for Yahoo’s search facility as it is for Ecosia – an ethical green alternative. Ecosiaimportantly doesn’t use any third-party tracking tools, meaning that any search made on the service won’t be seen by any party other than Ecosia. Furthermore, any search made on Ecosia becomes anonymized after one week. In contrast, Google and Bing will hold onto bits of search data (such as the device or date), even after deleting browser history and cookies.
A short (I hope) note on where media (and text messages) are stored on WhatsApp and Signal, how to backup and restore messages, and how to “get rid” of them – mainly to save space on your phone. I’m going to rely on the links referred to in the post, rather than repeat their contents, so click on the relevant ones.
First, some important points to remember.
The primary device for both apps is the device that your phone number was registered with. Any other device that you access messages from the service are synchronised with the primary device (usually a phone). It follows from this that you should always think of both WhatsApp and Signal as mobile apps, not tablet or desktop applications.
If you lose your phone, or change your phone without backing it up in the app first, you will lose your message store, and all the media attached to messages. They will not be accessible from your tablet, or desktop, applications because the link for synchronisation will be broken.
This is because … NO MESSAGES OR MEDIA ARE STORED ON A SERVER – really, you must believe me!
All media that’s downloaded in WhatsApp will be (by default) saved to your Gallery (Android) or Camera Roll [Photos app] (iOS). This is not the case for Signal (see below).
For Android devices, if you want to switch this off, you should read this article. Media files are automatically saved in your WhatsApp/Media/folder. If you have Internal Storage, the WhatsApp folder is located in your Internal Storage. If you do not have internal storage, the folder will be on your SD Card or External SD Card.
For iOS devices, in the same vein, this article may be helpful if you don’t want WhatsApp to store media to your Camera Roll [Photos app].
It follows from the above that if you delete media inside WhatsApp and you haven’t changed the default settings, the media should still be in the Gallery, or Camera Roll of your device. [NB I haven’t checked this out because I no longer use WhatsApp.]
If you want to backup your WhatsApp message store, you can refer to this article to find out how to do it for Android and iOS devices, and for PCs (for downloaded media only).
The situation with iOS for Signal is different from that with Android when it comes to Downloading images. Signal does not save media to your Gallery or Camera Roll [Photos app]. If you want to manage the auto download of media to the app, you should read this article first which covers the situation well for Android users, but will need to have a look at this article to see how to switch-off automatic downloads into the app for iOS users. I’m not going to recommend this as a way forward for iOS. Stick to the default and only store the downloaded media in the app.
If you want to Backup or Restore your Signal message store, you are advised to carefully read this article which applies to Android and iOS devices.
Now some notes on deletion of media.
It follows from the note above on media saved outside the app that if you delete in the app, the media will still be in the Gallery or Camera Roll. If you delete in the Gallery, the media should still be in the app.
Deletion of a message from a Chat will delete the media attached to it, but will not delete the chat, or the media, from any recipients of any message you’ve sent – unless you’ve put an “automatic delete after”setting on the message (Signal only, I believe).
Thus, following from above, if a chat recipient replies to a message you’ve deleted, you may see a thumbnail of the media attached to the original message, in the reply.
For iOS and Android users, to delete media from within Signal chats you should read this article, save any media you want, select the items for deletion and press the trash icon.
Finally, and I hope you’ve got this far, I think this link summarises the situation really well for our preferred solution – Signal. Media is stored in the app, you have the option manually to save selected images to Gallery or Camera Roll [Photos app], thus saving on storage space and gaining additional security along the way too.
Phew! That’s taken a good deal longer than I expected it would.
First off can I thank Sianed for taking over the meeting for the “round the screen” session which enabled me to take notes and have the fun of “lifting my hand” to speak.
There was not much to report back on from the previous meeting. I mentioned that I’d come to a determination that all media and messages in WhatsApp (and Signal) was held on the phone that was registered to WhatsApp (or Signal); the images on the desktop (and the iPad for Signal) were synced to the phone. This it was agreed could cause some phones to easily run out of memory.
As far as News was concerned there were just a couple of items that I’d already added to the Flipboard magazine – one on moving chat histories from an Android phone to an iPhone, and another about new features that were to be added to Apple’s Homekit (for developers), which we might find some use of in our use of Smart devices in the future. [NB We need to give this area much more attention and look at the Smart home more.]
I then thanked everyone who’d replied to the survey about a future venue for our face-to-face meetings. Not unexpectedly, nothing came out as a definite area of agreement for everyone, but some things did come through – no preference for room layout; a desire for a bit of social distancing (and good ventilation) from a couple of members; and no real need for catering. Taking these into consideration, it appeared to me that if we could return to URC that would be a good solution – probably using the Upper Room (rather than Meeting Room 1). I suggested that the meeting after next we should meet at URC and try the venue out – so that’s where we’ll meet on 21st July, our last meeting of the year. [Subsequently, I’ve re-visited URC, have been impressed that they have a new projector system for the Upper Room and I’m now working with them (Bob) to perhaps enhance the WiFi system which they badly want to improve themselves. Watch this space!
We then had a very short break and Sianed took over!
Paul returned to the issue he’d been having with Resources and Chrome; in discussion with Ted it became apparent that there was a need for a comprehensive article on where videos were stored in WhatsApp and I undertook to write such a post. [Following the meeting I did post a few links on Signal, which might be useful in the meantime.]
David reported that his screen sharing from his iPad to the TV was now working well for his Bridge-playing Tutorials [a link to this is on Signal – thanks David].
Ralph thanked Paul for the advice he’d given on driving licence renewal.
Steve recommended investigating the use of iCloud – it’s not very expensive to get 50Gb of cloud storage – if you’re an Apple user.
Christine reported that after a bit of a quiet period, the scams had started again and she’d had ones from Amazon and Paypal [I would recommend everyone consider subscribing to the Which Scam Alert Service] and perhaps one from Welsh Water, but there was some discussion over whether this was the Priority Registration Service – which is worth joining in case there’s a disruption in water supply, or indeed joining the similar registers for our utilities. [We’ve done this.]
Fred had gone to the recent General meeting (Roald Dahl) and learnt a few things, and had also renewed his driving licence following Paul’s advice.
Jim was still not sure about where WhatsApp/Signal stored images etc. and reserved the right to comment later, following my investigations.
Renee reported that the online portal for registering a change in marital status was a nightmare. No further comment – we suspected that very few (if any) of us were likely to be needing to use that portal 🙂
Ann had got into a pickle with downloading photos to her Google account that had then filled up her allotted storage and mail had stopped working. I sent a few links (on Signal) to help her work this one out but again promised to wrire n article on that as soon as possible.
I had nothing to report – I’d been too busy in the garden!
I then gave a brief review on the internet browser and search engine markets, the links I used are on Flipboard, but I will try and write an article about this too.
Just like me, Sianed didn’t report on anything – something I too often forgot to do.
That’s about it. A couple of articles for me to write which I’ll try and do as soon as I can.
Our next meeting will be on July 7th which will be an outdoor social meeting at The Castle Coffee bar, where we met before. Pleas try and come along if you can.
Finally, you’ll remember that I left the WhatsApp group and left Jim as the Admin. I asked him last week whether there had been any relevant activity on it. He reported that there had not. Therefore we agreed that he should close it, and that he’ll do shortly. Anyone not using Signal, I strongly encourage you to download the app and start using it. Let me know and I’ll add you to the Computer Group group on Signal.
So I did return!! As did eleven of you. So many thanks to Owen and Ted for holding the fort and particularly to Ted for two sessions, on Paint and using Ancestry. There was once a time when I arranged for the group to go to the Barclay Innovation Centre and Paul and I weren’t able to go. I felt much the same about missing Ted’s Talks (not this TED of course – although its really worth a browse if there’s nothing on TV you fancy watching).
Margaret, Ann, Christine and Owen weren’t able to join us and I had to interrupt Owen’s lunch to get a verification code for Zoom – apologies again, Owen.
I started by just reviewing the notes from the previous meeting highlighting just a few of them. I supported Jim‘s assertion that Windows Defender was sufficient for us for anti-virus control, but could see (once I looked up the details) the logic of Don installing Norton as part of his contract with BT as it was not an add-on that would have to be paid for at the end of a year. I noted that I’d need to follow-up the item on Software Discounts through the Third Age Trust – I think Owen said he’d make some enquiries. I supported the answer that Jim had given to Stella on where messages (and images) are stored in Signal (and WhatsApp) – they are stored on your phone. That’s why Renee had been unable to rebuild her message store on her computer a few months back. [I’d also had to look into this as my sister was getting alarmed at the amount of space photos were taking-up on her phone. Unfortunately there’s no bulk download facility available. You have to select individual media items, save them to your device, then download them to your computer. That’s encrypted security for you!]
I then went through the significant items (imho) that had seemed to have happened since the last meeting I facilitated. These are posted to Flipboard so I won’t go through them in detail.I did in particular draw your attention to the announcement at Apple’s WWDC event, that the next version of their Operating Systems with biometric Passkeys, could be a real game-changer as FIDO was a standard that was being followed by Google and Microsoft as well. Finally I highlighted some of the changes we could expect to see in the next release of iOS (v16) – you would be able to see the WiFi password of your connected network (useful when a trusted visitor asks to connect to your network); there would be improved methods of deleting duplicate photos; dictation would be improved (ie speech-to-text); the Home app would get improvements (ie more Smart Controls), [and incidentally Hive would better integrate with the Apple Home Kit]; you would be able to track medication in the Health app; you would be able to edit/recall iMessages (but not SMS Texts) up to 15mins after they had been sent; and finally you would be able to use your iPhone as a webcam.
Jenny advised us that her work on Digital Exclusion continues. She had a tight deadline to draw together threads and themes linked to Poverty and Digital Exclusion and asked for any help we could offer her on case studies or examples. [After the meeting I stumbled upon Jenny’s article in The Pensioner magazine – a rattling good read! Well done Jenny.]
David mentioned that he’d had an invite to join/use “passwordless” LastPass. I seemed to remember something about this, but suggested that he didn’t volunteer to be in the first wave of adopters. I said that it quite possibly might be connected to FIDO developments … but it isn’t. It’s connected to using LastPass Authenticator. Authenticator software is useful – I’ve used both Google’s and LastPass apps. It replaces the code sent to your phone as a way of verifying your identity. He then described a sad story of failing to learn to play bridge, and then when he had found a suitable online course (from u3a) he’d been unable to use it as the text on his iPad was so small. Various solutions for using your TV to see an iPad or Android tablet were proffered, and it was generally believed that it should be possible. [After the meeting he reported success having “googled” the issue.] I (with Paul’s help) will try and post a short article on the site in due course.
Sianed raised the issue of biometrics maybe not being the overall solution to replacing passwords as sweat on the finger has proven to be a barrier to correct identification, and anaesthetic (or a condition such as Bell’s Palsy) might make facial recognition challenging. I mentioned that Apple was now saying that its facial recognition could cope with masks – so there must be more attention being applied to eyes, perhaps. I also felt that, as with all new technologies, this would be an addition (at least initially) not a replacement. She also raised a problem she and her husband were having with network printer access from a shared computer. We suggested that she needed to look at the printer setup – to see if it was setup as a shared printer.
Paul had to earlier drop out of the call because he was getting a message saying that he was running out of resources for audio. After closing Chrome, all was well. Chrome is a particularly “hungry” app, and members are advised to use Brave, or Bing – both based on the same code-base (Chromium) as alternatives. He advised us that you code use the textno. 7726 to report spam text, and telno. 159 to report bank scams.
Mike had TV problems which had led eventually to getting a second new TV (one would be returned) whilst Budd Electrical and Beam Rite getting involved. They both seemed to suggest there was “no obvious problem”. However Paul gave some useful advice on certain channels appearing to pixelate more than others – my apologies, I didn’t jot down the reason/solution.
Renee reported that her VirginMedia problem appeared to have been resolved and a refund given. She enquired as to whether anyone knew anyone who might repair the power socket on an Internet radio – we suggested Budds Electrical, or to go to where sh’e bough it (JLP) and see if they could repair. Alternatively, rechargeable batteries might be a workaround and acceptable solution.
Stella enquired about how she could get the complete details of her computer (including serial number for instance) before she attempted an upgrade to Windows 11. Jim guided her to Windows 10 > Settings > System > About which hopefully would provide the information she needed. WE reminded her of the need to do a proper backup before attempting the upgrade.
Finally Jenny advised us that she’d recently attended a meeting at Cardiff & Vale College where the facilities were very good. I said I’d follow that up, but indicated that cost was going to very likely drive our choice of venue for September when we restarted face-to-face meetings.
The Future of the Group.
I restated what I’d written in my reply to Ted’s notes of the meeting of 12th May. I corrected the impression I’d obviously left with Ted that I wanted to step down. If I’d said that, even inadvertently, I hadn’t meant to.
I felt that taking Notes and maintaining the website was “a good thing” and I wanted to continue doing that, but also to be able to do more presentation-like stuff, like we used to do, whilst still retaining the intimate “round-the-screen” sharing stuff we’d developed during the pandemic.
I felt that with Owen doing the calling notice, if members could take it in turn to “chair” the “round-the-screen” material, that would relieve me from doing that at the same time as taking notes. Similarly, if members would step forward and do short presentations, for instance on software they use – they don’t need to have slideshows, or Powerpoint; that would also help to refresh the group a little.
I think it was generally felt that the taking of Notes did help, it provided a useful resource to go back to when issues re-occurred. I am pleased that Sianed “volunteered” to facilitate the “round-the-screen” part of the next meeting and am hopeful that others would follow subsequently.
Great article Jenny! I missed this when the mag. came out a couple of weeks back. Our Jenny has an article in “The Pensioner” – the magazine of the Civil Pensioners’ Alliance (which I joined because of the good deals on Insurance products).
Ted Richards facilitated this meeting in the continuing absence of “yours truly” from that role. A screenshot of the attendees (minus Sianed’s picture as her camera wasn’t working), is below and a copy of Ted’s presentation on his use of Paint is included as an embedded file below that. Just click on the arrows to move backwards and forwards through the presentation.
Many thanks Ted, I’m sorry to have missed the meeting, but I’ll be with you all again on the 9th June, and then hopefully no more absences until the end of July when we’ll take a break.
12 of us met although there were the odd appearance, re-appearance and disappearance of some members! Thanks to Jim for the screenshots.
Owen took the lead in David’s absence, mentioned the news that Apple was no longer the world’s biggest company, led a remarkably short moment of silence for that fact and also mentioned the demise of the iPod Touch.
David has a friend who had been locked out of Gmail. He was unsure whether this was a Google account problem or just spite. Renee mentioned that she had received prompts from Google to take extra security options. David further lamented that his iPad was now too old to receive iOS updates (he’s locked on 12 when the current release is at 15) and that this was now beginning to case him issues with favourite apps that would no longer work. Beyond commiserations, we were unable to offer much help.
Jenny then kicked off a discussion about discounts available through u3a or the Third Age Trust. Owen indicated that there were some software discounts available but needed to look into the scheme again. Fred added his weight to the call for national-level negotiations. Jenny is also speaking at the Age Cymru conference, her topic is digital inclusion.
Paul informed us that he had learned that the short phone number 159 can be used to report a banking scam (or attempt) [Thanks Rip Off Britain on the BBC]. He was unsure whether this was just a report or whether one then got through to one’s own bank to freeze cards etc.
Stella had received a scam message on Signal which she had not opened but wanted to delete. We demonstrated how to do this and also slim down the number of messages. We were unsure as to whether the messages were stored on a local device or just on a remote server. Jim interpolated later that with WhatsApp, images and videos are held on the local device when delivered and the storage this takes needs to be managed to avoid filling up the phone’s capacity. We presume the same is true with Signal.
Ralph needs to renew his driving licence having reached a certain age and enquired whether it was feasible to do this using a smart phone or would a PC/laptop be better. A PC/laptop was recommended as being more amenable to typing but we did think it could be done on a phone. In response to Ted’s enquiry on this, it was indicated that no actual medical checks were involved but that there was some self-reporting required.
Ted started off a discussion on the future of the group in view of David H’s decision to step down as facilitator in a couple of months. We kicked around a few ideas, thinking that as no member had thrown their hat in the ring yet, it might be necessary to reformulate how the group operates to attract candidates. No decisions were made but the following ideas were raised:
Frequency of meetings: monthly or fortnightly or a fixed pattern (e.g. 1st and 3rd Thursdays of a month)
Content of meetings: round table with occasional longer talks (as now) or just main talks
Mix and match options: face-to-face or zoom or do each type alternately [hybrid was discussed]
More than one convenor, possibly one running Zoom meetings and another running F2F.
No notes to be produced – this was raised to indicate that note taking and loading onto the website clearly involves some effort and may be putting off candidates – members to take their own notes as they think fit.
Some members expressed preferences but there was little consensus at present.
Jim added to his points on WhatsApp that there has been a message re a upgrade within the next few days that will be advisable to take.
Steve had had some issues with new equipment. He also raised the recent reports on FIDO, the sharing of account details including passwords between Apple, Google and Microsoft, ostensibly to save money and hassles. It should be reported that there was a tinge of cynicism about comments on this.
Mario reported that he had borrowed the URC’s new laptop and obtained much better speeds on his home wifi than he did with his own equipment. He also indicated that URC systems were improving and still hoped for better soon.
In closing the meeting, Owen reminded members that he was not available on 26th May for the next meeting and Ted has agreed to start the Zoom session instead.
Thirteen of us met this week with Owen facilitating again in David’s absence in the Antipodes.
Ted provided an extremely interesting talk on the use of the various software he uses in ancestry research. He demonstrated the use of paid-for and free software, including Ancestry.com and Find My Past in the former category and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Free BMD, the General Register Office and the Welsh newspaper archives available from the National Library of Wales in the latter category.
Using a grandfather of David Hughes who was known to have died in the First World War as an example, he took us through the search process, moving from one application to another to add in material until we had a clear picture of William Hughes, his parents, wife and children. Ted was also able to add in the cause of death and location of his burial as well as background as to his work before the war and possible service in a territorial unit, perhaps in the Boer War or other imperial conflict.
It was a trouble-free demonstration and Ted has provided a slideshow to accompany his talk for Thoughtgrazing members …
There were some contributions from members: Jim mentioned WikiTree to which you can add your own family tree to help others find connections – their ultimate aim is to connect all living people on a single tree – and Jonathan mentioned Family Echo which enables one to draw up a tree – but not to do the searching.
We moved on to our usual round-table discussions. Several members had nil returns but here are the others:
David H has battery-life problems with his mobile phone and Ann and Jim were able to offer him advice on both identifying and ameliorating the problem.
Christine had been selling things on Gumtree and eBay and was surprised by the level of scam offers she received. We discussed the difficulty in establishing the bona fides of purchasers. Christine has firmly decided on local and cash-only arrangements. Renee recommended the use of NextDoor for this.
Don had received a letter from a charity he supports informing him of a data breach and is monitoring his accounts. He had also received a few scam phone calls using what appears to be a Cardiff number 029 2240 4135 and felt the ‘22’ was unusual. Some Penarth numbers use this, apparently.
Renee has finally had a problem fixed by Virgin Media. She has lost incoming calls due to a problem which appeared when Virgin Media switched her phone to a hub. Of course, she didn’t know she had a problem until her callers informed her of failed attempts and she thinks three months have passed until the problem has been resolved.
Ann has found a workaround of her printer problems using a smart phone app but still has signal problems.
Owen closed the meeting reminding members that in David’s absence, substitute facilitators were required. He was able to do the next meeting on 12th May but not on 26th so asked for volunteers to contact him. He also reminded the group that David had indicated that he wished to step down from the role entirely after the Summer break and that someone was needed to take over if the group is to continue. Owen indicated that he was not in a position to offer to do this.
I recently had this message from the Royal Television Society, which David thought was worth passing on:-
We have become aware that there are issues with the latest Android 12 version that is affecting the RTS app along with many others. The most common issues are that the App will not transfer to a new phone or will not download from the PlayStore. It appears that Android 12 has elements of incompatibility with a number of app development platforms including the one RTS uses. We are very sorry about the inconvenience and frustration this is causing. We have been informed it is not possible to de-bug the App in the platform to avoid the incompatibilities, the solution being for Google to patch Android 12 to negate the issues.
With possible fixes suggested but not with 100% success.
Step 1: Clear the cache & data of the Play Store
This gives the app a fresh start and can help fix issues.
Open your device’s Settings app Settings.
Tap Apps & notifications and then See all apps.
Scroll down and tap Google Play Store Google Play.
Tap Storage and then Clear Cache.
Next, tap Clear data.
Re-open the Play Store & try your download again.
Step 2: Restart your device
If you still can’t download after you clear the cache & data of the Play Store, restart your device.
Press and hold the Power button until the menu pops up.
Tap Power off or Restart if that is an option.
If needed, press and hold the Power button until your device turns on again.
Regrettably we will need to wait for an update to Android 12 but we will contact you again as soon as we have news of a patch to Android 12 and that the RTS App is working on that operating system.
