Category: Advice

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Is it time to move to more paid subscription services?

I have to admit, the events of the past few weeks have made me look much more seriously at paying more for the IT services that I’ve taken for free up until now. Of course they’ve never been free, I’ve had to put up with the adverts and the email messages I don’t really want – alerting me to this deal, or that deal, and I’ve willingly put up with that as a price worth paying for the service I’ve been receiving. But two events have changed my mind, and moreover I feel the IT world is actually changing slowly as a consequence of the mistakes (to be exceptionally generous) of Facebook and Google; and the decision of Apple to switch more attention to Services, targeting this as their  main income stream for the future, and not relying on Hardware alone.
So what were the earth-shaking events in the Harrison-IT-world? Well the first was Google’s announcement that having hidden the news of a potential security weakness in an API, for several months (presumably to secure their stock-market price at the time Facebook was struggling, and presumably also after ensuring that the potential breach was secured) they used this as an excuse to kill-off (sorry “sunset”) Google+ next August. Now this service was not the success Google hoped it to be, and most definitely has not generated the revenue they hoped it might, but for me, my family and for many communities (particularly of photographers – because of the close linkage to Google Photos) – it was a hugely valuable tool. Now, we have to look for another social media platform. It could be Google Photos – Google may have plans to “enhance” it to take on features from Google+, or it could be another platform, but it’s just a pain in the neck having to move off something we’re used to! Google have real history with “sunsetting” tools that people get used to using [Thanks to @MrSimonWood for this link.] The second was Flickr’s announcement that they were going to limit their Free account to 1000 images – excluding those that were licensed under Creative Commons, which a lot of mine are. They are encouraging users to take out a Pro subscription to remove restrictions and allow more and larger images to be uploaded. This didn’t meet with the same “horror” feeling. I immediately felt that this was a decision that would secure the future long-term of the service under the new owners – SmugMug. [A feeling that I didn’t have when 500px made changes to their platform which led me to delete my account.] So I immediately subscribed and took advantage of the first-year discount price (still available for a few more days I believe).
So what am I saying. I’m saying that if there’s a service that I really want, and I really need some feeling that it’s going to be around for a while, I should pay for it. I wasn’t given that option by Google – shame on them; it appears I’ll never be given that opportunity by Facebook. Both of them are essentially marketing and advertising platforms. I don’t see either of them being able to develop a hybrid model as Flickr has been able to do.
This all makes Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography Plan and Microsofts’ Office 365 seem so much more sensible. I’ll continue with the former, but decline the latter as my roots are now firmly planted in the Apple world where I look to see how they will develop their Service offerings in Music, TV, Home and Car fields.
Interesting times.

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"It's getting to be a bit like Christmas" – 22 Nov 2018

Boot-up
These were the suggestions from last time that you came up with …
Password Manager [Aelfryn] Creating and updating a website [Martin] Google settings [Paul] Facebook settings [Me ???] Windows settings [Don] Backups (and archiving) [Stella] Labels (next session) [David] Photos – organisation and folders (finding) and editing [Toni] Video-editing [Toni] Building an internet browsing computer using Linux from an old laptop [David – Digital Projects maybe] Have I forgotten any? Send me any further suggestions.
Charging your phone overnight
News
Not much …
Facebook execs deny knowing anything!
YouTube video-streaming in Europe may be curtailed due to EU Copyright legislation.
Google runs into “problems” with use of health data.
Black Friday, Voucher Codes, etc. etc.
… anything else???
Labels
You need a printer! If you’re using an iPad/iPhone – you need a printer that supports AirPrint.
Sorry … nothing I could try out for Android tablets, or phones – does anyone want to research this?
Finding a solution that works on every machine is challenging. Using Google suite the best bet – Contacts, Sheets and Docs with an add-on from Avery.
Start with Contacts. If you don’t use gmail for contacts, go to the Contacts in your eMail application – you need to Export chosen Contacts as a .csv file.
So for Google (gmail) – go to contacts.google.com …

You also need to add the Avery Label “add-on” to Google Docs
– docs.google.com
 

Then in Google Sheets (sheets.google.com), you Import the .csv file

Back to Google Docs and choose new merge from Avery Label Merge Add-on …

Select the Avery Product Code – L7160 – 21 labels is a pretty good starting point …

… and then the .csv file you want to merge …

Select the fields that you want to print from the panel on the right-hand side of the Google Docs screen …

… and then Merge at the bottom of the Panel. A message should appear telling you that a new document Avery_L7160 has been created, and it should look something like this …

… which you should then be able to print – once you’ve loaded the Label Printer Paper!
Also a demo of using Label Printer for iPad/iPhone.
Here’s a good summary of how to do it in Word, Pages (Mac) and Google Docs
 
 

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Social media – is it worth getting involved? – 8 Nov 2018

Boot-up
Meeting – 25th October. Creating a magazine – any questions or issues arising? Apologies for not writing the article – I will get round to it asap!
What’s  a VPN, and should you consider using one? But first – How does the Internet work; how can you confuse it? Or … how to use your mobile phone in Starbucks to access your bank!!!!!!
We discussed split train ticket fare websites. Sites where you can say what your journey is, and you will be given a set of tickets that split the journey into pieces using different tickets. Remember NOT to book seats though, otherwise you’ll need to move your seat, otherwise you just present the correct ticket for the portion of the journey you’re travelling. I used to travel from Cardiff to Paddington with tickets from Cardiff to Swindon and Swindon to Paddington and that saved quite a bit of money.
These are the sites that offer split-ticketing. I can’t give a recommendation, but I think I used the first one – Split Ticketing. Others you could try Split your ticket, Raileasy, SplitMyFare and TicketClever.
What would you like to get out of these sessions; any themes or features you’d like me (or someone else – volunteers welcome) to lead a discussion on.
These were the suggestions you came up with …
Password Manager [Aelfryn] Creating and updating a website [Martin] Google settings [Paul] Facebook settings [Me ???] Windows settings [Don] Backups (and archiving) [Stella] Labels (next session) [David] Photos – organisation and folders (finding) and editing [Toni] Video-editing [Toni] Building an internet browsing computer using Linux from an old laptop [David – Digital Projects maybe] If I’ve forgotten any, please add as a comment.

News

Flickr goes subscription – let’s have that discussion again about free software. Apple vs Microsoft vs Google. [I’m going to write a Public blogpost on this one.]

Social media

It’s important to remember that almost without exception (WhatsApp and Instagram might have been that exception once) these are advertising, PR and marketing tools. They are not free, you just have to accept an intrusion into your lives for the service they provide. Some are more intrusive than others!!!
Facebook – newsfeed, pages, Messenger – hugely popular but now in disgrace somewhat, attempting a charm-offensive. Just remember to Logout!
A couple more rules for Facebook in addition to
Rule 1 – always logout because if you don’t Fb will track whatever you do away from their site;
Rule 2 – think very hard before you post photos; their terms and conditions allow them to do whatever they like with your images, and what you write;
Rule 3 – don’t use Facebook Identity Services to login to another website when it’s offered as an alternative to creating a login identity with a username and password – see Rule 1 above, for the reason why. [Using Google credentials is probably acceptable.] WhatsApp – an encrypted messaging app primarily for mobile devices, owned by Facebook. Their previous owners have now left; this may give rise to monetising of the platform – look forward to targeted ads some day soon!
Instagram – can be almost as annoying as twitter for promoting the trivial, eg photos of cute cats which you can like, or comment on. Allows you to easily alter the appearance of your photos with filters. Aimed at mobile devices for upload, but can be viewed on a desktop machine too. A marketing platform for many companies with links to their websites. It is also owned by Facebook and its original owners have also now left the company, so expect similar directed advertising, and tracking of what you’re doing, and where you’re doing it some day soon!
Twitter – simple public chat; announcements; keeping-in-touch with friends, family and colleagues and letting your thoughts be known by all. A private messaging facility is also available. Promotes the trivial, annoying at times, but hugely influential in “breaking stories” quickly (instantly); good that you’re limited to a certain number of words.
YouTube – simply the most popular video-sharing platform owned by Google; it allows you to comment on videos that are publicly shared, or on private ones you’ve been invited to view. You can embed your videos in a website, or share a link to them in an email. If you’re taking videos on your phone, you should at sometime seriously consider uploading them to YouTube
Flickr – now owned by SmugMug, it used to owned by Yahoo! (Oath), is the most popular photo-sharing site – again you have the option for private sharing of images, but the strength of the platform is in the ability to share with like-minded people your passion for photography. There are other sites, such as Google Photos, but they are really more photo storage sites.
LinkedIn – associated with the business and world of work; a marketplace for job-seekers and job-recruiters; a place for you to display your skills as well as keep in touch with former colleagues.
Pinterest – much-liked by those who use it, I gather, but I just don’t see the need (perhaps that’s me). You gather together collections of pins, of your interest, and others add to them, or comment on them. I gather recipes are popular!
Snapchat – introduced for teens and young people, it has the possible strength of reducing their digital footprint as snaps are removed after they’ve been seen by the recipient. The facility to build “Stories” is a recent addition which allow public sharing of snaps which are then permanently displayed (until user-deleted, I presume) rather than just temporarily displayed to named recipients.
Reddit – a place for opinionated people who want to argue their point. It has a nice voting mechanism so that views can be upgraded, or downgraded, bu those that read the posts, or comments. Essentially for commentary on events and news items.
Tumblr – owned by Yahoo! Its death has been forecast for many years, very much a niche-market of specialist users – micro-blogging. Simple publishing of ideas, and views to people of a similar mind who follow your writings.
Blogger – Google blogging platform; had the advantage of its close integration with Google+ (Google’s attempt to rival Facebook), but now beginning to look more than a little dated. Very few options for customisation.
Wordpress – two options available with this blogging/website creation platform – a commercial (but free) offering (this link is a site my daughter built) which is managed for you with more limited customisation and the ability to pay for extended services, eg backup; and a free service which you manage yourself and is almost limitless in what and how you can customise its look and feel through themes, and functionality through plugins, on your own hosted domain.
Here’s a review of the most popular Social Media sites currently (updated Oct 18, 2018)
And here’s a directory of my Internet presence on about.me.

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Creating a "magazine" – 25 Oct 2018

Boot-up
Meeting – 11th October. Ted Richards was the Convenor of the Group that day looked at Family History software – any questions or issues arising?
Changes to Thought grazing – https://thoughtgrazing.org
Logging in to Thought grazing – any problems or issues.
Password: Ca3rdyddU3A
Sextortion!!!!
Email scam threatens to show you watching pornography to your friends
An old scam with a new “flavour”

How safe are you online? 10 Questions to ask yourself
Another Facebook security breach
What to do if your Facebook account has been hacked
Google gets itself into trouble too by not telling users of a security hole and kills off Google+
The Brave browser – follow-up
also The best secure browser

News

Apple and Samsung fined for slowing-down older smartphones
Deleting your search history if you use Google
Fake review factories on Facebook
How to spot a fake five-star review on Amazon
Creating a magazine using Feedly, Pocket and Flipboard
Public article will follow – “Creating a Lightroom magazine”
Curating the web
Step 1 – create a Feedly account
Step 2 – select websites you want to get an RSS feed from [What is an RSS feed?] Step 3 – check periodically to see what has “popped-up” in your feed reader.
[NB You can also download an app for your phone or tablet for Feedly] Saving for another day, or for off-line reading (bookmarking+)
Step 1 – create a Pocket account
Step 2 – save to Pocket from your browser (perhaps using a browser extension), or from a feedly sharing icon
Step 3 – tag your articles, and read at your leisure, or when you want to
[NB You can also download an app for your phone or tablet for Pocket] Creating a magazine to share with others
Step 1 – create a Flipboard account
Step 2 – create a Magazine, and decide whether to make it Private or Public
Step 3 – add articles to your magazine from Pocket, or from your web browser
[NB You can also download an app for your phone or tablet for Flipboard]

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Starting to Trace your Family Tree (meeting notes from 10th Oct 2018)

Start by writing down what you already know of your family history.
Gather together any birth, death and marriage certificates your already have for the family.
Talk to other family members about their knowledge of the family.
Take copies of any certificates or family pictures they may have.
Then you are ready to start using online resources to help expand that knowledge.
 
Most important sources of information:

  • Births, death & marriages cartificates
  • Census information 1841 – 1911

 
Useful Websites

  • Ancestry.com – subscription site / free at library
  • Find My Past – subscription site / free at library
  • General Register Office – Free – needs registration
  • FreeBMD – Free
  • Family Search – registration
    • https://www.familysearch.org/

 
Accessing ‘Find My Past’ and ‘Ancestry’ in Cardiff Libraries

  • You will need your library number and a library PIN number.
  • Log into one of the computers in the library – note you may have to reserve a computer at busy times. At other times you will be able to walk in and start using one.
  • Double-Click on iBistro Library
  • Double-click on e-Reference
  • Double-click on either Ancestry or Find My Past

Recording your Family Tree
As you build up your family tree you will start to want to record all the information you have.  There are various ways of doing this:
The various websites (subscription and free) now enable you to record your family tree e.g. Ancestry.com.  You can sometimes choose to share that information with others but sometimes it is the default setting to share the information so take care.  Some sites automatically make information on living members confidential, others do not.
Many people purchase a bit of family history software to record their family tree.  I personally use Family Historian.
I also sketch out my family tree in Excel.

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Floppy Disks

Just a bit of trivia for you. When I started using computers at work, over twenty years ago, I would store my files on a 3 ½” floppy disk. These had a capacity of 1.44 megabytes, which means that these days I wouldn’t be able to store just one of my photos on one.

If I have managed to insert a photo from those days there, it is 600×480 pixels, and a mere 37 kilobytes.
(How did I type “½”? I didn’t, as I don’t have that key on my keyboard. I clicked on ‘Insert’ in the toolbar, and then on ‘Special character’.)
 

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iPhone Battery Replacement

I was in conversation the other day with someone who was complaining about the short battery life of their iPhone. I remembered that I’d put an alert in my calendar for later this year to take my 6s, and Jenny’s SE down to the Apple Store to get a battery replacement under their “special offer” scheme.
This came about as a result of them changing the way the operating system (iOS) worked on older models – slowing them down – to retain battery life. This caused a bit of a stink at the time, and so Apple responded with a replacement programme that means a replacement battery would cost £25, as opposed to £79, through 2018.
Apple also issued an advisory note to tell users a little bit more about how batteries would cease to work at full performance in this note which also explained how you could manage performance – which is of course what they should have done before they implemented it in the background without telling anyone. This article tells you how you can monitor and manage your battery health.
So … if you have one of the affected models (iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus) you should consider taking advantage of the Battery Replacement Offer, but for a few people with a 6S, it could be a free replacement.
The Apple Store calls …

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New Mobile Phone


This photo comes under the heading of Digital, rather than Computing, for three reasons.
I am holding my first mobile phone, a Samsung Galaxy J3.  I haven’t felt the need for one until recently, and even now I use it more as a small tablet.
I had just ridden a bicycle for the first time since I came to Cardiff.  As you may be able to tell, it is one of the new nextbikes which have appeared in the city. I used their app on the phone to hire it at Pontcanna Fields, and then rode it to Llandaff via footpaths. The app read a QR code on the bike, and then provided a code number to unlock it.
I am using the phone to remotely control my camera, a Lumix TZ200.  I can do things like adjust the exposure, zoom in and out, and obviously click the shutter, while seeing what the camera sees on the phone’s screen.
I hope some of that is of interest.
 

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A new year starts … and finally we look at Evernote – 13th Sept 2018

Boot-Up
Welcome
Issues & follow-up
We had a demonstration of the Beacon member website from Alison Firth;
David Hughes described the latest scam he’d been alerted to as it appeared to come from him and was going to a friend in the same membership organisation. As this person was a hotmail users, I suggested it was more likely they had had their email account hacked, rather than his gmail account. Last year we looked at Have I been pwned which allows you to check whether an account you have might have been compromised.
Digital Projects – I explained the idea behind Digital Projects – I showed this list as possibilities or examples of projects …

  • Buying a new computer;
  • Building a website for a project, hobby or for the family;
  • Family history software;
  • Under the hood – breaking down a PC into its components;
  • Building a server;
  • Using Linux to bring life to an old laptop;
  • Adobe Lightroom Training;
  • Video-editing for beginners including on a tablet (iPad);
  • Audio – analogue and digital working together;
  • More with Google Photos – further steps to link cameras and computers, and working with tablets.

News
Apple event yesterday – new iPhones and a new Apple Watch. You might like to watch the keynote speeches on your computer.
New privacy and security features in Google Accounts – you might wish to review your privacy settings in the light of GDPR legislation.
BT hike costs of email offering – ways of avoiding the increased charges for an email service from BT. IT’s going up from £5 a month, to £7.50 if you don’t have a BT line/account.
Fact checking – a review of websites that are allegedly “fair” and which have no obvious political leaning and also ones that debunk “fake news”.
Split-ticketing – an article that explains how a group managed to save c.£950 on a return journey by using the split-ticketing website. [Sianed told us that some train managers are happy to do this as well !!!] Topics for today
What is a browser? Look at this article which I wrote this week “Just Google it…” – it essentially suggests you should use a browser, ie Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Opera or Brave rather than the Google app on your smartphone or tablet for a better internet experience.
Thought grazing – features and demonstration. I explained the difference between the Public-facing pages on the site and the Private area available for Cardiff U3A Computer Group members (and past members). I’ll write some notes on how to post a note on the site and how to comment on posts before the next meeting.
Evernote – Here’s a Guide/manual to using Evernote. I gave a demonstration of how I use Evernote. Colin (I think) asked whether it could be linked to a Calendar – I said I would check and I’d report back in a reply/comment to these notes.

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"Just google it …"

Something I’ve only just recently become aware of is that people don’t know the difference between Google and an internet browser. Now this is a spectacular success for Google (the company) and drives their revenues up a lot, but means that users are potentially missing out on a lot in terms of their internet experience so this short note attempts to address that balance, albeit in a very small way!

How did this come about? Well principally because Google introduced an app for the iPhone and other smartphones and tablets called (unsurprisingly) … Google. It presents in a nice easy to use interface a way of searching for information on the internet – that is how Google started after all, which is how they also managed to corner the term for searching the internet – “just google it”. [You don’t hear many people saying – “just bing it”, or “just yahoo! it” – in fact in the case of the latter they just gave up and decided to use the Google search engine and ditch their own one.] So … at a stroke, new users to digital devices thought that the way to connect to the internet was through their “Google” app.
No, no – there is another way that presents you with so many other possibilities and no, no – you don’t have to restrict yourself to using just Google as your search tool. [In an earlier post I described some experiments with using DuckDuckGo and other search engines and I will return to that subject at another time.] So … what might you use?
Well even using Google’s Chrome browser is better than using the Google app on your smartphone or tablet. It probably uses the same software  “under the hood” based on Google’s Open Source Chromium code base but it does offer the possibility of adding extensions, and allowing the use of alternative search engines.
But what else could you use? On my iOS (Apple mobile devices) I tend to use Apple’s Safari browser. On my desktop/laptop I tend to use Chrome, or Firefox (another Open Source project) from the Mozilla Foundation. Then there’s Microsoft’s Edge – supplied with Windows, or Opera (a lean,  clean browsing machine), or I could be really radical and use something like Brave (and I am) which doesn’t track my browsing history … but I’ll leave that for another day, and for another post.
For today, the message is simple … don’t use the Google app as your main internet browser, just use it if you want to for simple searches. Find a browser you like and use that … and maybe even choose which search engine to use, it doesn’t need to be Google – I’m using Chrome with DuckDuckGo as I write this. You won’t regret making a change to your internet browsing/searching experience – believe me!