Category: Meeting

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Digital image editing – Feb 14th 2019

Boot-up
Any follow-up on our Tidying-up Photos session last time?
Phishing quiz – https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-quiz-help-spot-phishing-emails/ – any feedback? [Ted was concerned about providing his details at the start of the Quiz. His fears were understandable, but unnecessary – read the Comment beneath this post, from me.] Jim’s keyboard experience
My iMac adventure [Update: Not only did I get a free drive, but a free screen AND a replacement case which had a dent in it – possibly caused by Apple they admitted/offered/suggested.] Any other member issues?
News
Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram to possibly share same messaging infrastucture – BBC report, Cult of Mac article.
Have yourself a digital calling card, or alternatively create an online presence; for instance – this is me.
Keyless cars at risk of theft. [Sianed advised us that VW are apparently the worst and uses a lined purse for her keys, the same as the one she puts her contactless cards in.] Protect your browsing history with a VPN. [We’ll come back to look at VPNs another day.] Facebook in-house developers blocked by Apple, and Google too!
Google+ closing down in April. [Don raised this issue. If you’ve got a Google+ account then it will cease to work after April 1st. Google allow you to “Takeaway” your data – I gave a link to this in the previous notes – I believe you can’t do the same with your Facebook information.] Google launches apps to help the hard of hearing (volunteers?). [Thanks Ted, Martin and Jim for offering to look at this, which is only (I know see) available for Android devices, so you might not be able to do the testing. Apologies if this applies.] How to Back-up your iCloud Photo Library.
Google’s contribution to Internet Safety Week, including Protecting your data wherever you go on the web.
Mesh WiFi router firm bought by Amazon. [Thanks Paul for volunteering to research Mesh WiFi systems for us for the next meeting.] Samsung’s first TV with Apple’s Airplay 2 now on sale (US only?).
Digital Image Editing using Gimp
Gimp stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program and was written originally for the operating system GNU but has been ported to many other platforms including Windows and MacOS; GNU stands for GNU’s Not Unix; it’s open source software; it’s free and it can be trusted.
You can download Gimp for your computer from this link. User documentation is available from this link, and some tutorials are available here.
So first of all you need to Install Gimp.
For today, I’m just going to concentrate on a couple of areas
A simple introduction to Gimp, including changing the size of an image, and cropping an image.
Using curves to improve the quality of the colour in an image
However, I can’t recommend using Gimp. It’s a techies toy, not really a usable photo-editing tool. So what do I suggest for free photo-editing?
For tablet/smartphone users it has to be Snapseed (from Google) which is available for both Android and iOS platforms. A tutorial on what you can do it with Snapseed is provided here. You could also try Adobe Photoshop Express.
For Windows there’s Adobe Photoshop Express, or you could try Microsoft Photos.
For Mac users you really only have their Photos app as Photoshop Express is not available for MacOS, so it’s Gimp or maybe Fotor which you can get from the Apple Appstore – but I don’t have any experience of using it. I don’t think I can recommend using Picasa any longer.
If you want to do your photo-editing online, then apart from Google Photos and editing your photos stored in iCloud (for Mac users), you should look at Pixlr, which has a whole range of free and chargeable offerings that run from your browser and in particular Pixlr X which doesn’t require Flash, looks really good and easy to use, and is probably better investing time and effort in than trying Adobe Photoexpress Online, which is a bit clunky and requires Adobe Flash Player to be installed.
 
 
 
 
 

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Organising and tidying-up – Part 3: Email – 10 Jan 2019

Boot-up
Monty Cohen – funeral Jan 25th
DupeGuru -how did it go?
Browser and Google – OK now?
Ways that Google can track you
How to test your PC for failing hardware
News
TV manufacturers play ball with Apple
Google Maps and CarPlay
Email – clients and accounts
Email doesn’t need to be accessed from a URL using your browser, or to a browser via an icon on your desktop, it can be linked to a mail application. Email is the classic example of a client/server application, where the client (the browser, or an application) makes requests of a remote server. Until the request is made, the information remains unread and unseen on the server. When using a mail application (rather than a browser), the act of opening the application usually starts the download of messages.
Popular clients for Windows – probably Mail for Windows, but if you’ve got Office 365 – you could use Outlook – but it’s probably more geared towards business users and provides more features than you really want, or need (a bit like Microsoft Word and Excel are overkill for us “third-agers”). If you don’t want to use a Microsoft product you could try Mailbird, or if you like using Firefox as a browser, you might want to consider using it’s email partner – Thunderbird.
Popular clients for Mac – probably a no-brainer – Apple Mail because it integrates well with your Mac, but if you want to look at alternatives, you could read this review.
Popular clients (apps) for iOS (iPhone and iPad) – well there’s nothing wrong with the Mail app, but you could try the Gmail app, or the Outlook app (particularly if you’re using Outlook on your laptop, or desktop machine)
Popular clients (apps) for Android – they come with their own email app, so there will be a Sony mail app, and Samsung mail etc. etc. But they will also almost certainly come with a Gmail app as well, so there’s probably no real reason to opt for anything different if you’re using Gmail.
There are other alternatives for your mobile device but I will just focus on Mail (iOS) and Gmail (Android and iOS).
Why would you want to use an email app rather than use a browser-based client. Well …

  1. You can easily combine multiple email accounts into one place
  2. You can store all your mail locally for archive purposes
  3. You can setup your mail so that it sends out email from a different email address using different SMTP servers
  4. You can create multiple email boxes for different purposes, easily apply filters to help you organise your mail
  5. … and probably many more.

What do you need to know?
Your email service is usually provided “free” as part of your internet/broadband package from your ISP (Internet Service Provider). This could be VirginMedia, BTinternet, TalkTalk etc. etc. However it is possible to get a free email service from elsewhere and Yahoo! and Google are examples of such service providers.
There are very good reasons to have a Google account and use Gmail, Google Contacts and Google Calendar, but I’ll leave that for another day. There are less good reasons for having Yahoo! mail and if you rely on that for your email service provision, I would suggest you might consider changing, or at least start using an alternative as well.
How does it all work? Well … email is delivered to your client in one of two methods (protocols) – POP3 (where the message is essentially downloaded to your device) and IMAP (where only an index and a header are initially downloaded, and then if you want to read the message it will be recalled from the server.
Essentially with POP3, the message will normally be deleted from the server after you’ve downloaded it – POP stands for Post Office Protocol and you can see why – it’s very like a Sorting Office. With IMAP the reverse happens, the message will be stored on the server and you actively have to mark it for deletion. This can cause confusion because often you feel you’ve deleted the message on your phone or tablet, but it’s still there when you go to look at your mail on your laptop/desktop. You should therefore remember to mark a setting in your mail app on your phone/tablet to delete the message from the server when you delete it from the phone/tablet. Here’s an article that explains the difference between POP3 and IMAP.
Then your outgoing mail is delivered using a different protocol (or method) called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) which transfers the message back to your mail provider for ongoing transmission to the recipient.
So … to set up a mail client on a device you need to obtain some information about the POP3 or IMAP address to fetch the mail, and the SMTP address to send the mail. You will also need the username (usually your email address) and password for the mail service you are using. Here’s an example from a self-hosted email service that I use for my websites, this would be an example of  the most difficult configuration you’d ever be likely to encounter.


For some services you may need to set up the client in a browser linked to your mail provider service, but most of the common ones have been set up in the client to do the connections automatically.
For BTinternet …… but be careful …
… and when you go to Settings …

I much prefer Gmail which allows you to do so much more …


Live Demonstration!!! 
iPhone (Mail and Gmail), and then Instructions for Windows Mail [which are provided here].

Here is a link describing how to forward Yahoo mail (NOT BTYahoo! unfortunately) using Classic Yahoo mail interface. You have to go back to the older version to do this.
… and here are the POP and IMAP settings for common email systems (from Microsoft) …
To create (or delete) folders in Mail for Windows, look at this article. If you don’t see the + sign against All Folders, go to the Troubleshooting section at the bottom of that page – the advice is to Close Mail, wait 30secs, then re-open!!!

 

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Organising and tidying-up – Part 2 – 20 Dec 2018

Boot-up
Google and Browser – OK?
“Short for web browser, a browser is a software application used to locate, retrieve and display content on the World Wide Web, including webpages, images, video and other files. As a client/server model, the browser is the client run on a computer or mobile device that contacts the Web server and requests information. The web server sends the information back to the browser which displays the results on the Internet-enabled device that supports a browser.
Today’s browsers are fully-functional software suites that can interpret and display HTML Web pages, applications, JavaScript, AJAX and other content hosted on web servers – this makes a browser a platform for running web-applications (like your banking application) in its own right. This means that some websites stipulate which browser you must use to access their services. Many browsers offer plug-ins which extend the capabilities of the software so it can display multimedia information (including sound and video), or the browser can be used to perform tasks such as videoconferencing, to design web pages or add anti-phishing filters and other security features to the browser. When used like this it is a fully fledged application environment in much the same way as Microsoft Office, or Adobe Photoshop is.
“The three most popular desktop browsers, according to Net Marketshare, are Chrome, followed by Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox and Edge.  Other major browsers include Apple Safari and Opera. While most commonly used to access information on the web (or internet), a browser can also be used to access information hosted on Web servers in private networks or intranet.”
I hope that helps. You’ll notice that the word Google isn’t mentioned at all!! However Google does provide us with Chrome. As we discussed (and as I demonstrated) you can decide which search engine to use – this could be Google, or Bing, or Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo – which I am currently using. You decide this in the Settings of your browser.
News
Wikipedia -I won’t be donating to them anymore!
The usual Facebook story – this time about disillusioned journalists employed to fact-check pages …
“They’ve essentially used us for crisis PR,” said Brooke Binkowski, former managing editor of Snopes, a factchecking site that has partnered with Facebook for two years. “They’re not taking anything seriously. They are more interested in making themselves look good and passing the buck … They clearly don’t care.”
Google is above the law – in NZ it seems
Google Lens appears on the iPhone (iOS) – here’s Google’s update report, and Google Maps tells you where to go, not just how to get there.
File Organisation
The problem … duplicates, versions all over the place, unable to find “stuff”. No escape from the problem – it has to be sorted out. However help may be at hand.
Using DupeGuru for both documents and photos – https://lifehacker.com/the-best-duplicate-file-finder-for-windows-1696492476 and  https://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/computing/how-to-find-and-remove-duplicate-files-and-photos-on-your-pc-11363985986930and https://dupeguru.voltaicideas.net/
 

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Organising and tidying-up – Part 1 – 6 Dec 2018

Boot-up
We had a lively discussion at which members raised issues connected to their network falling-out; possible reasons why this might be – for example clashing with a neighbour’s network; solid walls in old houses – but felt that this sounded like a hardware, or CONFIGURATION problem that only the ISP (Internet Service Provider) could fix with an engineer’s visit.
I mentioned my problems with upgrading an iMac and how I decided – having looked at the work involved – that I should take it to Neil’s workshop … We will fix your PC. [Update: I’ve just spoken to him and he’s explained the risk in doing the job and that of course that risk needs to be passed on to me, so I’m going to have to think about it!] We also through the meeting talked about browsers and search engines. I referred you to the post I wrote a few weeks back – “Just Google it …” – I’ve also researched a couple of sources for a good definition of what a browser does, this is the best I could come up with …
“Short for web browser, a browser is a software application used to locate, retrieve and display content on the World Wide Web, including webpages, images, video and other files. As a client/server model, the browser is the client run on a computer or mobile device that contacts the Web server and requests information. The web server sends the information back to the browser which displays the results on the Internet-enabled device that supports a browser.
Today’s browsers are fully-functional software suites that can interpret and display HTML Web pages, applications, JavaScript, AJAX and other content hosted on web servers – this makes a browser a platform for running web-applications (like your banking application) in its own right. This means that some websites stipulate which browser you must use to access their services. Many browsers offer plug-ins which extend the capabilities of the software so it can display multimedia information (including sound and video), or the browser can be used to perform tasks such as videoconferencing, to design web pages or add anti-phishing filters and other security features to the browser. When used like this it is a fully fledged application environment in much the same way as Microsoft Office, or Adobe Photoshop is.
“The three most popular desktop browsers, according to Net Marketshare, are Chrome, followed by Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox and Edge.  Other major browsers include Apple Safari and Opera. While most commonly used to access information on the web (or internet), a browser can also be used to access information hosted on Web servers in private networks or intranet.”
I hope that helps. You’ll notice that the word Google isn’t mentioned at all!! However Google does provide us with Chrome. As we discussed (and as I demonstrated) you can decide which search engine to use – this could be Google, or Bing, or Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo – which I am currently using. You decide this in the Settings of your browser.
We also looked briefly at these three posts on the website
Sextortion (Private site)
Subscription services (Public)
Creating an online magazine (Public)
News
Quora gets hacked
… and so does the Marriott
Google Fi brings WiFi to the masses
A change in direction for tumblr
Google’s Wing delivery drones to be tested in Finland
BT begins to take Huawei kit out of it’s forthcoming 5G network
and finally … the trials and tribulations of Facebook continue
Password managers
How do they work – I will just be describing how LastPass works, but others will be similar …
“LastPass is a browser extension that generates, stores, and fills in passwords. It makes practicing good security a little easier, by letting you generate unique, random, very long passwords for each website you go to. If one website is compromised, attackers only have access to your account on that one website, and only until you change the password.
“On the backend, the security of your LastPass vault hinges on the “master password”. When you create your LastPass account, the vault is encrypted with the master password. The master password, thus, is the key to the vault, which is protected by mathematics. For a decent password, it would take longer than the age of the universe to crack your password and enter your vault. On top of this, LastPass artificially makes logging in take *much* more time (on the order of a few seconds, but this adds up to billions of years for a brute force attack) and thus more difficult to attack.
“LastPass never sees the “raw” contents of your vault. When you log in, your master password is scrambled through a one-way hash function, and sent to LastPass. LastPass compares this with the hash they have on file, and if everything checks out, they send your encrypted vault to your computer. Your computer then decrypts your vault using the master password, and stores it for the duration of your session.
“In the unlikely event that LastPass is compromised, or LastPass receives a government request for your information, all LastPass has is your hashed master password, and an encrypted vault. These are both absolutely worthless without the master password itself. The only way around this is to try every possible password to see if it matches the hashed version. This is why resetting your LastPass master password also empties your vault.”
[Source: Quora but see also Guide to getting started with LastPass] You can increase your security by using two-factor authentication linked to your master password, but if you feel your master password is strong enough that should probably be sufficient.
What do you need to do?
Two approaches – from the browser, or by downloading an application and then installing browser extensions (see article above). The first way is probably the easiest, watch this!
What’s the choice?
Well obviously LastPass, but here is a review of other password managers as well.
Live Demonstration!!! 
We didn’t have enough time to get round to looking at email – clients and accounts, so I’ve transferred the content I’ve prepared over to a new post for the first meeting in the new year.

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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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Thoughtgrazing, Brave and DuckDuckGo – 27th Sept 2018

Boot-up

Email problems – two members do not like the new gmail interface. They advised the Group that even though they could revert back to the old interface, this would be removed shortly. It was suggested that they read their Gmail through a mail client on their device. This would be called Mail for iOS and MacOS (Apple) devices, and through Outlook on Windows devices. Just set up the Mail client to pull the mail down from Google. Instructions follow.
Use of Security Programs such as McAfee or Microsoft Defender. For users like us who are unlikely to play games, and know how to avoid scams, and are easily frightened off installing any strange software on our devices – it is certainly a good strategy to use Microsoft’s Defender progam which is part of Windows, rather than paying for anti-virus and security software. Always be mindful that downloading programs from the Internet has an inherent risk. Research the software before you download and install it just using a search term like “<software name> malware security”. Read the posts that come up and make your decision based on those reviews.
Online banking. One member was having problems reading online statements and balances linked to from an email. My advice was to go to the bank website, or use their app, rather than try and open a link in the email, or read text in the email. Distrust mails from banks anyway is good advice (Ted). They’ll always contact you again if it’s important.
Office applications (free). A member asked the question whether they should purchase the Office 365 suite – initially offered for free after buying a machine. Generally my advice is no – don’t purchase Office, unless you really have to. It’s just too bloated and is geared towards corporate use. The Google suite of apps is free, and the file formats are compatible with Microsoft as they use a common Open Source standard (Open XML). Another option would be to use Microsoft’s Office Online, which will work as long as you’re connected to the Internet, or alternatively to install LibreOffice on your device. Both of these also use the Open XML format to store the document, so one saved in one applications, should be readable in another..
Feed-back on using Evernote with Calendar. I posted a Comment under the Meeting Notes which gave a link to the following integration that Evernote has with the Outlook calendar – https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208314168-How-to-integrate-Evernote-with-your-calendar
If you want to integrate Evernote with any other calendar you may have to use IFTTT – which I’ll come back to another day!!!
Meeting – 11th October. Ted Richards will be the Convenor of the Group that day and will be looking at Family History software.

News

Twenty years of Google.
Google proposes data protection legislation!!!!
How to check the health of your Windows 10 PC (and keep it in shape).
How safe are you online? 10 Questions to ask yourself.
All this and more in the Thought grazing magazine (on the Home Page)

How to use “Thought grazing …”

Browsers and Search Engines

There is still confusion over what an internet browser is. It’s the software that you can use to “surf the web”. There are a number of browsers around.
The first (in 1993) to gain widespread use was called Mosaic, which then was re-badged as Netscape Navigator when the developer broke away; it then morphed into Firefox, as it changed ownership from Netscape (the company), through AOL, to Mozilla. Essentially it is open source software financed through making Google it’s default search engine. [For a while it was financed by Yahoo when Yahoo had its own search engine.] You can download Firefox (safely) here.
Microsoft launched its Internet Explorer (in 1995) – it caught on to the internet rather late – and replaced it with Edge with the release of Windows 10.
The next entrant was Apple’s Safari in 2003 – up until then they’d been supporting Netscape – and they have stopped providing a Windows version now so that it’s only available on Apple devices.
The final and most successful browser (nearly 66% adoption) is Google’s Chrome browser. It was developed from an Open Source project called Chromium funded by Google to provide the code-base for Chrome. It continues as a separate browser on Linux, and forms the basis of a number of other browsers such as Opera and Brave, which is what we will discuss next.
In the post about Google and the difference between the Google app, on your smartphone, and the use of an internet browser such as Chrome (from Google), Firefox, Safari, Edge (or Internet Explorer, from Microsoft) I mentioned that I was using  Brave. As I suspected, Brave is financed in crypto-currency, with an opt-in model for advertising that the user wants to receive. A subject for another day?!?!?
So let’s download it and set it up …

I referred to alternative search engines in the article – eg DuckDuckGo and I am now using and testing that extensively. The combination Brave + DuckDuckGo is faster, does not track where I go – thus no annoying ads; there is an ad blocker built-in and pop-ups are prevented as well.
DuckDuckGo earns revenue by serving ads from the Yahoo–Bing search alliance network, and through affiliate relationships with Amazon and eBay.
Spread the word – if you like it, or learn a little more if you’re contemplating doing the same as me by looking at How to live without Google.
 

Posted on

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.