Category: Meeting

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Notes of meeting – 11th May 2023

Brief notes this time – apologies. I started the meeting by reviewing recent posts on Flipboard, looking at our Group webpage on the Cardiff u3a website and inviting help in facilitating the General Meeting on June 13th. I re-iterated my encouragement for members to subscribe to the free Which? Scam Newsletter, they also do a free Technology newsletter amongst others that members might also find of interest..

Anne was having problems with her TiVo box and the transfer tio VM360. Unclear instructions from VirginMedia. [Partly resolved by next meeting. Update??]

Tony had been searching for an alternative broadband supplier; he’d got a reduction from BT after price-matching from VirginMedia. He’d also had problems with unzipping files. [Update??] He was also more than a little disappointed at the way HP was blocking the use of compatible cartridges on their printers. A good reason to migrate/consider tank printers??

Ralph was unsure why Google seemed to cease working (or finding sites previously visited). Suggested that a solution might be to clear the browser cache.

Jim suggested that a solution to Stella’s previously reported problem might be to search the whole disk for missing files (TV programmes). He updated the group on what he had recently been doing using Audacity (see previous post). He’d wanted to take output from Video2MP3 music video (on YouTube??) and cut it into segments for easier playback. He’d used Audacity to do this. He was continuing to experiment with his new Pixel phone and was curious as to why some photos were being stored as thumbnails (I don’t know whether I’ve reported that one right??)

Ian was investigating a change in his iMac identity connected to separating work from home use. [Update??]

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Notes of meeting – 13th April 2023

Apologies: Sue, Jeanne, Mike, Jenny, Renee, Fred, Yvonne – apologies from me if I’ve forgotten anyone.

I gave an update on Paul – having visited him recently. We all hope that he, and David Hughes might be able to rejoin us in person sometime soon. [We did have a Zoom meeting on the 20th April at which Fred and Renee joined Paul, David and me.]

News: I quickly ran through the recent items I’d highlighted in the Flipboard magazine. These mainly being comments from WhatsApp about the changes to data territory and how they (like Signal) would be forced to exit the UK if the proposed legislation were to go ahead – of course we’d all get VPNs then, wouldn’t we?! Also an item from Jonathan on Windows 11 settings you might chose to change, and a variety of posts from Appleand about OpenAI (ChatGPT and DALL-E). We then also looked at a couple of items that had first appeared in the Signal group – the scamming of a journalist in the US’ credit card – unusual in that involved theft of the card within the US postal service and then working back towards the SIM swap; also the rather scare-mongering advice from Australia about a WiFi scanning device called a “pineapple” which omits to mention that deploying a VPN is a sufficient defence against possible intrusion; and finally the item on voice-cloning which was a bit frightening really. Again however, unless we’ve left a huge amount of our spoken voice on the internet, we should not be too alarmed – but it is amazing what technology can now do. I’ve put details of these on the Forums for you to refer to. We also discussed the reverse phone lookup sites that allow you to see whether a phone call from a number is likely to be a threat, or not – Who called me? and (confusingly, but different) Who called me.

I then quickly referred to the ChatGPT session we’d had previously and again there was a fair amount of comment, and also mentioned that I’d written an article on Google Photos which had been sparked by the group and my realisation that I didn’t fully understand some aspects of the synchronisation process and the difference between iCloud and Google’s cloud storage approaches. [As an update, I’ve subsequently realised there’s more for me to assimilate still, and I’m working on another post on deletion of photos from Google Photos and Apple photos – hopefully that’ll appear very shortly.]

I forgot to mention in the meeting that with the closing-down of the public Thought grazing site, I was now copying (with appropriate edits) some of the posts from this site to Just thoughts – my personal website.

Members raised the following issues (others not mentioned, did not have specific issues):

Jim commented that he’d been trying to get to the bottom of how short videos (called “hot shots” I believe) which enable you (on the Android) to select the best image from a short clip, do not appear to be retained in the cloud after an edit. [Subsequent to the meeting Jim did some more investigation and this, reported on Signal, has been transcribed into a Forum.]

Ian noted that the credit cxard replacement process {ref. US scam above} has changed and the verification process is now much better. It did mean that for some non-IT-savvy older folk, it might now involve a visit to the bank to complete the process.

John continues his learning pathway on Google Photos and using his iPhone. The discussion that followed led me to the realisation that I probably don’t need Google Photos (as an app) on my iPhone, and this in turn led me to consider writing another post (see above).

Ralph reported that he’d been experiencing messages from his ISP (through his WiFi connection) that he wasn’t online – when he most definitely was, or should have been. This quickly rectified itself in a few moments. I ventured the thought that this was the ISP disconnecting the router (employing dynamic IP-addressing) to either save allocation of scarce Cat4 IP-addresses, or alternatively to save bandwidth being allocated for polling the router to see if it was awake, and connected, or not. One way to test both would be to examine the IP-address being allocated to the router, and see if it was changing. With my VM ISP I appear to have a static IP-address – which is great. It never changes. This would allow me to run a server across the internet as the DNS would never change.

Stella had been alarmed by a message that appeared in her email that she felt was trying to make her download something that she hadn’t requested, and didn’t feel she needed. We went over the standard things that one should investigate in situations like this – looking at the URL, seeing if it’s https:// (SSL), and calling back independently from the message. All things we’ll cover again in the forthcoming Security session.

Anne had climbed out of another black hole (her words, not mine) having had a series of problems with a printer, buying a replacement, finding that the printer drivers were probably corrupted, and finding also that she quite probably hadn’t needed a new printer at all. The advice from PC World (imho) had not been good. The standard approach when you have a printer problem is to re-install the printer drivers – NOT install McAffee AV protection and say she had a virus problem!!!

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Notes of meeting – 9th March 2023

Swinging in to early action after yesterday, I started the meeting with updates and news.

I asked if there were any questions follow-up to the Snapseed / Google Photos session and post – there are links in this to earlier posts on Google Photos and it’s my intention to check and update these (if necessary) as soon as possible. Ian raised an issue at this point about whether you can use Snapseed without the photos being on Google Photos. I hope I clarified that Snapseed is really only a smart device app, that it was possible to load it onto Windows and MacOS, but I wasn’t advocating it. If you’ve got an Android device, you will be editing an image already in Google Photos on your device – it may as well be sync’d to photos.google.com as well (I can’t check that). If you’ve got an iOS/iPadOS device you can load an image from the Apple Photos app (iOS) into Snapseed and then after edits – Export to Google Drive. The same is true for iPadOS. You can then from photos.google.com on your laptop/desktop Import photos from Google Drive into Google Photos which will then be viewable in the app on your device..

On a separate question Ian asked whether Google Photos and Apple Photos have duplicate images on an iPhone. I was pretty sure (and have just checked) that if you go into the Google Photos app and go to delete images, that the ones that will be deleted will be ones that are on iCloud (ie they are in Apple Photos). Google Photos on iOS only stores cached images from Google cloud storage. What is more if you look at Google Photos on your iOS AND iPadOS device (if you have both, and they have identical backup settings for Google Photos), the contents of Google Photos will be different, whilst those for Apple Photos will be the same. Thus I can say conclusively that they are not duplicated. The amount of storage used by Google Photos on your iOS/iPadOS device can be limited as is shown in these screenshots …

[NB I don’t advocate this as a method of deleting images from Apple iCloud storage]

… the images that will appear in the Google Photos app will be the ones in Apple Photos on your device. They will not be in Google cloud storage unless you a) have chosen to manually upload them (see above), or b) have switched-on back-up and sync – which for Apple users I don’t recommend as you’ll then have two copies of the image on both Google cloud storage and iCloud. I hope this clarifies things, you might also find this link of interest.

I then talked about the re-structuring of Forums and Topics on the website and showed where I’d put “The apps I use …”. I invited members to add apps they were interested in under the most appropriate Topic or Category within a Topic. I added that I would move contributions around if necessary, so no one should feel intimidated about adding their favourite app (or URL). I highlighted the recent Topic on VPNs in the Network issues > Internet security Forum.

Using the opportunity to discover further the resources on the website, I showed the Guides menu page, and displayed the PDF documents available on the page from BDM Publications. These are to be thought of as “try before you buy” only and I would refer you to the new publisher – Papercut Publications – to see the complete range of paper-based guides that you can buy.

Then I quickly ran through the latest additions to our Flipboard magazine, curated by Jonathan, Paul and myself. I highlighted the growth in interest in AI and ChatGPT in particular and indicated that I was going to use this as the basis for the next meeting, with the use of Passkeys and 2FA being handled in the following presentation-style meeting on 27th April. I did dwell upon the graphical representation of Pink Floyd’s most frequently paid songs, and that sparked some lively discussion.

Finally, in my “introduction” I requested members to look at the page for the Computer Group on the Cardiff U3A website and make suggestions as to changes and additions that could be made – Jim suggested adding some of the photos that he’d taken, which I’ll certainly take on board. I also reminded members of the deadline for reduced membership subscription (March 28th). This created quite a lot of discussion about the payment method and the interface with PayPal. Ted requested that anyone having difficulties could help the Committee by taking screen shots. I referred members to this page that Jim had posted on how to take screen prints. We also quickly looked at the notes from the last meeting and were pleased to record that Anne had resolved her problem with VirginMedia whereby Prime Video was not linking to her Panasonic TV – pressing Yes, when it should be No, is not intuitive, is it?

Matters raised by members followed.

John S commented that he was encountering more and more bad website design – we concurred with that; he was also having problem with streaming services fro Sky. This I felt (unlike the advice I’d given to John M at the previous meeting about buffering) was due to contention for shared bandwidth from the ISP. All you can do is to take repeated Speedtest readings (preferably from a laptop connected by ethernet cable to the router) at different times of the day to see just how much the speed falls from the contracted level they should be attempting to deliver. It will be rare that they can reliably offer what is declared to be a maximum, all the time, but the counterpoint is that they should be close to delivering that speed in non-peak times. It’s a matter for the ISP to resolve; not one to be passed onto OpenReach to raise a query.

Kate was delighted to be able to report that she’d done a seamless transfer of everything from an old iPhone to a new one. A good news story which I can support from my recent migration as well. Very easy and painless.

Don reported a strange problem with his printer which seemed not to be working from a cable (ethernet) connection after Win11 upgrade but which was working from WiFi (and his phone). I suggested that upgrading the Printer Driver might be a solution, but it’s difficult to diagnose remotely.

Ian asked whether it was possible to copy photos from WhatsApp to Google Photos. I reported that once you’d downloaded the media from WhatsApp to the Camera Roll on the iPhone you could then upload them to photos.google.com as described earlier.

Ted requested (as mentioned above) that anyone having PayPal/U3A/subscription issues should try and take a screenshot and send it to him (or me, to send on to him).

John M asked what was incognito mode in a browser and how to get out of it. I said that was a very good question and would research and report back in the Forums.

Ralph had had a problem loading Google weather, but had solved it by stopping the download which had appeared to freeze (sic), and then re-starting it. I said I’d often experienced a similar occurrence when downloading from “live sites” – sites that were constantly changing, ones getting information from databases – and I usually just closed the Tab and then re-opened a new tab. This would clear the cache and start from scratch.

Anne was continuing her journey of discovery with Win11 (a not too pleasurable experience it would appear) and questioned where mail identified as Junk was going to, as it didn’t appear to be moving out of her Inbox. Jim felt this was probably a mail client issue, rather than Win11, but no one was able to definitively come up with an answer.

And with that rather unsatisfactory answer the meeting closed.

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Notes of meeting – 9th February 2023

This was the first of our “discussion-style” meetings and I recorded the following notes.

John S reported that his bus pass had stopped working and it had taken two further re-issues to get a working card. This led to a general discussion about apps and led to the suggestion (later in the meeting) that a session on apps might be “a good idea”. I offered to do a write-up on the Cardiff Bus app. [I haven’t done this because of later actions, namely the Forum “The apps I use …”.]

Renee had followed up her Signal request for suggestions for a new mobile contract by signing-up with Lebara (linked to Vodafone) and was happy with the deal but unhappy that voice-messaging didn’t seem to be offered. I advised that with GiffGaff (my preferred provider) it took some time for the network operator to arrange with the phone supplier the necessary integration and access to voice messaging. I found this link which might be helpful. We also discussed VPNs and I again offered to write something about them. [This I will do as a Topic in the most appropriate Forum.]

Anne was having difficulties in setting-up Amazon Prime. Getting a “No internet connection” message after she had upgraded her VirginMedia Router. Advice from group members was that she probably needed to setup the network connection on the TV again because the IP address of the router was probably different.

John M reported that he was experiencing an annoying break, and then delay in delivery of streamed media. I explained that this was almost certainly due to buffering. The download of a stream starts, then the delivery of the stream to the device is faster than the initial filling of the buffer that holds the content. Once the two are in sync, this delay would be minimised and the stream would be constant – that is download would equal display but would probably be slightly behind a live stream. This can be mitigated by using a cable connction from the router to the TV (or other device) because the download speed over local cable would be faster than relying on WiFi. He also reported some difficulties with enabling his First Direct Bank account with 2FA (his fingerprint). We suggested that he might look at the settings for his device, or the app, just to check that fingerprint recognition had been enabled.

Margaret retold in great detail the sage of changing her old phone to a new phone. The trials and tribulations of different SIM sizes (moving from a 7-year old phone); the barrier of having to provide ID at the shop (the security check to prevent SIM-swapping – which I applauded); the complexities of different USB connections (USB-A to USB-C) for an adapter; and when she’d got through all that the difficulty in understanding the instructions to validate the new sized SIM (they said Turn off, it should have said Power down). Congratulations and applause was showered upon her for the detail in her recounting of events and her success in achieving a successful outcome.

Ian was experiencing the SBOD (Spinning Beachball of Death) on his 7-8 year-old Mac; was this really the end, or could he do something about it? I suggested that the machine was probably nearing the end of its productive life. I had older machines but had been able to upgrade the RAM, the hard disk and the battery. If any of these were a possibility an upgrade might be a good idea and it was a job that a user could do relatively easy as there are videos (specific to machines) on the internet that show you hoe to do it. In the meantime, powering down the machine at least once a week (to flush the cache); running maintenance software such as Clean My Mac; and reducing the number of open windows, and background software, might eek more life out of the machine.

Stella was trying to link her laptop to her TV, but was having difficulties in doing so. I can’t remember (and I have no note) as to what was suggested.

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Notes of Hybrid meeting – 12th January 2023

What would turn out to be our last hybrid meeting

I started off the meeting with an apology for not doing the notes from our last meeting on the 8th December. I had the beginnings of a cold on that day, and the notes I took were indecipherable by the time I had recovered after Christmas.

I briefly went through the latest News – not that there was much as Jonathan and Paul attested to as well. Their additions to Flipboard and mine can be found here.

I then asked the group to consider using the Forums/Topics area on the website as an addition (not a replacement) to using Signal for issues that might be of interest to reference in the future. I suggested that Signal might best be used for getting quick responses to issues, and then copied to the most appropriate Forum as a Topic later. Or … perhaps just add them as a Topic if no response was immediately required and you just wanted to promote discussion on a Topic. I stated that I’d be reviewing the structure of the Forums and the Topics within them [Update: now completed], and that I would also be looking back at posts on the website that I thought ought to be promoted more for easy reference and access [Update: now done under Blog posts menu item].

I proposed to the group that we might review the way the group was working, and to discontinue doing hybrid zoom meetings which I was finding quite stressful. The group agreed with my proposal which I later circulated as an email …

I am grateful to those of you who attended the meeting yesterday and who accepted my suggestion to re-structure the programme of meetings for the Group.

We will still meet on the Second and Fourth Thursdays of the month at 2:00pm at SightLife, but without a Zoom hybrid component. Doing this was becoming a stressful addition to the meeting that I was finding it hard to work with, so I felt that if the group was going to flourish in the future we had to find a different way of working.

What I came up with, and which was agreed by the members present, was the splitting of the discussion/advice/issues component from the presentational/information component, so that the first will take place on the Second Thursday of the month, and the second will take place on the Fourth Thursday of the month. Doing this will mean that I don't need to prepare stuff for more more than one meeting a month - and I am keen to encourage others to "present" also; and I need not "chair" every discussion-style meeting - concentrating just on taking notes and inputting thoughts, inmformation or even sharing advice!

To support the Zoomers and maybe even extending the online community, a Zoom meeting will take place on the First Thursday of the month. This will essentially be a discussion-style meeting, but it's up to members to take it in any direction they wish. I will host this meeting from the comfort of my own home, with technology I'm more confident with.

Yesterday, I talked about "How the Internet works", and I'll be sharing an updated post on the subject, on the website asap. At our first proper "presentation-style" meeting in a fortnight I will be talking about "Home networking" - updating the various sessions we've had over the past 6 years or so. There should be time for anyone to raise a pressing issue/problem at the end so we're not dispensing with that and we will still do a News and Follow-up bit; we just won't go "round the table/screen" seeking input as we've done in the past two years (plus).

I'm looking for suggestions for other "presentation-style" subjects. I have it in mind to do one on photo-sharing in February, but any other ideas are welcome. Just drop me a line.

Finally, I'll be providing a bit more structure to the website so that the more useful posts are more easily found; and I'm also encouraging members to use the Forums and Topics, and you will see some changes to the Forums provided over the next two weeks. I don't want to replace our use of Signal. It's brilliant for keeping in touch and getting instant answers to problems; but I am keen to capture some of the issues/solutions as Topics so that they can be more easily retrieved. I am also keen to encourage members to start their own Topics and for all members to participate with Comments and Replies.

Apologies for the length of the message. I hope you all understand where I'm coming from. I'm confident that with these changes the group will be invigorated and work even better than it has in the past.

Then after totally confusing some of you in attempting to describe how I’d sorted out my son’s network (changing a router to a bridged connection, and creating a single WiFi network with one SSID is the quick description of what I did), I moved on to showing three short videos which aimed to explain “How the Internet works” …

These three videos I think provide a sound basis for understanding how information gets to you when you send an email, or do a search from your browser, or use an app on your phone to buy something. An earlier article on the public Thought grazing covers the ground too – I aim to update it shortly. This forms the basis for helping us to start looking at our Home networks and how they work, how they perform, and whether there is anything you can do to make them perform better. That’s for the next session – our first presentation-style meeting, on the 26th January.

You might be interested in reading this article which explains a number of terms used in the workings of the internet, and in the discussion of the videos the term “net neutrality” came up. I may have not fully explained why this is important, so again an article to read – if you’re interested; and a video, which I can recommend, which explains why net neutrality is a good thing, to watch …

Vimeo video on Net neutrality which they are supportive of (unlike Google & YouTube)

As the meeting closed Ian asked about Backups on Apple Mac kit. I strongly suggested there was an inbuilt, free, solution offered by Apple called Time Machine which he should investigate with an external hard disk. I offered the opinion that this was much better than cloud backup solutions which were slow and which would slow down other internet activity you might be doing. This is not to say that cloud storage is not important – I use iCloud, Google Drive and have used Dropbox and One Drive in the past – but it should be mainly thought of (imho) as a way of sharing documents (in the widest sense) between systems, between users and for long-term storage (archiving) of important documents.

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Notes of Hybrid meeting – 24th November 2022

No photo this time; and my apologies for the delay in publishing the notes. I thought I’d done them and only discovered I hadn’t when preparing for today’s meeting. Duh!

Quite a few apologies Jim, Sianed, Jenny, David Hughes, Sally, Kate and Renee. Some new members too – Rob, Maline and Hok. Welcome. Linda and Peter have decided the group is not for them, but we’re delighted to see Steve and Christine again.

I once again recommended members to take the occasional look at our Flipboard magazine , and to download Signal and take part in our chat between meetings.

On Signal in the past fortnight we’ve had a Google Update issue (Ted); Jim’s phone running out of memory – as yet unresolved; Ian’s disappearing old AOL email messages – resolved by AOL with a cautionary warning (do it within 7 days or it’s lost forever); a plug fro the Brave browser (from me); and discussion on the Windows 11 Photos app (Jim, Jonathan and me).

We had an update on Anne’s problems grappling with Windows 11 on her new laptop – a big change from the experience she was used to with Windows 7. Jonathan is providing assistance. Many thanks. I reported that I still hadn’t updated my iOS to v.16, or my MacOS to v.13 – I’m being very cautious this time and plan to go to v16.2 when it’s released in December and probably v.13.1 about the same time. I had experienced a strange issue with an app on my phone – the Coop shopping app that wasn’t allowing me to add new offers to my card, and yet I could do so through the web browser. I reported this to their help desk – I’m still awaiting a reply, but resolved the problem myself through an inspired guess. I disabled the VPN running on the phone, and it worked. [Message to self – you don’t need a VPN running all the time, really only when you’re away from your home network.]

I briefly mentioned the post I’d written a few years ago about using printer labels for Christmas cards and the added benefit of using the same template on plain paper to record the cards we’d received. I recommended using Avery format labels – the numbering is used by most printer label producers and so you can use their templates on whatever paper you buy.

Martin had a story to tell about his being “forced” into buying a new phone!! Being a mainly desktop user he’d decided to take the plunge and bought a Samsung. He’d found that SmartSwitch had helped a lot and prevented it being a nightmare and been able to use BlueTooth to do the transfer of information from the old phone to the new one. He’d found the SIM to be the wrong size but his telco had swapped the SIM for zero-cost. Currently he was finding that texts were not going out, but they were coming in. It was suggested that this might possibly be due to them being sent as MMS rather than SMS -we await the solution!

Don reported that he’d installed BT’s 100Gb cloud service and it had created three folders that he’d not requested. That’s the way, isn’t it. Just ignore them if you don’t want them, but they may provide automatic syncing back to the desktop.

Sue told us that she was getting fed-up with pop-up adverts, and wondered how she could get rid of them. I advised that this would be handled in the Privacy and Security session.

John Silk was puzzled by the growing number of acronyms. We helped him with what Android was, and updated him in the state of play with other mobile operating systems. These mainly being iOS/iPadOS and Chromecast. Microsoft’s offering hav efallen by the wayside.

Paul had moved from Win10 to Win11 and felt that performance on his machine had greatly improved; this may of course due to “clutter” having been removed in the upgrade.

Jonathan also noted that Win11 on his rebuilt laptop seemed to be running better.

Rob was puzzled by a problem with the display on his Toshiba Satellite Pro. It didn’t appear to be a BIOS problem. We advised that he consult “We will fix your PC” in Llanishen, and suggested that this was the standard advice we gave to new members for hardware problems. Generally these are beyond the scope of the group’s competence.

Ian queried the payment for meetings on Zoom, and in person. I advised that I would be sending out an email in due course but no one appeared to object to the idea of Zoom attendees paying something towards the cost of the meeting to defray costs of the meeting venue. He asked about the destruction of hard disks. He was advised that it’s possible to get data shredder software that makes recover of information from a disk impossible, a bit less drastic than hitting them with a hammer, or dissolving them in acid!

Stella told us about a “fun app” on the family history site – My Heritage that would change a photo to a historical figure.

Christine had been having difficulties getting decent sound from a film given her by a friend. Turning the sound up on both the TV and the video-player software had not helped at all. Installing a soundbar had however solved the problem.

Anne was still coming to terms with issues arising from her move to Win11 and had experienced a strange request for subscription to what she thought was free Microsoft Photos software. We took this up outside the meeting.

I then closed by informing users that I was looking at Photo Book printing software and Canvas printing to get the benefit of Black Friday pricing. I use Blurb for photobooks. Jonathan pointed me towards Cewe (used to be available at Jessops, and now from Boots – possibly). I’d also some experience of using YoPhoto and Snapfish. The latter do very competitively priced canvas prints (up to 70% off currently) which I’d taken advantage of. There’s always Google Photos as well. I said I’d do a review, but I didn’t have time to do it in the end.

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Notes of Hybrid meeting – 10th November 2022

A well-attended meeting with some first in-person attendees – welcome Lynette, Yvonne, Janet, Ossie and Peter, and welcome also to Kate, Sue and Mo who were experiencing Zoom attendance for the first time. Please excuse me if I’ve forgotten a welcome. Admin was never my strongest point.

So, I started off with introductory remarks which were a pretty close repeat of those from the previous meeting, so I won’t repeat them – look here for them.

I quickly looked at the Notes from the previous meeting and mentioned the issues raised by Ian, John Mitchell and Anne which I’d added as Topics – look here for them. I hope to put more of these replies/answers/responses to members issues in Forums from now on. It’s what I created that area to do.

I also encouraged members to download Signal, create an account and then let me know their mobile telno. so that I could add them to our Computer Group on that platform.

We then turned to News and Jonathan and Paul had added some very interesting articles to the Flipboard magazine which I urge you to take a look at. Anyone can add to the magazine, just click on this link to become a Contributor.

Any problems with getting on Signal, or becoming a Flipboard contributor, please let me know.

Two issues that were raised at the last meeting were the process of getting photos from your phone to your computer, and Google settings. The technology let me down whilst trying to demonstrate the former, so I’m written up both topics as blogposts which will appear as soon as possible.

I indicated that Security and Privacy would be an issue I would cover in the next meeting.

So we turned to members’ issues:

Paul advised us that 192.com kept personal detail about us if we used the service (an online equivalent of Yellow Pages) which we might wish to be removed. [I’m not sure this will worry too many of us as you have to create an account and then pay a minimum of £15.99 for 6 searches.] Paul please correct my unerstanding, if I’ve got this wrong. He also told us that TalkTalk were raising their prices again and he now had to pay for UK calls, which he hadn’t had to before. He finally commented on the articles he’s added to Flipboard and suggested we might be interested in the ones on Privacy – storing cookies on phones (Android???); and the ability to track parcels (currently only in the US).

Jonathan told us about the articles he’d added to Flipboard on Windows 10/11 security and cleaning-up a Windows 11 machine which had improved the performance of his laptop remarkably.

Margaret told us that she’d been experiencing a strange failing with her Tiscali email service in that it appeared that it was not being consistently sent. It’s worth noting that Down Detector is a good place to start if you’re having problems with your Internet Services. I haven’t researched the problem in detail, but searching this site may be helpful. [Tiscali is now part of TalkTalk.]

Yvonne reported that her laptop was running slowly – I didn’t write anything else down here, so can’t add anything. Sorry!

Lynette told us that she’d been disturbed by her machine (Windows 10) not being able to be closed down because it was doing clean-ups. This may be related to an upgrade being done by Microsoft [these are done on Tuesdays] which had not been completed. I always advise not to set upgrades to be done automatically. I definitely am not saying, “don’t do upgrades”, but I am saying “do upgrades when you want them to be done”.

John Mitchell bemoaned the fact that he was being pestered with requests to switch to Edge as the default browser. This is of course a nuisance, and I thought that there was an option when the pop-up was shown to request that it not be shown again. [I could be wrong, here!]

Stella was upset that she didn’t seem to be able to transfer recordings that she’s done off her TV on to her PC, as she’d been able to do previously. Paul reminded us that we’d touched on this before and that recordings from TVs are now tied to that TV, and are not transferrable. [I also mentioned with little confidence that she might try formatting her media as FAT-32.]

Jenny enquired whether any member had experience, and could recommend, any sources for refurbished equipment. I expressed the view that I was very sceptical of the value of refurbished equipment unless it was backed-up by some guarantee/warranty , but others remarked that some public bodies regularly released surplus (or redundant) equipment to the public which might be usable. [I’m not convinced.] She also asked whether she should be concerned about a) the amount of memory that apps take up on a phone, and b) how “secure” they are. My reply was – very little, and that they were increasingly more secure because of biometric security and the transition towards FIDO.

Don mentioned something about internet browsers, but again I haven’t written enough down to remind me what it was [Duh!!]

Janet enquired about when items deleted, actually got deleted. Members responded that this was something that could be set in Preferences/Settings, but that you can go into the Trash Can/Bin and delete individual or groups of files at any time. She also enquired about whether she needed to buy internet security software. The group was supportive of my response that Windows Defender is almost certainly adequate for those in our situation.

Renee reported that VirginMedia were really annoying her with the latest “upgrade” they had done to “improve” her broadband. I told her I (as I always do when upgrades are being offered) was waiting for a while before I upgraded [you need to switch the router/hub off and on] She also shared that she’d encountered a situation with photos disappearing from WhatsApp. I advised that this was a feature that was set by the person sending the photos, and applied to messages as well. Signal also had disappearing messages that you could implement.

Anne bemoaned the fact that Windows 11, that she’d been forced to move to having upgraded her Windows 7 laptop, was not intuitive. I offered the opinion that this was a common issue especially as you get older. We want things to stay the same, and just get on with doing the stuff we know how to do. It is for this reason that I hope to do some sessions on the changes to what you can do on your phones, as I’m well out-of-date in my knowledge here!

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Notes of Hybrid meeting – 27th October 2022

Just 11 of us in-person, room for more?

The meeting started with a welcome to new members – Anne, Kate and Mo (in-person) and Martin, John, Lynette, Yvonne and Linda (over Zoom, with 5 others). I asked the new members to introduce themselves and tell the group what they hoped to get from their membership of it.

I sought to clarify the arrangements where people had been allocated to groups. I do not want this to be prescriptive. If you know you can’t attend a meeting in-person, just let me know that you’d like to come to the one before your scheduled Thursday, or the one after.

It would seem to me that there is room for at least another 5 members in-person at Sight Life from this meeting, so I’ll be monitoring attendance and perhaps inviting people to move to “the attend all meetings in-person” category. Similarly, if people would like to change their preference for the meeting they would like to attend in-person, just let me know. Finally, if people would like to join the Zoom-only category, please let me know that as well.

We had some difficulties with the audio for the Zoom attendees at this meeting. My apologies. I’ve ordered a table microphone to use at Sight Life and this (hopefully) will solve that problem. I had been using the microphone integral to the camera, and this was apparently not picking-up all that was being said in the room. Kate and Mo wondered whether they might have trouble in using Zoom. I suggested they wait behind at the end of the meeting and I’d talk them through setting-up Zoom and using it. There a couple of useful documents about using Zoom on the Cardiff u3a website, and I’ve added a guide to setting-up meetings on Zoom on this website.

I then repeated a few things I’s said at the previous meeting about how the group is run. I referred to the fact that generally we don’t try and solve hardware/software problems on members computers, but we do recommend and refer members to “We will fix your PC” as an excellent resource and repair one-stop shop. I shared the “Toolkit” handout to a few members who’d not picked it up from their email. I explained and demonstrated how the Thought grazing website works and some of its features, its origins as part of my pre-retirement role at Cardiff University, and the public version – which is where Jenny (with my assistance) had recently posted an article about the switch-off of the analogue PSTN (public switched telephone network). I wondered whether Jenny might review the article to see whether it needed any additions to it?

I also suggested (and strongly recommended) that members join the Signal group we’ve set up to assist in giving support/advice between meetings. You need to download an app to your smartphone, connect your phone number to the Signal account. You can then download an app for your tablet, or desktop/laptop and view messages from these devices as well.

I went on to promote the Thought grazing Flipboard magazine – the place where I and a couple of other members add articles they have come across that they think might be of interest to the group. I also mentioned that anyone could be a contributor to the magazine. They would need to have a Flipboard account (which you don’t need to just read the magazine) and let me know; I can then add them to the list of contributors.

I concluded the introductory remarks by mentioning what I’d found to be the most common misconception for new members. What is an internet browser, and what is a search engine. I’ve written before about this – here, here and here. My most recent post however compares and reviews the various most common browsers and search engines available. I also stressed my preference (wherever possible) to use Open Source software, or to pay a subscription for software (rather than get free software with advertisements, and all the targeting and spam that involves).

I then reviewed the news that caught my eye in the previous two weeks, with links and comments to articles on the Flipboard magazine. Jonathan had posted this article on Windows Security, for instance, whilst Paul had found a nifty desk tidy device that could also charge your phone. I rushed through a number of Apple related articles which have my comments attached to them. This one, on sharing an iCloud Photo Library will be one I certainly want to follow-up, and then there were a few articles on the new Apple devices just announced, and the new versions of MacOS (Ventura), iPadOS and iOS. I cautioned (as I always do) against rapid adoption of an operating system, and referred members to an issue with Malwarebytes (for the latest MacOS release), but celebrated the fact that Dropbox had finally (after a year) released a native application for MacOS M-series machines.

There’s a lot of information in the above, so please get back to me if you want any clarification – preferably on Signal.

I finished my spot by detailing how I’d spent some time trying to subscribe a friend to use an upgrade to Apple’s iCloud system, but had found out – after nearly three months of trying, and having had finally to admit defeat and use Apple’s Support service – that the problem was that payments wouldn’t work because the software on her phone and MacBook was too out-of-date. The security system just wouldn’t allow payments to be made successfully. A very good reason to keep your operating systems up-to-date … even if you don’t rush to upgrade them!!!

Sianed then took over the facilitation of the meeting so that members could raise issues, and for existing members – how had they benefited from membership of the group. She stated that she’d benefited from learning from everybody else

Don described the Computer Group as a life-jacket. He’d taken over responsibility from some computer activity with hsi church and this had forced him to learn. He mentioned the recent scam whereby someone had lost their house through identity theft. This was discovered when it was found a person was trying to sell that property online! Apparently the identity had been stolen through a replacement driving licence that the estate agency had accepted as valid ID. Apparently there is protection from the Land Registry for a £40 fee. He had downloaded and installed Norton Anti-virus for his new machine – mainly for the internet banking security window. It provided him with re-assurance, even though I suggested that Windows Defender was probably as good as anything, and free!

Fred queried the strange URLs he’d recently seen – I explained these were URL-shortners. Often I use bit.ly.

Jenny described her work as a campaigner for Digital Inclusion, and mentioned specifically that she’d just become involved in lobbying for the Social Tariff for broadband more widespread, not something people had to opt in for. I had shared a link after the meeting on Signal, and she would be working on an article soon. She admitted to real problems with too much disorganised email from Gmail. I offered to do a session on Google settings, but in the meantime this page on the website might be a start.

Anne had a new laptop and it was running Windows 11. She was concerned that some of the software, especially that which she used for photography, might not run on the new machine. I responded (after the meeting) with this reply …

I’ve done a bit of searching around. It would appear that Picasa can still be downloaded and at least works with Win 10, so it probably works with Win 11 as well. Can’t confirm that.

Here’s an article that explains the status of Picasa, with a download link in it, which looks OK.

You might instead consider using Google Photos 

… where your earlier photos may already be. Google Photos is an Online Editor - I’ve covered its use a couple of times in the Group and there are posts on the website.

Alternatively you could look at Microsoft’s Photos app

… or an open source alternative such as Gimp …

… hope this helps.

She also asked whether she needed to take out a fresh licence for her Kaspersky Anti-virus software. Apart from the questionable source of the software (Russia), I suggested that this would not be the case, she needed to register her new machine. I also mentioned (as I had above) that Windows Defender was probably as good as any anti-virus software for our type of computer use.

David Hughes described the frustration in not seemingly to be able to switch off his Facebook Portal machine. [No comment – perhaps its spying on him :-)]

John Silk was interested in what I’d said about the iCloud Photo Library and reminisced on how it used to be the practice to just save photos on a USB-disk, or memory stick. How can you do that from your photos app on your phone now. I offered to write something about this workflow.

John Mitchell had a most interesting problem. It appeared that a lot of files (photos) had vanished from the folders they used to be in. The group discussed several possible scenarios where this might have happened. After the meeting I sent this email to John …

I’ve been puzzling over your missing files issue, and found this link

… which seems to suggest that you might have dropped into an issue that is not unique. I wouldn’t recommend trying to solve this one yourself, but I would recommend you taking your machine (esp. if it’s a laptop) to the guy we show hardware problems to; We will fix your PC

Neil is really good and I’m sure he’ll give you good advice. Mention the u3a Computer Group.

… and that was about it. If I’ve forgotten anything, my apologies. Please add to the Comments below the post.

Until the next time when I’ll revisit (again) privacy and security. Cheers.

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Notes of Hybrid meeting – 13th October 2022

The meeting opened with a welcome to new members – Ian, Kate, Sue, Fred and Marion Poyner, and to Mike Payne making his first meeting (if my memory serves me well). We had David Hughes, Paul, Renee and Ralph join us on Zoom. John, Jonathan, Jim, Don, Stella and Fred were with us as well. Tony, Marilyn Barrack, Linda, Mike Chapple, Christine, Sianed, Margaret, Jeanette, Seifi and Sally presented their apologies.

I started by explaining that we had been overwhelmed by the interest in the group shown at the “Meet the Groups” meeting the previous Tuesday where 20 members, or prospective u3a members, had expressed an interest in attending group meetings. I felt duty bound to admit 12 members as we had no Waiting List policy in place at that time – this has now been introduced and some of the prospective members of have now been placed on that list. With a membership approaching 40, I felt it was necessary to review how we operated. I thank Pat, Marilyn Guest, Owen Parry and Phil Edwards for stepping down as active members – they do however continue to have the ability to use this website, the Signal group and have access to the Flipboard magazine.

I reiterated that we don’t attempt to resolve members’ hardware issues – other than perhaps problems with printers, or connectivity issues, eg routers. We do recommend using “We will fix your PC” – Neil has done a wonderful job in supporting and helping us by resolving problems for several years now. It might be worth mentioning Cardiff u3a and the Computer Group should you chose to use his services. I also repeated what I’d said to many at the “Meet the Groups” session … namely we are not a training group. We cannot train you how to use Word, Excel, or whatever. We DO however focus on internet issues, applications and anything that is not machine/device dependent. In that way all meetings are usually accessible to all users who have access to a web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge, Safari, Opera, etc.).

We are fortunate in that we have established, quite quickly, a workable hybrid (ie Zoom) meeting format. This is in no small way down to the excellent technical support offered by Craig at Sight Life, and the overall welcome and excellent facilities they are offering us.

I am proposing, and circulated a pro-forma to start the ball rolling, to allocate members to either a 2nd or 4th Thursday preference group, with them being able to attend via Zoom on the alternative Thursday. Hopefully, this will keep the in-person group a manageable size whilst we still struggle with Covid-related issues. Some members who are essential contributors to the group will be able to attend in-person all meetings, if they are able to.

To that end, I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Sianed who will facilitate the “issues round the table/screen” part of the meeting; Don who has taken on the meeting attendance/subs task; Jonathan who will help me by screening Windows/PC news and issues; Paul (via Zoom currently) who will do the same for Android matters; and Jim – our official photographer and my adviser, proof reader and frequent contributor to the website.

We’ll just need to see how this plays out. Hopefully, in time I will be able to remove restrictions on in-person attendance, but please be supportive of the difficult situation we have put ourselves in, by virtue of meeting a need. Perhaps a second group is the answer, but that would mean finding another facilitator.

Starting the meeting proper, I explained to new members how we usually operated, the way the Thought grazing website operates, the benefits of the Signal group and the existence of the Flipboard magazine that I encourage all members to browse occasionally, and contribute to if they so wish (after creating an account).

I then launched into a description of the theft and fraudulent event that I’d mentioned at the previous meeting and had written up as a blogpost earlier that day. I won’t repeat what I’ve written, I’ll just repeat the warning and the recommended action you should take – don’t keep your credit/debit cards near to your phone, and seriously consider activating a SIM-lock to lock your SIM to your phone – so that it can’t be taken out and put in another phone on which a banking app can be downloaded and possibly a password obtained from your bank. The case in point here was Santander.

The issue of reporting scams to ActionFraud was mentioned, and the action you might wish to take if you receive a phishing phonecall is described here. Otherwise, I recommend you subscribe to the free Which? email scam alert service, and to look at other advice on the Which? website, and the Citizens Advice website.

Turning to members issues …

Fred reported the latest fortunately unbelievable text scam he’d received. I think as group members we’re getting much, much better at identifying these – the parcel that couldn’t be delivered, the transaction that know we couldn’t have made, the offer that seems to be too good to be true, the offer to help with obtaining a refund/grant/subsidy/entitlement which wouldn’t come via a text message. Just stay alert everyone, and remember … if it’s really important, the organisation will contact you again and not usually by text!

Paul reported issues with TalkTalk and their new website. Sue had a similar issue (see below). it is disappointing that he may need to change the settings on his talktalk.net email account to get it to re-direct (as it had done previously) to his gmail account where he aggregates all his emails.

Sue had a similar problem. The old TalkTalk website from which she’d accessed (occasionally) her email had stopped working. She hadn’t received any emails since before July. The solution hopefully, would have been to “upgrade” to the new website, but unfortunately as she’d moved to Sky (??) it was unlikely that she’d be receiving any emails from her talktalk.net email address anymore. This highlights an issue we’ve discussed before. It is advisable to move to an email provider that’s not connected to your Internet Service Provider (ISP). I used Google (and Gmail) for many years and have never used VirginMedia – my current ISP – to provide an email service for me. I migrated all my old BT email messages away from that service to avoid paying an annual charge for retaining the account after I stopped using BTinternet. I now aggregate most of my emails on iCloud – Apple’s service, as it is EXTREMELY unlikely that I’ll ever move away from them, but I retain my Google email accounts … just-in-case. Ian and Sue both used aol and asked whether this was a viable service. It was confirmed that now aol was owned by Verizon, it’s future was probably very secure.

John wondered whether the increase in “promotional” messages he was receiving was connected to his use of his Kindle advice. You can set your communications preferences from Amazon here.

Kate raised an issue of connecting to iCloud to delete “stuff”. I described (and demonstrated) how to login to iCloud.com using your AppleID and password.

Ian asked the question on whether stuff deleted on iCloud was also deleted automatically on a device. I had to admit I wasn’t sure. I’d written a blogpost on the situation with Google Drive (particularly for Google Photos), but had to check-up on the situation with Apple, which I reported back to him here. I told him that I needed to do further tests to satisfy my own curiosity. I can confirm that deleting a file on iCloud Drive from the Files app on an iPhone will delete it from icloud.com and your iCloud drive on MacOS as well – which is what you would expect should happen. He also asked (after the meeting) whether his daughter could change the account name/details on an O2 account, since she was now in a position to pay for it herself. The issue being she would want to keep the phone number. I had to admit that I didn’t know, and the O2 website was less than encouraging for what seemed to be a reasonable use case, so I recommended visiting the O2 shop in St David’s Centre (I believe). I also suggested looking at GiffGaff (operating over the O2 network and owned by the parent company of O2 – Telefónica UK) as a good pay-as-you-go (PAYG) alternative. She might be able to port the number to that network (or any other network) after obtaining a PAC or STAC code.

Here ends nearly the most rapid Notes I’ve ever written up – have to impress the new members.

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Notes of Hybrid meeting – 8th September 2022

Our new home??
Room layout at Sight Life

Back (almost) to normality. Thanks Jim for the two shots that show how we set up the room for the meeting, with quite a lot of room unused, both towards the windows, and behind the people sat at the tables.

We welcomed Tony Baines to his first meeting and noted the “virtual” presence of David Hughes, Renee, Jenny and latterly Fred. Paul would also have been with us on Zoom but for Dolly breaking her arm and being in A&E – we wished her well. Apologies were received from Mike Payne, Mike Chapple, Sally Semlow, Margaret Lewis, Ann, Christine and Don.

I started the meeting by describing the trials and tribulations of trying to get URC to install 4G Mobile WiFi which would if it had been installed, meant that we might well have stayed in the Upper Room. However I pointed to the tea and coffee offered to us at Sight Life as an additional bonus to the good WiFi we would now be take advantage of. This will be our home until Christmas at least and we look to having a full room after the “Meet the Groups” event on October 11th. I asked if anyone would be willing to assist on the Computer Group desk and after the meeting John, Jonathan and Sianed volunteered. Thanks.

I suggested that we did the “issues and updates” first because I had such a lot of “news” – all posted on Flipboard since our last meeting. I also noted that it was a bit Apple-centric (as usual, some might say) and wondered whether any member might like to offer a different and wider perspective. Jonathan volunteered to take a look at Microsoft/Windows news. I committed to helping setting up a workflow to help him. So … what were the “issues and updates”?

Jonathan had a real issue with his laptop (having dropped it). He was using his wife’s for the moment and Neil is currently trying to source a replacement screen for him. He expects it to cost £180 which just about makes it an economic proposition for a four-year old laptop. In addition he’d been having difficulties (prior to the accident) with Lightroom and I had been trying to assist him with that. Otherwise his grandson was providing tuition device _ something I think we can all say “yep! That sounds about it.”

Ralph had done quite a large hardware swap out and was now concentrating on getting more out of his new phone. I commented, and others agreed, that there were a lot of features on the iPhone I was not making use of, and didn’t know how to use. I suggested that we might have an in depth session on using iOS and Android mobiles as soon as possible. Ralph commented that we used to expect a standardised interface, but that it now allowed so much more personalisation. That’s great for those who are open to change, but perhaps that’s not so readily possible for those of us third agers! Sianed made a comment about Siri not recognising her voice. We offered the possibly light-hearted suggestion that she tried speaking in Welsh. We await the report back!

Tony had (at the beginning of the meeting) given us a brief insight to his use of IT and then presented us with a problem of Word maximising on his screen (when he didn’t want it to). We all offered solutions, but in the end he found the solution himself!! He also re-enforced the suggestion to learn more about what he could do with his phone. Noted! He then described a problem he was having with the VPN installed as part of his MacAfee security suite. He asked whether it was needed. That led to a discussion on the use of VPNs, whether they were necessary or not. I expressed the view that even though I’d purchased a copy of the NordNet VPN, I was of the opinion it wasn’t really necessary for our type of use. It obviously was of value to have installed on your mobile device(s), but not really on your desktop. Even then, if you didn’t do more than web browsing and email when out’n’about, it probably wasn’t needed. It was however commented that one value of a VPN was to “spoof” your location by choosing a VPN server in a different country. You can then, for instance, view iPlayer and UK-TV when in Australia! We then had a discussion on how to uninstall MacAfee (or Norton, or Kasperski security suites) as they all seemed to leave “stuff” behind after the uninstall. I followed this up with some suggestions to members on what to do in emails. [We possibly need to cover this in a meeting as well.] Finally Tony raised an issue on the use of organising his Gmail. Members suggested a number of options, including labelling. I offered the suggestion that archiving everything and starting from scratch using Folders might be the best idea.

John had a “flash new iPhone” that he was coming to grips with. He also expressed his views on Edge, he didn’t like it. We reminded him that there were plenty of alternatives, and for Tony’s benefit I mentioned that I’d done a review of browsers and search engines at the end of the last session.

Stella had installed Windows 11 and all was well so far. She told us about Lebara (a Vodafone 4G service) currently available for 1p per month for a number of months and then £4.99 – sounds a good 3Gb SIM-only deal!

Steve had also had an IT-refresh including a new iPhone 11, and noted that Chrome was quick. [Yes it can be, but it slows down if you don’t clear your cache out.] He’d invested in more iCloud storage (50Gb) – a good choice (imho). He’d got Bitwarden, and Nordstream as a VPN and wondered whether to use it (see comments above).

Jim had a problem with his new 1Tb external SSD in that it was losing EXIF data from photos. He’d taken the advice to re-format his drive as NTFS and the problem had gone. Sorted!! He’d also had a curious problem of a laptop draining power when a USB disk had been left connected to it. The only reason for this I could suggest was that the disk was “polling” to see if the laptop was switched on.

Renee had negotiated a new contract with VirginMedia and had saved some money (so had I just recently).

Jenny reported that her iCloud storage had filled-up, but she had been able to increase it with the help of her daughter. She enquired how safe it was to use a mobile device in a cafe. I said completely as long as you didn’t do anything that you wouldn’t sensibly do, ie financial transactions, or anything involving sharing personal information. I also expressed the view that it was unlikely that any of us would be “targets” of anyone wanting to get our information. So generally speaking – relax!

Sianed reminded us that the paper £20 and £50 notes were soon to be taken out of circulation, and the non-barcoded stamps would be not able to be used after January.

I reviewed a couple of things that I had reported to the group on Signal over the summer and then went through the items that I’d put up on Flipboard. I encourage members to go and have a look at what’s been happening, particularly with the new Apple devices. I did however discuss the recent scam/fraud reported on Twitter involving Santander and a journalist. I promised to write a specific blog post on the issue, but in the short-term I suggested that members did not keep their credit/debit cards in the same wallet as their iPhone (and probably Android phone for that matter), and secondly that they investigate and implement locking their SIM to their phone. This would mean that a SIM taken out of your phone with your information on it, could not be used on another phone.