Tag: 2017

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Alternatives to Google Search

At the last meeting of the Cardiff U3A Computer Group I rather fell flat on my face when comparing the returns provided by three different Search Engines – Google, Bing from Microsoft and DuckDuckGo (a new entrant which is open source) and which doesn’t track, or make available to others, what your browsing/searching history is. In other words it protects your privacy and the search results returned are unbiassed by your previous browsing/searching and it doesn’t return results biassed by what advertisers have paid Google to push themselves up the list!
I have tried using DuckDuckGo in its most basic form for a couple of weeks now with a Safari browser and found it to be reliable, fast and pleasant to use. A rather good article of a week’s trial of using DuckDuckGo in preference to (but alongside) Google can be found here, and I would recommend you read it. Another article which summarises the differences of this search engine to Google can be found here. This page might help you phrase efficient searches using DuckDuckGo. You do have to add it to the browser Chrome, unlike Safari or Firefox where it is provided as an alternative automatically from the Preferences Setting.
Bing is the main competitor to Google Search and is now the search engine used by Yahoo. Essentially, it’s very similar to Google and returns the same sort of results – you might find it useful useful to bookmark this page to help you phrase efficient searches.
So you’re not convinced? That’s OK. At least you ought to know how to construct a good Google search to get the best results. This page from The Guardian is as good as any in giving you sound advice. Essentially it makes the following points:

  1. Be specific, by putting your search term in parentheses “search term”;
  2. Exclude stuff you’re not going to be interested in using the – sign, eg -notthis;
  3. Use OR (|) and AND (+) in a search, and combine them with “search term” and -notthis, as desired to improve the search;
  4. Use qualifiers such as inurl:”search term”, intext:”search term”, or intitle:”searchterm” to search for “search term” in the uRL, the body of text of an article, or the title of an article; and finally
  5. Use * (the wildcard character) to extend searches, eg walk* would return walks, walker, walked, etc.

That’s about it. I could go into using Advanced Search (Google) but I think that’s beyond the scope of this post. For me, if I do some of these things I’m sure the quality of my searches will improve.
 

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Getting started with Digital Photography: Part 1

A new venture for Thought grazing …
This article starts from the assumption that you already have a digital camera, or smartphone, and doesn’t pretend to give advice on how to proceed to purchase one except to say that I would strongly recommend buying from a camera shop for the after-sales service you would get. In buying a digital camera you’re buying into a system – Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, Panasonic etc. – it can be a painful (and expensive) decision to change later, so it’s worth talking to someone who can talk about their experiences, or who can match your needs to what is available.
So therefore this article focusses on the software and in later posts – the processing of images using software.

Photography is a hobby that cries out to share its results (images) with other people and so therefore it’s best to work back from answering the question – what are you going to do with the images? By answering that question, the rest of the toolkit and the workflow you adopt is easier to answer. Typical workflows might be …
I just want to take a photo and print it.
I want to take a photo and possibly share it on Facebook, Instagram.
I want to take photos and make them into photobooks.
I want to take photos and post them to a website.
… of course it could be all of the above. One thing tends to unite them however, you need a place in the cloud to store your photos, from which you can then share them. If at all possible you should adopt a platform t
hat provides the maximum flexibility to allow you to do all of the above, and more, so that you don’t need to keep changing your systems as you develop your hobby. I’ve written about my workflow here.
So apart from the local USB disk-storage I use (with its backups, of course) to store and post-process my images, I use Google Photos as my main way of sharing photos in albums eg Orchids from Changi Airport, linked to the free storage (as long as you don’t store images at high resolution) you get on Google Drive. I do have other cloud storage/sharing platforms, but this is the one I use for photographs. I do also have a flickr account to share images – and I use it occasionally, as I do Instagram. As you develop your interest in photography, you may wish to have a more professional platform (I have used 500px), or the sharing platform that may be provided by your preferred software supplier (eg Adobe).
If you’re starting-out (or don’t want to spend any money) then you can use the editing software available within Google Photos, or if on a phone, or tablet, use Google’s Snapseed apps. You can still get Picasa for Windows 
and the Mac, which is software Google bought and supported for a while, but it is probably better to bite the bullet and use their Photos app in a browser, as it integrates well with Drive and Google+.
Then of course you might (like me) be an Apple user, and could of course use their Photos app and iCloud, but at the moment the editing facilities offered in the app are not (in my humble opinion) as good as Google’s. You can sync your smartphone “camera roll” to Google Photos automatically which is nice.
Other free photo-editing options are available. I will however after reviewing the other possibilities, only mention and discuss Google Photos on this blog.
If you’re a bit more sure that you want to invest in digital photography then there’s no better (imho) software than Adobe Lightroom. I’m not going into a whole set of reasons why you should invest in Lightroom rather than Photoshop Elements, or Apple’s Photo app, Paintshop, or even full-blown Photoshop. However for me these are the main benefits …

  • It doesn’t matter where your images are stored; you don’t have to import them into a database, but you can choose to import new images into a single location of your choice which is unconnected to the software.
  • It employs a catalogue which references where the images are stored. You can have multiple catalogues referencing the same set of images.
  • All changes (edits) to the images are stored in the catalogue. 
  • The original images are left untouched. This is called non-destructive editing.
  • You can go backwards and forwards through your edits, and can even create multiple virtual copies that allow you multiple versions of the same image, but only one actual (original) image.
  • You can store your images in Collections which equate to virtual albums unconnected to the actual folders the actual images are stored in.
  • You are supplied with a huge range of Plugins to allow you easy publishing to social media sites (eg flickr, Instagram, Dropbox), in addition to publishing to photobook websites (eg Blurb) and print sites (eg Smugmug).
  • You can apply presets to your images at import, developing or export so that the same look and feel can be achieved.
  • It integrates well with a whole range of other software such as WordPress (for blogging).

… I just feel that (for me at least) Lightroom is the best at the moment and it integrates with Adobe’s other software. It also now has a mobile version that allows editing on your iPad (or iPhone) if you subscribe to their Photography Creative Cloud Plan. This costs c.£9 a month and gives me both Lightroom and Photoshop, storage space in the cloud, and more besides, plus all the upgrades.
If you decide to go down the Lightroom route then here are a couple of resources you might wish to reference …

Laura Shoe’s Lightroom – http://laurashoe.com/
Lightroom Killer Tips – http://lightroomkillertips.com/
Adobe Training – http://tv.adobe.com/product/lightroom/ and https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/tutorials.html
… and for Lightroom tuition, you’ll do well to beat  …
Scott Kelby’s Lightroom books for digital photographers, New Riders
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I can come off the fence now and unequivocably support Net Neutrality.

One of our own, a Brit – John Oliver, makes the case very persuasively on Late Night Tv in the States – if a bit foul-mouthed and OTT in places – so this balances up the Cisco video I shared with you in the blog post. They would of course want a fast lane, so that they can make more money from the communications companies by selling more kit. Then of course the big players (Amazon, Netflix) want Net Neutrality for a completely different set of commercial reasons – reducing their costs. So where business is involved, the argument is skewed by whatever camp you are in – communications company (network equipment or ISP), or information provider. However the balance of the argument goes in favour of Net Neutrality because a) this is a form of control that is not for the benefit of the consumer – it takes the pressure off the cable companies to improve their overall level of service, b) the consumer hasn’t asked for it – the market is rigged against us in any case in terms of the level of service provided by our ISPs, and c) this was the way the Internet was designed, by a Brit and by academics, and this is the way it should stay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU&feature=share

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Ever wanted to keep a TV programme from ITV or the BBC longer than the standard download allows?

Well you can using “iPlayer Automator”. It’s been around a while for the Mac but unfortunately, having just done some research, I’ve found out that it is not available on a Windows PC (sorry for the mis-information this afternoon). There is a similarly titled piece of software, but I wouldn’t want to recommend it as I don’t know anything about it.

The software has been produced as OpenSource, supported and developed by enthusiastic “coders” and is Free. Don’t be put off by the rather austere interface you’re presented with at this link …

https://github.com/Ascoware/get-iplayer-automator

… select Clone or Download; then Download Zip and follow instructions. Enjoy … if you’ve got a Mac!

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Munzee, munzee, so good to me

If you want to wow your grandchildren with your knowledge and expertise in using your smartphone, this may be the app for you!
It uses QR codes, those strange square maze-like images that you’re increasingly finding on packaging, books and even television advertising to provide the basis of a treasure-hunt game. Click on the Munzee logo above to get started.
The idea is that you search for “munzees” in your local area, shown on this map thus  …
 
 

There’s a Munzee somewhere here – Devonport, Auckland, NZ

… and when you find them, you record that find on your smartphone by scanning the QR code that is on a lamp post, or even under a bench.
If you then want to get really adventurous you can start “hiding” your own munzees and adding to the fun of others.

Anyway, just a bit of fun that I thought I’d share with you to illustrate how QR Codes can be used.
Scan this one and it’ll take you straight to Wikipedia.

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Specialist areas of interest or expertise??

At the end of the last meeting I “floated” the idea that some members in the past had expressed an interest in more specialist areas, or answers they wanted to specific questions about what they wanted to do.

Obviously there’s always the possibility (or probability) that there may not be anyone else able to provide advice, but on the other hand there might be more than one person interested in that area, or someone who wants to learn.

I can remember Jeff for instance enquiring about sound editing, and I’ve never got my head around video editing, and then there’s how you handle getting photos onto your computer – a question that was raised on Thursday, and one that’s a really good topic for discussion with so many variants … Smartphone, DSLR, etc etc.

After the meeting I approached Joel and he indicated that he was happy for us to continue to use the room until he left at 5:00pm – if we were interested, and there would not be any additional charge. So, if we’re interested in pursuing this idea further, there would appear to be no obstacle other than finding “experts”.

So as a first step, perhaps we could compile a “register of expertise”.

I’ll kick-off with a pretty long list as the first comment below, but please remember I did work in IT at the university so I should have some expertise. Please add your offers below, don’t be shy, they could be quite specific, eg doing a Powerpoint presentation, or preparing labels for Christmas cards, or (and Jeff will like this one) using Excel to run a small group’s accounts.

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Quantum computing and the Internet??

I don’t begin to understand much of this, but what I do pick up from it is that Marie Christen’s question yesterday posed as a hypothetical “how does the digital internet handle quantum computers, or computing”, is being addressed.

As I read it, the transport of data between computers, around the world, could continue to be digital – ie the internet as we know it – but that users would communicate with distant quantum computers through Application Program Interfaces (APIs), using scripting languages (such as Python).

This is not dissimilar from the way current super-computers (such as the one in Cardiff Uni that I hope to set up a visit to see) connect to the current university network, and then on to the Internet.

The speed of data transmission will always be limited to three things. Firstly, the speed of light – the ultimate ceiling for the speed of data transmission on optical fibres; secondly, the speed at which the switches and routers can pump the bits and bytes through their electronics, and thirdly the speed at which the electronics in the interface between the computer and the network edge device can operate.

So, in practice the Quantum Computer is no different from any other computing device – it will be limited in its capability to communicate with the outside world by the electronics that it uses.

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2017/03/quantum-computer-programming/?lnk=hmhmhmhmhmhmhm

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

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

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