Tag: 2021

Posted on

Changes to Google Storage

If you’ve got a Google account – you use Google Photos, Google Drive (and the Google Docs suite) or Gmail – you’ll probably have received an email telling you about the changes that Google are making to the way it calculates how much of the 15Gb of storage the company allocates to you has been used. They have also spelled out clearly when they will delete content that has been inactive for more than two years.

This post relies heavily (almost verbatim) on information already available on Google’s Help Pages – which should always be taken as the main source for information.

Currently each Google Account includes 15 GB of free storage quota, which is shared across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. You can add to your storage quota by purchasing a Google One membership (where available). To learn more about your quota, see what items count towards your storage.

Prior to June 1, 2001

The following items count against your storage quota

  • Original quality photos and videos backed up to Google Photos
  • Gmail messages and attachments, including your Spam and Trash folders
  • Most files in Google Drive, including PDFs, images, and videos

If you go over your storage quota

  • You can no longer upload new files or images to Google Drive
  • You can’t back up Original quality photos and videos to Google Photos
  • Your ability to send and receive email in Gmail may be impacted
  • You can still sign into and access your Google Account

After June 1, 2001

The following additional items will count against your storage quota:

  • High quality and Express quality photos and videos backed up to Google Photos after June 1, 2021. Learn more about this change.
  • Files created or edited in collaborative content creation apps like Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Jamboard.
    • Only files created or edited after June 1, 2021 will count against your quota.
    • Files uploaded or last edited before June 1, 2021 will not count against your quota.

And this is how your usage impacts your data

If you do not use Gmail, Google Drive (including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms or Jamboard) or Google Photos for 2 years, your content within the inactive product(s) may be deleted (after reasonable advance notice).

If you go over your storage quota

  • You can’t upload new files or images to Google Drive.
  • You can’t back up any photos and videos to Google Photos.
  • Your ability to send and receive email in Gmail can also be impacted.
  • You can’t create new files in collaborative content creation apps like Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Jamboard. And until you reduce your storage usage, neither you nor anyone else can edit or copy your affected files.
  • You can still sign into and access your Google Account.

When you have been over your storage quota for 2 years, your content in Gmail, Google Drive (including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Jamboard files) and Google Photos may be deleted.

So it’s time to do a stock take of what Google Storage you’re using. You’ll see something like this if you’ve got an active Google account …

Seeing how you may be using your Google Storage, with June 1st approaching might seem pretty frightening to you, so you might need some help to know what you should do, and whether purchasing a Google One plan might be right for you …

What happens when you’re over quota

When you’re over quota, it means you’re using more storage space than you have available. If you’ve been over quota for 2 years or longer, and you have not freed up or purchased more space to get back under quota, all of your content may be removed from Gmail, Drive and Photos. But before that happens, we will:

  • Give you notice using email and notifications within the Google products. We will contact you at least three months before content is eligible for deletion.
  • Give you the opportunity to avoid deletion (by paying for additional storage or removing files)
  • Give you the opportunity to download your content from our services. Learn more about how to download your Google data.

How to go back under quota

We provide access to storage management tools that help you identify ways to free up storage space at https://one.google.com/storage. Another option to free up space is to download your files to your personal device and then delete them from your cloud storage.

However …

If you want more storage space for Gmail, Drive, and Photos, you can upgrade to a larger storage plan with Google One.  You can click on the link “Get more storage” from the page that you should have arrived at above, and you’ll be offered the opportunity of purchasing a Google One Storage Plan …

But what happens when you’re inactive?

When you have been inactive in Gmail, Google Drive (including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, Jamboard or Sites files) or Google Photos for 2 years, all of your content may be removed from that product. But before that happens, we will:

  • Give you notice using email and notifications within the Google products. We will contact you at least three months before content is eligible for deletion.
  • Give you the opportunity to avoid deletion (by becoming active in the product)
  • Give you the opportunity to download your content from our services. Learn more about how to download your Google data.

If you’re a Google One member with no outstanding payment or quota issues, you are considered active.

Important: As an example, if you’re inactive for 2 years in Photos, but still active in Drive and Gmail, only your Google Photos content will be deleted. Content in Gmail and Google Drive (including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Jamboard files) will not be deleted if you are active in those products.

How to stay active in these products

The simplest way to keep your data active is to periodically visit Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Drive (and/or collaborative content creation apps like Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, Jamboard and Sites) on the web or through a Google app. Make sure you’re signed in and connected to the internet.

Please note that you may have multiple accounts set up on your device. Activity is considered by account, not by device. Make sure you’re using the services for all accounts on which you wish to remain active.

The article from Google concludes with some FAQ which you might like to refer to, including one answer on how to preserve content from a loved one if they pass away and the use of their Inactive Account Manager.

In another article, I will attempt to answer the vexed question of how to delete photos from Google Photos in your storage plan, your computer and your device the way that you want them to be deleted, ie not deleting them all, just deleting them from the place you want them deleted!!!!

Lastly, here’s a link to how to delete files (and reduce the count against your quota) from Google Drive.

Posted on

Notes from Zoom meeting – 1st April 2021

Another full screen with 16+ of us spurring the lovely sunshine for a chat! I started the meeting off by talking about the changes to Google Photos that will occur on June 1st and the 15Gb of free storage you get with Google Drive. I’ve written about these separately, so won’t include that content with these notes.

I also touched upon the deletion of photos from Google Photos, on computers, the cloud and mobile devices, but again, I’ve written a separate post on that so won’t repeat anything here.

I rushed through the new content on the Flipboard magazine, highlighting the post on Reddit, which was a response to the question Steve asked at the last meeting (he also asked about RSS feeds but I responded to that one in the last notes); the iOS 14.4.2 (or 12.5.2 for older devices) that Owen had alerted us to; and articles on the latest update to Audacity and a review of the “best” photo-editing apps – I can recommend Snapseed for anyone using Google Photos in particular.

We then went round the screen (although not in the order of Jim’s screenshot above – many thanks again). I’ll only mention things that people raised …

Owen opened a discussion about the possibility of mixed media (in person, face-to-face PLUS Zoom) that the Committee was going to discuss in the near future. The following suggestions were put forward, and Owen would welcome any further ones as well. Don suggested Alternate Meetings rather than joint ones. Jim suggested that there might be challenges with getting the sound quality right.I said that I thought the management of the meeting might prove challenging, and in particular Screen Sharing might be difficult. Steve commented on the number coming into such meetings. Paul highlighted the issue of remote attendees being able to see in person attendees. Phil suggested the setup would have to be – two laptops, two screens, two cameras and a high quality WiFi!!! We all agreed this would be unlikely at the URC 🙁

Barbara would be grateful for any information on Google Photos and I promised to make available some links to articles I’d written in the past. [This prompted me to think that a lot of what we’d got on the old Google+ platform would still be relevant, and caused me to look after the meeting at this presumably underused resource.] After the meeting I resolved to do more actively with the Forums and Topics area of the website – so watch out, you’ve been warned – another place for you to look!!

Paul retold his recurring story of negotiations with TalkTalk suggesting he was thinking of moving to Sky Central. He managed to reduce his fee to £22 for Broadband, TV – no premium channels, free calls and overseas calls) from £27pm. Seems like a bargain!!!

David H had been alerted that his Google Photos account was at 85% storage capacity and he’d been asked to consider upgrading to Google One (Jim and I both have such accounts) which would give a total of 115Gb of storage. He’d started looking round for a method of transferring photos from the Google Photos Cloud to his desktop and had settled upon using the Mozilla Foundation’s free email client – Thunderbird to do that job. [Personally, I’m not sure why David couldn’t have just downloaded the photos, but perhaps I’ve forgotten to note something he said.]

Jim mentioned that he’d been experimenting with the Intel Graphics Command Centre (see below) …

… as a means to calibrate the displays on his devices so that the colours were comparable. I commented that I’d spent some time recently trying to do the same with a Samsung TV and after some time had completed the calibration, only to end up with a Profile that I couldn’t detect a difference from the supplied one!!!!

Jonathan mentioned he’d recently been working on Photos Books using a process he’d been introduced to by Jessops (now sadly going into administration for the third time). The system he’d used was from a company called Cewe – I will include the details he supplied to me in a Forum called Photo Albums, and add a few other possibilities there as well – please feel free to add any you have chosen with a brief review of what you like, or dislike about it.

Steven was interested at Paul’s TalkTalk pricing – he might be taking that further as it’s approaching his contract renewal time. I mentioned that anyone thinking of changing ISP should very seriously consider opening a Gmail, Yahoo mail or Outlook/Hotmail (Microsoft) account and use that as it would ease the pain of moving away from one ISP to another. You can setup forwarding from your ISP’s mailer to the chosen one before you move (or even if you don’t intend to move at this time), and inform everyone (I did so by putting a note in the Signature of my email) of your new email address.

Don was doing just this email accounts thing at this very moment, and I quickly showed how to add a Google account to an existing account from the Icon displayed on a Google Chrome (or Gmail, Drive, or Photos) page.

John also commented on Photo Albums, but I didn’t note down the one he was using. Perhaps you could add a Comment/Reply in the Photos Albums Topic? I have recorded he said it cost c.£30 for 28 photos, and you could get both hardback and softback editions.

Phil noted that in his research recently for a new computer he’d realised that cloud storage was cheaper than hard disk storage. [My comment: you need to get the right balance. Cloud storage is slow – it’s OK for archiving stuff. I’ll set out my thinking/strategy in a Topic at a later date.]

Posted on

Notes from Zoom meeting – 18th March 2021

Another lively meeting that once again saw Google settings omitted due to lack of time. At the end of the meeting I declared my intention to start with that next time, and especially look at Google Photos, and for the “round the screen” to follow.

Matters arising from the previous meeting. I mentioned that I’d put an article about the Pensions Issue for Women on Flipboard; I highlighted Jim’s Comment on the Meeting Notes that referred to his video; Fred reported that TalKTalk seemed to have got their act together in Cregiau – now he needed to get his act together with Signal!!

I went briefly through the items I’d added to Flipboard highlighting articles on screen sharing in Zoom; deleting Fb posts; the free password manager now available with Dropbox; the differences between USB standards and cable-types [NB we agreed to hold a session on this at some stage]; on adware; deleting online accounts; and a tool you can employ to move photos from Apple iCloud to Google Photos.

Member Issues.

Marie-Christine was interested in the idea of deleting online accounts and “disappearing” from the Internet [This will be a good subject for a session at a later date].

David H reported that the transition of his wife’s bank account away from M&S Bank had gone well [It’s interesting that a couple of banks, notably HSBC, have offered incentives to entice ex-M&S customers to join them].

Don told us about his grandson tutoring him over FaceTime – something we’ve all got used to. He also advised us that an article had appeared in The Times on sharing Netflix access codes. They were clamping down on this and making sure that “families” were living in the same house!

We advised Barbara that she might consider using speedtest.net, or uswitch.com, to test the speed of her internet connection and if it wasn’t performing as per spec. then to follow that up. She is with VirginMedia and as this is cable, she should rigorously challenge them if they’re not delivering the speed they should be as per contract.

Stella raised the interesting issue of being advised on her TV that an insecure WiFi network was trying to access her TV. We re-assured her that there were many WiFi networks around every house and it was inevitable that you’d see more than just your network. As long as your network has a secure password then you don’t need to worry. In this case it was probably just a neighbour clicking on a network at random, or by mistake.

Phil was enjoying his new MacBook Air; he had installed (just because he could I suppose) Parallels Desktop to enable him to run Windows 10 on it, as well as Ubuntu (Linux). Why spoil a lovely Mac is my comment!

The problem Marilyn had been experiencing with her external Hard Disk was now resolved – she wasn’t really sure how! She was experiencing problems connecting to/using Signal. Hopefully that’s resolved itself too now.

Paul‘s partner liked the old Windows 7 games (no comment); he’d found a way of installing them on Windows 10 and had put a link on Signal to inform anyone else of the solution. He was also cross at TalkTalk trying to increase the cost of his fixed-price contract before it came to the final date.

Steve reminded us that it was easy to Mute yourself on Zoom and then unmute by using the spacebar; a practice it would be good for all of us to employ. He also had been getting some scams on Text messages – like the ones we reported on a few weeks ago. He also asked about RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Reddit – what are they, and are they of interest/use. I was able to answer immediately how I used RSS feeds – and described in this post I’d written on how I use them to prepare for meetings and the Flipboard magazine – and I promised to get back about Reddit, which I did in a Signal post; the text of which I include below …

“A quite good explanation of Reddit is given here. You can perhaps think of Reddit as Bulletin Boards and Forums for everyone. Rather like the Forums and Topics on Thought grazing.”

Renee was experiencing some problems with Virgin Media

Owen was excited to tell us that Beacon Error Message 502 had now been fixed. I enquired when the new version of Beacon was likely to be ready. Sometime, never is probably the answer!

Christine‘s problem with her WiFi had returned, it’s sporadic. For her, Renee, and Barbara it’s important to press the problem with VM. They may offer free WiFi extenders. VM is the fastest network you can get. Don’t give up on it, just make them deliver the service they’re supposed to.

Posted on

Screen Prints

In case you are wondering how I take a picture of our Zoom meetings, the answer depends on which operating system you are using. (I am using Windows 10.)

David has supplied these instructions for Apple users:

Taking a screen shot on a Mac …

support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201361

Alternatively from MacOS Mojave onwards there’s a tool called Screenshot – here’s a link to the Help file …

support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh26782/mac

To do a screenshot of an iOS or iPadOS device, press the power-off button and then the Home button.

With a Windows computer, the simple answer involves the ‘PrtSc’ key, near the right hand end of the top row of the keypad. You might have to press the Alt key or the Fn key, on the bottom row, at the same time. You will have to experiment. A message might pop up, saying the screen shot has been saved somewhere. If that doesn’t happen, the image might have been saved to the clipboard, in which case you will have to choose somewhere to paste it.

The less simple Windows answer involves the Snip and Sketch program, which you access by pressing the Windows key + Shift + S. This gives you the opportunity to crop the picture on the screen, so you only save the area you want.

For Android tablets and phones, press the power and volume-down buttons at the same time. I couldn’t get that to work with my phone though. I did have success by holding the power and ‘home’ buttons together. The screen flashed to show the shot had been taken. The picture went to Google Photos and to the Gallery.

Good luck!

Jim

Posted on

Notes from Zoom meeting – 4th March 2021

Nineteen of us for our Zoom meeting yesterday. Yes! I’ve managed to get the notes done quicker this time.

I introduced the meeting, welcomed Barbara to her first meeting, did a demonstration on how the website worked and encourages members to take part either by writing a post, like Sianed last week, or to use the Forums and Topics. I showed how you could change some personal information under the Profile tab and highlighted the Noticeboard where changes to the site are recorded; the information available under Help and the Guides that are viewable.

I then went on to run through the “latest news” that I had curated in the Flipboard magazine, mainly focussing on Facebook’s problems in Australia and Microsoft’s attempts to get Bing as a preferred search engine over Google. The best experience of Flipboard is on a tablet, so I’d recommend looking on your app store to see if you can install it on your tablet (or smartphone).

Round the screen, not the one above which is a screenshot kindly taken by Jim, but the one I had in front of me …

Mike reported he’d solved his Mouse problem by using a Mouse Mat. Who’d have thought such a simple solution would work. Once he told us, many of us remembered stories of mice not working properly without a mouse mat and as Mike’s table was shiny, it was likely that this has contributed to the battery usage. His keyboard, which I’d previously reported as being a problem too, is working fine as well.

Marie-Christine had nothing to report.

Owen reported that the Beacon Members Portal was playing-up for some members and he’d had to do a fair bit of user-support since renewal of membership started. Of the 780 members the branch had, over 600 had renewed so far.

David H updated us on his Times subscription problem with Safari, Firefox and Chrome, but announced that it was now working with Brave. A really strange one – could it be something to do with the way browsers handled pop-ups. I don’t know. David is going to try Edge next to see if that works! He also reported that M&S Bank was closing – Owen provided this link to assist David find an alternative.

Margaret reported that she’d tried to install LibreOffice on her Android tablet with no success. Owen came to the rescue again with a reference to Collabora for Android and iOS which enables Libra Office to run on those platforms. Refer to your relevant App Store for downloads and installs. She also told us about “the scam that wasn’t” – eBay have enacted their plan to move away from Paypal so an email to that effect wasn’t a scam. On another note a scam to try and phish personal information from a hacked contact list by saying someone was seriously injured in an accident – with links to follow-up – was just as low as you can get! Margaret also told us about an issue with women’s pensions which is highlighted in this BBC News post.

Barbara told us about a disk drive problem she was having with her MacBook. The advice was to get in touch with John Lewis first, because that’s where she got it from, before going to the Apple Store. A phone-call now might be a good idea, to prepare the ground for the enquiry, for when we can visit the shops.

John enquired as to whether the group had a view on whether anti-trust legislation on an international scale might now be more feasible given the number of bad instances of fake news and scams during the Covid pandemic. I certainly felt that something was more likely to happen in the US now and referred to a couple of articles I’d posted to the Flipboard magazine recently on what the new US President’s agenda might include.

Jim had nothing to report. He had finished a video however that I’d be able to watch. I hope he doesn’t mind but here it is …

[He’s added a Comment about the purpose of making the video in a Comment below this post.]

Don told us about some work he’d done as a consequence of looking on the Money Saving Expert (MSE) website in respect of a Power of Attorney application he’d made online. He’d found the process to reclaim quite easy and had recovered £46 (I think). He also reported that following Sianed’s experience he’d purchased a Firestick and got the BT App and YouTube running on it. He had a Gmail project ahead of him as a consequence of his wife’s account having been compromised.

Paul showed us a magnetic USB cable that held together. Awesome! Must have one – I’m afraid I can’t find the website.

Fred advised that he had downloaded Signal and would be installing/joining shortly. He and the rest of his Close in Cregiau were having TalkTalk problems – actually BT OpenReach problems – and after many minutes trying to contact them reported that once he’d found an 0800 number, it was much quicker to contact them than the published 0333 number. There were bow OpenReach vans aplenty in the Close. This gave rise to a discussion on complaining and Barbara was of the opinion that using twitter was the best method of getting something done – she could be right!

Ann asked a question about JPEG files. I was able to state categorically that a native JPEG file was not a bad image. It had just had some information removed from it through a compression algorithm in the camera. Usually this was to remove detail from highlights and shadows. Left at that you would probably not notice any problem. If the camera allowed you to decrease the amount of compression then there would probably be no difference at all. If you edited an image, as long as you saved at 0% compression (100% quality) then there would be no decrease in the quality of the image.

Steve asked a question about Signal and whether it was an issue of privacy alone. I referred him to this blog post. I had also sent an email to the Group about my decision to move away from WhatsApp to Signal.

Stella asked how she could delete an app from her iPhone. I showed her in a practical demonstration. Press down on the app, wait until you see the icon wiggle and the ‘x’ appear. Press the ‘x’ and it will be removed. You can then press on the Home button to stop the app “wiggling”.

Christine announced success with her WiFi problem but she couldn’t be certain how she’d solved it. Barbara suggested that as a VM customer he might qualify for free Wifi extenders and encouraged her to follow that one up.

Renee said that VM appeared to be slow today, I suggested that she (and others) might like to look at their ISP’s status page.

For VM this would be – https://www.virginmedia.com/help/service-status

You would get taken to something like this …

You can also use this website to detect service outages – https://www.downdetector.co.uk – which links to many popular services.

Phil was just so excited by his new M1 MacBook Air that he had very little to say apart from some comment about Bing, the Rhondda and someone singing. It had been a long afternoon.

Finally Sianed introduced her post on LastPass. Anyone using LastPass, or thinking of using this password manager – which I recommend incidentally – should look at this blog post too, and if there are more than one user of the service in a family, you might consider taking out a Families membership which cover up to 6 people and an unlimited number of devices.

Posted on

Notes from Zoom meeting – 18th February 2021

I’m afraid the what had become the norm, delayed posting of notes has returned, so apologies for the late publication of these notes.

We welcomed a new member – Steve Jones – and I notice that there are a couple of new members hoping to join us for our next meeting too. So you’ll all have to be on your best behaviour!

I quickly followed up some issues from the previous meeting. Marie-Christine’s problem with Lightroom and Windows I’d dealt with in an email exchange but it might be that a bug-fix update to Lightroom was necessary to get a proper resolution. Jenny was not present at the meeting but Fred reported back on the National Pensioners Convention launch event on Tuesday 9th February. David Hughes had been challenged with his phone switching away from WiFi for calls and pushing his 4G calls bill up – we had advised on settings for WiFi calling and this now appeared to be working fine. Renee reported that her problems with alarm services and TV satellite were now fixed. Sianed was pleased to be able to report that she’d followed up our advice on howe to get her TV SMART once again by purchasing one of the many devices we’d suggested.

I quickly ran through some of the more interesting “news” items I’d posted on the Flipboard magazine.

I also quickly ran through the Thought grazing website, membership options (if people left the group, or if they were non-members but members of Cardiff U3A). I talked briefly about WordPress editing, commenting on posts and encouraged people to use the Bulleting Boards (Forums and Topics).

We seemed to spend a lot of time talking about COVID-19 and Jabs at this meeting – I wonder why. To that end, there were less than normal problems, issues, challenges and questions to discuss.

Marilyn had bitten the bullet and upgraded her iMac to BigSur. All was fine with her Lightroom Classic installation.

Owen gave further information on the Pixel issue mentioned in a Flipboard post and suggested we might like to consider using Pixel Block as a way to prevent information about us to be sent back to marketing departments of shops such as Sainsbury.

Stella was very unhappy about the WiFi service in her house and wondered about signal boosters. As she was using a 4G internet service to her router we felt that the problem should be reported to her ISP – Three – before any additional kit was purchased.

David Hughes reported on his interesting adventure into the world of online paying-in of cheques which was both instructive and interesting. His other query related to shared access to the apartments in his community at Penarth. Several solutions were offered. Whilst the popular option of a Keysafe got a lot of support, the possible insurance aspect of this must be taken into account. An alternative suggested by Fred were using a MasterSuite from Tunstall key set (all locks would have to be changed). Fred suggested contacting the Local Authority as they might have a preferred supplier.

Steve had a strange problem which seemed to involve phonecalls re-booting his WiFi. I’m not sure we really got the bottom of that one.

Jim was using Animatica to create slideshows of images with music coming from audacity. I look forward to watching the outcome of this project.

Paul had been looking at his Google file storage with the intended changes to the way Google was going to charge for what had previously been free high-resolution (ie not original quality) images. As with most of us the world of Backup’n’sync is a bit of mystery too!

Christine was still suffering problems with her WiFi when trying to play online bridge. The devices seem to freeze after 1hr 10mins when using Zoom – and yes it’s a paid-for account! Would Powerline Adapters help? She also commented upon Facebook ownership of Content – I disagreed with her son’s interpretation.

Don Roadblocks – games???? He reported that a grandson was happy to download animation software and create a Lego film in about 3hrs. Incredible!

Mike was having problems with his Bluetooth mouse and keyboard dying. We suggested buying a pair that would share the same USB port on his computer.

Ann was examining the cost of her phone contract and weighing up options. EE against Skynet; 4G vs. Broadband. We await her conclusions.

Me – I’d been mainly working on cataloguing videos and changing them to .MP4 format and archiving them onto the family website.

Posted on

Last pass

There is to  be a change to the free version of LastPass service.    At present, you  can use LastPass on as many devices as you like absolutely free. That’s changing on the 16th March.

You’ll have to choose whether you want to use LastPass on computers or mobile devices   You won’t be able to use it on both unless you pay for the premium version.

If you use it on both computers and mobile devices at the moment, choose which one to keep.  The first time you sign in to LastPass on or after the 16th, it’ll record which device you do it on.  That will become your free device type – so if you sign in first on your computer, you won’t be able to use the app any more (and vice versa).

To keep access to both, you need to sign up for the premium version. If you upgrade before the 16th March, a full year costs £22 or £30 after.

Posted on

Notes from Zoom meeting – 4th February 2021

A large attendance yesterday, touching nineteen as shown above. We started with this – The Blue Ball – it’s mesmerising; the digital equivalent of those steel balls that swung on a cradle on execs desks in the seventies, remember them?

I mentioned the emojipedia which I referenced in the last notes and offered to help anyone who wanted to get onto Signal at the end of the meeting. Then it was “round the screen” to find out what members had been up to, or were having difficulties, or issues, with.

Margaret reported on two scams, one from Lloyds Bank (spelt Lloyd) and an “internet interruption” call/text which on traceback (which David H had done having received the same one) appeared to come from Caerphilly! On a more productive note she had been able to transfer a lot of treasured photos from her old laptop – which she’d been unable to upgrade to Windows 10 unfortunately (for a number of reasons, lapsed time, lack of memory) – to their desktop. I mentioned that Linux was still a possibility to revive the old laptop, we could look at that agin when we were all together in person. She also told us about a very pleasant experience attending virtually the Destinations Travel event, and informed us about the Stanfords Travel Writer Festival and the videos from the event which finished yesterday will be online from that site.

Owen reported that following the last meeting, he’d replaced his Powerline Adaptors with new ones and was now getting much improved wired connection speed for his study.

Don had been decorating for the past three weeks, that is when he wasn’t standing in the garden at a safe distance from the lead gas pipe he’d fractured in a wall, thinking it was redundant!

Jim had got himself into “trouble” with Flickr for displaying a photo of some aubergines – this caused much mirth. He reported to me today that Flickr had apologised for slapping an “unsafe” rating on the picture, and it was now visible to everyone. He had also upgraded (on his new laptop) his copies of Audacity (audio editing) and PaintShop Pro (photo editing).

LetterA 1B2

Marie-Christine reported she was having a problem with her version of Lightroom and Windows. I offered to raise the matter on the Lightroom Queen Forum if she told me hat version of Lightroom, and the precise version of Windows she was having problems with.

Fred reported that a switch to Signal was not getting any traction with his friends, and that he’d had an instance of PayPal phishing to contend with.

David H added to Margaret’s description of the “internet will crash” scam. Someone asked where you should report such scams. The preferred method would appear to your ISP, in this case Sky, but Marie-Christine reminded us of Action Fraud (0300 123 2040) – is it a scam in itself? No it’s run by the police. Other tricks are to type the phone number of a caller into a browser and you’ll get an indication from Who Called Me? or Should I answer? Of course for an email you should look carefully at the email header address and type the domain into a browser to see if it’s genuine. David also asked whether it was possible to use WiFi for making telephone calls as the O2 signal in his apartment was so bad. The answer appears to be to activate WiFi calling for Android or iOS. David also reported that he was still not having any joy with his Times subscription on his iPad although it was working on his wife’s machine. I suggested that perhaps the subscription was limited to a fixed number of devices, and that perhaps deleting it from both machines and then re-installing it in order of preferences might solves the problem. Just a thought. Finally, he mentioned the possibility of adding people to a Netflix account and that his daughter had added them to her account and he was paying her £3 a month in gratitude – this being the cost of the extended subscription. It was pointed out that there was a similar option for Spotify, and the launch of Apple One scheme just recently was very similar. [NB The Spotify Family requires address verification; I’m not sure how this works but all members have to have “the same address” – work that one out yourself.]

Mike had nothing to report.

Renee reported some alarm issues ; problems with her satellite TV which required a factory reset eventually as the Italian channels had changed polarity (??) and just re-tuning didn’t solve the problem.

Stella had nothing to report.

John told us about the problems that have dogged them since he lost a bank card and the issues of not knowing whether a request to change details for a direct debit (because it use the former 16-digit number) was a scam or not. Just a nuisance. He wondered whether there were more scams at large currently because of Covid. Not sure. He reported with some delight success in transferring a SIM from an old phone to a new iPhone XR. There were some problems initially (with O2) but these were now resolved and he was getting the service he wanted at the reduced price of the service on the old phone. My standard advice is never to buy a phone on a plan, but to always save up for “the next one” when you purchase outright a new one. Also look at the plans that are available for SIM-only, or Pay as you Go. Measure up what you can get against the ones offered by GiffGaff (running on the O2 network and owned by them), which is my personal recommendation.

Paul had nothing to report, having been too sore to think of anything else but finding a comfortable place to sit since his accidental encounter with his loft.

Phil told us about a Facebook page – Strange things found in walls, including a safe and a gothic arch. He also told us about his experience (relating to Jim’s Flickr episode) of the poor performance of content-filtering for schools internet when he was working.

Ted told us about Just Watch – a really useful website that tells you which streaming service you should look on to find films, etc. He also mentioned how useful he was finding the Snipping Tool in Windows to cut-out an element from an image. I was able to say that the Screenshot Utility in MacOS did the same thing, but there were also short-key sequences for the Mac that did the same thing.

Sianed relayed the sad story of the Smart TV that had lost its smart functionality. For many of us that’s a cause for celebration as the smart functionality decreases with the age of a set as manufacturers don’t keep their apps up-to-date. So now she is in the happy position of using possibly an Amazon Firestick, a Google Chromecast (although Paul doesn’t rate it as there appears to a lot of US-content), a Now TV dongle, a Roku device or an Apple TV. Here’s a recent review of all of the ones available in the UK.

Finally Jenny described the National Pensioners Convention (Wales) event that she was participating in on Tuesday (9th February). You are encouraged to sign-up and take part in the webinar – I’ve circulated details by email earlier. She particularly noted the work of the Good Things Foundation and the Carnegie Trust in supporting digital inclusion activity and projects. She recommended looking at the former’s website.

I concluded the meeting with a gallop through home networking and router configuration which is all written up in this article which builds upon earlier ones.

Posted on

Home networks – some notes

I’ve written and talked about this subject on a number of occasions. I’ll bring these together in one place, before delving into the specifics of router configuration which prompted the subject for the meeting on Feb 4th, 2021.

For many of us home networking means WiFi, and the first article I wrote was on the subject of “Flaky WiFi” on October 11th, 2016. Members of the group had commented on their WiFi connection appearing to drop and in this article I tried to explain how all the bits and pieces hung together and how you could test your network to see it was working the way your Internet Service Provider (ISP) was proclaiming it should be!

Then, later on (January 26th, 2017), we discussed “Broadband speeds, WiFi routers (their type and security), and extenders or boosters” and as the title suggests we focussed on networking in the house and how it is provided by Internet Service Providers, such as VirginMedia, BT, Sky or TalkTalk.

I described “How the Internet works” in this post on June 29th, 2017, with links to a few videos and policy documents which hopefully explain the topic better than I could. Not much has changed since then; IPv6 is still to appear in the domestic market, so we still use IPv4 for internet addressing.

Finally, on July 27th, 2020, I wrote about “Improving home network performance” which is really what I’m going to revisit in this post.

So … what do you need to take a look at?

On your router:

If you’re using an integrated modem/router – often called a hub, typing in the IP address 192.168.1.1 will bring up a screen something similar to this …

… mine is different because I’ve disabled the router functionality so that I can use my own router – a Netgear Orbi Mesh Network – so to just access the modem part of MY hub I use the IP address 192.168.100.1. You can see from the above that only the Modem is active.

So for most users with an integrated modem/router, the first thing you need to be able to do is to access your Router’s Admin Dashboard. This article explains how to do it using the cmd prompt in Windows, but it is probable that your hub/router has an application you can start to do this, or that you can access it from a browser window. For most you would just enter the IP address 192.168.1.1 and supply the UserID admin and the password that I’ve created – the default is quite commonly ‘password’, so you ought to change that!!!

The above screen is for my mesh network, but non-mesh would be similar. Clicking on Internet will give you the ability to change some of the settings for your connection.

Of these the most useful to change is the Domain Name Server (DNS) – these are the servers that translate a URL (eg thoughtgrazing.org) into an IP address. I’ve chosen to replace the default DNS supplied for my VirginMedia (ie 194.168.4.100) Hub (I’ve disabled the router functionality on the SuperHub so that it only acts as a modem) for two servers run by Google (1.1.1.1 and 8.8.4.4). The reason I’ve done this is that these servers are replicated around the internet and will almost certainly be closer to my router than VirginMedia which I think the closest one is in Bristol.

All the other settings can probably be left as they are. The next option is where you configure the name of your network and the channels you’re going to use.

If you don’t like the name supplied to your network by your ISP, you can change the SSID. I did to make it a little more meaningful. You should then consider changing the 2.4Ghz Channel. If you can set the channel to Auto – you should do so because generally the router will then find the best channel for your network. If that’s not possible and you have found your WiFi to be “flaky” due to you and your neighbour using the same Channel(s), try setting the channel manually to one that’s not being used. The article I mentioned before describes how you can find the best Channels for a Mac, and this one identifies a Windows Tool that does the same thing – there’s a Download link at the bottom of that documentation. Here’s an article that describes all the possibilities.

Generally 2.4GHz has a wider range of signal but lesser bandwidth (throughput), and 5Ghz the opposite – shorter distance, but higher bandwidth. On my system my 2.4GHz channel gives me 400Mbps and the 5Ghz channel 866.7Mbps.

You’ll want to look at your Security Options and make sure that you choose the best for the devices that you’re going to connect to your router. Generally, for a home network, WPA2-PSK [AES] should be sufficient.

This article from the Apple website provides a very thorough and detailed examination of what settings you should deploy for your router, and why. Worth a read, even if you’re not an Apple Fanboy!

On your device …

Make sure the security settings match that you’ve just set on your router; remember the SSID and Password you’ve created, and re-connect to your network.

And that’s about it … I hope. Questions??

Posted on

Notes from Zoom meeting – 21st January 2021

Apologies (again) for the late arrival of these notes. Covid is certainly slowing me down – is that the same for you!!?? We kicked-off by going round the screen, several members had nothing to raise, no IT-problems is a Critical Success Factor for the group. Am I doing something right? {Don’t answer that.}

Owen described the installation of his Vodafone 5G Broadband service which he’s written up in this post. It’s an interesting development and points to the future of rural broadband as well … maybe. Certainly a more environmentally friendly alternative, but you need to ensure that there’s take-up/adoption, and of course hills can make construction of such a network very costly. But, for rural Pen-y-Lan in a cable desert it’s a winner!

Sianed had been having problems with OpenReach after damage to the cable feeding her property. Hopefully that’s now been resolved.

Ted was experiencing contention issues due to the increased number of devices using his home network with his son now living in the house as well. The same son had improved the performance by disabling one of the channels on the router. This led to a short discussion on wavelengths and channels used by the router and suggests that a repeat session on that topic might be worthwhile. {I’m going to do that at the next meeting on Thu 4th Feb.} He was also having some difficulty with adapting to the new WordPress Block Editor for his Family History blogs. I sympathised, but urger him to stick with it, I’d now made the switch and was finding it SO MUCH better! I suggested that perhaps a “special” extra session on WordPress might be worthwhile and possible?

David Hughes was experiencing problems with getting The Times on his iPad, whilst it was running on his wife’s. We ran through a number of possible solutions, which David had already attempted, so we were left with a puzzle which was not very helpful for David as he had been experiencing language challenges with the offshore IT Support Desk. {Is that me being sufficiently political correct?}

Fred praised the steps that Cardiff County Council had made towards inclusivity for those who were threatened by digital exclusion with the distribution of tablets, and adoption of new policies. He was also having much more pressing difficulties with a kitchen roof which he’d not been able to have fixed until a date in February. We sympathised with the challenges of someone moving to a new area and not having the list of useful contacts. To this end Christine offered me the contact details of a roofer – thanks!

Mike was enjoying his better broadband at reduced price. Great!

Renee had an interesting problem which was she had a satellite receiver dish with no manual and was having difficulty in making it work. I offered to supply a link to a manuals site that I’d used to good effect. Here are a couple – https://www.usermanuals.tech/ and https://www.manualslib.com/ – there are others. Someone (Paul or Phil ??) did suggest perhaps using a laptop with USB, rather than trying to connect to her TV. We await developments with interest. She also wondered whether there was anywhere you could look to find the meaning of emojis, there is – here it is Emojipedia.

Jim reviewed his difficulties with using an additional SD-Card for his new phone and thanked Paul for resolving the problem. He was now saving his photos on the card, and not using it as extended SIM memory. he also told us about his decision to take out a subscription to Google Drive/Photos to ensure that he could save his photos (taken with his phone) on Google at Original Quality. I expressed the view that perhaps this would not be an issue for smartphones as the limit for High Quality was 16Mp {most smartphones being 12Mp}. I sent him this link – Google Photos “High quality” vs “Original”: What’s the difference and should you care – which you might be interested in which compared different compressions with Google Photos.

Christine was still having difficulties with her WiFi still losing service when she was trying to play chess with another user (her husband) in another room in the same house. I suggested that this might be an issue which we could solve with our session on router configuration {see above}.

Phil was revelling in having discovered how good Google Docs is! {He ought to look at LibreOffice as well} It’s good to have a personal recommendation and I concur … why people are still paying money to Microsoft for Office when there’s free and open source alternatives that read .docx formats (and in the case of LibreOffice – write .docx), is a puzzle to me! He was also wondering whether anyone had come across an online version of Cluedo; he had updated his favourite gadget – his Firestick; and showed us how to move Zoom windows. Oh! Bliss!

That means that Marie-Christine, Ann (who had to leave the meeting), Margaret and Marilyn had no issues to raise.

So what have I been up to? The greatest success has been able to get my new Sony Bluetooth headphones working so that I can listen to music and not disturb anyone! Other than that I’ve been in organisation mood. I’ve sorted out my cloud drives – Google, iCloud and Dropbox so that they all have a distinct and different purpose; respectively photos and webwork, documents and archiving/backup. A lengthy job that I couldn’t have managed without dupeGuru, a rapidly favourite bit of Mac software. I then went on to start deleting duplicate (of which there were many) family history records. Duplicates are a pain in the neck – you never know whether you’ve got exactly the right one. That’s where dupeGuru comes in. I did have an anxious moment however when Dropbox informed me I’d deleted over 20,000 files. I restored them just in case, which put me back half-a-day; I hadn’t made a mistake!!! A neighbour across the road stores a backup disk of my photos and so I recovered that and did a backup and returned it to them. I do this every year. I have back-ups on an external disk connected to the computer as well for day-to-day use.I upgraded a few apps; removed Flash – hope you’ve done that too! However most of what I did was connected with my concerns with WhatsApp and it’s changes to it’s Privacy Policy.

We had a discussion on this – or rather I spoke at length of my concerns. They appear in three places – this blog; on the public – Thought grazing and my personal blog – Just thoughts. I won’t say any more at this time, but I will be reviewing my use of WhatsApp (in particular) before the new deadline of May 15th; and will be considering leaving Facebook and instagram after removing my content – a subject for a meeting at a later date when they decide to move away from Ireland.