In addition to the serious looking faces above, Barbara joined us for a short while until Geoff switched-off the ring main!! We had apologies from Jonathan, Sianed and Christine. We welcomed back Stella who had been suffering from the after effects of her Covid jabs.
We also agreed to experiment with a voice-to-text transliteration system to assist folk who were finding it difficult to follow the audio in Zoom meetings.
I started the meeting by explaining the changes to the website, and doing a quick demo. [I further made some more changes the following day – I note that some of the Help screens, now need new images. They’ll have to wait …] I also was pleased to report that I’d sorted Fred’s Signal installation out, and had finally managed to reply to Phil’s Signal message on using Thought grazing. I offered to help anyone having difficulties with either the website, or Signal, to get in touch.
I then highlighted a few items that I’d added to Flipboard – a lot of them connected to Privacy, which seems a very live issue currently. Apple, after it’s developer’s conference is certainly focussing on privacy, including traps of pixel trackers, it’s intentions to move away from passwords and the addition of FaceID and/or TouchID to Google’s Authenticator – increasing the security of this means of connecting to websites. The EU appears to be going after the way multi-nationals (Google, Microsoft, Apple, twitter and Facebook) export data – an issue I’ve been mentioning for a while – watch this space! The UK’s Competition & Market Authority are also going after Google because of its use of cookies to track users, and usage, in Chrome. Google says, don’t worry we’re going to stop using cookies, and we’re going to give the industry an open-source alternative – FLoC; but it doesn’t appear that anyone else wants to follow. The US Congress is also looking at introducing anti-trust legislation and this is causing the multi-nationals to be a little bit more than concerned and they are lobbying hard against it. Here’s Apple’s plea to Nancy Pelosi. Apple take Privacy very seriously and they have released this white paper which you might care to read.
Building_a_Trusted_Ecosystem_for_Millions_of_AppsFinally, it appears that there’s a non-tracking alternative to DuckDuckGo that’s about to appear – Brave Search. Initially it will be an alternative search engine within the Brave browser that you can choose as your default (and as an alternative to Google Search, Bing, or DuckDuckGo); but when it’s fully developed it will be the default search engine for Brave. Try it!!!
We then went round the screen as usual.
Mike was delighted with his new speakers which had improved his music listening (from the computer) as well as the quality of his Zoom calls.
Owen reported that he could not recommend the cookie-completion software he’d mentioned four weeks previously. In a test of at least 100 websites, he’d found that it had only worked with 7 sites and in some cases had stopped the websites working. Back to the drawing board! He also reported that the Committee was contemplating a reservation system for when we return to face-to-face meetings to cope with any constraints in numbers and/or social distancing in certain venues. I indicated that I was not too happy with such a proposal. It may not come to pass, however Owen has been charged (or volunteered) to see if the current systems can be tweaked to facilitate this. Zoom has now introduced ‘Live Transcript’, an automated subtitling system. It is by no means 100% perfect, but it should enable those who find it hard to follow in Zoom meetings an enhanced opportunity to hear and see what is spoken. Further information is to be found here. We then discussed how best we might extend the Group to those not participating via Zoom, and I agreed to try to see if any members wanted to join the Signal group.
David H mused on the death of John McAffee (as did Jim later); he reported that the barn was being converted as per his CAD drawings; that he had solved a Samsung phone problem with the radical solution of turning it off, and then switching it back on again; and enquired as to whether anyone had advice on purchasing a new TV. There was a lot of discussion; Steve commended 4K; Ann mentioned the Which? tool to assess size of TV vs size of room, viewing angle and distance from the screen; I asserted that most reviews appeared to favour LG’s OLED technology over Samsung’s QLED technology; we all agreed it was important to assess what we wanted, before we made a decision.
Paul was having problems with rapid battery drain on his Android phone; unfortunately no one had a concrete answer to the problem other than ditching unwanted, unused apps; enquiring whether an update had recently taken place, and again (radical thinking) – switch it off, and back on again!!! Here’s a link that might be useful too.
Don had bought a new Dell G3 system from JLP and it had arrived very quickly. It was so fast, it was like driving an Audi after the Vauxhall he’d had previously (no disrespect intended). He enquired about installing the security package from BT – I suggested to wait awhile before doing that – to try using Windows Defender first. He was going to investigate how to transfer his data from the old laptop. Neil (We will fix your PC) would do it for £30, or put the old hard disk in a caddy for £20. He also enquired about how to get his Gmail onto the new machine – I suggested using Windows native email client and offered to speak to him offline and provide some assistance [which I’ve done].
Phil drew attention to something he’d written about Podcasts which he and many of us use and like and commended CyberClean as a product to clean keyboards. Following the meeting he added another Topic to the Genealogy Forum on one of his ancestors which I recommend you read as a great multi-media experience.
Steve had brought his Sony HX90 camera to show Ann, and she was delighted that after visiting the Camera Centre, she’d plumped for a Sony HX99 for her carry around take pictures of birds camera. A great choice! That or the Panasonic TZ200 would have been my shortlist. He also commended BBC Sounds for Podcasts – good recommendation, thanks! He also enquired whether we thought showing a YouTube video on Zoom infringed copyright – we thought not.
Renee was wanting to look at Tasks in Google but couldn’t find it; we suggested it was included in one of the other members of the Google Office Suite – maybe Calendar. Hopefully this link will help – you access it from either Mail or Calendar.
Finally Ann just told her of her experience (very good) of visiting Camera Centre to purchase her camera which she expected to pickup after the meeting. She was buying a refurbished (but guaranteed unused) model at a discount. All the best – I suggested that she might like to consider joining the afternoon Photography group.