Tag: apps

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Meeting 9th October 2025

Here is the agenda for the meeting produced by Iain …

There was quite a lot of discussion on the merits, or otherwise, of Perplexity (or any other ChatBot) being part of a browser – in this case Comet. The group agreed that a session to review and update our knowledge of advances in AI would be timely.

… and the we had the Buzzword “Smart Watches” from Phil …

This BuzzWord created a lot of comment especially on health issues, and we should take seriously the suggestion to ensure our Medical IDs were up-to-date on our smart phones, as well as getting confident about the benefits of using the watch rather than the phone for a lot of everyday tasks. Phil advocated that no one needed more than the entry level iPhone SE – if you were considering an Apple Watch.

The main discussion of the session revolved around “The Apps I use”. I’ll try and write more about these in the Forum Topic that I created for this subject some time ago, so will here just list the apps. The Forum post will have (hopefully) a link to it added …

Helen kicked a lively session off with her use of the Cardiff Bus app which enable her and others to easily see where the bus they were waiting for actually was. It also has good timetables and maps to plan your journey. A well used app by most members of the group, and one that was well appreciated and easy to use.

Renee then highlighted her use of WordReference – an app that works like a dictionary, when you just can’t find the word you’re looking for.

Sianed initiated a bit of a discussion around her use of Waze which she found much better than her satnav and Google Maps for helping her find the best route in the car from A to B, due to it’s crowd-sourcing of road conditions. It’s also a great source of engagement for grandchildren when driving them around as they feed the app with (hopefully) valid information and advise on when there’s a police car hiding!!

Yvonne is very keen on using BBC Sounds – I must get round to using it more, especially as it not only has loads of music on it, but also live streaming of the radio channels, I believe.

Don came up with Bluebirds, an app he’s been encouraged to use now that he’s. season ticket holder at Cardiff City. I think it was him that mentioned Find Me – a location tracker. This then led to mentioning of Life360 and using Find my xxx (if you’re an Apple Family member); all useful apps to track errant children or grandparents!!!

Nita mentioned BusTimes.org, a website that allows you to stack buses all over the country with, it has to be said, a level of inaccuracy, but useful all the same to help you plan a journey. She also mentioned Your Parking Space, an app and website which enables you to book 350000 parking spaces across the UK. This of course kicked off a long discussion of car parking in general, and how awkward it can be to download an app to pay for parking in a location with a poor cell signal. So it might be advisable to download and install Ringo and PayByPhone onto your phone to reduce annoyance and anxiety! An alternative to Your Parking Space is JustPark which I’ve used to book a parking space in someone’s front garden in London. The things you can do!!

Phil mentioned a Paint application on MacOS, similar to the one he’d first used on Windows 95, which was simple to use. I’ve tried to locate it, but so far have been unsuccessful. He also mentioned MusicScore, which was great for music notation scores when it was first launched in that it allowed you free access to music. Things have changed now and it’s not only a subscription service but you also have to pay for downloads.

George then introduced us to two medical devices and their associated software. First he praised the Omron range of devices – blood pressure, weight, temperature, whose results could all be integrated into an app and then downloaded into a spreadsheet or fed to other Health apps. He also described the clever integration of hearing aids with controls on your phone to optimise the listening/hearing experience in different environments. Margaret mentioned her hearing aids were controlled by MyPhoneAK, I suspect there are other apps that do something similar, mine is Hearing Remote.

Margaret then mentioned her use of her Windy app and the website, which gives a visual presentation of how the weather is progressing – strongly recommended to give it a look. I mentioned my use of Yr from the Norwegian weather service which I found particularly useful when travelling. George then added Marine Traffic (for boats) which works in a similar way to Flight Radar – mentioned by Shiela (for commercial airlines) in tracking the whereabouts of boats, and of course in identifying them from out of visual range.

Anne loves the Translate app (Google or Apple), and who doesn’t! You’ll soon be able to have a real-time conversation with someone speaking your collective native languages with spoken translations instantaneously.

Tom highlighted his use of Google’s Notebook LM which he uses for Research and Note Taking and Recall which (if I’ve understood it correctly) can summarise from articles, documents or books into a single “note” and then with Obsidian (a personal knowledge base and note-taking application) store it for you for later reference.

Wordgames, puzzles and assistants were then mentioned by a number of people. Sheila uses Crossword Solver (I’m not sure which one – there are many) to help solve crosswords from known letters. Iain mentioned that he always had to be doing something, so in the blank spaces he would play Solitaire. Phil mentioned that he’d used ChatGPT to solve Sudoku puzzles, and Iain (and others) have used Anagram Solver. [I have to admit this is not, and never will be, an area of interest to me – shame on you, I hear you say!!]

Dave (a self-described petrol-head) uses an application – Torque to help with his rebuilding/restoring of cars beyond their sell-by date 🙂

Phil chipped in with a thumbs up for Tile Tags as a less expensive option to proprietary Apple tag devices, and ExpertRAW was mentioned as an Android alternative to Halide that I mention in my list of Favourite apps.

Lastly, Helen asked if anyone had any thoughts on how to get old family videos that had been transferred onto DVD onto a Digital platform. Tom came back with a really useful suggestion – using MakeMKV from a DVD player on your computer. I think that (with perhaps an introductory session on video-editing might be a good idea for a practical session at some time in the future.

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Google Photos and Google Drive, and the Apps I can't do without – July 11th 2019

Boot-up
A couple of postings from Jim and me on Thought grazing, including Jim’s annoyance at having a Windows 10 upgrade foisted on him.
Google Photos and Google Drive
Jim posted on Thought grazing last month about the proposed changes to the way that Google Photos, Google Drive and Backup and Sync  were going to work together. This is Google’s blogpost on the changes they are making and here is the help document explaining what will happen after July 10th, I suspect many of you will also have received this email …

Simplifying how Google Photos & Google Drive work together
You are getting this email because you sync items between Google Photos and Google Drive.
Over the next few weeks, we are making some changes to help simplify how Google Photos and Google Drive work together. We are making these changes based on the feedback that we’ve heard that the connection between these services is hard to understand.
• Your photos and videos will no longer automatically sync between Google Photos and Google Drive.
• You will still be able to upload to both services using the Backup and Sync app on your computer.
• We’re also adding a new “Upload from Drive” feature that lets you copy photos and videos to Google Photos.
• Your existing photos and videos are still in Google Photos and Google Drive.
You can read our Help Centre article or learn more about these changes in our blog post.

Add photos and videos from Google Drive to Google Photos
So … it’s really important to understand what Backup and Sync is doing, and this is determined from the Preferences screen.



Also from Backup and Sync you have links to your local Google Drive, your Google Drive on the web and Google Photos on the web …

… the interface is slightly different on Windows, but the first button will bring up something like this …

… the second button (from the web) will bring up something like this …

… and the third button (again from the web) will reveal something like this …

Now I wanted to test the Upload from Google Drive (which you should be able to do from the Upload button on the top-right of the screen), but it’s not yet operational  – and it’s the 11th July! However, I see now that I can drag and drop images which is new, although the imported image is not easy to find unless you add it to an album at the time of import!
On my iPhone, the Google Photos app settings look like this …

… and then the Settings screen looks like this …

… with everything I’m uploading (Backup and Sync) NOT counting towards my storage limit as I’ve chosen the “High Quality” (15Mp) option. Then on my Google Drive app, the open screen looks like this …

… and if I open the Google Photos folder that I had at one time been syncing with Google Drive, it looks like this …

… with the warning that they are no longer connected. If I then look at Google Drive settings …

… the Photos setting being like this …

… and the Backup settings being like this …

… you can see the Backups are clearly defined. As it happens I don’t Backup from my iPhone as I sync everything to my Desktop and that’s where my Backups of Google Drive, Contacts, Calendar are done.
So I think the separation of automatic sync’ing between the two could be a distinct advantage. You just need to make sure you set up your Backup and Sync options, or preferences the way you want it to work for each of Google Drive and Google Photos.
PS: How to do screen shots from an iPhone – hold the Power button down and press the Home button and then release the Power button. The image will transfer to your Photos Library, and if you’ve got Google Photos linked to your Photos Library, it will appear there as well, and then be Sync’d up to your Google Photos on the web, from where you can Download them to your desktop to insert them in a document – like this one!
Anything else, issues, problems.
Next and last meeting: Sound
News
Google Maps may be getting public transport information.
New warning over automated phone call scams.
BT to offer Free Telephone Number to Report Nuisance Calls – 0800 150 150 – it’s a scam!!!
Reasons to Install a Password Manager
How to find out if your Facebook account has been hacked.
George Felton has passed away.
The Apps I can’t do without
Working smarter?
eMail – use a client and link it to the service; that way you can archive mail and contacts locally rather than leave it on a server which is useful if you change provider; you can also read your mail offline. I also recommend using Google (Gmail) – they have no restrictions on the number of accounts you have. Each one you open – you get 15Mb of cloud storage on Google Drive too.
Calendar – I’d be lost without my Google Calendar. Everything goes into it and it’s held in an account which my wife and I share. So everything that either of us puts in, appears in the others Calendar and we then use the Calendar client on our devices. I’m also beginning to use Reminders on my iPhone as I quite like the nagging it does on the lock screen, so that I don’t forget to do something!
Contacts – we do the same with Contacts; the same Google Account holds all our contacts. We don’t store number on our phones, we just sync them down to the client application on our devices.
Cloud storage
You name it, I’ve tried it and/or am using it. In practice my preferred method of working separates things I may wish to share – which I put on Google Drive, or Dropbox – and those things I want to access from more than one device – which I put on iCloud. I tried OneDrive, but it’s just too “windoesy”.
Browser?
I think I’ve tried them all and I change about a bit. Currently my preferred one is Safari because all my kit is Apple, but Brave is a really strong contender to replace Chrome (it’s the same “under the hood”). I’m now exclusively using DuckDuckGo as my search engine of choice on all but Chrome.
Text 
I hate to admit it but I’ve got to like texting and also using WhatsApp – rumoured to be about to arrive on the iPad soon! The important thing about using communication tools is to use the most appropriate one in its correct context.
For example

  1. You require an answer to a question, or you want to make arrangements with someone – use eMail; it provides a better message trail  and usually there is no urgency, so asynchronous communication is best.
  2. You want to let someone know what time you’re arriving – unless it’s urgent and you need to arrange a meeting in which case use a phone – use text.
  3. You want to discuss something but it’s not time critical – use WhatsApp.
  4. You want to discuss something and it is time critical – use the phone!

Note taking
I’ve mentioned it so many times before, it must be boring but Evernote is just great for recording almost everything and for saving/archiving almost anything.
Maps
I still prefer Google Maps, but Apple’s Maps are getting better and now that our cars have got Apple’s CarPlay, I may be tempted to move. [I can also use Google Maps through CarPlay, I believe.] I also have a subscription to OS Maps – as they’re the best [I’ve an annual subscription which allows me to print maps off as well].
Photography
I prefer Google Photos to Apple’s Photo app, because Google works better with Apple, than Apple works with Google. I also love the new Flickr and have taken out a Pro account to enable me to store more photos there.
Password Manager and Security
I truly don’t know how I could manage without LastPass. With so many online accounts it would be impossible to remember all the sign-on credentials, so it’s a life-saver! I’m also increasingly using two-factor authentication for a lot of sites, and Google’s Authenticator is a useful app that helps there as it means you don’t have to wait for a 6-digit number to be texted to you.
Newsreader
Apart from the subscription apps that I’ve got to read national newspapers, and the BBC app – which I’m not so impressed with these days – and Wales Online – which I dip into regularly; I use Feedly which aggregates new posts from all the websites I’m interested using a protocol called RSS (Really simple syndication) so that several times during the day I look to see what’s going on in the areas I’m interested in – Photography, Technology and West Ham!! It’s a great way of keeping in touch with things. I’m hoping to do more with this and linking them to my Flipboard magazines going forward.
The Weather
Ever since the Beeb ditched the Met Office I’ve preferred the Met Office app – you know where the data is coming from and it’s proved very accurate over the past couple of years, even when abroad as it links to the national meteorological services of counties around the world if it can!
Cardiff Bus and Cardiff Gov
Two apps that are invaluable – the latter also sends me reminders of what kind of bin collection I should expect.
And there’s of course many more, but I was trying to answer the question – “The apps I can’t do without”. What are yours?

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Beware the free upgrade

So … we’re all excited about the advent of iOS 11 for our iPads and iPhones aren’t we? Or we are if our devices can actually take the new operating system. And there’s the first challenge. Apple gives us free upgrades to its operating system software but it comes at a price in terms of the pensioning off of some hardware from ongoing support.
So, if you don’t have any of the hardware on the list below … stop reading this post and go and do something constructive.

So what’s wrong with iOS 11, nothing of course, it looks like a really feature-rich release with lots of goodies to enjoy and reports seem to suggest that it doesn’t slow down your device significantly … except it’s a wholly 64-bit operating system. This means that all applications that you run on the device must be written in code that runs on a 64-bit operating system, and the problem is that quite a few of your applications, even some you really like, may have been written using older 32-bit code. You may even have noticed some alerts coming up on your screen to say “contact the developer” when you’ve been running an application – that’s the reason for the alerts – your app is potentially going “end of life”. So … before you do the automatic upgrade just do these checks.
Goto Settings > General > About and you will see something like this …

… click on Applications, and something like this will be shown …

… read the warning message at the top of your screen carefully. What it is saying is that these apps are written in 32-bit code and will tend to run slower than if they were written in 64-bit code. What is more, they will stop working with iOS 11. Then clicking on any of the apps shown on your iPhone (similar to the ones above on my iPhone), will give you this screen message which effectively says that the app is end-of-life UNLESS the developer provides a 64-bit version.

Now most of these apps on my iPhone I can probably do without but I do know that I ought to approach Cardiff Bus to find out when their 64-bit version of the Timetable and Journey Map is going to be released, as I use that a lot!