We start a new year much in the same way as we ended the old one. I invited members to volunteer any digital gifts they’d received. Somewhat surprisingly there weren’t many. David Hughes had given his wife a smart watch so that they could monitor things like heart rates and blood pressure; Sianed had been promised an iPad and we discussed possible options – I was looking at doing the same with a present from my Jenny; Paul had bought some replacement Dect phones and wondered whether they would work when the PSTN switched to digital (more later); Jenny had got an Apple Watch and I “appointed” her as our specialist/expert moving forward; Steve had got a Chromebook and was looking to get the most out of it whilst concerned about what we’d discussed last time in respect of the possible problems with ongoing support of the operating system and finally Christine was looking at the possibility of a webcam as another possible solution to her ongoing bridge game issues. I had been given a Wacom Intuos tablet but hadn’t started using it.
We turned to issues.
Ann had other pressing issues as a lath and plaster ceiling had collapsed; Fred shared an amusing story dating from when he was working in London relating to a ceiling collapse as well.
Christine was looking at possibly trying to return her Lenovo laptop and she was advised where she could find the AEU date.
Don had started storing passwords in his Google Chrome browser. We expressed some reservations about doing that, our strong preference is for using a password manager, but for the Apple fraternity there might be a possibility of using Keychain.
Sianed mentioned that she’d started using an ecologically friendly/green search engine – ecosia. I said I would be interested in looking at it.
Ted had started a migration from his personal blogspot (Google) website to one based on using WordPress. I offered advice and assistance if required. I also told members that Phil had recently migrated this website – for the clog team his wife organised – to Google sites.
David H reported that after guidance from a friend he’d been advised of a system that allowed multiple calls to come into the same landline. I was surprised and had never heard of such a possibility. It would be interesting to find out more about such a system.
Renee had wanted to extract messages from her iPhone to make them a document. I promised to investigate a solution I’d used for my Jenny. This I found to be called iMazing.
We then had a brief discussion on the withdrawal of the PSTN service by the telcos by 2025. Jenny and I were going to write something for the Magazine on it, and were also to provide Tony Baines with a briefing to take to Region. Paul told us about the problems a cousin (in the Salisbury area where the initial trials were being carried out) who was blind had experienced with 1471 not working any more; he’d had to change his number and there didn’t appear to a call-back facility which he’d relied upon before.
Jenny then told us she’d received a note of briefings on good use of Zoom, and I offered to put a link to them on this website. You’ll see it here.
The meeting finished with a demonstration of the 1921 Census to be found on Find my past. I suggested that all members might offer to demonstrate a website they found useful. At the next meeting I would show the photo sharing site Flickr and how it works..