Tag: Google app

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A new year starts … and finally we look at Evernote – 13th Sept 2018

Boot-Up
Welcome
Issues & follow-up
We had a demonstration of the Beacon member website from Alison Firth;
David Hughes described the latest scam he’d been alerted to as it appeared to come from him and was going to a friend in the same membership organisation. As this person was a hotmail users, I suggested it was more likely they had had their email account hacked, rather than his gmail account. Last year we looked at Have I been pwned which allows you to check whether an account you have might have been compromised.
Digital Projects – I explained the idea behind Digital Projects – I showed this list as possibilities or examples of projects …

  • Buying a new computer;
  • Building a website for a project, hobby or for the family;
  • Family history software;
  • Under the hood – breaking down a PC into its components;
  • Building a server;
  • Using Linux to bring life to an old laptop;
  • Adobe Lightroom Training;
  • Video-editing for beginners including on a tablet (iPad);
  • Audio – analogue and digital working together;
  • More with Google Photos – further steps to link cameras and computers, and working with tablets.

News
Apple event yesterday – new iPhones and a new Apple Watch. You might like to watch the keynote speeches on your computer.
New privacy and security features in Google Accounts – you might wish to review your privacy settings in the light of GDPR legislation.
BT hike costs of email offering – ways of avoiding the increased charges for an email service from BT. IT’s going up from £5 a month, to £7.50 if you don’t have a BT line/account.
Fact checking – a review of websites that are allegedly “fair” and which have no obvious political leaning and also ones that debunk “fake news”.
Split-ticketing – an article that explains how a group managed to save c.£950 on a return journey by using the split-ticketing website. [Sianed told us that some train managers are happy to do this as well !!!] Topics for today
What is a browser? Look at this article which I wrote this week “Just Google it…” – it essentially suggests you should use a browser, ie Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Opera or Brave rather than the Google app on your smartphone or tablet for a better internet experience.
Thought grazing – features and demonstration. I explained the difference between the Public-facing pages on the site and the Private area available for Cardiff U3A Computer Group members (and past members). I’ll write some notes on how to post a note on the site and how to comment on posts before the next meeting.
Evernote – Here’s a Guide/manual to using Evernote. I gave a demonstration of how I use Evernote. Colin (I think) asked whether it could be linked to a Calendar – I said I would check and I’d report back in a reply/comment to these notes.

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"Just google it …"

Something I’ve only just recently become aware of is that people don’t know the difference between Google and an internet browser. Now this is a spectacular success for Google (the company) and drives their revenues up a lot, but means that users are potentially missing out on a lot in terms of their internet experience so this short note attempts to address that balance, albeit in a very small way!

How did this come about? Well principally because Google introduced an app for the iPhone and other smartphones and tablets called (unsurprisingly) … Google. It presents in a nice easy to use interface a way of searching for information on the internet – that is how Google started after all, which is how they also managed to corner the term for searching the internet – “just google it”. [You don’t hear many people saying – “just bing it”, or “just yahoo! it” – in fact in the case of the latter they just gave up and decided to use the Google search engine and ditch their own one.] So … at a stroke, new users to digital devices thought that the way to connect to the internet was through their “Google” app.
No, no – there is another way that presents you with so many other possibilities and no, no – you don’t have to restrict yourself to using just Google as your search tool. [In an earlier post I described some experiments with using DuckDuckGo and other search engines and I will return to that subject at another time.] So … what might you use?
Well even using Google’s Chrome browser is better than using the Google app on your smartphone or tablet. It probably uses the same software  “under the hood” based on Google’s Open Source Chromium code base but it does offer the possibility of adding extensions, and allowing the use of alternative search engines.
But what else could you use? On my iOS (Apple mobile devices) I tend to use Apple’s Safari browser. On my desktop/laptop I tend to use Chrome, or Firefox (another Open Source project) from the Mozilla Foundation. Then there’s Microsoft’s Edge – supplied with Windows, or Opera (a lean,  clean browsing machine), or I could be really radical and use something like Brave (and I am) which doesn’t track my browsing history … but I’ll leave that for another day, and for another post.
For today, the message is simple … don’t use the Google app as your main internet browser, just use it if you want to for simple searches. Find a browser you like and use that … and maybe even choose which search engine to use, it doesn’t need to be Google – I’m using Chrome with DuckDuckGo as I write this. You won’t regret making a change to your internet browsing/searching experience – believe me!