Remember the digital chip that was inserted into the Covid 19 vaccine….the one that would kick into action at some unspecified date and force you to do things that you might not have considered before? Mine forces me to buy tech products. That digital chip even knows my P.I.N. number. An Apple Watch was one of my most recent purchases but I might say that I’m absolutely delighted with the device. It looks after me; a bit like having Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder. It does things for me that are really useful, potentially even vital.
It has a feature called Fall Detection. Those who know me will know that I’ve had a few falls over the last few years. I’ve sustained quite a few injuries including three broken ribs once. Believe me, falling over is no fun. Luckily, every time it has happened there have been kind Samaritans around, but what if I took a tumble whilst on a park walk, where there was nobody around? That is where Fall Detection comes in. The watch will know when you’ve fallen over. On the screen it will show a message, “You’ve fallen over. Are you O.K.?” You then have one minute to respond to that message. If you don’t respond within one minute, it will send for an ambulance, sending it to the GPS location provided by your watch. Here are a couple of videos. https://youtu.be/yZgzAhBa7Kc?si=2eTcmhPMFsJgIpKi. And https://youtu.be/OWasOBv15qk?si=zjaMW5gnKDcX8j2H
Medical I.D. You can tell your phone and your watch your ailment and prescription details. Now, I know we should be wary of giving computers too much sensitive information but as far as I know, this information can be gained from my watch by medical professionals in times of trouble only.
Health monitoring. The watch can give you all sorts of information about your health. This includes a step counter, sleep monitor, it can even monitor your walking steadiness. It is even said that it can detect atrial fibrillation although you might want to check that out yourself. The more expensive models have blood oxygen and ECG apps included. I went for the cheapest model, the SE second generation. (£219 at the moment). I think that is sufficient for my personal level of hypochondria.
A torch. Nifty ! There are a couple of ways to get the screen to light up, giving you roughly the illumination level of a candle. Sufficient to help you find the toilet during night time excursions in unfamiliar hotel rooms. Use Siri (yes, the watch has Siri) and simply say ’Torch on’, or for Harry Potter fans, say ‘Lumos”. To switch off, simply place your hand over the watch face.
Answer the phone. If your phone is in another room and rings, you can accept the call from your watch, speaking and listening to your watch. You can also send text messages to your watch using Siri.
Alarm clock / timer. Simply ask Siri to set an alarm. It wakes you with vibrations on your wrist. This is actually a really pleasant way to be woken up.
Things to be aware of.
The Apple Watch works in conjunction with your iPhone. It won’t do much on its own.
I haven’t looked in to this, but I’m pretty sure that there are alternatives in the Android world that will do pretty much the same thing.
There are other, far cheaper brands of Smart Watch available. I tried a £40 model but I had to stop using it because it made my wrist itch.
Oh, and just one more thing, especially for the gentlemen in the group.
Quick out of the blocks today – probably as I don’t have so much to write given the excellent contributions from Steve, Phil, Ted and Jenny. I had to do very little; I didn’t even have time to do anything on LastPass – but more about that later.
We started off by reviewing the Notes from the last meeting (finished only about an hour previously – many apologies). Fred noted that the Institute of Government have a series of podcasts which are free and worth listening too, and after the meeting Phil offered a list of a number of podcasts that he often listened to … Dan Snow’s History Hit; The Battersea Poltergeist (spooky); Mark Steele What the F #### is going on (bit sweary but hilarious); and Aaron Mahnke’s Cabinet of Curiosities.
We then launched into a demonstration of Trello, a piece of work organisation software based on Japanese Kanban principles. It seeks to help you manage small projects, and other aspects of your life. Steve guided us through its basic principles and offered to provide assistance if anyone wanted help in using it. We then went on to hear about Phil Edwards’ experience of using Google Sites to build a website with the useful additional piece of information that Google will provide a domain name (eg thoughtgrazing.org) for c.£10pa. This is not out of line with the pricing of other domain name registries. Phil showed and told us about the family history website he’d just finished called Rum and Gunpowder, I encourage you to go and give it a look, and Phil would like feedback on it as well. Then Ted who’d written a post for this site, talked about the Virtual Travels he was doing, I urge you to have a look at the inventive activities he and his wife have recently started. Finally Jenny gave us a short updarte on the article she’d written for the Cardiff u3a Magazine, which should appear in the digital version at least. I’ve added it to the post I wrote on the Analog to Digital switchover and will now transfer it across to the “public”Thought grazing site.
That was a great start to the meeting and the individual contributions were somewhat limited due to time. Please excuse me for not mentioning your name if you didn’t contribute in this section.
Jenny reported that her freebie (except the cost of a lunch) monitor was not working and she might have to ask for help at the next meeting.
Steve had of course been working on Trello and we thank him again for his demonstration.
Jim continues to work on adding information to the EXIF data in his photographs; currently he’s been labelling works of art that he has photographs of – adding titles and locations. He also raised an issue of whether instructing the deletion of material from external hard drives had to be done separately from that of internal drives. I didn’t know the answer for Windows/Chromebook machines, but thought in the MacOS world, although the recycle bins, or trash, were separate they were all cleaned out as long as the disks were attached to the computer at the time the instruction to delete was raised.
David Hughes raised the interesting point (that we’ll add to the webpage that Jenny and I have setup on the “PSTN switchover”) that some Households in rural areas don’t have a mobile signal, so that in the case of a power cut they would have no means of raising the emergency services. This was the case in point just recently in NE Scotland after the storms that brought down the power lines. Apparently this was raised as an issue in a recent episode of RipOff Britain too.
Renee picked-up on a point I’d earlier raised about the NHS Portal. This was something new that Cardiff and Vale Trust is using to record their Correspondence with you as well as your Appointments. Here’s a link that tells you more about it. We had quite a few discussions relating to health at the meeting. There was general agreement that not all GP Surgeries were the same; not all practices used the MyHealth Online Portal – in fact one had stopped using it as it was deemed to be “unfair” during the pandemic to not have the same “vanilla”service for all patients. Duh!; that not all health boards were working the same way; that the eConsult service was generally “a good thing” and often allowed access to your GP (usually over the phone) in much less than the 48hrs promised; and that finally telephone and video consultations were definitely “a good thing” to have come out of the pandemic.
Margaret reported that her TalkTalk service had gone down and that after switching off all devices and having found that made no difference , the service came back the next day. It was frustrating. A lot of work is being done by OpenReach currently in North Cardiff and they really should communicate to their (and associated service users) customers when ourtages are likely to happen.
Stella told us about a really alarming episode involving Alexa which had suggested as a challenge that an 11yr old girl should short-circuit a plug inserted in a socket. Here’s a link that tells you more about this shocking episode.
Ted informed us that he’d recently come across an app that transcribed speech to text called Speechnotes. This is a very interesting idea and it raises the possibility that all group members should examine the apps they use and see whether there is an inbuilt speech-to-text facility that they might use. A challenge for next time then – all group members to investigate the possibility of using speech-to-text on their smartphones and report back for the next meeting. He also mentioned there was a facility built-into the Chrome browser to provide Live Captioning. This is how you do it …
Open Google Chrome Click on the dots on top right hand side then: Settings Advanced Accessibility Toggle on Live Caption (it will probably only work for windows you have open in that Google Chrome session)
Paul reported (with glea) that his road was now fully fibre. He also showed us a multi-connect SD-Card Reader that could plug into USB-C, USB-A and mini-USB sockets. He also told us he’d now got a much more sophisticated Dashcam which even had a parking mode, and which could transmit recordings using WiFi to the house. He offered to do a presentation, an offer that was gladly accepted.
Don noted that he had to re-format his SD-Cards for DashCam and wildlife cameras to avoid corruption. I reported that I always re-formatted cards on the external device as it was just as easy to do that as delete them in the computer.
Fred suggested that we meet in person, a couple of other members also expressed that wish. I explained my thoughts and feelings on the subject and told the group that I’d been in contact with Nonn (the Groups Liaison Officer) and had suggested that a suitable venue with WiFi was still required before we could start regularly to meet in person. However the Group felt it would be “a good idea” to have a social meet (perhaps in the Castle) sometime soon. I agreed to plan for this in the near future.
Sianed advised us of our Consumer Rights under the 2015 Act, and that this over-rides the expiry of a Warranty if you can demonstrate it to be unreasonable for a device to be not working in an out of warranty period which was deemed to be reasonable. You might need to have expert opinion to press home your case to the retailer.
So … homework for next time.
Please (if you’re interested) watch this LastPass video and then we can have a discussion about issues, questions, etc at the next meeting.
Look at the applications you use on your smart devices (in particular) and see which of them a) have speech-to-text provided, and b) which ones you think you might find useful. [This is in addition to all the AI speech facilities such as Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant.]
Recent discussion in U3A has been on what role a Group Convenor should have in case of emergency. It’s a difficult one, I haven’t fully resolved in my mind what responsibility I should have – I think it’s one that’s worth discussing. Should I, can I request that information be lodged with me? Should the group member provide it to a membership record on a database system that the Convenor can access? Or, should – and this is the purpose of this post – the individual take the responsibility upon themselves. This can be done by either carrying a card – this one is used by The Ramblers – there are many providers of this sort of card, eg ICEcard, or should we use the facilities on our Smartphones which allow access without unlocking the phone from the Home screen.
