We had apologies from Sianed and Owen.
I decided I ought to sit down immediately after the meeting to write up some notes this time. The first part of the meeting focussed on the NHS Covid-19 App which is the subject of a separate post. I’ll keep that updated as the days and weeks roll by, but please also make comments in the Covid-19 Forum, I’ve created a Topic for the app there as well.
As well as showing Forums and Topics (which I hope you will grow in time to use more than WhatsApp) I showed the Flipboard magazine for Thought grazing in which I’ll post articles for the fortnight prior to a meeting as the recent Computing/IT/Digital News. There’s a link to it on the Home page of the site too. I also enquired who used twitter as I had created a @thoughtgrazing account some time ago. Only four of you used twitter (and only occasionally at that), so I decided not to put any more effort for the moment into promoting, or using, that social media platform. It was noted that at times of crisis that twitter was probably the best means of finding out what was going on.
I took the opportunity of leading-off with what I’ve been up to since the last meeting, highlighting a really useful piece of software to scan for duplicate photos – PhotoSweeper (which cost me £9.99 form the Apple Store). I thought it was available for Windows PCs as well, but apparently not. The other piece of software I found when I came to wanting to share an old blog post with someone and found that the link to an embedded map no longer worked, was an upgrade to the OS OpenSpace Maps Plugin for WordPress websites which is now even better. This new Plugin (and the output from it) is called OS DataHub Maps and links to it are included in the first of the above relevant links.
So we moved to participants.
David was unconsolable that his phone didn’t appear to be able to take the NHS app and wanted advice on where to buy a no-contract smartphone. From the advice that was given – Carphone Warehouse, Argos, Amazon (used), Tesco – it was generally felt that Tesco (Western Avenue) would be a good starting point as they had a specialist desk to help people buying phones. He also praised the response he’d had from Public Health Wales on an enquiry about Covid and Indoor Bowls, and also the Vale of Glamorgan on the help and documents they’d provided on the subject of Public Space Protection Orders which he was progressing due to anti-social behaviour on The Esplanade at Penarth.
Mike was interested in the Covid app, which his wife installed whilst I was talking about it; Stella had a bad throat and couldn’t talk, and Marilyn had nothing to mention apart from reminding me about Tripod advice – which I’ve now given her!
Christine reported that she now had a fully-functional Cello TV connected to the Internet so she could partner her husband playing online bridge. Success. Paul reported he’d just purchased a similar TV for his garage – and Android TV – which was seemingly very easy to set up and connect to his other devices. She had to buy a wireless mouse (Bluetooth) to make it work as a computer though.
Fred was very concerned about the way that Zoom was not being used in Care Homes to bring residents and families closer together during these difficult time. He was going to pursue the matter through his policy connections, and I suggested that perhaps we ought to raise it with Owen as an issue U3A might like to raise nationally, or make a representation to a suitable body. Phil recommended the Amazon Echo Show device as an inexpensive device that would suit this purpose well. Don related that Liverpool FC had purchased iPads for all the Care Homes in their area (presumably not the Blue part of Liverpool).
Jim had been having troubles with his mobile broadband router and it looked now that being on the edge of a wireless zone (for Three) and maintenance work going on currently together might be the reason for the drop in bandwidth. The purchase of an antennae had don nothing to help, and keeping his window open was not going to be an all-the-year solution!
Margaret related her experience of online retail which had resulted in her being unable to route the gift that she’d wanted to send to her daughter but which she discovered too late (more than 30mins) she’d directed to her home house. Paul felt that District Selling Act should allow you to return any goods within 7 days – I’m not able to comment upon whether this does apply in this case, or not, as the mistake was being made by the purchaser, not the retailer and presumably the 30mins is the time from order to dispatch.
Don had experienced a recent PayPal scam, and had subscribed to the Which? Scam Alert Service. He was also considering how the images from his garden wildlife camera could be viewed on a computer. I offered to help if he was experiencing any problems which might involve AVI to MPEG conversion – perhaps using Handbrake, and also capturing a JPEG image from a movie.
Renee had been experiencing outages from VirginMedia; she’d had a reasonable response from the Support desk when she complained about the increase of £20 in her bill. The Retentions department gave her a re-worked cost £1 less than she was paying now. It pays to complain.
John enquired how to reverse the Gmail forwarding he’d implemented for his and his wife’s Gmail accounts – I pointed him towards the Settings > Forwarding options where he should be able to disable the feature.
Phil told about his discovery of Musescore which will enable him to read the music he needs to be able to play his newly found “love” his bassoon that much better as it can print scores larger. He also commended the use of Google Docs as a suite of applications which you can use to store and edit documents on any device, in the cloud.