Apologies for the delay in writing the notes. I’d forgotten it was half-term this week with additional grandparent duties … no comment!!! Unfortunately Barbara and Jonathan were unable to be with us and sent their apologies.
Thanks for the screengrab Jim – I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many of us smiling as this shot – someone must have said something funny, and it wasn’t me because I’m laughing more than most, and even I don’t laugh that much at what I say. My guess it was Phil.
Anyway, I promised and failed to get another post out about Google and it’s changes to Drive storage. I did manage to get a link out to the Signal Group “just-in-time”, but only just, so I hope you managed to get Photos uploaded in “high quality” before the June 1st deadline. Any photos uploaded in this quality (ie not Original Quality) won’t count towards your 15Gb of free storage on Google Drive after that date. All photos, of any quality, will count moving forwards. To manage your Google Drive storage, I’m pointing you at this link – How to delete data and Free up Space in Google Drive. I hope it helps. Any problems let me (or Paul) know on Signal.
And for a couple of you Fred and Jenny I think, you were having problems with Signal. It has to be linked to a smartphone app (iOS or Android phone). Install the app from Apple’s AppStore, or Google PlayStore and then see if you can see me amongst the Contacts that will probably be added automatically to your account. If not, add me, telno. 077 8552 4683, and send me a message. I will then be able to add you to the Group.
Following-up from the last meeting – thanks to Steve for adding a post to the blog on Photo Albums. I followed up the future of meetings email I’d sent out to non-Zoom attendees and three responses indicated that they hoped to be able either by getting the time back, or with new equipment, to join us after the summer on Zoom if we were using it. However, a generally held opinion was that a split between in person and Zoom might be the way forward, and that we couldn’t really go back to the URC room we’d been using.
I quickly ran through the articles of note on Flipboard, highlighting the numerous posts from Google that arose out of their Google I/O virtual meeting. I mentioned the advances in Digital Music that Apple’s Lossless Audio stream (to be followed also by Spotify at some later date) would bring, but noted that not all equipment would be able to make use of it. I commented on my problems with getting Apple CarPlay to work, including formerly the regulkar drop-out in service as I passed Cardiff Prison!!! I also commented on the closing of the Apple vs Epic courtroom drama in the US which could prove detrimental (imho) to the integrity and safety of the iOS experience – but that’s perhaps just me. [Spotify have also recently grumbled as well.] Then some good news – a recent courtcase in the UK means that McAffee will not be able to impose a renewal subscription upon a user who might have inadvertently chosen to install software (usually for free) at the time of hardware purchase. Then a couple of articles on GDPR – what it is, and NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) – the latter being something that Steve told us the Discussion Group had mentioned that very morning! Finally an alert about the sharing of NHS data (in an anonymised form – but not apparently if criminal enquiries were being requested) – which had not been at well communicated to the UK population with your rights to opt-out!
I also tried to put people’s mind to rest about the WhatsApp “scare” message about changing person’s privacy settings. I’d researched this, found my settings HAD NOT been changed, and that the “scare” went back a long way – you can read this article to see the substance behind the “change”. I encourage you to search Snopes whenever you want to find out whether something is “fake news”,or not!
Then we had an interesting discussion (arising out of the GDPR issue) on the problems of clicking on pop-up screens just to get rid of cookie permission requests. Owen came up with an interesting article that had references to a couple of apps, or strategies, to avoid these. He was going to look into this more. I had independently discovered SpeedReader or Reader Mode which seems to work on all the main browsers – Chrome, Brave, Firefox …
… Edge and Safari which strips out the unwanted content from webpages. Here’s a link to how to implement it on Brave – it’s similar for Chrome and Edge.
Your matters, around the screen …
Jenny seemed delighted to announce she now had a part-time job from June to September editing a website that was connected to healthcare – policy and strategy. Whilst ticking all the boxes in the person specification, she was not confident of meeting the website matters so might be in touch …
David H was enjoying his experiments with his free CAD program but had drawn some diagrams for the barn conversion … just in case!
Don requested an update on how to get images and videos from wildlife and vehicle cameras. Paul suggested that the software provided by Garmin would probably do the trick, and I suggested that taking the SD-Card out of the camera and uploading to Google Photos using an SD-Card/USB reader should work.
Owen (as previously mentioned) had come across software for controlling Cookie Popups and would report back on how he found it. Coincidentally, it looks as there may be legal challenges ahead as well!
Margaret told us about the Hay Festival online. She also reported a recent case of two people having all their digital devices taken away by police on the basis of their IP address (taken from their router – which had been hacked) pointing to them being “guilty parties”. A wake-up call to us all to change our Router Passwords!
Jim was still proceeding with his duplicate files purge. It was taking a lot longer thatn he’d anticipated, but the software (last meeting) was working well. He also reported on his experience of having hearing-aids fitted and the “magic” that seemed to be employed to detect what was required. Other reported similar experiences with NHS hearing tests and appliances.
Phil had changed his broadband from VirginMedia to BT [I hope he doesn’t regret that decision]. All went smoothly except that he had to spend sometime reprogramming smart bulbs and Alexa. He also reported that he had a new car – a Toyota Yaris Hybrid – Paul suggested that he investigated the MyT app for Toyota to see if he could do “smart” things with that as well!
Steve told us he’d now got both ICE and Libby set up and so far all was working well.
Fred reported that anyone who was interested in vintage cars should make a point of going to Broadway this weekend.
Ann updated us on her experience of using her USB Dual-drive gizmo. All was working well. She’d managed without doing almost anything to download (or upload??) stuff (technical term) from her laptop to her phone (or was that vice versa). It was a bit slow, but very handy for quick backups from her phone. She was interested in recommendations for a telephoto (zoom) camera for photographing birds for later identification at home. This prompted some discussion. I just summarised by saying that look for the quality in the lens as the foremost criteria, and the amount of optical (not digital) zoom that was available. Members noted that Panasonic, Canon and Sony did good cameras that might fit the bill, and more than one of us recommended going to the Cardiff Camera Centre in the arcades to try one out.
Renee had installed the Libby app and had was reading magazines using it. I must try it out!!!
As always, please advise if I’ve mis-reported!!!!
There was no further time for me to talk about Google Drive management (see link at top of Notes) and Facebook Privacy settings – I will do a post on this asap.