Boot-up
Meeting – 25th October. Creating a magazine – any questions or issues arising? Apologies for not writing the article – I will get round to it asap!
What’s  a VPN, and should you consider using one? But first – How does the Internet work; how can you confuse it? Or … how to use your mobile phone in Starbucks to access your bank!!!!!!
We discussed split train ticket fare websites. Sites where you can say what your journey is, and you will be given a set of tickets that split the journey into pieces using different tickets. Remember NOT to book seats though, otherwise you’ll need to move your seat, otherwise you just present the correct ticket for the portion of the journey you’re travelling. I used to travel from Cardiff to Paddington with tickets from Cardiff to Swindon and Swindon to Paddington and that saved quite a bit of money.
These are the sites that offer split-ticketing. I can’t give a recommendation, but I think I used the first one – Split Ticketing. Others you could try Split your ticket, Raileasy, SplitMyFare and TicketClever.
What would you like to get out of these sessions; any themes or features you’d like me (or someone else – volunteers welcome) to lead a discussion on.
These were the suggestions you came up with …
Password Manager [Aelfryn] Creating and updating a website [Martin] Google settings [Paul] Facebook settings [Me ???] Windows settings [Don] Backups (and archiving) [Stella] Labels (next session) [David] Photos – organisation and folders (finding) and editing [Toni] Video-editing [Toni] Building an internet browsing computer using Linux from an old laptop [David – Digital Projects maybe] If I’ve forgotten any, please add as a comment.

News

Flickr goes subscription – let’s have that discussion again about free software. Apple vs Microsoft vs Google. [I’m going to write a Public blogpost on this one.]

Social media

It’s important to remember that almost without exception (WhatsApp and Instagram might have been that exception once) these are advertising, PR and marketing tools. They are not free, you just have to accept an intrusion into your lives for the service they provide. Some are more intrusive than others!!!
Facebook – newsfeed, pages, Messenger – hugely popular but now in disgrace somewhat, attempting a charm-offensive. Just remember to Logout!
A couple more rules for Facebook in addition to
Rule 1 – always logout because if you don’t Fb will track whatever you do away from their site;
Rule 2 – think very hard before you post photos; their terms and conditions allow them to do whatever they like with your images, and what you write;
Rule 3 – don’t use Facebook Identity Services to login to another website when it’s offered as an alternative to creating a login identity with a username and password – see Rule 1 above, for the reason why. [Using Google credentials is probably acceptable.] WhatsApp – an encrypted messaging app primarily for mobile devices, owned by Facebook. Their previous owners have now left; this may give rise to monetising of the platform – look forward to targeted ads some day soon!
Instagram – can be almost as annoying as twitter for promoting the trivial, eg photos of cute cats which you can like, or comment on. Allows you to easily alter the appearance of your photos with filters. Aimed at mobile devices for upload, but can be viewed on a desktop machine too. A marketing platform for many companies with links to their websites. It is also owned by Facebook and its original owners have also now left the company, so expect similar directed advertising, and tracking of what you’re doing, and where you’re doing it some day soon!
Twitter – simple public chat; announcements; keeping-in-touch with friends, family and colleagues and letting your thoughts be known by all. A private messaging facility is also available. Promotes the trivial, annoying at times, but hugely influential in “breaking stories” quickly (instantly); good that you’re limited to a certain number of words.
YouTube – simply the most popular video-sharing platform owned by Google; it allows you to comment on videos that are publicly shared, or on private ones you’ve been invited to view. You can embed your videos in a website, or share a link to them in an email. If you’re taking videos on your phone, you should at sometime seriously consider uploading them to YouTube
Flickr – now owned by SmugMug, it used to owned by Yahoo! (Oath), is the most popular photo-sharing site – again you have the option for private sharing of images, but the strength of the platform is in the ability to share with like-minded people your passion for photography. There are other sites, such as Google Photos, but they are really more photo storage sites.
LinkedIn – associated with the business and world of work; a marketplace for job-seekers and job-recruiters; a place for you to display your skills as well as keep in touch with former colleagues.
Pinterest – much-liked by those who use it, I gather, but I just don’t see the need (perhaps that’s me). You gather together collections of pins, of your interest, and others add to them, or comment on them. I gather recipes are popular!
Snapchat – introduced for teens and young people, it has the possible strength of reducing their digital footprint as snaps are removed after they’ve been seen by the recipient. The facility to build “Stories” is a recent addition which allow public sharing of snaps which are then permanently displayed (until user-deleted, I presume) rather than just temporarily displayed to named recipients.
Reddit – a place for opinionated people who want to argue their point. It has a nice voting mechanism so that views can be upgraded, or downgraded, bu those that read the posts, or comments. Essentially for commentary on events and news items.
Tumblr – owned by Yahoo! Its death has been forecast for many years, very much a niche-market of specialist users – micro-blogging. Simple publishing of ideas, and views to people of a similar mind who follow your writings.
Blogger – Google blogging platform; had the advantage of its close integration with Google+ (Google’s attempt to rival Facebook), but now beginning to look more than a little dated. Very few options for customisation.
Wordpress – two options available with this blogging/website creation platform – a commercial (but free) offering (this link is a site my daughter built) which is managed for you with more limited customisation and the ability to pay for extended services, eg backup; and a free service which you manage yourself and is almost limitless in what and how you can customise its look and feel through themes, and functionality through plugins, on your own hosted domain.
Here’s a review of the most popular Social Media sites currently (updated Oct 18, 2018)
And here’s a directory of my Internet presence on about.me.