We received apologies from Ann, Margaret, Jenny ( who arrived later) and Don.
I asked if anyone would be willing to share their favourite app with the group bu way of a demonstration. Steve offered to do something with Trello – a work organisation application, and I asked Ted whether he’d be willing to do something on Ancestry. Steve also asked me whether I’d do something on LastPass – so I said that I’d do that as a return favour for his offer which we agreed he’d do at the next meeting.
I then did a demonstration of flickr and will write an article up on what I’ve found out in doing the preparation for it! This will be on my Just thoughts blog in due course!
Owen reported that he’d been working on ways to move the Cardiff u3a website over to WordPress, in conjunction with some other local groups which were doing the same, and away from the SiteBuilder software he’d been using to date. They all needed to find a way to get it to work with the Beacon membership system, but there was a problem that there was no api (application programming interface) for Beacon that would allow easy import/export of information between the two systems. As a first step a read-only access api would be valuable and would allow the two to be linked together. Owen was now learning how to use WordPress, and I offered to provide help if required.
Mike has discovered the the iPlayer app on his desktop which he is very happy with. Steve suggested he looks into the Sounds app as well. I queried whether people listened to Podcasts much – quite a few members did.
David Hughes recommended the Sounds app and podcasts and said he’d just recently been listening to one from a family member – Jon Ronson – I for one, will try and catch-up on this!. We then started a discussion on David’s IT-phobic friend who lived in the Marina and somehow was receiving more than one incoming call on two handsets – that’s different calls!. It appears his son had purchased broadband and OpenTReach had installed a landline and a router. His landline is now digital (see Jenny’s article) and it appears he can use two handsets off the broadband landline for incoming calls. Renee reported problems with interceptions, and conversations being repeated on her landline. VirginMedia engineers had replaced the the handset to a broadband connected router. Maybe (she suggested) David’s friend had a legacy connected analog line? Owen offered the information that you could buy two-line cordless phones, but they did have separate numbers. [In later conversations on Signal it was mooted whether it was possible to put n answer machine on one of the lines, or not.] I can see us returning to this one.
Sianed advised us of a scam asking a user by TEXT to update their PayPal account. Watch out for that one.
Paul reported that Amazon and Visa had come to an arrangement so that Visa Credit cards could be used with Amazon. Good news. He also recommended All 4 as another possibility for streamed TV. I mentioned BritBox as another source of good binging boxset TV.
Steve had started using LastPass and wondered whether I could do something on using it, and was also looking at Flickr. He reported that he wouldn’t have problems with Chrome updates as the renewal date was 1st March. [I think this note needs reviewing.]
Ted was off to Rwanda. I won’t say more, just read his wonderful blog post on this site, and go look at his website for more information. He had us all in stitches describing his challenges with getting Banana Beer and doubts as to whether his payment using PayPal had been a scam because of links to a sister company offering him handbags and selling chilli paste. The mind boggles, or at least mine did!
Jim was transferring information from photos that went back to the early 2000’s into a Comment field in the EXIF data held on the photos. He also reported the problems that American airlines were having with 5G and their altimeters s they approached airports. The switch-on had been delayed until problems were resolved. Apparently 5G in the US is on a higher frequency than in the UK and transmits more power. Whether the problem is in the airports, or the planes is uncertain.
John reported that Flickr was working well. He’d uploaded lots of p[hotos of clouds and created a few albums of them too!
Christine was now a happy Real Bridge user. All her difficulties had been resolved [insert solution here as note not clear] She, like others, had been finding the process for getting a digital Covid Pass from the NHS website, more than challenging and was now printing off a paper version.
Renee had solved the problem with her landline; she said she was receiving emails from Royal Mail re. tracking deliveries that she was uncertain about. We suggested that they be best ignored.
Ann had updated her Zoom software. She had looked at her Firewall settings and chose to view blocking and now video not showing in Zoom. It was suggested that she look at her firewall settings and review Allow/Deny options. Jim suggested looking at the choices with Zoom itself that might be causing the problem. Owen suggested looking at another app that uses the camera to see if the problem was replicated.
Jenny (having managed to make the meeting after an earlier appointment) wondered whether she should get a replacement battery for her laptop – depends on whether she thinks £100-£140 is a good investment and whether she can do the replacement herself – perhaps get a view from Neil (our helpful IT fixit man!) and also said tht her external monitor was not working as well as she’d hoped.