 I have heard the following comment a few times this week: You don't know what you don't know.
That's where our Monthly User Groups are so great. You are guaranteed to learn something new - and it is often something so useful in your day-to-day use of your technology, or it may solve a problem that you hadn't even realised you had. It was a great turn-out for the September User Group on 17/9/21 - it was lovely to see some new faces. And, as usual, there were lots of laughs. Here's the list of topics that the participants raised for discussion:
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15/9/2021 0 Comments News from Apple - a security update that you must install, new products announced Apply this update to your Apple devices asapHopefully you have already seen in the press that Apple yesterday rushed through a security patch that they are pushing everyone to install ASAP. It is iOS/iPadOS 14.8. There is also an update for the Apple Watch and Mac. Here's just one of the articles about this urgent patch: Apple releases iOS 14.8 with security update to fix spyware flaw New Apple products announced overnightAt Apple's new products announcement overnight (Australian time), there was news of several new products
Here are a couple of articles that provides more details about the new range of products and what older devices will be phased out: iOS 15 is coming next weekThis is the time of year that Apple announces updates to the operating systems for a variety of its products. Here's news on when iOS 15 will be released and what it will contain.
It will be available from on the morning of Tuesday 21st September, Australian time. At this stage, there is no news of a date for the next major upgrade to the Mac, MacOS 12 Monterey.  A couple of months ago, we published our latest book about the iPad and iPhone - called Introduction to the iPad and iPhone - A Guided Tour.
I have now started recording some videos that talk about the content of this book and demonstrate the iPad and iPhone features that it describes, working through the guide section by section. I'd love to know what you think of the first couple of videos that have been recorded - and let me know if you would be interested in more of these videos. So here are the first two for all readers to check out. Please us a comment below to let us know what you think, and whether we should keep going with recording of these videos. 10/9/2021 0 Comments Online Members can now access videos that were previously for Premium members only As you have probably gathered from our Video of the Day service, there is a fantastic range of videos available to certain members of our iTandCoffee Club.
In particular, our Online and Premium members of the iTandCoffee Club are able to access a very long list of class videos (which is growing all the time) at any time during their membership year. These members can also download any of our wide range of user guides, receive our regular newsletter, they have access to the massive library of Handy Hints, and more. Effective immediately, we are making available to Online members some videos that were previously only available to Premium members,  I'm not sure how many of you will need this, but I regularly need to go back and check how long a Zoom Meeting went for.
For other meetings, I sometimes need to go back and see the list of people who attended. I do this by visiting the Zoom website. Here's where to find the relevant option and information. 9/9/2021 0 Comments On Facebook, are you giving away identity info, answers to secret questions, and passwords?
Every day on Facebook, I see the posts that are seeking to steal information from my Facebook Friends.
The posts look innocent enough - perhaps even fun. Quizzes where you share information about yourself with your friends or prove how good your memory is. And I see my Facebook Friends getting caught out by these posts, and 'joining in the fun'. But here's why you should never engage with posts like this - why they can be very dangerous.  Now that Microsoft's support for Office 2016 has ended (it ended in Oct 2020), I have spoken with several clients over the past couple of weeks about upgrading their current version of Microsoft Office. The question most people ask is which version to get.
I know many people balk at the idea of paying an annual subscription instead of purchasing the 'one-off' license. I outlined in an article last newsletter just why I do recommend the subscription model (see Office 2016 (and earlier) support is ending soon - are you ready for this?). What I didn't mention was the features that are included in Microsoft 365 only, that are not available if your purchase that one-off license - features that really make it worth investing in the subscription version.  In a Zoom with friends recently, discussion turned to COVID Vaccinations and what to do with the certificate that you receive once you are fully vaccinated.
The COVID-19 digital certificate is available from the Medicare Express Plus app here in Australia. If you haven't already done so, this app is well worth downloading to any mobile device. Not only does it show your COVID certificate (and other vaccinations), but it also allows you to submit Medicare claims. Alternatively, you can access the certificate via your web browser - by signing in to your myGov account and then accessing your Medicare service from there. (We won't go into how to set up myGov and link Medicare in this article - but let us know in the comments if this is something you would like to see covered in a future article.) So once you find your COVID certificate, what can you do with it, and how can you have it readily available when you need it. There are a few options. 
I am a big-time Excel user. And I thought I had a pretty good understanding of most of its features. So I can't believe I didn't discover this one until I prepared Part 8 of the Excel Boot Camp series.
It relates to the full capabilities of a feature called Flash Fill.  If you have ever taken a video on a mobile device - or used the screen recording feature of your computer - you may notice that the file size of the video is rather large. As an example, the short movie that we created in this separate handy hint (using iMovie on the iPad and iPhone) has a size of nearly 100MB - for a 52 second movie!
There is a tool that I use on my Mac that can quickly compress a movie like this to a more reasonable size. For movies that I create using Quicktime on my Mac, the file size can be reduced by 80 to 90%! For the movie like that created in the above-mentioned hint, the size can be reduced by about 50%. |
What's on at iTandCoffee ?Join us for a short, fun 'topic of the day' classes known as PTT sessions (Personal Training for your Technology fitness!) - these are run on a regular basis. Or join any of our other classes shown below to learn so much about your technology.
If you have questions, why not join our The iTandCoffee Club to attend fun and informative 'user group' meetings. All classes are run as online classes (using Zoom) which means you can attend from anywhere. |
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