SeniorNet Marlborough Sounds September 2019

Wavelength

Greetings Members,

Open Day Seminars have been a feature of our 2019 programme and

brought to members information on a wide range of topics. On Octo-

ber 12 there will be a further selection of seminars that will contain

much of interest. Liana and Ian have done a splendid job in bringing

together a number of well qualified presenters.

Among these will be the retiring CEO of the SeniorNet Federation,

Grant Sidaway. Grant was responsible for founding SeniorNet way

back in the days when he was working for Telecom. Over the years he has guided us through

several major reconstructions and updates. Apart from his organising skills Grant is an en-

gaging presenter and has paid us regular visits since our local branch was established in

2002. This will be our opportunity to thank him for his support and learn from his wide

knowledge of this field. After all he has had another eighty branches to monitor.

Open Days present opportunities for members to catch up with the rapid changes in infor-

mation technology. Like it or not we have all been dragged kicking and screaming into this

new and somewhat scary world for us oldies. Do you remember the days of pens, inkwells,

blotting paper and telegrams and a penny or tuppence to post a letter?

Regards, Donald

Drop in Help Sessions and/or Booked Help Sessions for Members

Linkwater and Picton

For the last year we have been running drop in sessions on the third Thursday afternoon at 1p.m. every

month. Brian Cameron runs these and members are reminded by email prior to the day. These have

proved popular, but can be frustrating when more than one member requires attention or when the tutor

on duty is not familiar with the device or problem in question. It may also mean that a tutor on duty has

no calls for his services thus a wasted afternoon. These sessions are at Linkwater Hall.

We propose to run, in parallel, booked session help for members. (Third Thursday in the month 1p.m.)

This means that if you have a specific need you can phone Robert 574 2333 and book in for help about a

device or IT related subject. If it is a subject that Robert is unfamiliar with, he will try to find a tutor famil-

iar with the subject of your need. These sessions are at Linkwater Hall.

Philip Middlemiss, phone 021 628 544 has offered to run similar sessions in Picton for members. These

will be booked sessions, available on the afternoon of the third Thursday of the month. Phone Phillip to

make a booking.

The committee have not made a decision as yet on a charge but in the meantime a gold coin donation

would be appreciated. Just a reminder that our tutors give their services free.

This is a new initiative –use it or lose it.

Invitation

SeniorNet is hosting a farewell dinner

for Grant and Linda Sidaway

At

Queen Charlotte Tavern

12 October at 6 pm

All members welcome

REPLY - ianc.cameron@xtra.co.nz

Members free entry, visitors $10

Time Topic Presenter Notes

10:00 -10.15 Meet greet cuppa

10:15-10.45 Digital Literacy Liana Bull What skills do we need? Where/

How to get them.

10.45-11:15 Internet Radio Philip MIddlemiss Philip follows up on his brief com-

ments last session with a more in-

depth look. This by popular re-

quest

11:15 – 11.45 Cyber Security Brian Cameron Staying safe online, reporting

threats

11.45 – 12.15 Sharing Drone Flying experi-

ences

Ian Grant Ian shares his knowledge and ex-

periences learnt over the past

year. In his words “There is heaps

to learn”

12.15–

12.45pm

Shared luncheon - Share,

talk, eat, socialise

12.45-1.45pm What’s the point? Grant Sidaway CEO, Federation of SeniorNet Societies. Grant will talk about reasons why older people need to keep up to date and the im-portance of technology in our lives. He will also demonstrate smart speakers. This will be the last of a very popular series as he retires this year.

1.45 – 2.15 Create a simple web page Peter Thompson Learn a bit about the Web's histo-

ry and how easy it is to create a

simple web page

2.15 – 2.45 Writing Life Memoirs using

Digital Tools

Liana Bull Memories

The simple act of writing can help

Seniors embrace their creativity,

share significant memories, and

keep their minds healthy and ac-

tive.

2.45 – 3pm Afternoon Tea

Open Day Seminars Date: 12th October 10:00 a.m. ----

3:00 p.m. Shared luncheon

Next meeting Linkwater Hall Friday October 4 1.30pm

The challenge for the month was A TOY STORY, using depth of

field, some interesting photos, it was not a very easy subject

but I think most enjoyed the challenge.

The archives were FLOWERS/INSECTS, not many brought pho-

tos in this section.

We had a slightly lower attendence than usual as a few were

away, looking forward to next month which is

Something you haven’t photographed before with a concep-

tual view.

Archives Travel pics.

.ARCHIVE PHOTO— Flowers insects

Fishi

Hi

I am Richard Kearney, General Manager & Owner of BrandPost NZ (formerly InkPost). We are one of

NZ's leading Ink & Toner printer cartridge suppliers, but we also offer a digital slide scanning service.

I am contacting you as recently I have noticed that we are receiving many orders from older New Zea-

landers for our slide scanning service. This service takes “shoebox” quantities of 35mm slides and con-

verts them to a digital format for a set price.

We have discovered that many kiwis who took slide photos in the 60’s 70’s and 80’s store them in old

shoe boxes and now want them digitized. We have capped the price so that everyone knows what

they will pay to have this done and this is proving popular.

What we are asking you is how can we get this message out to Senior Net members in your area.

• Do you email your members occasionally?

• Do they meet in the same place and might see a poster if we sent you one?

Or are there other ways we can get details to your people.

We are keen to promote this on a local basis and would be happy to have discussions with you about

how BrandPost can support your branch and return value back to our Senior community.

If you are happy to discuss this more, simply send me a reply email and I will get back to you with more

information. I am also happy to discuss over the phone if you prefer.

Kind Regards

Richard Kearney

General Manager

T: 0800 465-767 | M: 021 474 074 | E: richard@brandpost.co.nz

235 Main Street, Palmerston North, 4410 www.brandpost.co.nz

While holding down the Ctrl button on your keyboard — rotate the scroll wheel in the middle of your mouse. (see image on right) Go ahead and give it a try, right now. On most computers this will magnify / shrink the size of websites. Rolling the mouse wheel up will make everything bigger, while rolling the mouse wheel down will have the opposite effect. So, next time you are having trouble reading small text on a website, simply hold down control and use the scroll wheel. Very handy — pass this on to your friends. It’s the best thing since… Ctrl+c. Alternative method: hold down CTRL and tap on the + and – buttons on the keyboard for the same effect.

Two Steps to Better Search Results

by Leo A. Notenboom

Searching is an art of sorts. I'll share two common mistakes searchers make, and my two-step approach to better search results.

As I mentioned in a previous article, people are often confused as to what is and is not “searching”. But even when they know they’re searching, they often give up in frustration when they don’t find what they want. Searching effectively is the key to unlocking the vast amount of information available to us on the inter-net. Unfortunately, searching well is a bit of mystical art. While advanced stuff you can do with most search engines (like Google or Bing or others) is pretty im-pressive, you don’t need to be a “search engine jockey” to get better search results. I want to share the two mistakes I see people making most often. I’ll also share a two-step approach to getting better search results that I’m convinced will get you what you’re looking for well over 80% of the time (assuming what you’re looking for exists, of course ). Mistake #1: Starting too specific What I often see in the search logs for Ask Leo! are questions that are almost complete sentences. For ex-ample:

help i cant get my computer i just bought from an action, says need administator password, i dont know it….what can i do to get on my computer?????? Forget the grammatical and spelling errors for a moment (also very common). Putting a lengthy phrase or entire sentence into a search engine is a recipe for failure in most cases. That’s simply not how search en-gines work. Now, to be fair, search engines are getting better at distilling questions to what the questioner means as opposed to exactly what he or she typed.1 But the fact is, computers are still better at finding and match-ing words and phrases than they are at trying to figure out what a sentence — particularly one full of grammatical and spelling errors — means. After performing a search, if the answer isn’t obvious on the first page of ten results, many people just walk away. “Can’t find it,” they say.

This is particularly frustrating since it’s not uncommon for that initial search to be very, very close to the desired result. The fact that it isn’t immediately obvious isn’t an indication that the answer isn’t there. It’s an indication that you need to dig deeper. And there’s often much to dig into. Bonus mistake: confusing ads with search results Many search engines display ads on search results pages. Many people don’t realize that. They just click on whatever’s at the top of the page, thinking that’s the first result from the search when in fact someone paid money for it to appear there. The actual search results appear somewhat further down the page. How far down? That depends on how many ads are present. Sometimes there are no ads, and sometimes there are more ads on a search results page than there are actual search results. With so much of the internet supported by advertising (including Ask Leo!), it’s critical to learn to recognize advertisements and not confuse them with actual content, like articles and search results.

Bryan Strong

It was with regret that the SeniorNet

committee accepted the resignation of

Bryan Strong. Bryan was chairman for

a number of years and the branch

flourished under his leadership. He

was always willing to assist members

with their IT problems, conducted

workshops and make presentations at

seminars. In addition Bryan was

prepared to travel to Picton to conduct

classes and assist members living

there. Bryan was last year awarded Life

Membership of SeniorNet in recogni-

tion of his services.

We offer Bryan our condolences on the

passing of his wife June and wish him well in his own battle with illness..

SeniorNet Committee 2119

Please contact any one of us if you have any

comments or questions.

Chairperson: Donald McIver 574 2326

Deputy: Liana Bull 574 1372

Secretary: Ian Cameron 574 2558

Treasurer: Brian Cameron 574 2267

Executive Members:

Yvonne Blakey 5741068

Robert Boren 574 2333

Jan Godsiff 574 2409

Diane Payton 5741029

Subscriptions are now due.

Single $20.00 and double $30.00

Please pay into Bank acc number

38 9010 0788795 01