Author: Ask Ursula

Password Managers

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Passwords seem to be the bane of our online lives – but there is a way to make it so much easier.
Use a password manager!
A password manager is a small program/database that keeps all your passwords in a secure and easy to
access location. As an added bonus, it also can create strong passwords of any length, fill them in
automatically in any website and all you have to remember is the one strong password that allows you
access to all of them.
The file is encrypted and can only be accessed by using the correct master password. Even if someone
managed to get the file, they still cannot see any data in it – not even the provider of the password
manager can access the file.
There are many password managers out there – most browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox…) have one built
in. Or you could download and use a third party program like Bitwarden, ProtonPass or 1Password.
Compare features, ease of use and cost; many offer free versions with basic features that are perfect for
most home users.
But whatever you use, secure it with a strong password and do not forget it. If you use your browser to
store passwords, make sure that your device is secured with a password or pin as anyone with access to
your browser might be able to access your passwords as well.

What are phone and internet plans?

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Do you understand what your phone or internet plan actually gives you?
Both come essentially with 2 measurements:

  • Phone plans have included calls/SMS and data
  • Internet plans have speed and download allowance

The calls/SMS refers to phone calls and text messages (using Messages or iMessages-green
bubbles) only, generally they are unlimited these days.
Data is everything else that your phone does: Facebook, including Facebook Messenger, video
calls, Weather, Emails, messages with pictures, Maps and all the other apps that get information
from the internet. This is shown in GB, which are 1000MB. A photo is usually around 2 to 8 MB,
an email without pictures is probably less than 1MB. But, a video (even a short clip on Facebook
or similar) can get in the 100s of MB very quickly and watching a movie can use GBs easily. So, as
long as you don’t watch videos, a small amount of GB on your phone plans is OK, just remember
that all your backups (like Google Photos) will also count towards your data. If you can link your
phone to your WiFi at home or elsewhere, you will not use your phone data; useful for updates
or other large downloads.


Internet also has a data allowance but usually much higher like 200GB or more. Again,
everything you do on the internet will count towards that, and if you stream movies on your TV
it will use about 2GB per hour in low resolution, but the better the picture quality the more data
it will use. So, 50GB per month will not allow you to binge watch many series.
Talking about streaming, the speed of your connection (measured in Mbps) will have to be at
least 25Mbps to allow you to watch a movie without the annoying circle–hiccups, if more than
one device is streaming, you will probably need a faster speed.


If you are not happy with your current plan for your phone or your internet, check out other
providers that might offer you more suitable plans or a better price.

Listening to the Radio

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Perhaps you remember the early mobile phones that came with an FMRadio app and you had to
use the headphones in order to listen to the radio on your phone? These days there are many
more options to listen to almost any radio station in the world through an app. The larger radio
stations, like the ABC, have their own app that you can download and listen to their live radio
stations or to programs that you missed. More general apps allow access to radio stations around
the world, e.g. the Radio Australia app or the TuneIn app – you can choose the country, the genre,
local stations and all for free without headphones. Just search for “radio app” in the Google Play
Store or the App Store.
Did you like radio plays? They are available again, too. There are numerous websites that let you
listen to all sorts of exciting plays, from Abbot & Costello to Wild Bill Hickok. Just search on
Google or Safari for “old time radio plays” and you will be presented with a list of websites
where you are sure to find something that interests you. And all for free (including the old ads)!
Audio Books? Try LibriVox – it has a large collection of audio books that are in the public
domain, like some of the old classics.
Rather read yourself? Check out Project Gutenberg, it has eBooks that are in the public domain to
download and read for free.
And last but not least, there is the public library with a huge number of books, magazines, audio
books and videos that you can access and borrow if you are a member of you local council
library. I know of Hoopla, CloudLibrary and Borrowbox – it is best to talk to your local librarian
which they recommend.
Happy reading/listening
🙂

Attach photos to emails and messages

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How do you attach a photo to an email or send a photo with your mobile?

For emails it is usually easier to first write the email and then attach the photo – for messaging, selecting the photo first and then writing the message is best. But either option can be used in both cases.

The principle is always the same, regardless of which device or tool you use. Go into your photos folder/gallery and find the photo you want to send. Select it and then find the ‘share’ button. This can look for example like this: or like this: or you might have to right-click on the photo and select ‘Share’ from the menu that appears – it all depends on the device you are using. Once you have clicked ‘Share’ more options will appear, again depending on the device you are using. You can select email, SMS (MMS), messenger apps (Messenger, Whatsapp etc); try and avoid the person icons that might appear – it is not always obvious which app is going to be used to send. Once you click on the app you want to use, it will open and you can create and send the email, message as you usually would and the photo attaches itself to it. Try it out to see how it works!

If you want to send more than one photo it is generally easier working the other way around: create your email or message and before you send find the attachment icon. Now this time it might be a paperclip, a small picture or variations of these – you will have to do a little looking around. Once you click that icon you will be given options to look for your photos in their folders and you can select more than one, just by clicking on the individual photos. When you are done, select Done or similar and you will be taken back to your email or message and can send it.

Just a word of warning, photos can be quite large and sometimes you can only send 2 or 3 photos at once before you get an error message, in that case send multiple messages or use a cloud sharing option.

You can use most cloud services (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive…) for this. Just upload your photos to your cloud and then ‘share’ (usually a right-click will offer this option) using email or messaging. It will create a clickable link that allows the recipient to access those photos (but nothing else on your cloud drive). The receiver of the link does not need to have the cloud service themselves, as the photos are displayed directly in a browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox…). If you are using Gmail it might even do this automatically for large files.

Another way is offered by file transfer services like WeTransfer or SendAnywhere, usually without having to sign up, but these links have a limited lifespan (lets say 7 days) before they expire.

Of course, there is always the option to load the photos onto a USB drive (thumb drive)and give that to the recipient.

There are other more technical ways, but this is not the place to explain those.

A tidy inbox

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Are you one of those people who can’t find the important emails among all the spam, advertising and
newsletters?
It is quite easy to control your inbox with a few simple steps:
Go through your inbox one email at a time and check each email for its worth:

  • If it is something you want, there is nothing you have to do. Go to the next email.
  • If it is a newsletter, special offer etc from a business you have bought from in the past, again ask
    yourself if you really want these emails. If not, there should be a ‘unsubscribe’ link most likely
    right at the end of the email (generally quite small and faint). Click that, it will direct you to a
    website, and sometimes you have to confirm that you want to unsubscribe. They might ask you
    why, but you don’t have to answer that. That’s it! You might get a confirmation email, or it might
    take a couple of days to go through their system, but you should no longer be bombarded with
    ‘special offers’.
  • If this does not work, or if it is an email you really don’t know how they even got your email
    address, you can block them. Depending on your email program or provider, there should be an
    option somewhere (typically where you find the Reply and Forward buttons) to Block, Mark as
    Spam, Mark as Junk or similar. Simply press that, and you should no longer receive emails from
    that address. Sometimes you even have the option to ‘report as spam’, but that is optional.
    If you follow these steps for a few days (or weeks, depending on the amount of emails to go through),
    your inbox should look a lot more manageable and contain mostly wanted emails. Also, keep
    unsubscribing or blocking any new emails that will turn up.

The Magic of Google Lens

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Have you heard of Google Lens? If you have an Android phone (Samsung, Nokia etc) chances are it is
already on your phone ready to use. On iPhone, you can download the Google app from the Appstore
(there is a limited version in your photos app, but Lens can do a lot more).
By using Lens you can find out about buildings, plants, animals that you see, find a recipe by scanning a
photo of the finished dish, translate foreign language text, explain exotic items on a restaurant menu and
lots more.
It can read out the small print on pill bottles, chargers, ingredients lists or cooking instructions on food
items (great when you forgot your glasses)
You can scan phone numbers to make a call, business cards to add the details to your contact, event
details to add to your calendar (these last three might or might not work-depending on the text
scanned).
You can scan a broken or dismantled mechanical part and add ‘how to fix this’ in the text box underneath
the photo to get instructions from the web.
You can also scan the login sticker on the back of your Wi-Fi router and having Lens log in automatically.
The limit is your imagination, as they say.
All you have to do is select the Lens icon on your Google search bar and point the camera at the item
you want to know more about and press the button.


Or sometimes the camera icon looks like this:


Go and experiment, point your Lens camera at all sorts of things and see what you can find out 🙂

Phone only rings twice…?

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A lot of people complain that their phone only rings a couple of times before going to message
bank, and they cannot find a setting to change that. You can make your phone ring for up to 30
seconds, but you have to dial a specific code in your phone app.
First find the number you call to access your message bank ( this is usually 101 for phones using
the Telstra network, 321 for Optus based networks and 121 for Vodaphone*).
Now go to your phone app and call up the keypad (as if you are calling a number you have not
saved in your contacts) and dial the following:

**61*XXX**30#

where XXX is the message bank number (101,321 or 121) and press the call button. After a short
while a notification will pop up on your screen : ‘MMI code started’, and then ‘Call forwarding
registration was successful’ or similar. Next time someone calls you, your phone will ring for 30
seconds before going to message bank and you should have enough time to answer it. This works
on both Android and iPhone.

*You are not with any of these 3 providers? You still use these same codes. For example if you are
with Aldi or Belong you are using the Telstra network and your message bank number would be 101.

If you are with Amaysim, Circles.Life or Southern Phone you are using the Optus network
and your number would be 321. Kogan, Lebara and TPG use the Vodaphone network and their
number is 121.
If you are not sure, go to your contacts and search for Message Bank – it will show the number to
use.
Also, don’t forget to delete your messages on Message Bank once you no longer need them
(usually by pressing ‘5’ while on the call to Message Bank) otherwise it will slowly fill up and no
longer accept any new messages.

Changing your email provider

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Do you still have the email address your ISP (internet provider) gave you? What will happen when you change internet providers? Will you still be able to access this email for free? It might be time to hoose your own email provider, here are a few points why:

  • Access your emails from any program (Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird) plus from the web and you can customise how the pages look and function
  • Spam filters are generally much better with other email providers
  • Your inbox is usually much bigger, a few fancy catalogues or pictures won’t fill it up and prevent you from getting new messages
  • Some email providers allow you create ‘dummy’ email addresses or aliases that allow you to sign up for newsletters and more without disclosing your real email address. If they get difficult about cancelling the newsletters or other email, you just discard that address and all is good.

So how do you change your email address?

  • Have a look on the web what is around (e.g Gmail.com, Outlook.com, ), compare what they provide and choose one (or even 2 or 3, you can have an unlimited amount of email addresses, not just one) of them.
    Sign up and make sure you provide recovery methods (like a phone number, another email …) so you can get to your emails if you happen to forget your password.
  • Send an email to all you contacts informing them of your new email address
  • Make sure you contact any businesses, websites, streaming services and other online accounts (bank, myGov…) etc on THEIR WEBSITE OR PHONE to change your email address, they generally do not accept changes any other way.
  • If you can, set up automatic forwarding from your old email address to your new address and monitor this for any senders you missed
  • You could also set up automatic replies from your old email address to inform any senders of your new address

It requires a bit of work, but it is definitely worth it.

What else is the camera is good for

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Last time I told you about the amazing things Google Lens can do, but even just your camera can do
much more than taking snapshots. Here are just a few ideas:

  • Keep a photo of your pet and their ID, that way you have a photo handy if he/she goes missing
    (could be a good idea for kids, too, perhaps?)
  • Use it as a notebook: take snaps of recipes in magazines, plants, art, decorations that you like and
    would like to try out yourself
  • If you rent a car, take a picture of the car and the number plate; easier to find if you don’t
    remember exactly what is looks like
  • Or even with your own car in a strange carpark, take a photo with indicators like row/level
    number etc to find it again afterwards
  • If you keep a shopping list on a whiteboard on the fridge, take a photo of it before going
    shopping, no need to transcribe it. Also, you could take a photo of the contents of your fridge to
    see what you have and what you need
  • Take a photo of any cable/plug placement before you move them, easier to put everything back
    where it belongs afterwards
  • If there is a label in a shop high up, and you can’t see it properly, hold up your phone and take a
    picture of it (or even if the print is just too small); and then zoom in

I’m sure there are a million other things where this always there little camera can help. Just remember to delete the photos when you don’t need them anymore.