Technology

YouTube Ruins YouTube

On the OpenSource forums and social media platforms I belong to there is a lot of discussion about YouTube being stricter on the use of AdBlockers.

What Is An AdBlocker?

Many people use AdBlockers online not only because they block many intrusive adverts but also because:

  1. Improve the speed of web pages showing up in a browser rather than waiting for the adverts to appear.
  2. Improve privacy as adverts can come with third-party trackers that may collect data you don’t want others to have.
  3. Protect users from malware.

What Data Does YouTube, aka Google, collect from me?

This is easy to find out from the Apple App Store:

YouTube Data Collected

It’s very scary how much data is collected from users. Note that Meta and Twitter also harvests the same amount of information from its users. I would recommend double checking before installing these apps and ensure, using tools on your smartphone, they cannot track you.

YouTube Strategy Regarding AdBlockers

Lately, users have been receiving the message below. They are being given three warnings, if they don’t disable their AdBlocker/s they won’t be able to play any more videos. This policy is in their terms and conditions, it’s just now they are enforcing it in a very strict manner. This is partly achieved using cookies so the technology they are able to do this is not really ground breaking.

YouTube AdBlock Message

Looking at various articles around the internet I notice these perspectives on this strategy.

  1. “SEO Experts” and “advertisers” like this strategy as it will force YouTube users to watch the adverts and buy their products.
  2. This is just a way of YouTube to make more money out of users through their extremely expensive and unreasonably priced “premium” subscription. The content on there is not worth the subscription price.
  3. AdBlocker’s mean “content creators” don’t get paid, however, many now include in-video affiliate advertising as they have adapted over time. Some users have Patreon accounts to make money and offer additional content. Also, some people suggest money hasn’t gone to content creators since 2012 from YouTube.
  4. There is so much trash and illegal content on YouTube that, along with the adverts, will force viewers off the platform.
  5. Users don’t want adverts especially when they appear several times during the video they are trying to watch.
  6. YouTube aka Google are so rich they could limit their advertising including those which interrupt a video.
  7. I don’t have any AdBlockers but still receive their message, YouTube can’t even get this right and don’t get back to users when the issue is reported.

On YouTube there is the “My Ad Center” feature in which you are supposed to be able to indicate your advertising preferences relating to subjects and brands you don’t want to receive adverts about. However, in my experience, this is broken. I tell YouTube I don’t want to receive adverts on a certain subject but I appear to see more of them, same with brands. I suspect this is just a tool which creates the perception that they care about the users, a placebo, but has the reverse effect since it doesn’t work.

Is Google To Be Trusted?

I would say no. I’ve seen a trend from quite a large community of people, especially security and privacy experts, to “De-Google” their devices and computers. There are plenty of high quality alternatives around today regarding all Google products. For a YouTube alternative consider the more professional platform Vimeo or the federated universe platforms such as TILvids.

For me, Google is one of the worst spam supporting ISPs. Most of the spam emails I receive comes from Gmail accounts that someone can all too easily set up. Microsoft is another one of these spam ISPs as well. Neither of these companies do enough to protect their users, this is contrary to the adverts they play time and time again on the television.

Summary

YouTube, like other platforms such as Twitter, have become too big for their boots that it is difficult for users to leave them. The amount of useful accounts on the platform are few and far between. Everybody has something to sell us no matter where we go and it’s becoming tougher to avoid; we get it on the TV, radio, newspapers, through our letter box, email, telephone, social media and more. Personally, they are a waste of my time and unlike what these companies want us to believe, they aren’t helpful or life enhancing and more than ever I am careful about companies siphoning off my personal data.

2023-10-19T03:52:44+00:0019 October 2023|Social Media, Technology|
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Outlook vs Apple Mail vs Thunderbird

I’ve not been happy with Microsoft Outlook for some time now and have been looking for a potential replacement but don’t want to spend beyond what I’m already paying out. This is what an ideal candidate would look like:

  • Simple to use
  • Pleasant interface
  • In-software local folders to pull messages off the server
  • Rules
  • Links with Apple Contacts
  • Categories (or Tags)
  • In-software calendar

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft has been working on a “New Outlook” for 3+ years now, that and the “legacy” versions are available. The New version is clearly a long way off from being finished…still. I was forced to reboot into New, found out that it was rubbish, and then went back to Legacy losing emails, rules and other functionality. I was less than impressed. Legacy was useable before that happened. Rather than lose more data I’m sticking on New.

Current observances re New

  1. HTML emails didn’t load the graphics properly in Legacy but in New, this is improved.
  2. You cannot add or subtract column headings in email.
  3. “All Accounts” is not an accurate summary of what appears in other accounts, still need to scroll down all email addresses or set them as favourite.
  4. Categories for non-Outlook dot com accounts do not show in the email view as they did in Legacy.
  5. No rules for non-outlook dot com accounts
  6. Contacts you had on the desktop rather than Outlook dot com don’t show categories properly. I’m getting the feeling Microsoft want you to upload your contacts into the online version of Outlook but I don’t want to do that.
  7. You are “locked out” of viewing emails with digital signatures after you’ve opened them once, no such issue in Legacy, Thunderbird or Apple Mail.
  8. “My Day” doesn’t show items entered in Microsoft To-Do (they said it’s supposed to, but maybe its coming later).
  9. Doesn’t work well with an iCloud account.
  10. For every email attachment, an empty text file is received as well.
  11. There is some wording in the program that refers to Windows rather than Mac infrastructure.
  12. UX/UI is improved but that is useless if so many features don’t work.

I’ve tried funnelling this feedback through to Microsoft but nothing ever improves, I guess it might take them another 3 years to fix this stuff.

Apple (Mac) Mail

This is a very decent program. Nice UX/UI. Local (On My Mac) folders. Links with Apple Contacts well.

Observances:

  1. Painfully slow connectivity to IMAP servers. I notice many others have this issue. Makes the program unusable.
  2. Doesn’t integrate well with Apple Calendars or Reminders, Outlook does this better. Sharing a calendar with other Apple family members works ok but meeting invites to others don’t work, branding especially sucks. Calendar invites go through the Apple server and arrive from no-reply @ email dot apple dot com. There is little room for branding or customisation of these invites.
  3. They don’t have categories.
  4. Rules under settings work well
  5. The iPhone/iPad version of Mail is much better.

Thunderbird

They have just released version 115 and it is much improved. It still has a clunky interface but that may be part of its charm, not for me. It has local folders, an in-built calendar, and access to Apple Contacts. IMAP server connectivity is the fastest out of both Outlook and Apple.

Observances:

  1. No folder displaying all emails from every account. However, it does have favourite folders which is helpful.
  2. I love how you can assign a custom sound when an email arrives.
  3. Can’t really get email and calendar to work well together and the recipient receives an ugly meeting invite. I can’t include an attachment, only a web link. I sent 2 calendar invites to my Yahoo account, the second one took about 30 minutes to arrive, it did include [yes – maybe – no] and that updated the calendar but there are two ics files attached which is a little confusing – the text I sent with the invite never arrived. The layout of the calendar invite workflow is better than Apple Calendar, the only downside is the UX/UI. Since I send quite a few meeting invites this solution doesn’t work for me.
  4. The program uses Mac Contacts which is helpful.
  5. UX/UI is improved but could be much better, much better. The calendar is still pretty bad.
  6. I like my emails displayed in a list and you can turn on/off column heading, which is great compared with New Outlook.
  7. When I last tried out Thunderbird newsgroups they don’t work very well but I can’t find these in version 115.

Summary

None of the above programs really do what I want them to do. The one I will have to stick with is New Outlook because it acts as a more business program with an integrated Calendar, and the UI/UX is easier to work with than the other programs. Unfortunately, I don’t see any of the important features I need on their In Development List so I expect I am screwed.

2023-07-19T23:35:25+00:0019 July 2023|Technology|
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New Outlook for Mac

This is a quick summary of my experiences with New Outlook for Mac and, quite frankly, it’s really extremely disappointing.

Background

I wasn’t sure what release I was on. I was using the older version and one day I opened it up as usual and it just said “Next time you open the application it will go straight into New Outlook for Mac”. I really like to plan for these things so I had to drop everything I was doing and go into backup mode. Backing up took me about 1 hour.

The Good

  • The best thing about the updated version is the look and feel. It looks smooth and is a pleasant workspace to spend time in.
  • When I opened up the program it had deleted all “On My Computer” folders (I did have a backup though). Then a pop-up appeared to restore them, this took about 30 minutes and was moderately successful. See “The Bad” below for more information.

That is all the good I have.

The Bad

Sigh. Where do I begin?

  • I was disappointed to see that it didn’t migrate all my “On My Computer” files across, this was a bit of a nuisance but I did have a backup.
  • There are no Rules, none, anywhere. There was an item on the menu bar but nothing worked on any account. This function, at least for now, is useless.
  • I receive emails from universities that use embedded security certificates. I could open the email once but that is it. After that, the email was locked and unreadable.  No other action could be taken on the message such as delete, reply, forward, move etc.  I investigated further and could see those messages, without problem, in Thunderbird, webmail and iOS email applications. So, this just seems to be an Outlook issue.
  • There is no export feature, the items under the File menu were just greyed out no matter what part of the program I was in.
  • Moving a message actually copied it, so it was now in two places. This has never been the case with Outlook before, move meant move, now it means copy.

Every time I opened the program I found a new problem and barrier to getting my work done.

Recommendations

New Outlook is clearly not in a fit state to be released right now. If I found these errors what atrocities are beneath the hood?  Thanks, Microsoft but no thanks.

Summary

Microsoft has been working on New Outlook including “On My Computer” for virtually 2 years now, maybe longer. Looking around and facing all these issues is just a waste of my time dealing with them. I wish they would just get their act together and tidy up these errors or missing features before releasing another version. How much longer?

Many users say Microsoft actually can’t be bothered with Mac users and puts them down the priority list. Whether or not this is true I don’t know but it certainly feels that way.

Maybe I need to just drop Outlook and use something like Thunderbird.

2023-05-05T22:28:25+00:005 May 2023|Technology|
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SuiteCRM vs EspoCRM vs TapForms5

I was having issues with SuiteCRM so I decided to create my own CRM in TapForms but then I came across EspoCRM.

What Happened to SuiteCRM

This is a totally awesome Contact Relationship Manager (CRM) tool which is based on SugarCRM. They came out with version 8 and upon upgrading it obliterated my current version and all its data, luckily I had a backup. Then, I tried to do a fresh install but there didn’t appear to be any install php file, I notice in the forums this has stumped many other people. Maybe there is a different way of installing the application that me and other users aren’t getting.

It doesn’t matter really, I really appreciate the time I was on SuiteCRM but I decided to abandon it at this point.

Onto TapForms5

Since I already purchased TapForms, an amazing database for Mac, iPhone and iPad, made in Canada, I decided to create my own CRM in that tool. There are many advantages using my own database:

  • Encrypted
  • Very reasonably priced.
  • Ability to create other databases apart from a CRM, no limitations.
  • Has scripting ability but also easy enough to use if one doesn’t have those abilities.
  • Sync over multiple devices via iCloud or other cloud services.
  • View offline without an internet connection.
  • Design as I need it from scratch without the irrelevant structure of an off-the-shelf tool.
  • Later, sometime in the future, I might not have a hosting account which means an online CRM would be out of the equation.

I’m really happy with where I am with TapForms.

EspoCRM

Someone in the SuiteCRM forum, who also had similar issues to myself, wrote and recommended EspoCRM so I went ahead and tried it out.

Espo wouldn’t replace TapForms5 now but I see some advantages to using it:

  • It’s very light weight
  • Easy to install on your own hosting environment.
  • Its aesthetically pleasing to the eye, good UX/UI.
  • Easier to customize the fields.
  • Works well on multiple platforms, good responsive design, as long as you have an internet connection.

Summary

These would be my recommendations:

  1. If you don’t have a hosting account try and use a database like TapForms5
  2. SuiteCRM is powerful although slightly pretty complex, but it would be my second choice, if you understand how to install it.
  3. EspoCRM would be my third choice especially for ease of use.
2023-03-21T17:16:21+00:0021 March 2023|Technology|
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Siteground Drops SpamExperts

My web host, Siteground, has recently dropped the well-known email spam-checking tool SpamExperts.

Background

Siteground is popular, I would say “advanced”, web hosting company. It is more expensive than some common old mass-market hosts like GoDaddy.

SpamExperts is a spam-checking web application that many web hosts subscribe to. Siteground has dropped SpamExperts and created its own solution.

Surprise Surprise

Dropping SpamExperts was kind of a surprise, one day it was there and the next it wasn’t. They said they sent a communication to admins but I certainly never received it. I would like to have known beforehand so I could have exported my white and blacklists from the application.

The change required an update of MX records and it just didn’t work out for me. A couple of Siteground reps were able to fix that for me, my email was back within three-quarters of a day.

SpamExperts

I’ve never liked SpamExperts. It is labour-intensive and too cumbersome for my needs. There were multiple clicks to get to the application and most of the functions within were irrelevant to me, I just needed to whitelist or blacklist, that is it.

The relationship between Siteground and SpamExperts appeared to be problematic with issues from time to time. I remember a year ago it was taking messages a day or more to appear in the application, so anything important going into quarantine I couldn’t get to for a long time.  It did improve over time but still wasn’t particularly happy with that process.

Siteground and other hosts just feed suggestions into SpamExperts about enhancements but whether the company picks them up is another thing.

In-House Solution

Often it is easier to provide an in-house solution rather than be reliant on third parties and could be cheaper in the long run.

I don’t have to go to another website to handle spam now. This is what I generally do:

  • Site Tools > Email > Filters
    I filter suspect top-level domains (TLDs) to redirect to a junk folder or discard them before they reach my email. I use SpamHaus as a guide to block the worst TLDs.
  • Site Tools > Email > Spam Protection
    I have entered my most important email addresses (family, friends, vendors and clients) to Allow Senders to ensure they aren’t redirected to junk ie whitelisting them.

Summary

I am very happy with the solution they provided; simple, all in one place, and easier to manage.

2023-01-12T17:27:26+00:0012 January 2023|Technology|
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Email Marketing Gone Wild

In recent years I’ve noticed that promotional marketing from companies has increased in frequency beyond what I can handle.

Most of the companies I sign up to receive emails from, I do so for a reason because I’m on the lookout for one of their products or new releases. However, bombarding my inbox with messages every day, or sometimes more frequently, is too much to handle, therefore I will unsubscribe. Then, I will often forget to visit their website for new releases I might want.

From the industry statistics provided by Constant Contact, it looks as though the click rate (percentage of consumers clicking on links in emails) has really decreased during the years. In the first line, All Industries, the click rate is only 1.11%! With all the messages being sent out, that average is tiny and I wonder whether if it’s actually worth putting a lot of resources into such an endeavour.  However, they must get some business, awareness or brand loyalty out of it. Brand loyalty is about keeping your current or potential customers aware that you exist and are there for them.

Having held an email marketing job during my career, I know that it can be a thankless task at first but I was more successful with it as time went along reaching a 50% click rate. It’s a juggle of providing a good subject line and concise text, with some graphics, in the body. What really helped, I found, was naming a very well-known person in the organization, like the CEO or head of the Board. However, that has dangers too as I receive messages from one company with a name in it I don’t recognize in which case I almost delete it thinking it’s from a dodgy person.

Some companies do it right, and I will use Marks and Spencer as an example. Their emails come about once a week, that is the perfect frequency for me. They even ask me whether I want to opt out of receiving messages about Mother’s or Father’s day. Many companies bombard customers with selling items around those days when, especially during COVID, many lost their parents, so this could be upsetting to many as they cannot celebrate this time of year for the first time in their lives.

I have noticed some companies I never receive email from anymore, apart from the usual system ones like a) thank you for your order, b) your order has been sent, c) your order is out for delivery and d) your order has arrived. Probably, social media is actually more popular.

So, this would be the right email balance for me:

  • One marketing email per week is enough.
  • Don’t post too much content in the email, be short and concise. I don’t have time to read through several paragraphs. That goes for news summaries, post a couple of lines about the item and link me to a website for more information. Don’t waste my time with irrelevant rubbish in the email.
  • Don’t mislead customers, for example, financial institutions will send a message “You Are Pre-Approved” – well, we know they aren’t real, they still have to go through a process and be rejected. Just offer the customers a deal.
  • Emails have very little security, no matter how secure a system you think they are. Don’t include people’s account numbers and don’t say how much they owe or the cost of the current bill. I only know one company that does that to me, which is BC Hydro, and I can go and find this out when I log in securely to their website.
  • Tailor your messages as much as possible, providing opt-outs for certain content, so that clients are not receiving unwanted information that might lead them to unsubscribe.
  • Don’t put a human’s name in the From field unless you are sure your customers know who they are.

Email marketing is something that companies should absolutely get right, it’s not just about the company’s success but also about customers’ sanity. Campaign Monitor has some great resources for email marketing campaigns.

2022-06-20T17:35:44+00:0020 June 2022|Technology|
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My First .CA Spam

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) manages .ca top-level domains and they are proud of the fact that few spam goes through any related email addresses. This has always been the case for me, I didn’t get any spam from a .ca domain, well, until the 2nd of February. I wasn’t happy.

This is what I found out about the spam:

  1. The company from which the spam originated haven’t been as communicative as they should be which has made it quite tiresome to resolve.
  2. The company did say they experienced a hack but didn’t say whether my details had been lifted from their system, I am waiting for that response.
  3. I found out that behind the company domain they are using the Google system. According to Spamhaus, Google is one of the worst ISPs for spam.
  4. There was a suspicious link in the email which went to a company called Beezer, they are a click-and-drag app development provider based in Scotland. With plenty of security and my VPN on I clicked on the link, and it looks as though the company I received the spam from has an account there, sub-domain and lots of branding. On the page it had a link to view a document, I clicked on that and asked me for a Microsoft username and password, obviously, I went no further than that. I’m not convinced it was actually a hack, the company could have uploaded my details to the Beezer system, without my permission, to do some testing.
  5. In the meantime, I have blacklisted the email address from until I am satisfied it won’t happen again.

There are certain protocols a company should use when their business email is hacked into. The company I received the spam from appears to be failing to follow these steps. There are many resources online including this one from Crazy Egg.

2022-02-09T23:44:23+00:009 February 2022|Technology|
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State of The Net 2021

Managing one’s presence on the internet has become labour intensive in recent years and 2021 was no exception. Following is a summary of the issues I’ve had and how I deal with them.

Email Spam

Although this increases year by year it is becoming easier to recognize. SpamExperts, which I use via my ISP Siteground, is becoming more intelligent to catch spam and I will block certain Top Level Domains to ensure the spam footprint is reduced.

Resources

Spamhaus TLDs – any TLD mentioned in this Top 10 I will block, meaning they go into quarantine and not straight into my Inbox

Spamhaus Spam Supporting ISPs – TLDs such as .com one cannot block like so many businesses use it, for example, many have a gmail.com address from which I receive a good portion of spam.

Statistics

This is a typical month of spam by TLD that I receive, this is data from December 2021.

  • .com = 209
  • .work = 70
  • .cam = 35
  • .us = 9
  • .org = 1
  • .co = 1
  • .xxx = 1

There are certain TLDs that are more reliable than others, for example, I never receive spam from .ca (Canada) as I believe it is better regulated than others. For more about .ca domains go to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) website.

WordPress

The best tool to combat intrusions onto a WordPress site is Wordfence, it is a must. It won’t stop all nefarious activity but is one of the best prevention tools out there.

One of the biggest problems I noticed was attempted logins onto the websites I manage, this is because many administrators will keep the default username or URL on their site. A couple of tips to resolve the issue:

  • Never have a username of Admin to log into the site. Change it to something else.
  • If there is more than one user that has access to the site limit the number of people who have administrator access.
  • Install WordPress plugin WPS Hide Login to change the default URL to the login page to something else, then, hackers will not be able to guess that too easily.
  • None of the above will stop all WordPress Form Spam but ensure you can see the IP address of where the email came from, on whatever form tool you use, so you can then block it in Wordfence. This will ensure that spam farm will never reach your site again.
  • I was receiving a huge amount of comment spam and as a result, I’ve now turned that feature off. I was disappointed that I had to use this extreme as I did have quite a decent stream of engagement, but I have to consider safety first.

Social Media

This is becoming horrendously tedious to manage above anything else on the internet.

Twitter

This is full of fake, anonymous and bot type accounts so I am extremely cautious who I engage with on the platform now. Here are my tips:

If the account falls into the fake/anonymous, has limited profile information and/or few followers look them up on BotSentinel before engaging. If the account is disruptive then walk away from it. BotSentinel is also a good tool to monitor yourself and improve your timeline.

Use lists to put in buckets the groups of accounts you are interested in, use TweetDeck to monitor those lists if necessary, keeping away from the main timeline can relieve a lot of stress.

Cite legitimate sources, like a peer-reviewed science journal, to enhance your credibility on the platform. Thinking you know some facts and referring to them created by a subject matter expert are two very different things.

Facebook

The majority of my friends don’t actually post on this platform anymore, probably 5% will engage on a regular basis. The majority of posts I see are from technical groups I belong to, and I am thinking I can do without them.

  • According to DuckDuckGo, Facebook is the 2nd worst offender in tracking whatever you do around the internet, even if you aren’t logged in. I obtained this figure from the Firefox DuckDuckGo Add-On which will prevent and report on that tracking, it’s a brilliant tool.
  • My Facebook footprint has been seriously reduced, I don’t post anything with my photo on there now. Even in closed groups spammers and bad actors often gain access to posting obscene material. Facebook is clearly failing around a whole bunch of privacy and security issues, it’s extremely disappointing.

Instagram

I follow many arts and culture related accounts, they place a lot of content on Instagram I don’t see elsewhere.

  • I have stopped non-friends from commenting on the photos I post there, this facility is in the settings, due to the amount of spam and bad actors posting trash there. I still receive many fake accounts following me but I block and report them immediately.
  • The worst part of Instagram is the amount of animal abuse and the companies failure to do anything about it. These accounts will often monetize on that abuse too. Despite reporting them those accounts are still around.
  • Some companies have been pinching my photos without my permission. I would expect this from naive individuals but companies should know better. As a result, I am considering placing a limited amount of them on social media and making better use of this blog.

VOIP Services

I rarely use these services now, I only have one friend who contacts me on them. In addition to the ones below I also have Telegram and Signal, I don’t have any activity on either of them.

WhatsApp – another Facebook company with problems, the main one for me are fake users attempting to contact me.

Skype – a Microsoft company, despite updating the settings not to be contacted by anyone that isn’t on my friend’s list, they still do. I, of course, just block them, but it is a nuisance to be disturbed by the criminals.

Summary

I feel as though I have good tools available to deal with Email and WordPress issues which have become part of my routine.

However, dealing with social media especially with companies who are not handling the situation well is extraordinarily labour intensive. I think it’s worth reducing my footprint there and spending more time developing this blog.

2022-01-01T18:59:50+00:001 January 2022|Technology|
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iPhone Upgrade 6 to 12

I decided to upgrade my iPhone this month from a version 6 to 12 Pro for various accessibility and technical reasons.

Why Upgrade?

The number one reason was accessibility. I was beginning to find it difficult with the smaller screen size of an iPhone 6. I did increase the size of the fonts but that didn’t really have the effect I desired. It was also becoming fiddly with my fingers and thumbs. I can read perfectly with my glasses on, but I have a habit of forgetting to take them with me, like all the time, so to perform basic functions like handling calls and paying things was an issue.

Second reason was technology, some apps had stopped upgrading. The apps would still work under the outdated version but really needed the security functions the updated ones offered.

What Phone?

I decided to buy the iPhone 12 Pro. Screen size was the main benefit which was instantly noticeable when I bought it. I didn’t want to upgrade to the thirteen, I’m a little superstitious, and couldn’t wait for the fourteen to come out.

On my old iPhone 6 I only had 16Gb of space which was extremely limiting for what I needed to do. Having said that I disciplined myself not to keep any data on it for long which I transferred to the cloud or airdropped to myself on my desktop computer when arriving home. Since I was used to that routine, I only bought a 128Gb model.

I did consider the number of videos I might film in HD or 4K which take up a lot of space, however, this is something I do very rarely. I take more pictures and conclude that this model would be fine for my needs.

Obviously, the other technological advantage was the ability to reinstate or upgrade existing apps.

The Transfer Process

I went through transferring the data using the method in the video below, the video was one of many on YouTube but this one was particularly helpful and very descriptive.

I still had issues with some apps, re-registering or verifying from my old iPhone. Here is what I had issues with:

  • HSBC UK and Canada: needed to scan in a QRCode on my old phone to re-register my login credentials on my new phone.
  • WhatsApp: like signing up but bringing across my data which sits on their server
  • Telegram: re-registering but needed to verify with a code sent to Telegram on my old phone
  • BC Health Gateway: this was the most complicated and forgot most of the steps now to describe them here, but I got there eventually
  • Apple Pay: needed to re-register my credit cards, which was a bit of a nuisance, but understandable
  • Adobe: the login process with Adobe is slightly labour intensive but then I found their “Account Access” app which makes the process easy, it’s worth considering if you use any of their apps on the iPhone of iPad.

So, I would recommend when upgrading phones do not give up your phone immediately as you might need it verify yourself on another device.

Review

I have to say the iPhone 12 Pro is genuinely nice, way better than the iPhone 6, which a much sleeker feel, with lots of screen space. So far, and I’ve only had it a few days, it feels great so far.

2021-09-11T23:20:59+00:0013 August 2021|Technology|
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My Favourite RSS Feeds

I really couldn’t do without my RSS feeds, I’ve been using them for many years.

Basically, I can go to one place to see important updates on my favourite websites without having to go to each of them one by one. Lifewire has a great explanation of what they are.

Over the years I have noticed that some websites no longer support RSS as they change their technology but many interesting one’s do.

Tools

In order to view RSS Feeds you need an online tool to parses them. These are the ones I use, most have free and paid for versions:

NewsBlur
This is my favourite one and I have a subscription to it for USD36-00 a year, which is reasonable. The best feature is the Desktop, iPad and iPhone apps that are available for it, syncing on which articles I have read or not.

Netvibes
This is my second favourite as you can view the RSS feeds in different ways, for example as a list or a mosaic of buttons. Netvibes comes with other features as well which might be advantageous to many.

Old Reader
This tool is pretty good but lacks a clean user interface and is pretty messy. Even though it doesn’t quite meet my needs it might others, so worth looking at.

Thunderbird
Mozilla’s email/calendar application Thunderbird also has an RSS feature but I found this quite a mess.

Favourite Feeds

Here is a list of some of my favourite feeds which may inspire you to consider RSS Feeds:

WordPress Updates

Simple History is a Plugin that will record the latest activity in WordPress, it’s easy to install and if you wish creates an RSS feed and great to monitor updates. Extremely useful if you manage multiple user WordPress installs.

Most WordPress websites I know have an RSS feed and the address is usually the domain followed by /feed/. For example, the RSS feed address for this website is https://stevendrowe.com/feed/, copy and paste to place it in your favourite tool.

Daily Newspaper Cartoons

Many of the daily newspaper comics are available as RSS Feeds, go to Comics RSS to search for your favourite ones.

Some I subscribe to:

  • Andy Capp
  • Fred Bassett
  • Peanuts
  • View Business

Comics

There is many news and blog orientated website related to comics, such as from Marvel, DC etc. I subscribe to these four feeds:

Food

There are many food-related RSS feeds out there but these are two of my favourites. The unfortunate thing about the BBC one is the amount of advertising.

LGBTQ

The feeds that I have are mainly UK orientated as I consider that home.

News

Mostly the RSS feeds in this folder are related to local news, wether that be in the UK or here in British Columbia.

Technology

This is one of my main work interests, to keep up with as many tech issues as I possibly can.

Hope everyone finds this useful and have fun finding your own RSS feeds.

2021-09-12T17:00:25+00:004 July 2021|Technology|
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