Dorchester — Jan 10th 2023

David M gave an explanation and demonstration of Apple’s new Freeform App. As this is designed to be used for collaborative brainstorming with more that one participant David P joined in adding items to and writing on the board via his iPad. As well as writing and sketching with an Apple Pencil you can add pictures, videos, sound tracks, links , clip art etc. across an almost limitless area, zooming in and out and bringing different areas of the board into the visible space. David was not entirely convinced of its usefulness but thought it would be fun using it to communicate and play with grandchildren. Euan stressed the importance of understanding the concept of a white board and is very impressed with Freeform.

Trevor C explained how to use Hide My Email and how it works. Rather than use your own email address Hide My Email creates a a specific email address for that site or contact. If there his a response to that email address, Apple forwards it to you. If you start getting more annoying mail to this address you can simply delete it. The details are held in iCloud for which you must have iCloud Plus at minimum £0.79 a month. Trevor showed how to manage Hide My Email addresses in iCloud settings.

David M gave a short preview of PassKeys which will replace password just requiring face recognition or touch. Based on FIDO (Fast Identity OnLine ) Alliance and W3C standards, passkeys replace passwords with cryptographic key pairs. These key pairs profoundly improve security. Passkeys will work in parallel to Passwords and as sites introduce them the switch will be very simple. No more having to remember passwords; coming soon.

After the break Mick showed us language teaching for young children created by our member in Cornwall, Eric Jervis. Eric had purchased the art work from the Belgium producers of language books to create a computer based French to English language course for children. The screen is split in half, each half carrying the same picture but all the writing is one language on the left and one on the right. The quality of the speaking and accent is excellent, line by line of the displayed text, the one language is spoken followed by the other, French and English. But also Welsh and English. Eric had discovered that whilst some schools in Wales are Welsh speaking, the greater number teach in English but want and need to teach Welsh, creating a big opportunity for a computer based language teaching aid. Eric achieved all this without using the very latest expensive software, using Aperture, discontinued in 2015, for editing the artwork, GarageBand for adding the sound, and Audacity, free software, to clean the sound. The overall result is superb - well done Eric.

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