Robert gave a presenation about Podcasts which are ten years old this year. He covered what podcasts are, how to find podcasts you might find interesting and then how to organise and listen or watch. Some useful and interesting resources he mentioned are:
- Apple’s Podcast help page - has FAQs and tips for both podcast consumers and creators.
- iTunes Essentials: Podcasts - recommendations of podcasts in many categories, a good place to get started.
- Podcasting - The First Ten Years - a two-part BBC Radio 4 documentary marking the anniversary.
DaveK talked about a situation he’d been shown where a web site hides the browser controls on your iPhone. During the meeting it was suggested that you can tap the title of the site (which is in a thin bar at the top) to reveal the controls. If that doesn’t work, and alternative fix is to access a link in another app which will open that site in Safari. With the site open you can access the controls and then close the problem tab. One way to create a link in another app is to enter one in a note in the Notes app.
Ben showed us the Joby GripTight, a neat and inexpensive mount that clips onto you your iPhone (it’s universal and will also fit the iPod Touch and other smartphone models) to give it a standard tripod mount.
The main topic in the news discussion was the very serious Heartbleed security bug which has affects many web sites and was revealed in the last week. The current advice is to change your passwords on affected sites when those sites have been patched to fix the problem (and not before). It’s also a good idea to be wary of e-mails advising you to change your password and only ever do so by visiting affected sites directly (don’t follow links in e-mails just in case they are fraudulent). Here are a couple of articles with useful tips and lists of affected sites:
- Heartbleed bug creates confusion on the Internet - from the BBC, this lists the status of most of the UK banks.
- The Heartbleed Hit List - from Mashable, a listing of popular web sites and whether you should change your password on them.