My Experience with Google Photos

This week I have had more than one person talk to me about saving their photos. These days most of us have more photos than we know what to do with because we always have our Smartphones with us and we take pictures of EVERYTHING.

I usually organize my photos using Mac's Photo app. It works well for me. If you have a PC you can use Microsoft Photo Gallery which comes free with Microsoft Windows. Today I am going to try and also describe my experience using Google Photos.

Before I begin with Google photos I want to make sure that you are backing up all of your pictures on a hard drive or in the cloud somewhere (or both). The cloud is just a way to talk about a huge bank of computers that you can get space on in order to save things. iCloud is Apple's cloud. Dropbox is a cloud. Microsoft has OneDrive. If you use Google Photos you are backing up on Google's Cloud.

What I have learned is that in May of 2015 Google made a big announcement and began Google Photos. It was designed as a pain free way to store, organize and share all of your photos without having to do much of anything. The program does it for you. It is a single location for ALL of your photos from your computer, phone and any other devices you have. It works with Android phones as well as iPhones.

The first thing that you do is to download the Google Photo Autobackup App. This will search and find all of your photos from all of your devices and put them on Google Photos which you can find by going to http://photos.google.com. This process takes a long time, maybe a few days, but when it is done ALL of your photos are backed up and accessible to you on all of your devices. If you choose to save them as "high resolution" the space does not cost you any money. If you want the RAW original format you will have to pay for extra space after your allotment is filled up. Even the "high resolution" photos are formatted perfectly for most of us. If you are a photographer and usually print large copies of photos you may want to pay for the extra space.

Now for my experience using the app.

1. It has pop out tools on the sidebar. There are three ways to look at your photos
   • Photos-This is the view that you first see when you upload your photos. It is organized by date that the photo was taken. You can view all of these photos on all of your devices. You can see them as individual pictures, days, months and years by pinching and unpinching the screen. They are located "in the cloud", so they are not taking up space on any of your devices. You can download them or send them to someone from here.
   • Albums-Google Photos will organize your photos for you by face (It is amazing at recognizing faces even as they change through aging) and by places and things. This is also the place where you can view albums that you have created using the assistant. 
   • Assistant-This is where you can create your own albums and other creative things. To do this Click on "create new album". Then click on all of the photos that you want in the album. The album will appear with "untitled" at the top. You click on it and give the album a name. 

• You can also search your photos for specific photos that you remember. The search is amazing. I tried searching for "snow", "food", and several other things. Even though I had not tagged or named the pictures a bunch of snow pictures and food pictures were found. A few of the other searches were not as successful (books, beach), but I am not sure that I had any pictures that fit these categories. Also, my pictures were still being downloaded.

In the agreement that you must sign in order to use their free services it says that they can "host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute these photos".

• There is the issue of trust. What is Google doing with all of your photos? Google is a search and advertising company. They make their money by very precise advertising. Your photos make it possible for them to know you better and target advertising directly to you. They do this already, but your photos make it even better for them.  If this is a problem for you then it is better not to use it. Many people think that the value of using all of the free apps that Google offers is a fair exchange. Targeted marketing is a little creepy, but in some ways is better than constantly getting ads for things you do not want. One video said that being selective about which photos are stored on Google Photos can protect some of your privacy. 

CONCLUSION
Having tried it I am impressed with Google Photos. I tend not to be someone who is very private, so my experience may not fit you. The important thing to take away from this article are that YOU are in charge of your photos and backing them up somewhere is EXTREMELY important. I think that having an external back up on a hard drive is a good idea because even Google may change its business model and who knows what would happen to your photos then? 

How does Apple Pay work?

If you are like me you watch with interest whenever Apple introduces something new. That is not because I want to buy every new thing, but lately it seems like their new products and ideas change how things are done everywhere.

So, I have been curious about Apple Pay. I keep reading articles and seeing things on it, but none of them tell me how it really works. I want a down to earth, Not A Geek, explanation. 

Here is what I have found out and want to share with you in the way I understand it best.

HOW PEOPLE USE IT

1. There are a lot of details, but basically, if you have the right equipment and are in the right store you can just take out your phone at the cash register and instead of swiping your card and entering your pin you can hold your iPhone up to the machine and put your finger on the finger print reader on your phone.
2. The machine will register the purchase and charge your credit card just like it did when you swiped the card through the machine. 

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO IT

If you have a new iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, first you have to download OS version 8.1. If you have a phone older than 6 you cannot do Apple Pay. It will also work with the Apple Watch when it comes out in 2015.

You have to set up your credit card information in your Passbook application on your phone. If you want to use the credit card that is already associated with your iTunes account you can do that by just setting up a 4 digit pin. You can take a picture of the card and the phone will fill in the information!

It only uses cards like Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. You cannot use your Macy's card. The information about payments made using Apple Pay can be found in the Passbook App.

The cash register that you pay at must be Apple Pay Enabled. You can look for that sign before you begin standing in line planning to pay that way.

It might be good to have a back up way to pay ready. Even though you hope to pay with your phone it is a pretty new technology and so the store may not be set up. 

MORE GEEKY EXPLANATIONS

Near Field Communication Symbol

A bit more "geeky" way to explain it is that Apple Pay uses NFC or Near Field

Contactless Payment Symbol

Communication to connect to the Apple Pay enabled device at the store. Look for the contact-less payment symbol. You may have seen these before because Google Wallet and some credit cards work this way already.

It will also work with the Apple Watch which is due out in January 2015

It is surprising that Apple will not make a bunch of money from this. The company will take a small cut from each transaction. Their goal is to sell phones and watches.

SHOULD YOU USE IT?

So, why use it?  Right now it is mainly a novelty. It might save a little time over swiping a card. Maybe you can carry a lighter wallet. We will only see in the future what it can really do.

BENEFITS OF USING IT

Security - Your credit card number is only entered once during setup. After that your phone sends a different number that is tied to your device when it makes a transaction. The cashier will NEVER see your credit card number and it is not stored anywhere but on your phone. If you lose your phone you can use the app "find my iPhone" to put your phone in LOST MODE so that no one else can get your info. Unlike when you lose your cards you will not have to cancel your credit card and get a new one because your card number was never stored.

Privacy - Apple does not transmit any information about you to the store. In this time when all of our information seems so public Apple Pay is actually anonymous. Some retailers are not happy about that because it does not help them to collect information about you. You will need to provide them with a loyalty card separately, rather than having that information transferred automatically.

Should I use 2 Step-Authentication?

WHAT IS 2 STEP AUTHENTICATION?

Authentication means making sure you are who you say that you are. Using a password is the main way that you are authenticated by most websites. But what if someone finds out your password. Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter (and other large companies) have designed a way that you can have two layers of security for your accounts with them. First you have to put in your password. Second a random code is texted to your cell phone. When you get the message you type the code into the website and you are in. If someone has your password it is most likely that they do not have your cell phone also. 

NOW THAT YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS SHOULD YOU USE IT?

The more secure you want to be online the more important it is to use the two-factor authentication. You can set this so that it does not happen on your own computer, but only when you are using a public computer or one that belongs to someone else. 

In Facebook click on the gear in the top right to get the settings.  Then choose Security. Look down the list on the left until you see Log in Approvals. This is where you set up your phone to be an extra layer of security.

In Google after you log in find your picture, or the default picture in the top right corner. When you click on it a window will pull down and you should click on the word Privacy. This will open a webpage that will give you lots of information about how to be more secure. If you want to set up 2-step authentication slide down the page and click to "find out more about 2-step authentication. 

Follow similar steps to set this up in Yahoo, Twitter and other programs. The choice will be found in your settings under security or privacy. 

The more secure your computer is the more difficult it is for anyone, including you, to use it. I like the advice of Socrates "Know Thyself". How old are you?  How good is your memory? What do you use your computer for? How often do you use computers other than your own? Do you have a cell phone and do you use Text Messaging? 

For someone who uses a computer all of the time for business purposes or for regular banking it is a good idea to be as secure as possible even if it is frustrating sometimes. For someone who mostly plays solitaire and sometimes gets online to do email it may not be worth the effort. Then there are all of the many cases that fall inbetween. So, know yourself, is the best advice that I have. 

SOMETHING EXTRA

Since we are talking about security I thought I would also mention the Captcha Codes. Wikipedia says it stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. 

You often have to fill them out at the bottom of a form or application that you are submitting. They are getting more and more difficult to interpret. They were devised to make sure that it was a real person who is filling out the form. Today there are robot computers that can fill in forms and send notes, but they cannot read pictures of letters and numbers. 

If you cannot read the code on the page that you are on there is a speaker you can click on to hear the audio of the captcha. You can also press the circle arrows (or reload) to get a new code. There are several really tricky letters and numbers to read (L, l, I, and 1 for example), so never feel like you are stupid. You are SO much smarter than any computer.

Cyberwise-No Parent Left Behind

This post is for parents, grandparents, guardians, teachers and anyone else who deals with children and use of the computer.

Many adults feel poorly prepared for dealing with many of the things in the Cyberworld. There are programs like Twitter which you see everywhere, but may know nothing about. Some people are worried about privacy issues.  Technology changes so fast that it is difficult to keep up especially if you are not comfortable with it to begin with.

If this sounds like how you feel check out Cyberwise. http://www.cyberwise.org/

Cyberwise is a new website that provides some free training on current topics that can be really fun and helpful. Topics covered are New Media, Media Literacy, Digital Citizenship, Prezi, Glogster, Twitter, Ethical Use, Privacy, Reputation and many others. Each "learning center" has a short (under 5 minute) video on the topic and often something to read online or print out. There are also many links leading to other information on each topic.

Cyberwise also offers a course called Be Cyberwise Certified. It goes through many of the "learning center" lessons with a quiz at the end of each one. If you pass the quiz you get a badge and if you do all of the lessons they mail you a certificate saying that you are Cyberwise Certified. So far I think that the course is free.

Add caption

Another course was created in collaboration with "I Keep Safe, Verizon Foundation, and the California School Library Association. It is called BE a PRO which stands for Balancing Ethical Use Privacy, Reputation and Relationships, Online Security. Each of these topics are covered and there are links on each one to other resources.

Facebook-Constantly Changing

I guess Facebook has to keep changing in order to be responsive to all of their customers. It can be frustrating to think that all your privacy settings are set up and then to find out that Facebook has changed around how it works. Recently, it seems to me that they have been trying to figure out how to make your experience using Facebook more secure without losing all of the possibilities for networking that is the central purpose of the program.

I just read an article from USA Today (a paper that I usually do not take too seriously) at 
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/komando/2013/01/18/kim-komando-facebook-settings/1827413/ 
It was sent to me by a friend and the article did have several good recommendations. One overall suggestion is that it is good to check your privacy settings every once in a while to be sure they are how you want them to be. 

Facebook has added a new link to the right of your name at the top that looks like a lock with three lines next to it. When you click on it and the window opens up you can answer three questions. Who can see my stuff?, Who can contact me? and How do I stop someone from bothering me? Under these three questions is the link to See More Settings. When you click this it will bring you to a place where you can go into each one of your privacy setting areas and make changes. To make a change to them you click on the EDIT link, type in your changes, and then close the window. 

 





There is also a link here for looking at your own profile so you can see the way it looks to someone else who comes to your page. That is really helpful because you can get a feel for what people are seeing about you and decide whether you want to be more private or more public. 

To get there go to your privacy settings and look for the words "view as" in this view you will be able to see what people coming to your page see and also check if it is different for the public, your friends and friends of friends.

I suggest you take some time to click through these things and see what you think about the way your Facebook is set up. If this does not make sense to you or you have more questions please do add them as comments to this post and I will get back to them.

Setting up Privacy Restrictions on your iPhone

Most people know that they can set up a PASSCODE on their iPhone or iPad which has to be entered in order to use it. Just in case you have not tried it go to Settings, General, and slide down until you see Passcode Lock. This allows you to choose a 4 digit number that must be entered in order for anyone to use your iPhone. 

What many people may not realize is that there is a way to Restrict your iPhone so that only certain apps, and certain ratings of movies or TV shows can be used on the device. You can disable in app purchases and make it so that no one can download or delete an app unless they know to go to the restrictions list and have the passcode to change the settings. To go there choose Settings and next  General. Under Passcode Lock you will find Restrictions. They can be turned ON or OFF.  In order to turn them on you have to click the button at the top that says ENABLE RESTRICTIONS. It will walk you through setting up a passcode and then you can turn off anything that you do not want others doing with your iPhone.

When something is set to 'off' you do not even see it as an icon on your phone. For example, if the slidebar next to Siri says 'off' you cannot access Siri. There many items that you can control separately; YouTube, Camera, FaceTime, iTunes, Ping, Installing Apps, Deleting Apps, Siri, Explicit Language and many others



You can set it to stop using Location Services, or to only show certain apps. They are categorized by age, so you can set it up so that the only apps that show up are apps approved for 4 year olds and below. I am not sure who does the ratings and if all of them are correct, but it is better than nothing. If you are not sure which apps are good for different ages of kids you can take a look at Common Sense Media. They offer nonpartisan reviews of apps that are searchable.

I recommend that you spend some time going through your phone settings to see all of the things that you can do. It is a great way to make the phone your own. 

Here is a link to a slideshow that has additional ideas about setting up the restrictions on your iPhone or iPad.
http://www.slideshare.net/Papersh211/parental-control-on-apple-iphone

Detour from Facebook-Video, YouTube, Vimeo and others

Last week I was in California helping out my Mom and so I didn't write all of the posts I was planning to about Facebook, so we will have to come back to that.

Today's post is about video. I was motivated to write it because a professor I know asked me about posting his lectures on the web. Since I had to look up and try things I thought it would be a good topic to share about. I hope I will be able to do more writing about issues people ask about as time goes on. This is especially for my teacher friends who might want to do something, but have no time to figure it out.


SHARING VIDEO ON THE INTERNET
First of all video files are HUGE. The size depends on what resolution the video was taken at. High resolution videos are the best to watch on your big screen TV or to submit to festivals like Sundance, but if you just want to put your video on the web so that someone can see it there are lots of options. Each of these sites resizes your video automatically to make it perfect for viewing on a computer screen.  They also provide embed code (We will have to talk about that tomorrow) so that you can put your video onto your blog or website.

http://www.youtube.com
The best known and most used video site is YouTube. There are videos up on YouTube on every topic you can imagine (and some that you can't even imagine). If you want to post a video to YouTube first you need to sign up for a free account.

Next set up your own channel. You can use your channel as a place to collect videos that you like as well as a place to get to all of your own videos easily.

When you first get to your channel page you will have lots of choices. You can make it look the way you want it to look.

At the very top of the screen you will see the word UPLOAD. When you have a video that you want to put onto your channel click "UPLOAD" and you will be walked through all of the steps.

Be sure to set the privacy settings that you want. YouTube offers three settings:
Public-Anyone can see your videos and searches can find them.
Private-You can share your video with ONLY 50 or fewer people who already have accounts with YouTube.
Unlisted-Only people who have the link to the video can view it. The number of people is only limited by your sharing. People who you share the link with DO NOT have to have YouTube accounts to watch the video.

There are many other video sharing sites and they all work in about the same way. There are a few differences and I will list the ones I know about and their differences here. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list, so if you have one to add it will be welcome.

Vimeo emphasizes quality and creativity. It was made by film makers and can work with HD video. There are Video classes on the site if you want to learn more.
Privacy: Public, Only Moderators can view (you need to enter their emails), Password Protected-people do not need an account, but need the password to view the video.
http://vimeo.com


YouTube created for schools. This has different settings for students and teachers allowing teachers to do more.
http://www.schooltube.com/

http://www.teachertube.com/
Similar to SchoolTube, but created with teachers in mind. Today when I looked at it the site was extremely slow, so I don't have privacy information.

Surprisingly I could not find a site for professors to upload their lectures. There are LOTS of sites where you can go and watch the top professors in the world lecture and there are online classes, but not an upload site! One other thing I learned is that you can actually watch MOVIES on YouTube. They cost $1.99

I am sure there are other sites out there, but these are the ones that I know about and that are FREE
I hope people will add comments if they know about other places.

10 Essential Privacy Settings on Facebook

As I was writing this I took time to look at all of the privacy settings on Facebook. I came away thinking that I have a lot of control of what I want to share and what I want private. I also felt a little strange about how many privacy choices there are and how easy it is to miss some of the settings that seem important.  An article from mashable.com really helped me to figure out some of the most important settings.

Facebook privacy settings
http://mashable.com/2011/02/07/facebook-privacy-guide/

1. Sharing Settings:

Account > Privacy Settings > Sharing on Facebook
Facebook allows you to set your sharing settings so that everyone, friends of friends (this means that your friends can see your content and THEIR friends can see them also) or only friends can see your content. Each item is listed and you can either set them all the same way or do a custom setting where  each one has different setting. If you do not indicate what you want it is possible that some of your content (pictures, status updates, etc...) will be seen by friends of your friends. This could be a LOT of people that you do not really know.

 

2. Existing Photo Settings:
Account > Privacy Settings > Sharing on Facebook > Customize Settings > Edit album privacy for existing photos
It is really important to make sure to set the privacy settings for your existing photo albums. As you create each album you choose what level of privacy it should have. However, your existing albums are probably all set as viewable by everyone. When I went in and checked mine were.




3. Friends Checking you into Places:

Account > Privacy Settings > Sharing on Facebook > Customize Settings > Friends can check me in to Places
If you do not want someone else notifying the world where you are you may want to be sure to change this setting.
It lets your friends check you in to Places. "Having someone else telling the world where you are can be unpleasant and even dangerous in some cases. If you want to avoid it, disable this feature."

4. Connecting on Facebook 
Account > Privacy Settings > Connecting on Facebook
These settings determine how people can find you on Facebook. Can anyone search for you? Are your listings open to everyone? 

5. Apps You Use
Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites > Apps You Use
Facebook is full of additional apps (or applications). For example Yelp, Pandora, etc... Each one has its own privacy settings. Either go to each one and be sure that you are in agreement with how they are sharing your content or remove them and only keep the ones you use regularly.

6. Instant Personalization
Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites > Instant Personalization
This allows third party companies to access your information so that they can tailor their information to match your interest. I think this is sort of spooky and also sort of amazing. These sites can only access information that you have marked for public sharing.

7.  Info Accessible through your friends:
Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites > Info accessible through your friends
You may think that you have set all of your settings so that only your friends can see what is there, but until you have gone to this level and indicated which information can be shared through them you are not done with setup. I was pleased to see that the default was that NO information was shared and that I had the choice to add specific things to share.

8.  Public Search
Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites > Public Search
Do you want people to be able to search for you through Google or another search engine and find your Facebook page? They will still have to request to be your friend, but you can set it up so that your profile does not even show up when someone searches in Google or other places.

9. Friend Lists
Friends > Edit Friends > Create a List
You can simplify setting up your privacy settings by creating lists of friends that fall into different groups. For example: family, work friends, childhood friends, etc...  You can then set up privacy settings that apply to a group rather than an individual.

10. Using HTTPS
Account > Account Settings > Account Security > Secure Browsing (HTTPS)
Now go back to the main page and choose Account>Account Settings rather than Privacy Settings. There is a setting called Account Security. It talks about secure browsing with HTTPS.  HTTPS is a programming language behind Facebook that will make it more difficult for anyone to hack into your account. It is recommended that you choose this setting to be more secure.

One problem with these settings is that they keep changing. Keeping up with new ones can be a problem. Even now there is a warning that appears on top of the privacy settings:

I have decided to do the best I can to set up my privacy settings so that they work for me. I know that they are not perfect, but the benefits of using Facebook in my opinion outweigh the questions of privacy. I know and respect that everyone does not feel that way and so each person has to decide for themselves about this issue.