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2FA: what’s it all about?
One of IT’s biggest barriers is jargon, where simple concepts are given overly complex names. Among those is 2FA (two-factor authentication) or MFA (multi-factor authentication). Why don’t they just call it “Another way of checking that you really are who you say you are”. OK, maybe that’s a little wordy! Remember how easy it was…
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Tell Us Once
Many of my columns are inspired by personal experience. Sadly, that’s true for this one too. The Government’s Tell Us Once service is set up to inform all relevant national and local government departments of a bereavement. As I used it when I lost my lovely Dad – the man who inspired my love of…
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Online learning
The last 18 months have been tough on everyone, including our children. Each family had their own challenges: for mine, it was the UCAS personal statement as my son applied for university. No college meant no after-college activities. Closed shops meant no weekend jobs. Closed charities meant no volunteering. How could he stand out from…
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Windows 11 is announced
In 2015, Microsoft said that ‘Windows 10 is the last version of Windows’. The Verge explained, ‘While it immediately sounds like Microsoft is killing off Windows and not doing future versions, the reality is a little more complex. The future is “Windows as a service.” … Microsoft could opt for Windows 11 or Windows 12 in future,…
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How To …
I need to start with an update on my last article. Just hours after the newsletter it’s published in went to print, LastPass sent me an email telling me that the free version of their password manager would no longer work across multiple platforms. That left me having to decide whether to pay for the…
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I’ll Ecosia that
“I’ll Google that”. Like Hoover and Xerox, Google has become a verb in its own right. And there’s a reason for that: Google – unquestionably being the best search engine out there, makes use of powerful and intelligent algorithms … to let the users get the best out of a search engine with a personalized…
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Password managers
How do you deal with passwords? Do you use the same one for every account? [Please, please don’t do this!] Do you write them down in a notebook? [Better; two cross-referenced notebooks are better yet.] Do you reset the password each time you log in to an account? [That’s actually really safe, but such a…
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FreeRice
The presents have been opened. Christmas dinner is eaten. You’ve taken a walk along the Ridgeway or up Yew Hill. Now the night is drawing in, but you don’t want the day to end. An idea hits you. You install the Freerice app. You open it and see: You click “merry” (well, it is Christmas!)…
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Quick Assist
I get my love of technology from my Dad, a real technophile who, until Alzheimer’s made it difficult, was never happier than when trying out a new gadget or experimenting with a new app. My Mum, on the other hand, is discombobulated by it all. She’s fine doing familiar tasks on her laptop but gets…
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Copy Me That
When I started writing this in February, I thought it was quite niche. But when restaurants and pubs closed because of Covid-19, home cooking became the new eating out and it’s now surprisingly relevant. I’ve always been a keen cook and have a shelf of recipe books, a box full of recipes ripped from magazines…
