AI Generated Transcript
Speaker 1
Good morning, everybody. Nice to be with all of you this week. This is Larry Watkinson. I’m residing in Olympia, Washington, and we’ve got other panelists here today. We have Marcy. I want to go ahead and acknowledge Marcy. Marcy? Good morning, everyone. And I’d like to say good morning to Kayla. And actually, Marcy’s located down in the Dallas, Texas area. Good morning, Kayla.
Speaker 2
Good morning.
Speaker 1
And you’re located where?
Speaker 2
Peabody, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1
All right. So we’ve got everybody covered here. And I want to acknowledge Cindy and Lucy for being Lucy, our streamer, and Cindy is our host this morning. So a little strange opening today in the sense that I hadn’t got a chance to talk to Marcy. And as a facilitator today, we normally have a question. And so I actually have a question because in chat, which is on Friday and Saturday nights, we’ve been getting some feedback that people say, why do we ask a warm-up question at Ask Bits? And so the question I want to kind of ask the panel is this. Do you think a question gives value to Ask Bits? And that is going to be a question I have for you all today as we bring you in. So I want to kind of hit Kayla and say, what do you think? If questions add value to ask bits?
Speaker 2
I think the warm-up questions are good, especially if people don’t have questions to come with. It gets them to engage in some kind of conversation.
Speaker 1
And Marcy, what do you think?
Speaker 3
I absolutely agree. I think that when people don’t have tech questions, it’s a good way for us to get to know them. So I really do like the icebreaker questions.
Speaker 1
And we’ve talked about that in our organizing meetings a little bit because we’ve gotten some feedback in that area and we’ve talked about that. And so we kind of want to hear from you this morning and see what you think about the warm up question. And that really sucks. And so what Cindy’s going to do for us is going to be great as we bring folks on this morning. If she’s going to announce your name and then the person who’s going to follow you, if you get ready, because you’ll be the next person in. And Marcy is our grand facilitator extraordinaire. Have I missed anything before we start going directly to questions?
Speaker 3
Yes. Lucy is our host and Bell is our streamer. And thank you guys both for doing the jobs that you’re doing. We really appreciate you.
Speaker 1
Oh, I didn’t realize. I was told it was going to be Cindy this morning.
Speaker 3
It was supposed to be Cindy Laban, but she asked to change it like 30 minutes before the call.
Speaker 1
And I didn’t know that. So good morning, Belle. Good morning. Good morning, Lucy.
Speaker 4
Morning, Larry and everyone.
Speaker 1
All right. So what do you guys think about the warm-up question? I know we’re kind of breaking the rules here, but so we can get the voices warmed up here. Belle, what do you think? Is there value to the questions?
Speaker 4
Absolutely. I will echo what Kayla said.
Speaker 1
All right. And what do you think, Lucy?
Speaker 4
Oh, it’s always a good way to get to know people. If they don’t, you know, have any questions about the subject matter, then they can introduce themselves. Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1
All right. So what are the rules if I broke this morning, Marcy? Are we good to go with questions?
Speaker 3
We are good to go. I asked Lucy to give us the person coming up and the person following them. So we should be great.
Speaker 1
Awesome.
Speaker 3
I want to thank David and Cliff as well for substituting because we weren’t sure if you guys were going to make it. So I appreciate that very much.
Speaker 1
Are they here?
Speaker 3
Yes.
Speaker 1
Well, then they should answer the question themselves.
Speaker 5
This is David. I see value in the icebreaker question because not only does it fill empty space if needed, but it also puts some getting to know you questions about the person answering. So we get to know you guys a little bit better.
Speaker 1
All right. Okay. How about you, Cliff?
Speaker 6
Do you have a thought? I go everything that everybody else said. It just gives more personality to the call per se, or people that are regulars that come in, you get to know them a little better, get to know a little bit more behind what’s that person’s asking the question versus just a person showing up asking a question and leaving. So I think it does definitely give value.
Speaker 1
Wonderful. Glad to hear that from everybody. Now, you can have a different thought if you’d like to. Why don’t we go ahead and get ready to take our first call and first question?
Speaker 4
We have Pam Coffey followed by, oh, this is being weird, followed by Ann. Good morning, Pam.
Speaker 7
Good morning, Pam. Oh, yeah, I know what it’s like when technology is acting weird. But I love the idea of the icebreaker question because, well, for a lot of reasons, it gets us thinking, especially in the morning. And sometimes I may not have an actual tech question. I’m just listening in and learning stuff and what have you. So, yes, I love the idea of the icebreaker question.
Speaker 1
So do you have a tech question this morning, Pam?
Speaker 7
Not at the moment. I do not.
Speaker 1
So do you mind if I just say thank you and go to the next person so we can get as many questions in as we can. Pam, it’s good you heard you this morning. Well, go ahead and take the next one, please.
Speaker 4
All right. We’ve got Ann followed by Allison.
Speaker 1
Good morning, Ann.
Speaker 8
Actually, I called in because I need some help with something. But I think it’s good to have a question timed, you know, to give some ideas. if you have some you know if you want us to give you some ideas about something that’s I think that’s a good thing to kind of get the call going but you know for people who need help we don’t want to take too much time you know with an icebreaker question if people need help so Lynn let’s just jump to your tech question okay I don’t know why but I was having the schedule go to my phone and my computer and all of a sudden it has stopped going to my computer and I have not received the community schedule to my computer since Tuesday. Does anybody have any ideas?
Speaker 3
My question to you is it on the same email address for both devices? Yes. And are both devices set up as IMAP?
Speaker 8
I’m the most untechnical person in the world. I would never know the answer to that.
Speaker 3
Because IMAP takes an image. So if you do something with one of them on one device, it does the same thing on the other device.
Speaker 8
So my question to you is, do you ever help people with things like this offline, Marcy?
Speaker 3
Yes, we ask people to come into BitsChat and we break out into breakout rooms.
Speaker 8
Oh, no, no. I mean over the phone. I don’t mean typing back and forth. I can’t do that.
Speaker 1
Oh, no, no, no, no, ma’am. There’s not chat. So BITS, Blind Information Technology Solutions, on Friday nights and Saturday nights, actually, they call it chat, but it’s a Zoom meeting. And in those Zoom meetings, we have rooms where we take and help people, and we can remotely access your computer and assist you and look at things that are wrong. And so chat is not where you just simply type. It’s where you come in and we socialize in a Zoom room.
Speaker 8
I mean, do we actually talk to you?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 8
Oh. So how do I do that?
Speaker 1
Well, we can, why don’t you, can you send an email to ask at bits? Okay. And then what you want to do is write to ask at bits. And why don’t we reach out to you? But what we can do is we can get you that schedule. Blind Information Technology Solutions sends out a weekly schedule of our chats. David, do you want to talk a little bit about that? That’d be helpful.
Speaker 2
It’s ask at bits-ac as in Charlie, B as in boy, dot org.
Speaker 8
Oh. So I sent an email telling you that I would like some help or something? Yeah.
Speaker 5
Yeah, just tell us that you don’t help.
Speaker 8
And leave my phone number or what?
Speaker 1
Yeah, that works.
Speaker 5
We can reply with the chat link. You can come in like you come in on any other Zoom link, including this one. And then when we get the breakout rooms, we can move you over to the breakout room.
Speaker 8
So it sounds like you can’t help me on this call.
Speaker 1
No, because this is to get questions out on the ground. And if we can answer a simple question for you. Right. But you have an issue going on where you have conflict between your phone and your PC. And it’s going to take time. Like it’s going to take 15, 20 minutes maybe to help you out. And we just don’t have that capacity in this meeting.
Speaker 8
So you don’t know why it all of a sudden happened when it was working.
Speaker 1
The only way we can do that is to break it down, ma’am. And we just can’t. But I can guarantee you this. You know, you have Marcy here. You have Kayla here. You have David. You have Cliff. We have a whole army of folks who can help you, and they will help you solve that problem in a matter of 15, 20 minutes, and that’s the best way that we can support you.
Speaker 8
So I sent you an email telling you kind of what I need and my phone number, and then what? Do you call me or what?
Speaker 1
Yeah, we’ll call you and we’ll email you. We’ll send you a schedule. Yeah, we’ll reach out to you.
Speaker 8
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1
Why don’t you try that, and maybe right after this meeting, I bet you hear from somebody. and our next person.
Speaker 4
All right. Excuse me. We got Allison followed by Janine. Good morning, Allison.
Speaker 1
Allison, good morning.
Speaker 9
Good morning. Can you guys hear me?
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 9
Yeah. Okay. I think these icebreaker questions are very important because it gets people to engage with, get some curiosity as to what technology would they like to learn. And I also have a technology question for you guys, too. Go ahead. The Sparrow is doing a webinar on the new outlook on March 26th, and I’m wondering, because I’m still using the Outlook Classic, how do I upgrade to the new outlook, and when is a good time to upgrade to the new outlook? Because the Classic is not going to be obsolete for a while, right?
Speaker 1
Right. Marcy or Kayla, do you want to take that? Because I know you guys both work with the Outlook.
Speaker 2
So I’m going to let people know. So New Outlook does work for the most part. There are parts of it that are a little funky and still need some work on. But I’ve been telling people in Bits Chat, if you don’t start trying to use New Outlook and providing feedback to Microsoft, the product is not going to get better. So we suggest if people are able to and have the time to learn new Outlook and start using it and providing feedback, that is like the best thing you can possibly do. So by the time classic Outlook is no longer available, new Outlook will hopefully be very similar to what old Outlook used to be or maybe even better. but to get new outlook usually new outlook comes with the microsoft office suite so there should be a way you can easily and marcy correct me if i’m wrong there should be a way you can either go into outlook classic and go to i think it’s file and then you go down to info and you can switch over to New Outlook. That is true. Okay, thank you. Another thing is the New Outlook is a part
Speaker 3
of Windows 11. It doesn’t even have to be a part of Office 365. If you have Windows 11, you have
Speaker 2
the New Outlook already available to you. Yeah, which you can get to through going to your start menu and you can search for new outlook and it should pop up as new outlook app um
Speaker 3
setting up an email an account on the new outlook should not be hard all you need is your email
Speaker 1
address and password now you guys i have gotten access to the new outlook by going up to the help menu and there was a switch there to switch between the new outlook and the classic outlook is that is that another way of approaching it or is it better going the way you guys are talking about
Speaker 3
it is and when it’s a part of office 365 you can have your choice of using the classic or the new
Speaker 1
just as just as kayla said okay any other thoughts to help our friend here and does that answer it for you at this point and if you need help you too can write to ask at bits It’s dash ACV.org. Next caller, please.
Speaker 4
All right. We have Janine followed by Angel.
Speaker 1
Good morning, Janine.
Speaker 10
Good morning, everyone. Icebreaker question? I could give or take it. It doesn’t really matter to me. As far as the tech question I have this morning, And yes, I have already emailed bits and haven’t received a response.
Speaker 1
Shame on us.
Speaker 10
But while on Facebook, on my iPhone, I come across photographs or photos that people have posted that voiceover doesn’t really give a good description. I mean, you could have somebody in a suit and they’ll tell you that the person’s wearing a mask. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. What options do I have to get better descriptions of photos?
Speaker 1
Who wants to take that?
Speaker 10
I found a workaround with my metaglasses, but they’re not always handy. And I’m hoping there’s something within the phone that I can manipulate for better descriptions.
Speaker 1
Does anyone’s recognition work on that, Kayla, or anybody?
Speaker 3
I was just thinking. The Be My Eyes app has a feature called Be My AI. Right. If you run a photo through Be My AI, you often get a lot better descriptions than you would from voiceover on the Facebook. But this would mean saving the photo. And I don’t want to do that. Yeah, that’s the only thing.
Speaker 10
Especially from Facebook, I don’t want to do that.
Speaker 6
She can also go into accessibility, voiceover, and go all the way down where it says voiceover recognition. in there there is a feature called image recognition and then you can go to the rotor and put that and activate and put that on the rotor so when you need a photo recognized or described you can turn your run to image record or image description and it will describe the photo
Speaker 10
for you oh cool i have i didn’t know about that and i will try that yeah i i’ve used that i have
Speaker 1
that in my rotor and that’s what i was thinking about image right now i just wasn’t sure i’ve never tried it on Facebook, I guess. So let me ask you real quickly, too. You wrote to Ask Bits, and we hadn’t responded. Was this the same question, or did you have a different question?
Speaker 10
It was the same question.
Speaker 1
Okay. So I would be interested in knowing if it works for you. Can you do that? And if so, come back and raise your hand before the end of the session, or if one of our other folks out there in the virtual land have success with that. I hope you’ll raise your hand and come in and let us know.
Speaker 10
Okay.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. Take the next question, and we appreciate you coming in.
Speaker 4
All right. We got Angel followed by Lynn.
Speaker 11
Good morning, Angel. Yesterday I was in the blind tech call, and Dethel will try her best to ask this question, but let me see if I can ask this. And yes, I do love the icebreaker questions. Now, my question I want to ask not only to all of you panelists, but anyone that is either here in Zoom or here in Zoom. And the question is, on a PC, when I just checked out the ACB Community Podcast, and if I need to rewind it, jump ahead, or if I need to start the podcast over, what buttons should I press on my keyboard? So that way I don’t have to use the mouse because I don’t know how to use the mouse on my PC. I can only use the keyboard, which is the arrow key, and I can hit enter, and I can use it to go on Zoom. I can hit Alt-Y to raise my hand, Alt-A to mute and unmute. What do you think I should do when I listen to a podcast, like the ACB Community Podcast link? Like, I already know how to activate it, but I just need to know, like, how should I rewind it? How should I fast forward to it? What do you think I should do?
Speaker 3
I’m playing an ACB Media podcast right now to see how I can fast forward and rewind it. I think it’s a slider that lets you determine the position of the podcast.
Speaker 6
I was just about to ask how is he listening to the podcast?
Speaker 3
What website is he using? So he clicked on an email link that took him to ACB Media. Let me explain.
Speaker 11
In the ACB Community Daily schedule, right? Your JAWS, I use JAWS, and it says, link to subscribe to podcast. I hit enter. then I usually go down the arrow keys and I usually wait until I hit the play button and then I hit enter and I will hit the use the arrow keys to navigate to the pause and then I just go to the next podcast so I just need to know what buttons are my keyboard so I press to rewind to jump ahead and to fast forward anybody in the panelists and in the audience
Speaker 3
that has a pc I will have an answer for you I’m going to play a podcast and see how I can
Speaker 6
That’s why I was asking what website is it taking them to? It’s the ACB’s website, ACB Media.
Speaker 3
ACB Media.org. Click on the link that says podcasts, and then we can search for podcasts. So any podcast.
Speaker 6
Okay. Because I know in my experience, I’ve been able to use the JKL to fast forward, rewind, and pause. Michael Babcock, if he’s around, might have a better answer to.
Speaker 1
He is in the audience.
Speaker 4
Yeah, just a minute. Let me allow him to talk.
Speaker 6
Make him do some work today.
Speaker 4
Oh.
Speaker 1
Oh. I don’t want to, I normally will not take advantage of people who are off, who do. Oh, I know. I’m just teasing. Just like with Marcy and with Liz, you know, we don’t expect them to work when they’re not
Speaker 4
working, but Michael.
Speaker 12
So Angel, this is a very good question that we don’t have an actual solution for, but I am going to investigate how we can solve this because I was doing what Marcy is doing and playing a podcast. And like Cliff mentioned, in other web players, you can use J and L to jump back and forward and K to play and pause. But unfortunately, that does not work with this specific player. And so let us do some investigation and see what we can do about solving this. But right now, there really isn’t a good solution unless you’re downloading the podcast to a different app, which does take a little bit more work. but yeah look right now we don’t have a solution but we will investigate this for you
Speaker 1
so you would need to do angels you’d need to download the podcast to to your downloads and then what you would have to do is use a different podcast application then you would have to go open that download with that application on your download folders in order to um in order to listen to it. That would be a workaround. Whoa. I did not know that.
Speaker 11
I did not know that. But I don’t know how to do all that yet. But this could be good not just for me but for anybody that’s using a PC.
Speaker 12
I 100% agree with you, Angel. So thank you for bringing it up. I will work on this over the next couple weeks. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but we will investigate how we can fix this experience for everyone.
Speaker 1
And what will happen is with Michael and Cindy’s daily schedule, when they have a solution for that, I’m sure that that will be featured on their daily schedule. So watch for that solution to be brought to you, and we’ll take the next caller, please.
Speaker 4
All right. We have Lynn followed by John. Good morning, Lynn.
Speaker 13
Good morning.
Speaker 4
Good morning.
Speaker 13
Yes, I like the icebreaker question. It’s kind of fun and gives some pep to the call and get some, you know, you can, like you were saying, get to know people a little better. All right. So my question is, a few months ago, I purchased, and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of this brand, but I purchased a card reader that was a Benfei, B-E-N-F-E-I. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that. and it was supposed to be compatible with Mac and with the iPhone and with PC and I can it’s a USB-A and I can use it on the PC but the Mac doesn’t see it now the difference between my Mac and the and my PC is that my Mac I have to use an adapter to get a USB-A so I didn’t know if that was the issue. Wondered if anybody knew about that.
Speaker 1
Cliff is our expert on Apple interface. And Cliff, do you have a good answer for that?
Speaker 6
Larry, I never thought I’d hear you use my name and the word expert in the same sentence. But, uh… You know what? I’ve only had one cup of coffee this morning, Cliff. Oh, that’s awesome. But my question is, what format is the SD card that you have in this card reader because that’s going to play a good huge factor in.
Speaker 13
Yes, it should. So it’s a FAT32. I’m using it for an Orbit reader. I have to update it.
Speaker 9
So it’s for a FAT32.
Speaker 13
Does Mac not read FAT32? It does not. Oh, I did not realize that. How stupid of me. Okay. Well, that’s why then. I apologize.
Speaker 1
Well, that’s not stupid of you, ma’am. You know, this is why we’re here.
Speaker 6
It may not show up right away. Sorry, Larry. It may not show up right away in the computer section, but if you go to utilities with command shift U and go down to disk utility and VL space bar on that, you may be able to find it in that list with that 32, but it’s not going to show up initially in the computer section.
Speaker 13
But I won’t be able to read it that way, will I?
Speaker 6
It’s possible, but I can’t promise you.
Speaker 13
okay um all right so fat 32 is but that’s funny because the well i’m getting into a whole different thing and i’ll just be really quick but the orbit reader is a braille display and they say you’re supposed to be able to update it on your mac and you wouldn’t be able to do that if you didn’t we couldn’t read frat 32 that’s very strange okay do you have maybe uh like i said it’s it’s a hit
Speaker 6
or miss because i there was an article that came out a couple of years ago that said it was supposed to but i’ve never gotten fat 32 to be able to be seen on my mac so i just don’t have to deal with it no more but if you try a different usba port maybe that make a difference too i’m not sure how what is your mac model it’s a mac mini is it m4 or oh yes m4 okay okay just making sure it wasn’t larry’s thing in the last year okay all right that that should make a difference to me because you have an M4, that’s quite up to date. So, yeah, I tried on the USB-A port, or USB-C port, I should say, other than that, but, yeah, that doesn’t make any sense. Or call Orbit. I mean, maybe they have a solution.
Speaker 13
Great, okay.
Speaker 1
And I’m just wondering, though, do you have the adapter? Do you have the adapter or do you not?
Speaker 13
I do. I do have it, and it’s, you know, I have it. You mean the adapter for the USB? Yeah, to make it. Yeah, yeah, I have it. And I have a PC also, so that’s how I’m doing it. But I just thought it was kind of strange because I thought I should be able to see it. So anyway, but that explains it, I guess. Thank you so much for your help.
Speaker 1
This fat thing, this Fat 32, I guess you could put it on a diet and try a Fat 16. That’s me.
Speaker 13
That’s me who has to do that.
Speaker 1
So anyhow, let’s take the next caller.
Speaker 13
Thank you.
Speaker 5
What’s that, David? I just did a quick search, and it does say that Max should be able to read FAT32 natively, although I have not had an experience, and I don’t always trust what I get on a Google search. All righty. I haven’t verified it.
Speaker 1
Hey, if you have a further problem, write in, and we’ll see what we can do. Maybe we can, you know, walk you through the process and maybe have one of our folks try it on our end and see what we can do to solve it for you or call Orbit. So let’s take the next person, please.
Speaker 4
Okay, we’ve got John followed by Carla.
Speaker 1
Hey, good morning, John.
Speaker 14
Hey, can you guys hear me? Yeah, how can we ruin your day? I mean, make your day. Yeah, you can ruin my day. It’s okay. First of all, I like the question. I do because it makes you think, and it’s something maybe you had in mind, and now all of a sudden we’re discussing it. My question today is AI, in that I have a Windows 11 machine, and I’ve got about 10,000 lists of music. and a couple weeks ago I could get the computer to, I could search for a song and it would come up and it would show me where it was. Now all of a sudden it decides it can’t find anything. I mean, like Etta James, for example. There’s a lot of James in my folder. Etta James, James Brown, James Hold the Ladder, same by Sue Tonkins. Oh yeah, we got a lot of James. It can find nothing. And I tried with other names and it says nothing. I don’t know what Microsoft did, but this AI isn’t exactly that smart as far as I’m concerned. Any suggestions or ideas?
Speaker 3
Are you talking about… Yeah, how are you doing your search?
Speaker 14
Control F, and then I also have used F for three, and it comes up with a search. It’s AI, we can find whatever it is you’re looking for, type it in, and hit enter.
Speaker 3
Okay, so are you searching in File Explorer or in for those particular, like, Because it’s Control-E for search.
Speaker 14
Okay, I’ll try that. I’m in the list of songs, by the way. Right, right. And so I never didn’t know about Control-E, so I can try that. But if I do Control-F or F3, the function keys, it worked for me before.
Speaker 3
Yes, it’s Control-E or F3. Those are the things that – so Control-F is the JAWS find command, which will let you find something. But if you’re looking for specific files with specific names in Windows, if you do Control-E and then type James, it should bring up all those files.
Speaker 14
Yeah, James Brown, bring up a whole bunch of folks. All right, I’ll try that. Thank you very much for that. See, I learned something today. What do you know?
Speaker 1
You know, and we changed it from being artificially intelligent to AI. We’re changing that to be accessibility inclusion. Anyhow, our next person.
Speaker 4
Okay, I’m going to ask Michael to speak first before you, Carla. Sorry, Carla.
Speaker 12
I just wanted to give some follow-up to Angel because I did solve the problem for him. See, I said it wouldn’t be a couple of weeks, but it was only a couple of minutes. So, Angel, this is a little bit of a process, but I’m going to describe this, and it is consistently working. If you down arrow to the play button and you press enter on the play button, your audio will start playing. Press tab once and you’ll get into an audio adjuster. And if you press enter, you’ll hear a little pop sound because that’ll put you into forms mode. And then you have a couple of ways to fast forward. If you tap your right arrow key, that will fast forward. If you tap your up arrow key, that will fast forward. And if you tap your page up, that will tap forward. So what you’re looking for, again, is once you find the play and you’re playing it, if you tab once, you’ll hear audio time scrubber. Press enter on that. And then you can adjust the audio with, again, your up arrow, page up, or right arrow to go forward, or down arrow, page down, or left arrow to go back. So hopefully that helps you, Angel. And if you have problems, you know how to reach me.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Michael. All right.
Speaker 6
Yes, thank you, Michael. One more thing before we go to the next person. I forgot her name. I think it was Lynn. For the FAT32 format, Google also says that that is for smaller formats. So I don’t know if the files are bigger. It says if it’s bigger than four gigabytes, they use XFAT. X-F-A-T, because that’s designed for larger file types. That may be another format you could use because both Mac and PC can read that. All right.
Speaker 1
You bet, Cliff. And let’s take our next caller.
Speaker 4
Okay, Carla, followed by Eric W. Good morning, Carla.
Speaker 1
Good morning, Carla.
Speaker 15
Good morning. Good morning. And I do not want you to get rid of those icebreaker questions. They jazz up the calls. I’m voting. I’m weighing in. They jazz up the calls, and you learn so much from them, and they make you think. I’m a dumb cop that needs to learn everything I can. But anyhow, speaking of which, I have been getting lots of opinions on this question, and I don’t know if you can help or not. But, okay, there is probably, I’ve been saying this for months, but I think I see a new computer on the horizon. It’s going to be, Voc Rehab is making it for me, but it’s going to be Windows 11 probably. And I don’t know if they’ll put 365 or Office 24 on it. I don’t know what they’re going to do. But anyhow, the story is I’m afraid that it’s going to go to IMAP. Okay. And so I have this Windows 10 computer here that I would like to use as a backup. Because as you know, when you have a business, you don’t want to be without a computer. I’ve been there, done that, and it’s no good. So my question is, let’s say he walks in tomorrow with this computer, sets everything up on my system. Will I still be able to use my present computer as it is? Or will something bad happen when I go to get my email if the new one is on IMAP and the old one is not?
Speaker 1
So is your old one on a POP3 server? It is. So the short answer is, if you were to go out and reconfigure with some other servers, it may force you into IMAP. But if it’s working on a POP3 on your existing laptop, that will continue to download files. However, if you delete a IMAP file before you turn that other computer on, that file will not be there or that download will not be there, you know, the email itself. But if you have the POP3 machine running simultaneously, it should continue to download until such time as you’re forced to go to IMAP. POP3 is really antiquated as a resource, and a lot of the servers are forcing IMAP to be. I have a Windows 10 machine that continued to work just fine with POP3. it’s still an option but on for instance um you uh depending on where you go and who you’re getting mail from it could change at some point just so you’re aware anybody else have a question
Speaker 3
or response yes so carla larry gave you the key i mean it’s who the email is coming from if they allow pop and imap to happen then it can happen on your older computer and new one also but a lot of email providers or a lot of ISPs, internet providers are moving to the IMAP. And I’m sorry, Kayla, go ahead, please. I had a thought.
Speaker 2
So what type of emails do you have, Carla? Are they like Gmail? Are they Comcast? Are they Yahoo? Because that will make a difference as well when setting up emails. Like for Gmail, for example, People were using IMAP, and I’m noticing on our technology list for bits that a lot of people are having issues with Gmail sticking in their classic outlook. And it’s because they’re using IMAP. Google has become very, very strict with their security and have made it so you now have to set up Google email accounts with Google rather than with IMAP, which still syncs it. you know like IMAP it’s just through the Google server rather than through the IMAP server so that’s why I just wanted to see what type of email accounts you may have.
Speaker 15
I have a mess okay what’s happening is I have Verizon for my primary email that I go through Outlook and I have the classic Outlook and unfortunately Verizon has shepherded off their to AOL, which is a disaster. And so that’s what I have. And I have Verizon Fios. But for another day, I’m not even, this is a big can of worms. I’m going to have to probably contact you guys about this. I have two Gmail accounts that don’t work very well. And I don’t use them very much. And I should, but they’re a mess. Okay. But I just am concerned about the primary, you know, the outlook app that is or it’s at verizon.net okay that’s what my isp is for this so david has
Speaker 1
a real quick thought here and i want to get his thought and carla i think you need to write in when you get this new computer and i think you know maybe we’re gonna have to help you because uh so i want to make sure we get through all the calls today yeah and i know and i and the reason
Speaker 15
i i’m gonna have to need some hand holding because the reason i don’t want to go to imap is all my devices have to be switched over too.
Speaker 1
Well, you know where we’re at. I do. Yep. So, David, your thought, and then I want to get the next caller because I want to make sure we get everybody in today.
Speaker 5
Just to be clear, Windows 10 is on extended support. If you haven’t enrolled in that, that’d be very good to do, and we’ve got it until October. But you can run IMAP and POP3 at the same time with one big caution, and that is that the new computer, if it’s on IMAP, will work just fine. And so will the old computer. Until you connect to the POP3, it’ll download all the messages and either mark them as read or move them off the server so that when you go look at the new computer with IMAP, it’ll either show them all read or the messages will be off on that one computer by itself. IMAP and POP3 have been around for decades. IMAP was back when we had Pine, for those that remember it. But anyway, the point is that I think it’s a good idea where possible to switch to IMAP so that all the devices can be synced. And Google and Microsoft have enhanced the IMAP protocol with the exchange protocol for Microsoft and whatnot. So they’re still using a form of IMAP.
Speaker 1
And we’re getting pretty deep here. So rather than having someone drown here with the floodwaters, let’s go ahead and take the next call. And Carla, you’re welcome to reach out to us and we can assist you. And even setting that up, you may have the rehab agency not set you up with that part and maybe have us give you a hand if that works or something like that. So it sounds like we have some work to do there. Let’s take our next call.
Speaker 4
Okay, Eric, followed by Miriam.
Speaker 1
Good morning, Eric.
Speaker 16
Hey, Larry, how are you doing? Good. And the panel? Huh? Go ahead. Yeah, no, I was going to say, is there an icebreaker question today?
Speaker 1
No, the icebreaker question is, do you like having icebreaker questions?
Speaker 16
Yeah, I do. All right. Actually, I think we should keep them. Yeah, good.
Speaker 1
What’s your 10 question, my friend?
Speaker 16
Yeah, so I have a Windows 10 Bootcamp Mac, and I use Thunderbird with it.
Speaker 7
Okay.
Speaker 16
And, of course, I’m signing to my Gmail. So is there a good extension to sync contacts that’s accessible? Because I’ve heard of Cardbook, and I forget which other ones they said.
Speaker 1
I do know that there’s a thunder and lightning. The lightning is an add-on for me. A class coming up that’s going to be offered by John Carson. I think it’s the 24th that you’ve got to register for. So why don’t we throw this question into the panel? Can anybody answer his question?
Speaker 16
Actually, I did sign up for that class.
Speaker 3
Eric, are you wanting to sync your Google contacts with your Thunderbird? Or which contacts are we wanting to sync? Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Google with Thunderbird? Yeah, I think it’s a great question for the presentation. I saw that happen today or recently with Google Contacts synced to Thunderbird with a special file that was used. And then the address book is totally synchronized. So, yes, it can happen.
Speaker 1
Okay. And if you want, Eric, so the panel knows that, if you write to the Ask Bits email with that question, I’ll make sure that John Carson has that question when he’s doing this. Because that’s going to be a very popular class. And there will be lots of questions. And so we’ll make sure that John Carson has that question.
Speaker 16
So it’s askbits.acb.org?
Speaker 3
It’s ask at bits-acb.org.
Speaker 16
So ask at sign or A-T?
Speaker 3
At sign. Ask at bits-acb.org.
Speaker 5
Okay. And if you haven’t seen the registration link for the class, we’ll shoot that right back to you.
Speaker 16
Yeah, actually, I saw. So I think I’m good on that part.
Speaker 6
And Eric, I got, you know, I know you saw. This is in good fun. If you were using Apple Mail on a Mac, you’d have to worry about them contacts. I know that’s right. Yeah.
Speaker 3
That is true, but then I’m trying different things.
Speaker 6
You know what I’m saying? I know. I know.
Speaker 3
I saw it get done. 108 contacts are synced between Google and Thunderbird. Oh, there you go. It can happen.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And, of course, Cliff was our inside sales rep for Apple. Oh, yeah. Me, too. Me, too. But he doesn’t offer us any discounts. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Eric. We’re going to take the next call inside that. Let’s take the next call, please.
Speaker 4
Okay. We got Miriam followed by Carla.
Speaker 1
Miriam, good morning.
Speaker 17
Good morning. So you guys are so efficient that you just answered my question. I have a very complicated email Microsoft 365 question, and I was going to ask for the full AskBits email address. So thank you.
Speaker 1
Well, awesome, Miriam, and we thank you.
Speaker 3
How do you feel about those icebreakers, Miriam? Yes or no? Yes, definitely. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1
All right. Thank you. And how many hands do we have? I want to make sure we get to everybody. Great.
Speaker 4
And they’re both repeats.
Speaker 1
All right. Carla, you’re back.
Speaker 4
Carla, followed by Angel.
Speaker 15
Okay.
Speaker 1
Carla, you’re back.
Speaker 15
Quick question about the A-L-E-X-A Plus and Regular. The Plus was not getting things like some of the OnePlace.com player and playing some things. So I switched back and it’s doing better. My question is, can you continuously switch back and forth? And if you do, will plus forget all the settings that you had when you switched out?
Speaker 1
It has been my experience that it remembers. But I think it’s going to depend on some of the updates that they’re doing. So down at CSUN, and I did not get a chance. So there are some barriers to interviewing some folks with Amazon on those specifics. What I was told is that they’re aware that Alexa’s new improvements has some challenges and that they’re, by use of individuals, they’re getting those mismatches of questions. And they actually are working vigorously to raise the intelligence of the new Alexa voices. And so I think it’s going to be that they’re pushing updates out regularly on that product, on that particular piece. And so I think anytime you do an update of technology, and if there’s a resident memory of something, you run some risk of not having it there because part of it becomes virtualized and part of it is it’s being housed on their side of the house. And so I would not necessarily invest in having something of value there that you may need to go back and recover. Does that make sense? And I want to check with the panel to see your thoughts.
Speaker 15
It makes sense. But is switching back and forth okay? And is it bad to do? And is the old one eventually going to go away completely or not?
Speaker 1
They have not announced an extinction of the old. but it’s like Windows 7, Windows 95, Windows. I think eventually their goal would be to have Alexa new. But I also will tell you there is going to always be a free version, and so will that be Alexa old or will that be Alexa new scaled down? Because the rumors have it, this is not factual, that depending on what prime level you have prime membership versus non-prime membership as to what level of access you’re going to have to some of that Alexa AI intelligence. And that’s been published in publications. And so I think that they’re developing where they’re going to go with it. And I think there’s some things that they have not rolled out to us. And they’re also rolling that out in the United States first and starting to move some of that to other countries where they’re allowed to use the AI technology. Because like in Europe, there’s a certain level of AI that’s just not allowed to be done. And I don’t know a lot of detail on it, if that makes sense. Any other panelists, members, thoughts, responses, or experiences on going back and forth between the two?
Speaker 3
I would say have a conversation with Amazon Accessibility, the people who actually make Alexa, and find out where they stand. And their number is 888-283-1678. Because I went with Alexa Plus and I never went back. So I can’t answer the question of can you go back and forth. I mean, I’m sure you can, but will Plus remember what you said or what you did? I don’t know. So have a conversation with Amazon Accessibility.
Speaker 1
On that part, yeah. I have switched back and forth just to test it. And it’s seamless going back and forth.
Speaker 3
Yeah, switching back and forth, no problem. But like, has it remembered your alarms or, you know, things like that that you’ve set on? Okay, you’ve got 10 minutes. Yeah.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Lucy.
Speaker 4
Okay. And I’m going to take someone who has not spoken yet.
Speaker 1
Absolutely.
Speaker 4
So let’s do Stacey. Hey, Stacey.
Speaker 18
I was wondering, when do you do Ask Bits and when do you do tech support at Bits?
Speaker 1
Well, tech support. I’m confused. So I would just suggest to you, Stacey, most of the questions that you usually come in with, I would honestly tell you that Ask Bits is probably a good starting point for you, knowing kind of a lot of times the questions you have. The whole idea about support at BITS, and that’s what you’re talking about, support at BITS, that’s if you’re having a specific issue with the website of BITS or you are needing to deal with like when you get into the BITS website and you’re trying to get into membership and other things. But Stacey, we have some history with you of some of the needs you have. And I would suggest to you the best option you have that would meet your needs typically would be to go ahead and write in to ask BITS. Because there’s a larger group of folks who are monitoring that email on the support at BITS. That’s Kayla, I, Michael Babcock, and Jeff. Typically, it’s the four of us and ChiroLine. So there’s five of us who are monitoring that. And then the ASCAP bits, I think, how many people do you have really monitoring that now, Marcy?
Speaker 3
Ten.
Speaker 1
Ten. So I think your best route is just ASCAP bits. And if it needs to come over to support, they can move that over very, very quickly and bring that to our attention. Does that answer your question?
Speaker 18
Yeah, and I’m going to try to get the chat GPT, I think. I’m going to get it at, because I’m about ready to get that. Okay. I don’t know. I’m going to try downloading all that stuff again, because I’m thinking maybe it got updated or something. Okay. I don’t know. All that stuff I downloaded before, I’m not sure I can play it. I still can’t play it. Okay.
Speaker 1
Well, maybe right into Ask At Vits and maybe we can get you paired up with somebody who can give you a hand getting that downloaded and restarted again. I’m going to take the next caller. And thank you, Stacey. Nice to hear you this morning.
Speaker 4
We got Janine.
Speaker 1
Okay, Janine. Go ahead.
Speaker 4
And then Angel.
Speaker 1
Okay.
Speaker 10
I don’t think I’m mute. I think I’m still muted. Okay, go ahead. You’re good. We hear you. Excellent. Okay. No, I was just playing around with my phone as suggested with the images. And my rotor hasn’t changed. So I want to clarify, it’s under accessibility and then voiceover? Or is it just under? Yes. Okay.
Speaker 3
Let Cliff tell her because I don’t think so.
Speaker 6
She’s right. But you got to go in once you have activated because there’s a, I don’t know what to say. It’s like files or something, a database per se that it has to download to recognize the images and describe them. But once it’s activated, you have to go to your rotor section of voiceover and select the checkbox or radio button to make sure that it’s on your rotor.
Speaker 10
That’s something I did because I wasn’t able to do that, but I found that. And I’ve rebooted my phone and it’s still not showing up on my rotor.
Speaker 6
Okay, I’ll take another look at it and then reach out to AskBits. I’m on that team.
Speaker 10
Okay.
Speaker 6
And I will get back to you once you respond to it or send that email and let you know what I find.
Speaker 10
Okay.
Speaker 6
I’ll be right with it, too. I’m about to say, who knows? It could have changed with the last update. You know, Apple, Microsoft, they’re always changing. They always change something. They must be taking notes from Zoom, always updating stuff. Amen to that.
Speaker 1
All right. We will take Angel’s call. But, Angel, you need to be brief because it’s time for us to be starting to wrap things up.
Speaker 11
Yes, I will be brief. I will be brief. Okay. So I want to thank Michael for answering the previous question. And as a segue to my last, the last question is when I, when I, once I hit the tab once, right, and then I go to the arrow keys to find out, okay, fast forward and all that. If I need to basically pause and then how should I find my way back to where I need to go to the next podcast? What should I do?
Speaker 12
So your question, Angel, is what do you do after you make the adjustments if you need to go back?
Speaker 11
Is that correct? If I need to go to the next podcast, like how should I exit that podcast and episode and then go back to the next podcast episode?
Speaker 12
Oh, well, Marcy’s going to tell me I’m wrong because Marcy has other ways of doing this. But what I use is alt-left arrow to go back. Is that what you use, Marcy? That’s what I use.
Speaker 3
Okay. That’s what I use too.
Speaker 12
Okay, good. So, Angela, I would use alt-left arrow. Alt-left arrow. And that’ll take you back to the list. And then you can go back into the next episode if you want to arrow down to go to the next episode. So, hopefully that helps you there. And feel free to practice it. You’re not going to break anything. So, there’s no harm in trying things out. And then before you wrap it up, Larry, I just want to remind people, If ask at bits-acb.org is difficult to remember or you’re not able to type it in or things don’t work, remember, it’s also under the description of the call in the community event schedule for the weekend.
Speaker 1
Wonderful. I really appreciate that. So I want to go around, do a round robin with the panelists. Anything, last words you have before we wrap it up? Marcy, the head of our group here.
Speaker 3
Thank you for being here today and invite you to the next Ask Bits call on the first Saturday of the month.
Speaker 1
And Marcy’s been a great leader for us, by the way, on this, really trying to listen to our members and say that. And we thank you, Marcy. How about you, Kayla?
Speaker 2
I want to thank everybody for coming today. And hopefully we’re able to answer most people’s questions. And we look forward to helping you through Ask Bits and Support Bits.
Speaker 1
And David.
Speaker 5
I just thank everybody for coming and see you the next time. And maybe we’ll see you in chat this evening.
Speaker 1
There you go. Chat. And how can they access chat?
Speaker 5
Just send an email to ask at bits dash ACB.org. Watch for the announce emails that come out on the announce lists, such as ACB conversations or our own announce lists. And I think it’s on the website. All right.
Speaker 6
Cliff. No, not me. everybody I echo what everybody else said chat on Friday and Saturday nights and when David decides to throw one out on Sunday and make me the host no I’m joking but then that’s the best place to get support I mean we can we can answer what I like to call drive-by questions here but in ask bits we can you know and or not ask this but at the chat we can take you into a breakout room take 10 15 maybe 20 minutes if we need to to answer your questions so that’s the best place to get
Speaker 1
supporters come to chat. And I want to take the time to thank Lucy and I like to thank Belle. We would not be doing this without their wonderful help and I’d love to work with both of them and I want to thank you for giving us your time this morning and at that I want to say thank you to all of our participants. Those of you who have asked questions and those of you who just been silent, you’re just as valuable as well. So with that, we sign off for this week, and we’ll see you the next time. And thank you so very much.