So you can all get the dates in your diaries for next year nice and early, here are the 2015 LCC meeting dates;

28th March - AGM
13th June - Summer
12th Sept - Autumn
28th November - Xmas

Plenty of us have bought (or won) iPads so I thought I'd put some tips here to help you get the most out of them.

Access your running apps
Double clicking the home button shows you all the apps that are currently running on your iPad. You can swipe left or right to navigate through these apps.  Tap on any one to switch to that app or swipe upwards to close it.

Quick controls
Swipe up from the very bottom of the screen and you will open the control centre. From here you can quickly switch on and off airplane mode, bluetooth, wifi, do not disturb and orientation lock. Control the brightness of the screen and the iPod app. Use the torch, camera, timer and calculator.

Open new Safari tabs
To open links in a new tab, just press and hold the link and a menu will pop up allowing you to open in the same or a new tab.

Gestures
Use 4 fingers to swipe left or right to cycle through your open apps.  Use a grabbing motion to go back to the home page (same effect as pressing the home button)

Tell Siri your relationships
Hold the home button to activate Siri, then say Joe Bloggs is my husband. From then on you can say to Siri things like 'Text my husband' and it will know who to contact.

Custom vibrations
Want to know who's calling without taking your phone out of your pocket? Set up a custom vibration - go to contacts, find the one you want and edit.  Scroll down until you find the vibration field and tap the arrow to change it or set up a new one.

Highlighting text
I'm sure you all know to tap a word to highlight it for copying, but did you know if you tap with two fingers it will highlight either the whole line or paragraph instead.

Screenshot
Press and hold the sleep/wake button on the top of the iPad and the Home button at the same time.

Fast charge
Put your device into airplane mode and it will charge much quicker

Turn off in-app purchases
Kids use your iPad? Go to settings, general, restrictions and scroll down to disable in-app purchases.


Note: Most of these tips work on the iPhone too

If you have any useful tips you'd like to share, please post them in the comments.

Further to the discussion that was started on the email group, I thought I'd post some thoughts here about spam emails and scams so you can all let each other know your methods for dealing with it.

Scams:
These are usually fairly easy to spot, here are a few rules I apply to check whether an email is legit or not.
1. It's not addressed to you personally ie. it starts 'dear customer' or 'dear client'
2. Bad spelling and/or grammar
3. Promises of large amounts of money or expensive prizes
4. Asks for money
5. Has an attachment
6. From a company you don't deal with
7. Asks you to verify your account by using a link to log in
8. Hovering over email links show they don't go to the correct place or are spelt worng
9. A friend sends a weird link without explanation

Now this list is not exhaustive, but to be honest dodgy emails are usually easy to spot.  Never reply or unsubscribe from them as you just confirm that your email address is active.  If you're not sure and the email asks you to click on a link, go to the website directly instead (or via google) so you can be sure you are on the legitimate site.

Getting your email password hacked is something that has happened to many of us and the first we know of it is someone asking if we sent them a dodgy looking link! If you think your email has been compromised change your password asap (see my previous blog post on creating secure passwords) and email your contacts asking them to ignore dodgy emails from you.

I have a bogus contact in my contacts list that will fail if anyone sends an email to it.  That way if my account gets hacked and they send emails to all my contacts (which is the usual MO) I will see a bounceback message and know my account was compromised almost straight away.


Spam:
Spam is an unfortunate side effect of comping online, most sites ask us to register or sign up to their newsletter and so we get many, many emails every day.  Here's how I deal with it.

I have a separate email accounts for different things. I have a personal account that everything important goes to, a LCC account for club use only, a comping account that I sign up to sites with and a everything else account.  Now this may sound complicated to deal with, but in the days of tablets and smartphones I can see all my accounts in one place.

I set up filters to deal with the most usual spam, looking for words such as; casino, loan, payday, etc and these go straight to the trash folder.  Other emails I mark as spam and then they go into the spam folder for me to check and delete at a later date.

Occasionally I will go through my emails and unsubscribe from some that don't often have comps or that are just sent too often.  You can do this manually or there are sites such as unroll.me which will unsubscribe for you and roll up any remaining emails into one digest type email.

However, on the plus side some of these emails have extra 'hidden' comps in th


Please add your methods of dealing with spam and scams in the comments.

Here's the promised blog post about how to edit the magazine (or any other) Yahoo! database.

1. Follow the previous instruction to get to the database page of the Yahoo! groups site.

2. Click on the Edit Table button (see Figure 1).  NB: There is no point searching first because when you click this button it 'helpfully' reloads the page.

3. Use the search box to find the row you want, if you are adding a new row you do not need to search first.  Refer to my previous blog post on searching for help.

4. When you mouse over the row you will see a trash can and a plus sign in the last column.  I can't show a picture of this as they disappear when you move the mouse from them.

5. To delete a row from the database, click on the trash can icon for that row.  You will then see a confirmation window (see Figure 2).  At this point you can press the Delete Record button to confirm or the Cancel button if you clicked in error. 

6. To add a row to the database, click on the plus sign icon for any row.  You will then see a blank row where you can type into each box (see Figure 3).

7. To edit a row, just type over the details that are already there.

8. Once you have deleted, added or edited a row you MUST click the Save button or you will lose your changes (see Figure 4).

9. If at any point you are not happy with your changes or you think you've really mucked it up, just click on the Cancel button next to the Save button and all your changes (up to the last point you saved) will be undone.

 

At some point, in the not to distant future, I will be asking all of you to check your entries in the database.  Now I know that some of you are not sure how to do this now that Yahoo! has been upgraded, so here are the instructions.

1. Clear your browser cache.  I have found this really helps when Yahoo! appears to be misbehaving.  If you don't know how to do that (and you really should) use this link http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cache and find the instructions for your browser.

2. Go to the Yahoo! groups site at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo

3. Down the left hand side of the screen you will see a list of the groups to which you are subscribed (see Figure 1). Click on the magazine group

4. Underneath the photo you will see the 'More' tab (see Figure 2).  Click on that and select Database.

5. You will now see a list of databases.  Click on 'Who posts what?'  (see Figure 3)

6. In the search box (see Figure 4), type in your email, first name, last name or magazine - then click the magnifying glass.  The search is case sensitive and you can use partial words.

Get familiar with doing this and I will put instructions on how to edit the table in the next blog post.

 

As many people have been having trouble searching for posts on the 'new and improved' Yahoo! site, I thought I'd spll it out for you here.

1. Clear your browser cache.  I have found this really helps when Yahoo! appears to be misbehaving.  If you don't know how to do that (and you really should) use this link http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cache and find the instructions for your browser.

2. Go to the Yahoo! groups site at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo

3. Down the left hand side of the screen you will see a list of the groups to which you are subscribed (see Figure 1). Click on the one you want to search

4. At the top of the screen is a box that says 'Search Conversations' (see Figure 2).  Type in that box what it is you are looking for, the click the 'Search Groups' button just to the right. By default the message subject and body are searched for your criteria.

5. You should be able to find what you were looking for in the results.  If not, there is an 'Advanced Search' button (see Figure 3) that allows you to be a bit more specific.

Please let me know in the comments if this helps or not.

 

 

I thought I'd start a list here of free mags containing comps that can be downloaded.  Here's a few to get you started:

Morrisons
Odeon
Metro
Sport
Tesco
Specsavers
Tesco Technology & Entertainment

Please add any more you think of to the comments.

Membership for 2014 is now open.

The renewal form can be found on the contact us page of the website.

Due to circumstances beyond our control the meeting date for the Xmas 2014 meeting has been changed to 13th December.

Hopefully it's still far enough in advance that it won't cause anyone any problems