Handy hints and tips from your fellow readers
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Issue 630 • 27 April – 10 May 2022Want to recommend hardware or software
to fellow readers?
Email [email protected]Issue 627’s article on
recording your phone
calls (pages 60-61) missed the
simplest solution. Recently, I
needed to replace my 15-year-old
cordless phone, and found that
BT’s BT 4600 Big Button
Advanced Call Blocker was the
ideal replacement.
As a bonus, it provides call-
recording at the press of a single and
prominent button. It records calls up toan hour long, and there’s also an audio
jack socket on the phone to make it
easy to transfer recordings to a PC.
Price of a single phone is £41.99, and
it goes up to £94 for four phones (a
‘Quad Handset Pack’). There are
twin (£59.99) and triple
(£74.99) sets as well.
Ken FieldAPPLE
Be careful when using
Apple’s Family Sharing
Last Autumn my son in law
suggested he set up Apple’s Family
Sharing (www.apple.com/family-
sharing) with me, so we could watch
films he had purchased via Apple. This
sounded like a great idea, but we now
find that it caused the credit card
associated with my Apple ID to be
overwritten with his account details,
without me or him being advised.
Consequently, my monthly spend on
additional iCloud storage is being
billed to him!
I still got notified that payment had
been taken each month so didn’t think
twice about it, but now in the small print
I see it tells me that: “This is not a receipt.
The original receipt for this purchase has
been sent to the Family Organizer”.
I spoke to Apple, who assured me it
wasn’t a mistake. Anyone using Family
Share becomes liable for anything spent
by the other party. The only way to
reapply my card details and take control
of my Apple ID account again was to
cancel Family Sharing. Be aware!
Richard Wills
INTERNET
Keep web cookies from
selected sites
In response to Robert Stalker’s
question in Issue 626 (‘Why must I
sign in to Gmail every time?’, page 65),
I’ve set up Chrome so it clears all cookies
when you exit, but you can add some
sites not to be cleared.
Open Chrome, then click the three
dots, top right, and select Settings. Now
click ‘Security and privacy’ on the left,
then ‘Cookies and other site data’ in the
middle. Scroll down to the small
‘Customised behaviours’ heading and
add the sites you don’t want to wipe
cookies from.
I keep cookies on safe sites
that I use regularly, including
http://www.google.com (see screenshot
below), so I can use Gmail
without problems.
Terry HennessyTV STREAMING
Record shows using
Xbox Game Bar
I recently discovered
that a new streaming
channel called Pluto TV (www.pluto.tv)
was showing series four of Star Trek:
Discovery. Luckily they were showing
again all the episodes I had missed, at
the weekends. I looked for some way
to record them on my computer and
then watch when convenient by
streaming to our TV.
I had hoped to use VLC (www.videolan.
org), but for some reason it wouldn’t
record either the video or the accompanying
audio. I then discovered that you can
record using the Xbox Game Bar built
into Windows. To open it, press Windows
key+Alt+G. I had to set the audio to
record, which meant opening Settings(click the cog icon), then selecting the
All option on the right (^1 in our
screenshot above).
Pressing the white-dot button^2
records whatever’s on screen (you can
also press Windows+Alt+R). The videos
were recorded in MP4 format and look
good on our Sony TV. The one limitation
I found is that it will only record a
maximum of two hours at a time.
IM WilliamsWEBSITE
Compare size of countries
Question from my inquisitive
grandson: is England bigger than
Iceland? It was prompted by a lesson in
school on geysers. My atlas seemed to
show England was bigger, but I asked
Professor Google for confirmation. It led
me to the fantastic MapFight site (www.
snipca.com/41459), which compares
the sizes of everything geographical,
countries in
particular. As you
can see from my
screenshot (left),
England is indeed
bigger than Iceland.
Joe BlackmoreBT 4600 Big Button Advanced Call Blocker
£60 from Amazon http://www.snipca.com/413381
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