Twitter Twaddle

If you are like me, and granted you may not be, but if you are this may be helpful. I, like many iOS users, use both Google Drive services and iCloud services for keeping my documents up to date across a variety of devices and OSes. One thing I discovered today about Google Drive that is helpful to know is that you cannot add screenshots of forms or info sheets to existing 'files' in Google Drive like you can with Apple's Word Processor, Pages , but unlike Pages, you can access Google Drive from just about any 'Smart Device'.

When adding screenshots to a particular piece in Google Drive it has to be called a 'Folder' in Google Drive's system. If you previously created it as a 'document' it will not allow you to add anything from a camera roll or photo album to it. You must recreate it as a Folder and once you have done this, you can add screenshots or photos or for that matter, other 'documents' to it to your heart's content, making it as large as you like. 

This was a bit of a mini epiphany for me, however small although very useful, so maybe one of you out there could benefit from this as well. 

Bon Voyage and happy document editing...

The new musical paradigm (to those of us over 40) is subscription-based music services. There are a lot of them out today and I have not tried but a few and of those Google All Access Music has been the clear victor. 

Not only can you stream what you like - artist, playlist, album or song - but you can also download music to the device to listen to when offline. Of course, as expected this functionality is active as long as the subscription remains current. Along with these features, Google keeps track of what songs you like and don't (with convenient 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down' buttons) and recommends music accordingly. All of this is nothing new. Most of the services out there have some sort of similar system in place, however with Google being an Aggregator of a lot of our data through our Google accounts, this can make cross-pollination of our data much easier across a variety of services. What this amounts to is 'ease of use' when it comes to the end user experience of many of these services. 

Google All Access is an awesome answer to modern day digital music subscription services. Read about it and check them out. 

https://play.google.com/about/music/allaccess/#/

That's all I have for now. *smile*

I discovered recently that if you modern cable modem/router on your home network reboots itself (for maintenance, eg. an in-line update, etc) that you may lose the proper identity of your network. The Time machine could be happily trotting along, i. e. 'green light' and the modem is fine, but your home network is now renamed and none of your devices are on it....

At first I thought that the modem had re dubbed itself as the 'King of NAT' when it had rebooted--claiming that job from the Time Capsule, which is Also a 'router'. I had previously set it up for my TC to take point on the NAT job on my network.

I wasn't looking forward to having to re-configure the Motorolla Surfboard's settings to hand over that authority to the TC.

As it turns out, I didn't have to. Since the TC wasn't screaming 'double NAT', as it will when that is happening--with the 'blinking amber light', meaning there is something wrong, I tried simply rebooting the TC.

That did the trick!! My network came back and everything. Bam! All is happy in Networkville and I didn't have to reconfigure the modem's default settings. Yay. 

Are there any of you out there that have ever accidentally moved around any of your music files on your Mac? I have done this without even realizing that I had done it. Luckily, having an iTunes Match subscription saves you from having to figure out where you accidentally moved those music files to. 

What with all the cloud backup solutions and cloud mirrored backups and all it's not out of the question that you might create a few errors in your iTunes library now and again by sheer accident. iTunes Match (your whole music library backed up and available through Apple's iCloud on all your Macs/PCs and iOS devices that you own anywhere you are) can help you smooth out the kinks quickly and easily. You might see some of these errors from time to time if you've really got your hands on your computer all that often like I have. 

You have probably encountered this before at some point where you see the '!' symbol on the listing and go to click on it only to have your Mac tell you that you have moved the 'original file' from it's 'original location'. It then asks if you would like to go and 'find' the file through that handy 'Finder' dialogue window that pops up if you click on the 'locate' tab. Yes, you can do that if you want--that is the 'old way' after all and a lot of us are very used to having to hunt those 'prodigal son' files down and bring them back home, or IF you have iTunes Match enabled on your machine you can do it this the new and: easy way: just select all the tracks with said error and delete them. After that, the track listings will still be 'ghosted' there, but with one little addition--a download button next to each one. This is So, So handy! Just select them all, right finger click or two-finger tap and select 'download' and then iTunes re-downloads them in a nice 256Kbps download (even if the tracks you uploaded were of a lower quality than that). Brilliant!

This is an excellent way to yet again to take advantage of that iTunes Match subscription and a time saver,  to boot. Then copies of those lovely tracks are right back where they were meant to be. Having iTunes Match doesn't just make it easier to import your iTunes Library to other machines when you upgrade or buy an extra computer, it makes managing your digital music collection a breeze right from where you sit.