Bell Ringer Volume 54, No 7 Clear Lake, South Dakota 57226 November 2020 ITC Offers Blast Wi-Fi! Annual ITC is now offering Blast Wi-Fi! Want the Meeting ease of ITC setting up a great experience and keeping your router up- Re-cap to-date, along with an app that gives COVID-19 has undoubtedly changed you control of your network? Blast Wi-Fi the way we do business. It also played Powered by ITC is what you need. a considerable role in ITC’s 33rd Blast Wi-Fi includes the lease and Annual Meeting. This year there was support of a dual-band router. We no in-person meeting or meal. There offer an initial site survey to analyze was no time to catch up with friends wireless coverage in your home or small and neighbors. While these are things business. The connection support of we missed, it was really important for several devices is also included in this service. ITC to hold a meeting that was safe. With Blast Wi-Fi, you will have access to an app that gives you a snapshot view of your home Following the regular business, or small business. Through the app, you can view all the connected devices on your network, set CEO/General Manager Bryan Roth up parental control or a guest network, change your SSID (network name) and password, and gave his report. He announced more! Do all of this from the convenience of your phone. that capital credits checks totaling There are two packages available depending on how many devices you have and how in-depth approximately $4.5 million will be you want to go with the app. The Premium package includes advanced parental control, advanced distributed to members in early network security, connection support of an unlimited number of devices, and a mesh access point December. These checks will include if needed. Check out our website at https://www. the remainder of 2004 and 2005, and itc-web.com to see what package best fits you. 25% of 2016. Please note, if your Worrying about your Internet is a thing of the check is less than $100, a credit will past. Call 1.800.417.8667 to sign up for Blast be issued on your ITC bill. Wi-Fi Powered by ITC! There was also a drawing for 20- $50 ITC bill credits from those who participated in the Zoom meeting. The $50 credit was applied to the October bill. Congratulations to the Directory Cover Winners Announced following winners: Dala Albright, Robert Berndt, Dennis Carmichael, The winner of the Directory Cover Contest is Kathy Krause of Clear John/Pamela Fieber, Larry Goodroad, Lake, South Dakota. Kathy likes to take her camera around Lake Randy Hume, Glenn Intveld, Victoria Alice and Lone Tree Lake areas. Kathy said, “This particular evening, Kingslien, John/Roberta Knutson, the GF&P land just east of us was filled with buzzes, chirps, rattles, Gregory/Dianna Overby, Gerald/ and clicks from all sorts of different birds. I shot this picture just as Laurie Pavek, Duane/Laralyn the sun went down.” Congratulations Kathy! Your photo will be on Skorczewski, Wayne/Louann Smith, the cover of the 2021 ITC Phone Book. Josephine Stemwedel, Eugene/ Linette Stohr, Charlie Swenson, Nancy Tarbox, S&J Farms, Inc., and The second-place winner of the Directory Cover Contest is Jessica Anderson All Points Travel, Inc. of Rutland, South Dakota. The description for this photo is appropriately Thanks to everyone who joined us labeled, “The garden has flourished from social distancing.” Jessica took the this year on Zoom and to those who picture at her home east of Rutland this past July. She said, “It was exciting to provided feedback. Who knows what see all the vibrant summer colors, and all the amazing sunrises and sunsets next year will bring? We can only hope just added a peacefulness that nature provides.” Congratulations Jessica! for the best! Internet 911 ITC University

By Michael Martinell, Network Broadband Technician By Holly Stormo, Marketing Communications Specialist

I started using the Internet before the Apple users have probably noticed a significant software update waiting word “google” was used as a verb. In the to download. iOS 14 has been causing a lot of chatter lately due to the early 1990s, searching for information size of the update. Whether you have done the update or not, here are a was very different. The best way to find couple things about what iOS 14 has to offer. something was to telnet to a server with • The iPhone has a new Accessibility feature called Back Tap, where an Query Form. Once you found you tap on your phone’s back as a shortcut to a task. Go to Settings> the file you wanted, you could download Accessibility>Touch>Back Tap to see a list of actions to pick from like it using FTP (File Transfer Protocol). You could also do a search a screenshot, scroll up or down, mute, lock screen, and more. You can of menu items. This would present you with a custom menu. The select an action for two and three taps. Gopher site might even have a Jughead menu. The big difference was • Tagging people in a group iMessage conversation is also a new Veronica could search multiple servers, but Jughead could only search addition. This option will help get a particular person’s attention when one of them. texting to a larger number of people. To tag someone, type the @ and Around 1994 searching the Internet changed when companies like then a name. You can also add an in-line reply by long-pressing on a Infoseek, Yahoo, and Webcrawler began to take advantage of the new message and tapping Reply. Then type your message. graphical web browsers. These web browsers included the popular To see if you have a system update waiting, go to Navigator and . It wasn’t until the end of the Settings>General>Software Update. This screen will tell you whether decade that Google created a search website that not only contained an your phone is up-to-date or give you info about the waiting update. There extensive list of results but was simple to use. Since then, an estimated is an option to Customize Automatic Updates, 87% of users around the world use Google. so you don’t have to worry about updates in the It may be surprising to learn, but there are alternatives to using Google. future. If you want your device to update before This is good because the bias for Google is, obviously, Google. Different it automatically does, tap Download and Install. search engines have other benefits for using them. It is best to have your device plugged in when 1. Bing: https://www.bing.com. Microsoft Bing is one of the biggest updating. competitors of Google. In the United States, about 25% of people use To read more on this article or to see other Bing. One of the advantages of using Bing is that they do not favor Google Internet-related articles, check out the blogs on YouTube when searching for videos. our website at https://www.itc-web.com/about- 2. OneSearch: https://www.onesearch.com/. OneSearch is a new search itc/news/. With various topics, there should be engine from the Verizon phone company. It is an updated version of the something to read for everyone! old Yahoo . It promises not to track or profile you, or share your information with advertisers. They do not filter web results and claim to be unbiased. 3. DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/. Another search engine, DuckDuckGo, does not collect or store your personal information like Google does. For that reason, it is often used by people who want to keep their browsing history private. Thank you to everyone who participated in the 4. Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/.The Internet Archive is a Roku Internet promotion earlier this fall. As a way different type of search engine. This search engine saves old websites, to say thank you to our current customers, we held including websites that no longer exist. You can search and access these a drawing following the end of the promotion. Two websites using the “Wayback Machine.” lucky winners won a Roku Stick! 5. Twitter: https://twitter.com/explore. Twitter, on the other hand, is a great ITC would like to congratulate Sherry way to find up-to-the-minute information in almost real-time. Other search Zimmerman of Webster, and Wayne Fuller of Vienna. We thank you engines, like Google, will eventually catch up and catalog the information. for supporting ITC! Still, you can usually find information needed in an emergency first on Twitter. There are other more specialized search engines as well. Search engines are continually evolving and changing. While Google is currently the most Happy Thanksgiving! popular, other platforms are starting to make a strong showing. Give some of the alternatives a try for yourself and see how they are different. The ITC Offices will be closed for Happy Searching! business on Thursday, November 26.