Tag: software

Sonos controller update fails on macOS Ventura

After the installation of macOS Ventura (currently 13.1), the update of the Sonos Controller app would fail systematically with the error message: Sonos update failed – an unexpected error occurred.

This can be resolved by adding some permissions for the Sonos Installer:

  • Open System preferences
  • In the navigation column on the left, select Privacy & Security
  • In the Privacy section, select App management
  • Make sure that the switch is on next to Sonos Installer. This will give the installer the necessary rights to update the app.
Change the setting to ON for Sonos Installer

Free cycling maps for a Garmin Edge 800 GPS

I own a Garmin Edge 800, it is very old but still super reliable. And the best part is that you can update the maps regularly via the OpenStreetMap initiative. It allows you to use turn-by-turn navigation and have an accurate view on the routes you are following.

Garmin Edge 800 with OpenStreetMaps

This is the procedure:

  • Connect the device to your computer with the USB cable
    This should mount two storage devices on your computer: the built-in storage and the micro-SD card.
  • Download the most recent map from https://www.openfietsmap.nl/. Go to the Downloads section and download the region you need.
  • Open the zip file you just downloaded, and copy the file gmapsub.img to the Garmin folder on the SD card. Be patient, this took about 1 hour on my device.
  • On the GPS device, make sure to verify that the new map is the one that is active, especially if you have other maps on the card. There should only be one map activated. Check the readme.html file in the zip for more tips and tricks.

Update to Android 11 on Nokia 6.2 stuck on “Finishing system update”

I recently updated a Nokia 6.2 phone to Android 11.

After the update finished, a message Finishing system update appeared in the notification center, and it never went away, even after restarting the phone or waiting for hours.

In some discussion forums, people suggested to do a factory reset, but even that did not fix the issue, the message still appeared after the factory reset.

In the end, I removed the Micro SD card that was in the phone, and that magically seems to have fixed the issue, the update finished successfully.

So if you would experience the same issue, try removing your SD Card, that might help you out. Let us know in the comments if it worked for you!

AirPlay no longer working on Apple TV 2nd generation

I recently had reset an older Apple TV (2nd generation) to the factory settings. After that, AirPlay did not work anymore. The Apple TV could not be found on the network (or example when trying to screen mirror from an iPhone), and when I navigated to Settings > General > About on the device, it showed Activation: failed

These are the steps I took to resolve the issue::

  • Make sure that you are signed in to iCloud on the Apple TV
  • Install Apple Configurator 2 on your Mac
  • Connect your Apple TV to your Mac with a micro-USB cable
  • Select your Apple TV when it appears
  • In the menu on the left, select Profile
  • Click the Activate button

After that, Airplay started working again, and the Activation: failed message disappeared.

My Top 10 learning tools for 2016

Jane Hart has a long tradition (10 years, congrats!) in gathering the world’s Top learning tools and I am happy to contribute again this year.

Some changes: there will now be a top 200, and a split on education, workplace learning, and personal and professional learning.

Here we go, in random order:

  • Twitter: the best way to generate your own “information streams” about various subjects. (personal & professional learning)
  • Microsoft OneNote: still the best note-taking application on the Windows platform. Unbeatable in combination with SharePoint or OneDrive, and a tablet pc with a digitizer pen (like the Surface). It is fully cross platform with a nice and stable client for OS X! (personal and professional learning)
  • Office Lens: a Microsoft mobile app (Windows, iOS, Android) that “scans” about everything with the camera of your phone. I especially like the way it “straightens” pictures of documents, whiteboards, flipcharts…
    Invaluable for capturing the notes of a meeting. (personal and professional learning)
  • Office Mix: the top tool to “convert your PowerPoint to e-learning” (even if that is not always a good idea), almost dropped out of my list because Microsoft suddenly removed the support for SCORM export. But I give it the benefit of the doubt for another year, there is still LTI compatibility. (workplace learning)
  • Pocket: with the “read later” button in your browser toolbar, you can save interesting articles for later, and read them afterwards. Love the fact that it is available on and syncing with my e-reader. (personal & professional learning)
  • WordPress: excellent blogging platform. Recent releases have been focussing on the usability for the writer, and it is setting the standards for usability. Administration is now a piece of cake, even for non-tech users, with e.g. the auto-update feature. (personal & professional learning)
  • Fever: this “self-hosted Google Reader” is still my main information hub, gathering hundreds of RSS feeds that would otherwise be impossible to follow. Fever is exceptionally easy to install and very stable. (personal & professional learning)
  • WebEx: a very reliable, easy to use and complete web conferencing tool.  An international company could not do without it. (workplace learning)
  • Microsoft Snip is a “garage project” that goes beyond the functionalities of the traditional “screen capture” tool. Love the fact that you can easily annotate your screen captures to document your findings, and the idea to let you record voice annotations is very useful for support purposes. And it is free. (workplace learning)
  • Office 365: the “swiss army knife” of productivity tools: enterprise-grade e-mail and calendar, SharePoint sites for collaborating or storing knowledge, and OneDrive that has 1TB of storage and that is a serious competitor for tools like Google Drive and DropBox.
    Some nice extensions became available, like Sway and Flow, but for me it is too early to mention them separately …(workplace learning)