Archive for the Software Category

Evernote has been hacked!

March 3, 2013


Evernote

If you are a Evernote user then check your email, you might have received an advisement that your password has been reset. I did but  thanks to Gmail, it was in my spam folder! So I didn’t get to see it until after I saw an update from my friend Keith on Facebook.

According to Evernote…

Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts, and encrypted passwords. Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Evernote are protected by one-way encryption. (In technical terms, they are hashed and salted.)

However, even if passwords technically seem unusable, it is still a good idea to change them.

More information can be found via the BBC, Wired and Gizmodo. More information from Evernote on what to do.

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Open Source alternatives to creating and editing images

August 26, 2011


As a blogger and a designer of WordPress sites, I often have to create logo’s and enhance photo’s. As I use Ubuntu Linux and believe in Open Source Software, Photoshop is not a choice. So what do I use?

Moving the pixels around…

The Gimp is a leading Open Source image editing program. It allows you to do pretty much everything you need. I use it to crop images to size, change colour balances and even remove unwanted details – like camera date stamps. It is a very accomplished program and has been compared to photoshop. I’ve yet to explore all the features but for what I need it for it’s perfect!

There are versions available for Windows and Mac, not just Linux.

Making logo’s

I am not a graphic artist but I can quickly create logos and banners using Inkscape. This open source program does not do pixel editing but deals with vectors. You create shapes and manipulate them with a fairly easy interface. One very useful feature is that you can import images, PNG, JPG etc as separate objects. Great for taking a product image and using it in a logo etc.

It has been compared to Illustrator, CorelDraw and Xara X. Versions exist for Windows and Mac.

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Use HTML entities and stop those funny characters

July 5, 2011


If you are programming your own web pages, I hope you are fully aware of HTML entities. They are special codes to represent characters that are already in use within HTML. They can also be used to put on a page foreign characters such as the Euro (€) symbol and various French letters like é.

By using the correct representation of each special character you can ensure that each browser will display them correctly.

For example…

To put the Euro symbol on a page (for your price list or rental costs page) , you would use € to produce €.

HTML entities is a standard you should be using. Not only does it ensure that browsers produce the correct characters, it also means that search engines will see them correctly too.

Find out more at W3C Schools and more on their reference chart.

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So what is FTP exactly?

June 14, 2011


In my recent post about site maps, I said that you had to transfer them to your site via FTP. Angela from Le Grand Saule B and B asked me to clarify what I meant.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and goes way back in computer history. It was at one time the only way to transfer files around from one computer to another.

All the files that make up your website are stored on a computer some where on the Internet. The easiest and safest way to get them there is to use FTP. You use a program to select files on your computer, select the destination on the remote computer and click transfer. Your FTP program may look similar as the picture below…

example of an FTP program

example of an FTP program

It just a matter of click and dragging the files across. Your webhosting company will give you the details needed to gain access and enable the file transfer to happen.

There are loads of FTP programs around, the top 5 are reviewed by Life Hacker and include those for PC, Mac and Linux.

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