To Avoid Phishing Please Sing In

September 13, 2013 | Comment

I am occasionally asked by family and friends to give advice on whether an email is genuine.

These are not emails from Nigerian kings looking to transfer out money via your bank account but emails that appear to be from companies and government departments that you would recognise and may have account and dealings with.

Of course this recognition is exactly what phishers are aiming at. You are thrown that your bank has sent you an email requesting that you login and view an important message from them.

There is actually a pretty easy well to tell if the email … Read the rest

Designed by Jony from Chingford

September 6, 2013 | Comment

Opening up the latest Wired magazine yesterday I was struck by the double page ad Apple had placed on the inside cover. The ad was the print version of that shown above highlighting that their products are “designed in California”.

Apple are rightly proud of their Californian roots and I’m sure that plays well in the home market (although “Made in the USA” might be better) but I just don’t get the relevance to anyone outside of the US. Why would I care? Especially when the products are made in China and are actually designed by a team led by … Read the rest

One of the most amazing websites we have seen

August 3, 2013 | 1 comment

Producing realistic product shots running on a variety of devices can be challenging. Cropping and rotating images to get them to fit the screen without it being obviously done that way.

Enter PlaceIt which is one of the best use of web technology I have ever seen. For a start using it is simplicity itself.

Firstly you chose the device type that you want to create a product image onto – this can be any number of smartphones, tablets, desktop and laptops in a variety of settings. As you see from the one above they are beautifully done.

Next, if … Read the rest

Twitter on iOS

July 31, 2013 | Comment

This is what I see when I start-up Twitter on iOS. And it stays like this for a good six seconds. It feels like a lifetime.

… Read the rest

Evernote Quick Tip – Filter Out Skitch Notes

June 3, 2013 | 1 comment

Evernote is one of the most useful applications and I use it daily and with other apps such as Skitch, Penultimate and Hello it is becoming a real business powerhouse. However, while I like Skitch and welcome the Evernote integration to have all the random screen grabs I have taken showing in my notes timeline is really distracting.

Good news! It is possible to hide these as follows:

At the top of the note list select the icon to change the view. Hover over “Include” and then untick “Skitch Notes”. Simple as that. All the usefulness of synchronising with Evernote … Read the rest

Sloppy Development – Part Two

May 22, 2013 | Comment

This is the helpful error message you receive if you don’t enter a telephone number into the Centre Parcs reservation system.

… Read the rest

Introducing…

May 20, 2013 | Comment

Our new logo. What do you think?

… Read the rest

Sloppy Development

May 17, 2013 | Comment

I spend all my working day dealing with software development and developers and have done so for the last 25 years. Over that time I have come across some interesting practices and learnt how to do things the right way. The five years I spent with Admiral Computing in particular was an invaluable education in delivering quality software.

So when I come across something like that shown to the left I find it both amusing and perplexing in equal measures. How can a menu item called “Test” make it through to a live system? Clicking the link takes you through … Read the rest

Adding a new watch face to Pebble

May 10, 2013 | Comment

You can watch all my Pebble videos here:

http://dsktp.net/pebble

… Read the rest

What we did Before Google

March 20, 2013 | Comment

I was away over the weekend and spotted this on my in-laws book shelf – The Internet Atlas by Richard Dinnick. A guide to the “best 1,000 sites on the web”.

Even though the book is only a few years old, it was published in 2000, it is a fascinating snapshot on what the web was like only thirteen years ago.

It includes sections on the browsers available which besides Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape also includes the first alpha version of Mozilla.

There is also a section on search engines which includes Altavista and Ask Jeves along with … Read the rest