Hacking groups (such as LulzSec) have been targeting high profile companies (including Dropbox, Sony, Valve, et al) and (among other sinister things) have been releasing millions of rows of customer’s data have been released into the public domain.

Thankfully, this has highlighted the importance of good security for technology companies all over the world, some of which are taking the threat seriously and beefing up their own security as a result.

But a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link, and more often than not, the weakest link is a user’s password.

In my job as a Web developer I’m often given the login details for many of our customer’s accounts, anything from hosting, email and social media accounts right up to e-commerce payment gateways, and more often than not, (if I’m allowed to be frank for a moment) the passwords on these accounts are abysmal.

Some of them are so bad, they’re the equivalent of Manchester Unitedusing ‘football’ as a password, or The Coca-Cola Company using ‘c0ke’ (substituting a letter for a number – such as replacing an I with a 1 – is not making a password secure.)

what constitutes a good password?

There is a lot of advice on choosing a good password, and even arange of tools that can help generate them, but it mostly boils down to choosing a password that will be difficult to guess, and with enough characters (and special characters) that a brute force attack would be endless.

All of this advice is worthless, however, if even after choosing a good and secure password, you use the same password on everything you sign-up for, or if you write it down on a piece of paper next to your desk.

how am i supposed to remember all these passwords?

As I mentioned before, I have to keep track of the login details for many of our customers, and as such it is my responsibility to keep these passwords secure. To help with this I use a piece of software calledKeePass:

KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).

KeePass isn’t the only solution, others such as LastPass andPasswordGenie (seen below) exist, but keepass has worked well for me for a number of years.

Anyway, I hope this post has been useful to you (and I hope I start to see some more secure passwords from our customers), but in the meantime, let me leave you with this interesting PasswordGenie infographic:

(Article originally published on Ghost Design.)

I’m having a bit of a dilemma.

I’m a web developer, and as a web developer, I’m part of an industry that is forever evolving. New tools and techniques are being created all the time, and if you don’t keep up with the latest industry developments, you face being left behind.

In addition to this: I’m a PC – and very proud of that fact. Microsoft’s Windows platform might not have been at the top of its game at all times (I’m looking at you Windows Vista and Windows 8), but I think Windows 7 is a fantastic operating system – I’ll be the first to admit that Windows 7 isn’t perfect, but I like it.

It’s a lot like your favourite hoodie: the design might be faded, the stitching around the hem might be starting to come loose, and there might be other hoodies with cool, slick and stylish designs on them, but your like your favorite one because it has molded to your body shape and fits you perfectly – which is exactly the case with me and Windows 7.

So?

My dilemma is that, in my effort to try and keep up to date with the latest tools and techniques being developed for the web industry, I’m going to have to jump ship and start using a Mac.

I’m no fan of the Mac.

Unlike my favourite Windows-7-hoodie, a Mac-hoodie would be too short on the waist, too long in the sleeves, and things would keep falling out of the pockets.

Anything I’m able to do on a PC I’m equally able to do on a Mac (and vice versa – but more on this in a moment), but I prefer doing it on the PC as it fits my way of working better. More and more, however, I’m seeing people within the web industry ignore the PC and focus on the Mac. Tools such as CodeKit and Hammer are Mac exclusives, and even tools which support both platforms such as GitHub, tend to focus on the Mac features first.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m able to achieve the same goals as all of these Mac-only tools via the combination of my PC and Debian development server – but it never just works - there is always something that I need to configure or fix. One could make the argument that I’m better off doing things the hard way, and that I’m learning more by manually configuring everything, but I’m not a software engineer - I’m a web developer, and as such, so I don’t care how the tools I use work, I just care that they do work.

This isn’t to say that Macs are fundamentally better than PCs (they’re not) or that PCs are better than Macs (equally not). It also doesn’t mean that the tools in question can’t exist on the PC (they can, if only someone would build them). It simply means that the developers of said tools, for whatever reason, are choosing to build them exclusively for the Mac, and as such, if I want to take advantage of them, I also have to use a Mac.

Once bitten, twice shy

Anyone that knows me knows that I embraced Apple once before when purchasing an iPad, which I later regretted. I still have the iPad in question, but it currently exists as nothing more than a music player, pumping funky tunes out of its speaker dock, as all its other functionality has been superseded by my Android phones and tablet.

I also have access to a Mac at work, but don’t use it for anything more than checking email or reading documentation, as everything else I need to do is completed using an old Windows 7 laptop which I brought into work on my second day of employment. I keep giving Apple the opportunity to impress me, but keep coming away disappointed.

So the point (and dilemma I’m facing) is that, if I should somehow find the £1,500 needed for a semi-decent Macbook, and decide to embrace the Apple once again, am I just going to end up regretting it?

As always, I welcome your comments below.

Casual gaming

… at the risk of sounding like a casual gamer, since getting my Galaxy Note 2 phone, I’ve found myself playing games on it.

This never happened on my old phone (the Xperia Arc), or on either of my tablets (the Transformer Prime and iPad – well, with the exception of Plants vs. Zombies on the train to and from work), but I’m now finding that I’m increasingly pulling it out of my pocket and tapping the screen with glee.

The thing about each of these games is that they’re perfectly designed for mobile phones, i.e. they’re all autorunner games which are quick and easy to pick up and play, but with hidden complexity that encouraging repeat play – and while the mechanics of each of the games is simple (often no more than a simple tap of the screen), there is still a lot of skill involved in them.

The games

Jetpack Joyride (Free to play)

This is one of the aforementioned simple tap of the screen games, in which our hero (who I believe is called Barry) breaks through a wall, stealing a jet-pack in the process, before proceeding to make his getaway along a corridor using said jet-pack. You tap and hold the screen to fly up, and release to fall down. Using this technique, you fly along a never-ending corridor, avoiding all the obstacles encountered on the way, trying to get as far as you can while collecting coins, spin tokens, and other vehicle-based power-ups. Upon death you’re returned to the start of the game, and encouraged to try again.

Normally I’d get bored with such repetitive game play, but the beauty of this game lays in the missions that you are set while playing. You could be tasked with collecting a certain number of coins within a single play-through, or to high-five x number of scientists, or to die between 1000 and 1100 meters. Completion of these tasks results in being awards stars, which in turn allow you to rank up. All of this also provides funds, which which you’re able to buy different jet-packs, gadgets, assorted helpers and cosmetic changes to your character.

Although you’re doing exactly the same thing each time you play (flying along a corridor), the fact that you might have to die at a specific point, survive without using a vehicle for a certain number of time, or tempt fate by having near-misses with electrical nodes, means that you’re actually doing something different each time to play.

Jetpack Joyride on Google Play.

Temple Run 2 (Free to play)

In Temple Run 2, your character (one of four Indian Jones wannabes) has just stolen a relic called The Idol, and as such are being chased by a beast intent on getting it back. This chase takes place along a weird series of random outdoor corridors littered with coins, and feature obstacles and sudden right-angle turns to traverse, and should you fail for any reason, you can choose to save yourself by using a gem, otherwise you go right back to the beginning, ready to start again.

Much like Jetpack Joyride, the strength of this game is the simplicity of it – although this one is more complicated than the aforementioned game. This added complexity comes in the form of swiping the screen in the correct direction at the correct time, i.e. swipe up to jump, swipe left to turn left, etc.. This is combined with good use of the phone’s accelerometer, in which tiling left and right causes your character to lean in that direction to collect coins, or (slightly later in the game) control the direction of a minecart.

Much like Jetpack Joyride (and, I imagine, a lot of other repetitive games of this nature) you’re tasked with a series of challenges, each of which rewards you with coins with which you can purchase upgrades.

Temple Run 2 on Google Play.

Rayman Jungle Run (£2.29)

I’ve not played any of the other current generation Rayman games, so I’m unable to provide a compare/contrast of this with them, but what I can say is that if they’re designed to work on their platforms as well as this one is for touchscreens, then they must be masterpieces of gaming.

Your job as Rayman is to save the Lums, of which there are 100 per level, and ten levels per ability. What I mean by this is as you progress through the game, your abilities improves, i.e. for the first ten levels you’re able to jump (which you do by tapping the screen), the next ten add the ability to fly (by holding the screen), the next ten give you the ability to wallrun (which happens automatically), and the ten after that let you punch (which you do by tapping the other side of the screen).

Unlike both Jetpack Joyride and Temple Run 2, this isn’t a rinse and repeat game, where each level is randomly generated as you play, instead this is a collection of  specially designed levels, each with their own charastics. As a result of this there are no artificial challenges to complete like the two other games, but this doesn’t take away from the game, as in truth, it doesn’t need them as there is more than enough challenge within the base game.

Rayman Jungle Run on Google Play.

Conclusion

There you have it, three well designed Android games. There are lots more that I’d happily recommend,  depending on your mood, including Contre Jour, Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery EP, Fieldrunners, Osmos, Spirits, The Room, etc.. (all of which I got via the Humble Bundle), but I wanted to focus on these three due to their similarities to each other.

Please note: Both Jetpack Joyride and Temple Run 2 are free-to-play game, meaning you’re provided with the opportunity to use your own money purchase upgrades, but seeing as I’ve not done this, I’m unable to comment on it.

Introduction

I’ve been meaning to make this post for a few months now, but one thing lead to another, and before I knew it an unhealthy amount of procrastination had set in. I really don’t have any real excuse for this either, as all I really wanted to do was share the following resource with you…

iOS App Icon Template

The iOS App Icon Template is a Photoshop template (and action) which makes it easy to create, and then export, an iOS icon in all the different sizes you might require, for whatever purpose you might require them (in this instance, we’re looking to provide a custom icon for sites that get added to the iOS home screen).

I’ll not go into detail on how to use the template itself (its site does a good enough job of that), but I will tell you that once you’ve created the files, you need to rename the files with the relevant dimensions like so:

• apple-touch-icon-114×114-precomposed.png
• apple-touch-icon-144×144-precomposed.png
• apple-touch-icon-57×57-precomposed.png
• apple-touch-icon-72×72-precomposed.png
• apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png (57×57)
• apple-touch-icon.png (57×57)

Once you’ve done this, and compressed them using TinyPNG, simply upload to the root of your site, and iOS (upon someone choosing to add your site to their home screen) will do the rest.

The video starts with a fairly non-descrip introduction by Hugh Grant, who talks about the titular newspapers’ integrity and journalistic practices, and the fact that if they say they have an important announcement to make, it isn’t going to be some obnoxious marketing gimmick…

… then it happens! (watch the video, I don’t want to spoil it)

I don’t know about you, but any institution that has a good sense of humour about itself is good in my books.

Will this make me buy the aforementioned newspapers? Probably not. But I might consider subscribing to their RSS feeds.