Pat Howe's Blog

What you need to know about the heartbleed bug

You will no doubt have heard about the Heartbleed bug and here I’ll give you a quick idea of what it is and any action you need to take. For full details you can visit the Heartbleed website. So what is it? Heartbleed affects secure websites and other secure communication channels but for simplicity I’ll describe what happens on a website. Normally, you visit a website via HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) and the traffic is not encrypted so anyone that interrupts that communication can see the data transferred. Websites that

Farewell old friends: saying goodbye to Windows XP & Office 2003

In case you didn’t already know, Microsoft are stopping all support for Windows XP and Office 2003 on Tuesday. That means no more patching even if security risks become known to them. This of course means that attackers who know that not everyone will be disconnecting their Windows XP machines or Office 2003 suites from the internet on April 8th will be rubbing their hands in glee. If you have an old machine running Windows XP/Office 2003 that you love and you can’t upgrade or you don’t want to upgrade

What’s the fuss about Google Plus

Google+ can be considered the social media side of Google but it is much more than that. They have been developing and fine tuning it for quite a while now and although I’m no social media guru and have only been using Google+ for a few months, I must say, I’m impressed. It seems they have taken all the best bits from all other social media solutions and come up with the best of all worlds. However, Google+ is not just superior as social media; it is a collaboration platform

Update on all the new top level domains available in 2014

There are hundreds of top level domain names becoming publically available based on profession, location or just fun. By far the most popular globally of the new extensions so far has been .guru followed by .photography. This is an update from last month’s article Hundreds of new domain extensions flooding the market in 2014. That page listed the predicted availability of the new domain name extensions and this page just shares an update of that list. There are many places where you can buy the new top level domains just

Stop the scammers by raising awareness with email scam examples

I get a lot of phishing emails and I would like to make everyone aware of them whenever they arrive. However, it’s impractical to make a posting every day that I receive them as that is every single day so I thought I would introduce a new page where I can keep adding the new email scams. I can’t actually remember a day when at least one scam comes through my various mailboxes but I’ll only show them the first time they hit my mailbox (it would be a very

A brief guide to the enhancements and new features of HTML5

I wanted to write some articles about the new features of HTML 5 and figured I had better start off with what HTML 5 is and give an overview of those new features and enhancements. I know there are probably hundreds of other HTML 5 articles on the internet and books explaining everything you could ever want to know but I’m hoping to keep the subject simple and present it in layman’s terms for those that are not into geek speak. So if you want a technical article, then you’d

How to avoid becoming a remote social engineering victim

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to write something about the remote social engineering threat that we all face and here I’ve attempted to explain what social engineering is, how to detect it and some preventative measure that you can take so that you or your company are not taken in. Social engineering is where malicious people attempt to manipulate others into divulging information which they can then use to perform an attack. They will use technology so they can perform these social engineering attacks remotely such as by

Hundreds of new domain extensions flooding the market

If you haven’t purchased a domain name yet, now is a good time to get involved. You will probably think that I have some infatuation with domain names as this is the third article in a month but after years of relative inactivity in the domain name world, there is a lot going on now. A few years back, ICANN asked for applications to open up the domain industry for many new extensions. They received thousands of applications from lots of companies around the world (including applications from companies that

How to cook up your own website

Whether your company needs to maintain a web presence, allow employees access to web-based resources or simply requires customer access to account data via the web, starting up a website can be a daunting task but it doesn’t need to be. Ingredients There are 3 main ingredients that you will need to cook up your own website; website files, website address and website hosting. Explanation Website files are what will be displayed when someone visits your website. These files can be static (always display the same), dynamic (may display differently

Anybody want to buy a .uk domain name extension?

The domain registrar for .co.uk, .org.uk and .me.uk, Nominet, will be launching the new .uk top level domain extension on 10th June 2014. This new top-level domain is expected to take the place of .co.uk in popularity. Of course .uk will shorted the length of the full domain name and it is anticipated that the demand will be great. Nominet are offering all owners of .co.uk domains the first choice of the new .uk extension and if you own a .co.uk then you now have the opportunity to pre-register the

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