VCLEVER BLOG
You’d think it’d be the simplest of things to create a centred heading with horizontal lines either side of it, but as is so often the case in web design, when you throw in lots of different browsers and devices, things aren’t so simple after all.
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The Heartbleed security vulnerability has been well-publicised, but advice on what to do varies wildly. We’ve been updating our clients and thought we’d publish our thoughts here.
What is it?
Firstly, if you haven’t heard about it (which would be quite an achievement), Heartbleed is the catchy but alarming-sounding name given to an error in the code of a bit of widely-used software called OpenSSL, which encrypts data on ‘secure’ websites. OpenSSL is used on maybe around two-thirds of secure sites on the web (so that’s two-thirds of sites that start with https:// and have the little padlock symbol displayed). The error allows an attacker to trick a website’s server into giving them a small random chunk of data from the server’s memory, which could be anything – something harmless, some sensitive data, a password, or an encryption key.
Some reports imply that hackers are just taking specific data at will, but they have to go through multiple attacks, getting little chunks of random data at a time and hoping they turn up something useful. It’s still not good, but it’s not the same. And the chances that you have been compromised are probably very slim (more…)
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Photo by Sparkfun Electronics
Here’s some help (hopefully) for anyone who uses Avast and finds that it suddenly and mysteriously stops working from one day to the next.
The Problem
Avast stops working after a reboot for no apparent reason (no changes made and working fine before). The Avast system tray icon shows a little cross and gives a status that the system is unsecured. Clicking the ‘Fix Now’ button does nothing. Also, it says ‘Not yet registered, 0 days remaining’ even though it is registered and the future renewal date is shown correctly. (more…)
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Tired of the dated, fussy design of the Hootsuite dashboard? I was, so I created a new cleaner version, which you can use on your own Hootsuite dashboard (if you use Chrome or Firefox).
Restyling Hootsuite
Here at vclever, we’re big users of Hootsuite, a social media dashboard that makes it easy to manage multiple accounts on Facebook and Twitter, amongst others. But the hideous appearance of the dashboard niggles at me. While others, like Twitter and Google+, have been rolling out beautiful new looks, Hootsuite’s three themes are starting to look a bit tired and dated thanks to thick shadows and strong gradients plastered everywhere, and colour-schemes that are less than tasteful.
Although I had better things to be doing at the time(!!), I decided to dabble with Hootsuite’s CSS using Chrome’s developer tools to make the appearance fresher, easier on the eye, cleaner and brighter. (more…)
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A new app on the iphone is finally demonstrating the power and possibilities of AR.
Augmented reality (AR) is being talked about a lot at the moment, but for all the buzz, I’ve yet to see anything that’s more than just a novelty. Until Word Lens appeared that is. (more…)
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Just a quick (and very geeky) post in case anyone else ever has this problem with Outlook, because it was driving me mad for about an hour.
Basically the error message in the title would pop up whenever I closed Outlook, but only if I had opened or edited a note at some point. Read more…
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