But, have you ever taken a closer look at the way you can search for images using Google? I use it quite a lot and I’m often surprised at how few people know about it.

Lets take a quick look at a few ways of using Google image search to;
• Find images
• Find similar images
• Identify unknown images
• Find web pages containing images
• Find matching items based on colour

Find Images

First of all, lets take a quick look at the basics of finding an image.

Go to the Google search page.
Click “Images” from the menu.
In this example I’m looking for images of the classic 70′s Seiko Speedtimer so I type the search term, “seiko 6139 6002″.

The search returns thumbnail results that link off to various web pages containing images of the watch in question.
The menu down the left hand side of the page can be used to refine the results.

Find Visually Similar Images

In this example we are going to find images that are “visually similar” or look like another image.
This is useful for finding images based on colour, composition or detail within an image rather than known search terms.

Go to the Google search page.
Click “Images” from the menu.
Click on the camera icon inside the search box.

You will get a drop down that allows you to enter either an existing URL to an image or upload an image.
Click the “Search” button.

The search returns thumbnail results that are “visually similar” to the original image you entered the URL for, or uploaded.
The menu down the left hand side of the page can be used to refine the results.

Identify Unknown Images

In this example we’ll see how we can identify an image, the image equivalent of Shazam if you will.
We’ll use the beautiful “Miranda and the Tempest” by John William Waterhouse.

To do this follow the same steps as the example above.
If the image is well known or if Google has indexed it previously, you’ll get the following results.

Find Web Pages Containing Images

In this example we’ll see how we can find web pages where an image has been used.
We’ll use an illustration by local Poole artist and illustrator Jo Parry for our search.

To do this follow the same steps as the example above.
If the image has been used on a number of web pages that Google has indexed, you’ll get the following results.

Find Matching Items Based on Colour

In this example we are going to find something that matches the colour of an existing item.
This is useful for finding cushions that match a lampshade without searching for “red cushions”. (I know, I know!)

To do this follow the same steps as the example above.
The image used for the search would be the lampshade, in a rather fetching shade of raspberry red.
After you’ve clicked the “Search” button add the following text into the search box;
“cushion cover uk” as we are interested in raspberry red cushion covers to purchase in the UK.

Now click the blue “magnifying glass” search button on the right.

The search returns thumbnail results for “cushion cover uk” that match the colour of the original image.

Hopefully we’ve given you a quick overview of a couple of ways you can get the most out of Google image search.
Please leave a comment and add any other tips you know about.

Example: In the 7th episode of series G, Fry asked the question “How many men have been President of the United States?” and showed a clip of US President Barack Obama declaring himself the 44th person to have taken the oath. This is incorrect since Grover Cleveland was elected to two non-consecutive terms, meaning only 43 people have taken the oath.

We often espouse something we think to be true but have never really bothered to find out for ourselves. It’s easily done and I expect we are all guilty of it.

“You accidentally swallow about eight spiders a year in your sleep”
“Plasma TV’s need to be re-gassed or re-charged periodically”
“Sugary food makes young children hyper”

And who can argue with my personal favourite;

“Wagon Wheels were much bigger when we were kids”

What’s all this got to do with technology or web design I hear you cry? Well, allow me to explain.

How many times have you been asked or heard the following?

“Make the page a bit shorter”
“Avoid scrolling at all costs”
“Ahh, but your content isn’t above the fold”

If you’ve ever heard any of those, do two things…

Firsty, staple a Wagon Wheel to their forehead, to facilitate a closer look.
(Original with the jam bit in it, not the toffee or caramel “Johnny come lately”)

Secondly, explain this is the year 2011 and websites are not just viewed in 800×600

Let’s get a definition of “Above the Fold” by seeing what Wikipedia say;

“Above the fold” is a graphic design concept that refers to the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper, or in case of webpages, the part of a page that’s visible without scrolling. Most papers are delivered and displayed to customers folded up, meaning that only the top half of the front page is visible. Thus, an item that is “above the fold” may be one that the editors feel will entice people to buy the paper.

This term has been extended and used in web development to refer the portions of a webpage that can be visible without scrolling. However, some have suggested that this term is vague as screen sizes vary greatly between users, especially in an era where websites are viewed with mobile devices as much as home computers.

On a more serious note, re-educate the person who raises the “Above the Fold” view and explain why it’s an outdated concept. I can find no more elegant a way of doing this, than by pointing them here;

A great article called Life Below 600px by Paddy Donnelly.

I’ll leave you with this thought. Wagon Wheels have supposedly shrunk in size as time has progressed. Burton’s Foods Ltd have denied this, instead suggest that the supposed shrinkage is due to an adult’s childhood memory of eating a Wagon Wheel held in a much smaller hand.

Challenge common misconception, biscuit related or not.

Here’s what Apple say;

“iOS 5 includes more than 200 new features for your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.”

Well this post is all about the really useful features you discover and how to use them. All you need to do is post a comment explaining a new iOS5 tips or feature and I’ll add them to this post. Simple.

General iOS5 Tips

Word Suggestions
When writing text in an application double tap a word to see additional suggestions.

Mute Button
When you enable sounds with the mute button on the side it now shows the volume level.

Location Services Status Bar Icon
If you have the the Location Service Status Bar Icon set to on, via Settings > Location Services > System Services > Status Bar Icon, it will turn purple when an application is using Location Services.

iOS Software Updates
To check for available iOS updates, select Settings > General > Software Update. If a software update is available, you will see a description of the available update and a button labelled “Update Now”. Clicking this button will begin downloading the update. Updates to iOS5 are deltas or differences so are expected to be much smaller than the usual updates.
via Jason Pope

Emoji Emoticons
You can now type all sorts of Emoji emoticons (smileys) by using the new Emoji keyboard. To activate this goto Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards > Add New Keyboard > Emoji. Now whenever you’re typing, tap the globe icon next to the space bar to select all manner of stuff.

Automatic Downloads
If you have multiple iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch devices, you can now enable Automatic Downloads. Go to Settings > Store and enable it for Music, Apps and iBooks. Now when you download something to one of your devices it will be automatically downloaded to your others.

Find My Friends
Not strictly iOS5 but download this free app from the Apple App Store to locate your friends and family from an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Very similar to the “Find My iPhone” app but for people.
via Jason Pope

Keyboard Shortcuts
Use abbreviations that expand into commonly used full words. Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Add New Shortcut… The default shortcut is omw which will expand into “On my way!”
via Polevault Web

Camera

Access to Photos
When using the camera, swipe from left to right to reveal existing Photos, swipe back to return to the camera.

Volume Up Shutter Button
Hold the iPhone sideways in landscape orientation, and the volume up button works as the camera shutter button.

Zoom Function
A two finger pinch or expand will activate the zoom feature.

Direct Access from Locked Screen
On the lock screen, double click / double press the home button to view the camera icon as well as the music player controls that feature on previous iOS versions. The camera button takes you straight to the camera app.
via Martin Lucas

Exposure Levels
When you’re taking a photo with the camera a single tap on an area of the screen will adjust the Exposure Levels based on the area you selected.

AE/AF Lock Levels
When you’re taking a photo with the camera tap and hold on an area of the screen to adjust and lock the Exposure Levels based on the area you selected. You can now frame the picture without the levels changing.

Screen Grab
Briefly hold down the power button then click the home button to save a picture of the current screen to Photos.

iMessage

Delivery Method Indicator
When typing a new message in iMessage the send button will be green if the message is to be sent over the SMS network. If the recipient is registered with iMessage the button will turn blue. The text box watermark will also change and say “iMessage”.

Typing Indicator
If you send someone a message via iMessage, when they start to type their reply you’ll see a bubble appear with an ellipsis (…) in it while they’re typing.

Mail

Important Mail Indicator
You can now highlight an email as important with a little red flag in the inbox. When reading an email tap “Mark” next to the subject.

Drag and Drop Recipients
You can now drag and drop recipients between the To: Cc: and Bcc: fields. Just press and hold the recipients name until it gets bigger, then drag and drop into place.

Text Format
When writing email messages, you can format text using bold, italic, or underlined fonts and create indents in the text. To access these features, select the text to apply formatting and then tap the right-pointing arrow to access the additional menu items. If you select Define, a handy dictionary pops up.
via Jason Pope

Contact Photos
If you have a photo assigned to a contact, in the Contacts App, a small thumbnail photo appears next to the subject line of the email in the inbox.

Notification Centre

Main Access
Swipe down from the top of the screen to reveal and drag down the Notification Centre. In Photos this reveals a new button that you can then drag down.

Direct App Access
When you get a new notification via the “locked” screen, swipe the notification from left to right to go directly to the notification in the application that generated it.
via James Lattimer

Detailed Weather Report
If you have weather configured as a notification in the notification centre, tap on the weather icons to bring up the weather page. Swiping down on the weather opens up further detailed descriptions of the weather over the next few hours.
via Mark Worboys

Photos

Edit Options
While viewing a photo a single tap will reveal the new “Edit” button in the top right. This gives a new menu on the bottom with the following features; Rotate, Enhance, Red Eye and Crop.

Album Management
Albums can now be added directly from within Photos. Click the Albums button at the top or bottom and then click “Edit”

Reminders

Location based Reminders
To-do items can be set with due dates and locations. Location based reminders will send an alert whenever you are near the destination that the item is associated with. Reminders pop-up in the Notification Centre as appropriate.
via Jason Pope

Safari

Uncluttered Reading
When viewing a web page you may see a “Reader” button appear in the address bar at the top. Click it to see a clean uncluttered version of the web page.

Twitter

App Integration
iOS5 lets you sign in to Twitter and then tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, and Maps. Setup Twitter from Settings > Twitter and then simply tap on the share / action button in the integrated apps and select Tweet. You also get a nice tweet sound when the tweet is posted.
via Jason Pope

WiFi Sync

Wireless iTunes Synchronisation
Synchronise your iPhone or iPad with iTunes on a computer that is connected to the same Wi-Fi network. To set-up Wi-Fi sync for the first time, connect the iPhone to the computer via the lead and turn on “Sync over Wi-Fi connection” in the device summary pane. After you configure Wi-Fi Sync your device will sync automatically once a day when its connected to power and iTunes is running. You can manually sync over Wi-Fi via Settings > General > iTunes Wi-Fi Sync > Sync Now.
via Jason Pope

What are the key messages here?

• The tolerance of poor performing websites is clearly decreasing over time. Remember, its a privilege to have visitors coming to your website, so give them a fast high quality experience.

• If your website delivers a key message via a slider, for example “Special Offer 25% Off”, then you only have a couple of seconds before people take no notice of it.

• If your website performance is slow (“slow” = greater than 3 seconds) then you may as well offer links off to your competitors websites.

• Each 1 second delay that you impose on your visitors will reduce your conversion rate and result in fewer actions.

• Bounce rate (the rate at which visitors land on a page then immediately click off your site) increases dramatically as page load time increases.

• As mobile devices like the iPad become the norm, website page load speeds will have to decrease to cater for these visitors.

Click on the image below to download the full size PDF file

If you don’t know how your website currently performs, why not get in touch and let us show you how we can help.

Feel free to comment on this article or get in touch if you would like any further information.

Google decided that to offer its users the best search engine experience it would take the speed of a website into consideration when calculating the page rank of a search result. Here’s what Google say;

Google’s goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience. Fast sites increase user satisfaction and improve the overall quality of the web, especially for those users with slow internet connections.

Websites are much richer these days in terms of content, with many more objects per page than a couple of years ago. Websiteoptimization say this;

Even in this era of widespread broadband, slow websites still frustrate users. The average web page more than tripled in the 5 years from 2003 to 2008 from 93.7K to 312K in total size. An upcoming survey will show the trend continuing at a similar rate. We have seen home pages in excess of 4 to 10 MB in file size with hundreds of objects! Even on a broadband connection these fat and complex web pages will tax the attention thresholds of users.

The average number of objects has grown from 25.7 to 49.9 during the same 5 year time period with no signs of slowing down. Object overhead now dominates page load delays in this era of higher speed connections.

The end result can be an increase in page size and load speed that can quickly grow and more often than not, go unnoticed. However, the people that will be sure to notice are the end users as their experience suffers.

As end users become more and more familiar with modern feature and content rich websites, they also become less tolerant of poor performance. If you leave them hanging around for a response they will often quit and simply visit the next website in the search results, leaving your website in a trail of negative perception.

The Need for Speed?

Numerous studies over the last few years have proven beyond doubt that users love fast websites. These results aren’t just psychological, they can be measured too. Here are some real world examples;

• Aesthetic Perception
• Bounce Rate
• Perceived Credibility
• Quality Rating
• User Frustration

There are other benefits to keeping your web content lean and mean. Many websites use a shared hosting package which typically have a bandwidth limit associated with them. As well as bandwidth, shared web hosting has a finite amount of resource in terms of concurrency and DB access before we even start to consider network latency.

Things to Consider

• Number of objects
• Image size v quality
• Use a CDN for jQuery
• Script order and placement
• Compression
• Server caching
• Response headers
• Enable browser caching

Here is a snapshot of one of our customers who was getting some rather intermittent responses from their website during the Summer, which just happens to be one of their busiest periods. The image was taken from the Google tool that is used to measures website performance and would have directly affected the website’s search ranking.

We re-platformed the website, migrated the hosting to a new provider and after some detailed analysis gave the website a “performance tune” to bring it back in line (during early August). The result is a far more responsive website, quicker page load speeds and a decrease in monthly bandwidth usage.

Revisit your website from a customer’s perspective and ask yourself a few simple questions;
  What is the end user experience of my website?
  When did I last measure my web page sizes?
  When did I last measure my website speed?
  How can I improve them to help with SEO and search ranking?

Conclusion

A well constructed, tested and tuned website will perform better and if using a shared hosting package, may well save money. These days users will not tolerate poor performing websites, so keep your content as small and light as possible. The speed of your website is a factor in your SEO search ranking.

Need any more persuading? Take a look at this powerful Speed Chart Infographic from Google.

Feel free to comment on this article or get in touch if you would like any further information.

Let’s take a quick look at this question and work through some examples to help understand DNS.

First off let’s start by saying that I’ll make the answer generic, aimed at the reader gaining an overview level understanding of DNS and not a detailed dissection of each minute nuance. If that’s what you want I suggest asking Google or reading through the RFC’s.

Secondly, I will attempt to explain in a way that is system and OS independent. If you want specific instructions regarding the setup of a Microsoft or Unix DNS server, stop reading now.

Domain Name System or DNS

Let’s start by looking at mobile phones. Most people I know have a mobile phone. So many in fact, that I can’t remember every phone number associated with each person’s phone. What I do is assign a name against each phone number and store that association in a phone book or phone directory.

“James Mobile” = “07801 123456″
“James Home” = “01234 123456″
“Mark Mobile” = “07801 654321″
“Mark Home” = “01234 654321″

In the example above we are associating peoples names or “friendly names” with people’s telephone numbers or “unique identifiers”.

Now when I want to talk to one of them I select “James Mobile” from my mobile phone book and hit the dial button. The job of associating the “friendly name” of James with his phone’s “unique identifier” is done for me. Simple.

DNS is very similar. Each computer that is connected to the Internet and publicly available has its own unique identifier, a little bit like a phone number. This unique identifier is called an “IP Address”.

An IP address looks like this;
123.123.123.123 (example that I made up)
209.85.169.147 (a Google web server)

We would find it very difficult to remember all the IP addresses of websites we visit, so instead each computer is also assigned a “friendly name”, often referred to as a “hostname”.

A hostname can look like this;
www.mydomain.co.uk (an example)
www.google.com (Google website)

So instead of using the following in a browser:

http://209.85.169.147
I can use;
http://www.google.com

We use the global DNS system as a great big phone book to associate one with the other.

When I type the hostname of a website into a browser my PC sends a DNS lookup query to a DNS server and gets back the correct IP address.

How does that all work?

Well the next step is to understand the hostname a little better. I’ve simplified it so far but let’s take another, more detailed look. I’ve referred to what you type into a browser as a hostname up to now, but strictly speaking it is a Fully Qualified Domain Name or FQDN.

Let’s take a look at the FQDN for www.google.com from right to left:

com = Top Level Domain or TLD
google = domain name
www = hostname

So the FQDN consists of;
hostname + domain name + TLD

A more familiar example;
http://host.domain.tld or http://www.domain.com

There are approx 13 Global DNS “Root Servers” dotted around the world named A to M, (how dull) that are the very top of the DNS hierarchy. Next, under the root servers are servers that are responsible for the TLDs (.com .net .co.uk etc) Under the TLD servers are servers responsible for domains.

So when we fire off a DNS lookup query we can actually traverse several DNS servers at many levels. Below is a picture showing this traversal against an example DNS lookup query for www.wikipedia.org

Now it is highly likely that you are reading this article while connected to the Internet using an Internet Service Provider or ISP. Your ISP is probably running several DNS servers that are already configured in your ADSL router/modem. It is also likely that you are not the first person to do a DNS lookup query for www.google.com against your ISP DNS servers and the answer is probably already cached.

If there were no cached DNS entries then every time we wanted to do a DNS lookup query we would have to start at the very top of the DNS hierarchy and work down to the domain’s own DNS server, or the “authoritative name server” for that domain. Cached DNS entries vastly decrease Internet traffic and speed up DNS lookup queries.

The Authoritative Answer

Let’s go back to the mobile phone example earlier in this article to understand the concept of “authoritative”. Assume I’ve lost James’ mobile phone number so I ask Mark. Mark looks it up on his phone and tells me.

However this number is out of date due to the fact that James has a flashy new iPhone 4s complete with a new mobile number. I then bump into James at the pub and ask him his new number. He tells me the “authoritative” answer.

So in effect Mark gave me a cached answer and James gave me the authoritative answer. So caching is great but it does have its drawbacks. DNS uses a Time To Live or TTL mechanism to specify the lifetime that a cached answer is valid for.

In effect when you add a new server into the DNS system it can take up to 72hrs to propagate around the world and when you change DNS information it can also take a while due to the caching nature of DNS.

This type of information is stored in the “zone file” which is a file used to store DNS information about a particular domain. The zone file is also the place where the hostname is mapped to an IP address.

Zone File Entries

Lets have a brief look at a zone file and some of the information that it contains;

 example.com. NS ns1.nameserver.com ; specify name server for domain
 example.com. NS ns2.nameserver.com ; specify name server for domain
 example.com. A 12.34.56.78 ; ip address for domain
 localhost. A 127.0.0.1 ; ip address for localhost
 www.example.com. CNAME example.com ; www alias
 ftp.example.com. CNAME example.com ; ftp alias
 mail.example.com. CNAME example.com ; webmail alias

Above I have given examples of record types you would commonly find in a domain DNS zone file.

NS Record – This entry specifies the nameservers ns1.nameserver.com and ns1.nameserver.com as the authoritative nameservers for the domain example.com It is good practice to specify multiple NS records for failover.

A Record – These are the main entries that map a hostname to an IP address for the domain. You can see in the above example we have also specified an entry for the localhost or loopback address.

CNAME Record – This type of record specifies an alias name and maps it to an A record.

Many people use a shared server these days and typically have 1 IP address assigned to them by the ISP. These shared servers commonly offer multiple services to the user, for example; www, ftp, webmail, etc.

In such an example the main A record specifies the IP address of the shared server as per the first A record in the zone file example above. The other services offered are defined using CNAME records that point back to the main A record. As you can see from the above example the following would be available for use over the Internet;

example.com
www.example.com
ftp.example.com
mail.example.com

Obviously each of these services would be running on their own TCP/IP port number on the given IP address. Also note that localhost will resolve to 127.0.0.1 which can only be used internally on the server itself.

So there it is then, a brief overview of DNS. I hope this article has given you an insight into the global DNS system and may even prompt you to find out and read a bit more.

Feel free to comment on this article or get in touch if you would like any further information.

First of all let me introduce you to the concept of “Pipelining”. First lets think about a very simplified example in the form of a web page called test.html with some text and 3 images. Your web browser will need to make a separate HTTP GET request for each object on the page as follows;

A non pipelined request will do all the GET requests in serial;

Step 1: GET test.html
Step 2: GET image1.jpg
Step 3: GET image2.jpg
Step 4: GET image3.jpg

A browser using pipelining will do all the GET requests in parallel resulting in fewer HTTP connections, less latency and less traffic overhead between you and the web server;

Step 1: GET test.html, GET image1.jpg, GET image2.jpg, GET image3.jpg

In Firefox pipelining is not enabled by default. To enable pipelining we have to go beyond the normal Firefox preferences page and get under the covers.

Type “about:config” into the browsers address bar. (don’t include the double quotes) You will see a rather humorous warning message regarding “Dragons”. After promising not to break anything you will be greeted with a billion and one different options to play with.

At the top of the page you will see a “filter” box.
Type “network” into the filter box (don’t include the double quotes) and you will only see options relating to the networking configuration of Firefox.

Scroll down a little and you will find the following settings;
(double clicking will toggle between true and false)

network.http.pipelining – set this to true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests – increase this to 8
network.http.proxy.pipelining – set this to true

Now restart your Firefox browser and Pipelining will be enabled.

Further reading and more in depth details can be found here;
HTTP pipelining at Wikipedia
What is HTTP pipelining at Mozilla

Feel free to comment on this article or get in touch if you would like any further information.

This is especially useful if you want to avoid Damn You Autocorrect type scenarios!

These settings are the same on the iPhone 3 and the iPhone 4, and Apple iOS3, iOS4 and iOS5.

So here is how to reset your iPhone spelling dictionary back to the default for your language.
Go to Settings » General » Reset » Reset Keyboard Dictionary
You will get prompted for confirmation, just in case you’re not sure.

You can also turn off spelling auto correction if you like.
Go to Settings » General » Keyboard » Auto-Correction
The Auto-Correction switch allows you to toggle it on and off.

Enjoy.

“Continuous and broad peer-review, enabled by publicly available source code, improves software reliability and security through the identification and elimination of defects that might otherwise go unrecognised by the core development team. Conversely, where source code is hidden from the public, attackers can attack the software anyway. Hiding source code does inhibit the ability of third parties to respond to vulnerabilities (because changing software is more difficult without the source code), but this is obviously not a security advantage. In general, ‘Security by Obscurity’ is widely denigrated.”

Department of Defense (DoD) FAQ’s response to the question: “Doesn’t Hiding Source Code Automatically Make Software More Secure?”

The DoD indicates that FOSS has been central to its Information Technology (IT) operations since the mid-1990’s, and, according to some estimates, one-third to one-half of the software currently used by the agency is open source. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum in 2004, which recommends that all federal agencies use the same procurement procedures for FOSS as they would for proprietary software. Other public sector agencies, such as the U.S. Navy, the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have been identified as recognizing the security benefits of publicly audit-able source code.

To understand why free and open source software has become a common component in the IT systems of so many businesses and organizations that perform life-critical or mission-critical functions, one must first accept that software bugs are a fact of life. The Software Engineering Institute estimates that an experienced software engineer produces approximately one defect for every 100 lines of code. Based on this estimate, even if most of the bugs in a modest, one million-line code base are fixed over the course of a typical program life cycle, approximately 1,000 bugs would remain.

In its first “State of Software Security” report released in March 2010, the private software security analysis firm Veracode reviewed the source code of 1,591 software applications voluntarily submitted by commercial vendors, businesses, and government agencies. Regardless of program origins, Veracode found that 58 percent of all software submitted for review did not meet the security assessment criteria the report established. Based on its findings, Veracode concluded that “most software is indeed very insecure… [and] more than half of the software deployed in enterprises today is potentially susceptible to an application layer attack similar to that used in the recent Google security breaches.”

Though open source applications had almost as many source code vulnerabilities upon first submission as proprietary programs, researchers found that they contained fewer potential back doors than commercial or outsourced software and that open source project teams remediated security vulnerabilities within an average of 36 days of the first submission, compared to 48 days for internally developed applications and 82 days for commercial applications.25 Not only were bugs patched the fastest in open source programs, but the quality of remediation was also higher than commercial programs.

Veracode’s study confirms the research and anecdotal evidence into the security benefits of open source software published over the past decade. According to the web-security analysis site SecurityPortal, vulnerabilities took an average of 11.2 days to be spotted in Red Hat/Linux systems with a standard deviation of 17.5 compared to an average of 16.1 days with a standard deviation of 27.7 in Microsoft programs.

Sun Microsystems’ COO Bill Vass summed up the most common case for FOSS in a blog post published in April 2009: “By making the code open source, nothing can be hidden in the code,” Vass wrote;

“If the Trojan Horse was made of glass, would the Trojans have rolled it into their city? No.”

Vass’ logic is backed up by numerous research papers and academic studies that have debunked the myth of security through obscurity and advanced the “more eyes, fewer bugs” thesis. Though it might seem counter-intuitive, making source code publicly available for users, security analysts, and even potential adversaries does not make systems more vulnerable to attack in the long-run. To the contrary, keeping source code under lock-and-key is more likely to hamstring “defenders” by preventing them from finding and patching bugs that could be exploited by potential attackers to gain entry into a given code base, whether or not access is restricted by the supplier.

“In a world of rapid communications among attackers where exploits are spread on the Internet, a vulnerability known to one attacker is rapidly learned by others,” reads a 2006 article comparing open source and proprietary software use in government systems. “For Open Source, the next assumption is that disclosure of a flaw will prompt other programmers to improve the design of defences. In addition, disclosure will prompt many third parties – all of those using the software or the system – to install patches or otherwise protect themselves against the newly announced vulnerability. In sum, disclosure does not help attackers much but is highly valuable to the defenders who create new code and install it.”

Academia and internet security professionals appear to have reached a consensus that open, auditable source code gives users the ability to independently assess the exposure of a system and the risks associated with using it; enables bugs to be patched more easily and quickly; and removes dependence on a single party, forcing software suppliers and developers to spend more effort on the quality of their code, as authors Jaap-Henk Hoepman and Bart Jacobs also conclude in their 2007 article, Increased Security Through Open Source.

By contrast, vulnerabilities often go unnoticed, unannounced, and unfixed in closed source programs because the vendor, rather than users who have a higher stake in maintaining the quality of software, is the only party allowed to evaluate the security of the code base. Some studies have argued that commercial software suppliers have less of an incentive to fix defects after a program is initially released so users do not become aware of vulnerabilities until after they have caused a problem.

“Once the initial version of [a proprietary software product] has saturated its market, the producer’s interest tends to shift to generating upgrades. Security is difficult to market in this process because, although features are visible, security functions tend to be invisible during normal operations and only visible when security trouble occurs.”

The consequences of manufacturers’ failure to disclose malfunctions to patients and physicians have proven fatal in the past. In 2005, a 21-year-old man died from cardiac arrest after the ICD he wore short-circuited and failed to deliver a life-saving shock. The fatal incident prompted Guidant, the manufacturer of the flawed ICD, to recall four different device models they sold. In total 70,000 Guidant ICDs were recalled in one of the biggest regulatory actions of the past 25 years.

Guidant came under intense public scrutiny when the patient’s physician Dr. Robert Hauser discovered that the company first observed the flaw that caused his patient’s device to malfunction in 2002, and even went so far as to implement manufacturing changes to correct it, but failed to disclose it to the public or health-care industry.

The body of research analysed for this paper points to the same conclusion: security is not achieved through obscurity and closed source programs force users to forfeit their ability to evaluate and improve a system’s security. Though there is lingering debate over the degree to which end-users contribute to the maintenance of FOSS programs and how to ensure the quality of the patches submitted, most of the evidence supports our paper’s central assumption that auditable, peer-reviewed software is comparatively more secure than proprietary programs.

Programs have different standards to ensure the quality of the patches submitted to open source programs, but even the most open, transparent systems have established methods of quality control. Well-established open source software, such as the kind favoured by the DoD and the other agencies mentioned above, cannot be infiltrated by “just anyone.” To protect the code base from potential adversaries and malicious patch submissions, large open source systems have a “trusted repository” that only certain, “trusted,” developers can directly modify. As an additional safeguard, the source code is publicly released, meaning not only are there more people policing it for defects, but more copies of each version of the software exist making it easier to compare new code.

The original article can be found here.

Take a look at my article Internet Connection Problems and make sure everything is working as expected. A good way to do this is to use a PC wired directly into the router/modem. If the wired connection is having speed issues fix them first as this would indicate a generic problem that would affect both wired and wireless usage.

Ok, so your wired connection is working fine, but your wifi is still significantly slower. Let’s have a look in a little more detail.

Wifi is simply a wireless networking technology that uses radio frequencies to transmit data between a wifi enabled device and your broadband router/modem.

The wifi signal is transmitted over a very specific and narrow set of frequencies in the 2.4Ghz range.

Just like any radio frequency, wifi is prone to interference. This interference can come form a variety of sources, especially when you consider that the 2.4Ghz range is in common usage in a typical domestic environment.

Common household devices also use the 2.4Ghz band, for example, cordless phones, baby monitors, automatic door openers, microwave ovens etc.

It’s a really good idea not to have your wireless router/modem next to or near any of these devices. Test the wifi performance with these devices turned off to see if that makes a difference and try to isolate the device that is the source of the interference.

The most common issue regarding wifi performance is related to the wifi channel. Although wifi uses the 2.4Ghz frequency, it is split up into different channels. The specific channel is normally set on the router/modem with the other end of the connection auto detecting what the router/modem is configured to.

I’ll avoid the in-depth technical detail which can be found via the internet in articles like List of WLAN Channels on Wikipedia.

There are typically 11 separate wifi channels that are spaced 5Khz apart from each other. Furthermore most of these 11 channels overlap each other and will cause interference. Channels 1, 6 and 11 do not overlap and as such are recommended for use.

Have a quick look at this diagram to see the 2.4Ghz WiFi Channels and how they overlap.

If you consider that most modern broadband router/modems have a wifi capability and that most households in your street also have broadband, it’s easy to see how your neighbour’s wifi signal could be interfering with yours.

If you use Linux there is a nice simple command to show all the wifi networks that are in range and on what channel they are operating; (iwlist scan). I’m sure there are equally easy ways to find out this information if using MS Windows or Mac OSx.

So I do a quick scan and find that my neighbour’s wifi signal is very strong and is on channel 6. I look at the configuration of my router/modem and see that I’m also using channel 6 by default. The solution is simple, I simply need to configure my router/modem to use either channel 1 or channel 11.

Other Top Tips
Try to place your router/modem in a central location in your house so the signal has a chance to reach most other areas.

Locate your router/modem;
At the top of the house rather than on the ground floor and with at least 12 inches clearance from surrounding walls.
Away from any large metal objects like filing cabinets and fridges and away from any fluorescent strip lighting.
Away from any other household devices that might be using the 2.4Ghz frequency band as discussed above.

Ensure that your router/modem is using the latest firmware update from the manufacturer as there may be signal strength improvements or other bug fixes.

If your router/modem has a moveable aerial place it in a vertical orientation. If your laptop or pc also has an aerial place this in the same orientation.