Below we have a video from CNET explaining, according to their research, the top 5 worst things about the iPhone 4s.

Are you an iPhone 4S user?  Do you have an opinion on the iPhone 4S?  Why not share it with us below and we’ll see if the things that are hated about the phone in the US are also the same for UK users.

Description

Mozilla Firefox is a web browser available on multiple operating systems and has been a long term rival to Microsofts Internet Explorer.  Throughout the late 90s and early 2000s this popularity was ever increasing with many experts tipping the web browser to eventually overtake Microsofts Internet Explorer in terms of market share.  Numerous exploits and non standards compliant development of Internet Explorer were two of the reasons for IEs decline.

Review

Mozilla Firefox unfortunately looks to be heading down the wrong path.  Once hailed the new dawn in Internet browsers, the late 2000s and early 2010s have not been good for the once revolutionary browser.  While still maintaining a fair portion of the market share (for the moment), Firefox is becoming increasingly unpopular with computer developers and experts.  One of the big reasons for this is the browser becoming increasingly more bloated and becoming more increasingly prone to lock ups.

Other browsers now such as Opera and Safari are offering better performance now than Firefox and unless things change, it is likely that Firefox will continue to decline.

Another issue brought up by users is the ever increasing amount of updates for the browser (sometimes only days apart) and the increasing incompatibility of add ons with different versions of the browser which, as expected, will no doubt be contributing to a decline in the number of users using the web browser on production machines.

Download

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

For WordPress users, searching Google for “Free wordpress themes” might seem like a great idea.  However increasingly this is becoming one of the most dangerous things you can do.

There is a lot of trust placed in a theme developer when you download and install their theme.  The reason for this is that, especially if you are not an experienced programmer, they could place any code they wanted to in there – even malicious code, and you might be non the wiser.

What harm can that do?  Well potentially lots!  If you’re running a reputable blog for your company then hidden likes to “Busty Babes 3″ and “Winky Mania III” might not go down great with your bosses and could seriously damage the reputation of your business as it is linked to such, lets say, questionable websites.

But, surely I’d see those links?  Well you may do, but you most likely won’t.  Most people who want to place secret code in a theme are pretty good at it by now.  So links will be changed to the same colour as your background or even placed entirely off screen.  So what’s the problem then?  If people can’t see them how could that possibly affect your website?  Well, the reason is that you may not see it, you may even (luckily) get away without your visitors, customers or potential investors seeing it.  But there’s one thing on the Internet that will most definitely see it, without a shadow of a doubt.  That is Google (and every other search engine!).  Google will start to link you to the other websites due to the links you have back to them.  And it may be difficult to explain to your boss why the manufacturing business website you are running for him suddenly ranks 3rd place in Google for “Busty Babes” and “Girls Go Wild”.

The example above is a serious one, albeit slightly humorous.  But that is not the only thing that could potentially be included in your “fantastic” new theme.

Oh no, there’s more!  You could have real malicious code pasted in there.  For example, there could be code in there which makes it easier (i.e. leaves the proverbial front door unlocked and open) to bypass your servers security and attack it, change your content, hijack your account and the list goes on.  Of course, none of these things are good – but they are possible if malicious code is in there.

And not only that, anyone with the requisite knowhow can use the open door to mess with your website – not just the person who put the code in the theme in the first place.  Most themes like this tend to be counterfeit copies of real premium themes that genuine developers have put a lot of time and effort into creating.

But, I’m an experienced programmer, I know what I’m doing, I’ll recognise any malicious code.  Well, possibly, but quite likely not.  I mean, even the most experienced programmers won’t necessarily understand what every piece of code is and if you do, you are unlikely to have the time to vet it all before it goes live.  And in any case, most malicious developers realise that they could in theory be caught out and encrypt the offending malicious code and then decrypt it on the fly using base64() and other similar functions.  I would hazard a guess that there isn’t anyone out there, however clever or experienced, that can decode encrypted strings on the fly in their head!

In conclusion, in general, free themes for blogs (and free themes for other server software) are generally a bad idea.  There are some good ones out there that are fine to use but more often or not these are from reputable companies.

Make sure you know where you themes have come from and who has written them.  You don’t want to invest a huge amount of time in your website to have someone destroy it in a few clicks and keyboard presses.

The safest and best quality templates are of course premium templates from reputable companies!  Happy, and safe, template hunting!

Description

Ben’s website is a personal tech blog covering a range of issues relating to hardware and software including both the Windows and Mac operating systems.  To add the personal touch, there is also some interesting non tech posts now and then that certainly get you thinking.

Review

Ben Stones’ Personal Tech Blog on Windows, Mac, Software and Hardware is a site that you should definitely bookmark even if you have the vaguest interest in technology and specifically computers.  The quality of the articles on this website supersedes the quality found on even some of the biggest technology sites out there.

One of the great things about Ben’s website is that, as expected, it is informative and full of useful information, but he also adds his personal take on things, gives advice and explains his experiences of similar situations.

With regular updates and good quality content this site is sure to go from one success to another.  We’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on it and we suggest that you do to!

An API is a set of functions and essentially a programming language (and it use that term very loosely!) that allow third party developers to develop applications and websites that interact with them.

Facebook has a similar API for it’s own service, unsurprisingly called, yep, you guessed it, Facebook API.

Now with the Facebook API you can (as long as you have sufficient permissions from the user) access profile information, friends lists wall posts, about me, work history and a great deal more information and use this to enhance the experience for Facebook users on your own website.  You can even post to their wall, update their status, share photos and videos etc.

Now the reason why the Google+ API (based on OpenSocial – a popular open source social networking platform) is frustrating developers?  Well, if you want information, such as the profile information, ‘circles’ information etc you’re fine.  But a lot of data from your Google+ site cannot currently be shared.  The major thing however is that communication with the Google+ API is pretty much all one way.  You can get information from it, but cannot send (for example update status posts, add new photos etc) back to it currently.

Now Google+ is based, and is largely composed of OpenSocial – which has all these functions in place.  But Google+ has it’s own special variant of OpenSocial and currently hasn’t released any functions to send information to Google+ or even got all the functions to retrieve all the information from Google+, if authorised.

Until Google+ does this it is unlikely to see as rapid growth in app development on it’s platform as Facebook – who has new websites and apps appearing everyday that integrate the worlds biggest social network.

No doubt it is in the plans of Google to release a fully functioning and comprehensive API but we hope this is in the near future.  Every day that it is not released they are likely to fall even further away from Facebook, who already have, without doubt, the commanding share of the social networking market.

The timeline has many great features, simplified yet fairly effective privacy settings and it’s biggest asset (or downfall depending on how you feel!) is that now information which you shared on your Facebook profile many moons ago and had dropped to the bottom of the Facebook pit never to be seen again is back!  Back with a vengeance!  Now, thanks to timelines easy navigation system it is simple to browse to a specific point in time, even years ago, and see what you were doing and sharing on Facebook.  Timeline even gets involved with life pre-Facebook, for example births, marriages and other ‘life events’.

Sounds great right?  Possibly, but it could cause potential nightmares for a lot of users.  Facebook has been available in the UK for around 5 years now with many people having been members since 2006 / 2007.

Remember that photo of you tied naked to a lamppost on your 18th birthday?  Remember that photo of you stumbling out of a club at 9am in the morning several sheets to wind?  Yes, there are all times that we would like to forget and that we thought were safe at the bottom of a Facebook server never to be seen again.  Wrong!  They’re back alright – and would you want your current boss reviewing all of your teenage displays of immaturity or Facebook status wars of you abusing an old granny?  Probably not, it could mean that promotion or pay rise disappearing!!

Thankfully, there is a way to review and censor your own history to make is squeaky clean.  The only problem is that it will be very time consuming!  Even if you have only used Facebook weekly from 2006/2007 it will amaze you actually how much content that you have placed on there!  And for the Facebook addicts out there, you’re going to need to devote days and days to clean out your days of debauchery! The ‘Activity’ log shows everything that you have shared on Facebook – status updates, wall posts, comments, likes, photos, videos, app posts – you name it, if you’ve shared it, it’s on there.  Theres also a handy little button next to each post which allows you to quickly hide it from your timeline or delete it altogether.

If there are things that you definitely don’t want to be unhidden accidentally then it would be advisable to delete them!

Now would also be a good time to update all your privacy settings and ensure that nothing is public and your lowest privacy setting on posts is ‘Friends’.

After switching (or being switched) to timeline you have seven days to review the content before your timeline goes automatically viewable by the rest of the world (or if your brave, or sort out your profile before the seven days is up, you can always click ‘Publish Now’ – be warned, there is no going back from publishing your timeline!).

In conclusion, a valuable lesson can be learnt from this.  Facebook remembers EVERYTHING.  So always do choose your words carefully, try to keep private issues private and if you do make mistakes (or make posts that seem like a good idea at the time, but not a little while after) make sure you review your activity log periodically to be safe.

Now it’s your choice.  Is Facebook timeline going to be a dream or a nightmare for you?

Greeks government servers went down, followed by Swedens and now Bulgarian pro-ACTA business Prophon becomes the latest victim in this seemingly never ending war on ACTA.

Prophons usual content was of course, “suspended” by Anonymous.  The group stated on Prophons redesigned homepage that “This domain has been seized by Anonymous under section #14 of the rules of the Internet”.

Despite, in the past week, security experts saying they could defend attacks from Anonymous with relative ease, they were only taking into account automated attacks using the groups LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) software.  Individual or co-ordinated manual attacks seem to be all but impossible for governments and businesses worldwide to prevent against given the recent flurry of attacks on numerous servers, tapping into conferences and theft and publication of personal and sensitive data.

A screenshot of the Prophons homepage, designed by Anonymous, is displayed below, showing their full message.

DPS Computing can confirm that Prophon have since restored their website to it’s original content.