The well-known and well used WordPress CMS System has been the latest victim of the hackers.

According to an article written by W3Techs “Usage statistics and market share of Word Press “ the well-established CMS is used by 17% of website across the globe.

A botnet attacked ‘Tens of Thousands’ of individual computers last week, according to server hosting providers Cloudflare and Hostgator.

This attack is brute force attacking the admin portals within the url (myaddress.com/wp-admin). By using the default username ‘admin’ and guessing (on mass levels) the password.

Chief Executive and co-founder of Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, commented on his blog “One of the concerns of an attack like this is that the attacker is using a relatively weak botnet of home PCs in order to build a much larger botnet of beefy servers in preparation for a future attack. These larger machines can cause much more damage in DDoS attacks because the servers have large network connections and are capable of generating significant amounts of traffic.”

Sarah Brassington MD of Rake Mark Solutions said “Media Hype and fears of future attacks are obviously doing the rounds but please stay calm. We advise that all our clients’  double check that passwords are kept strong and to try and include characters within the password”.

She continues with “if any of our clients have any issues at all, please feel free to contact us. A email will be going out to all our clients using the word press platform later today”

Google will allow users to configure what happens to data stored within their Google associated account after death (or after a period of inactive time on-line)

The feature will apply to email, social network Google Plus and other Google products you may use within your Google account.

For many years concerns have been raised about how much privacy we actually have when surfing the web, how much is stored, what is stored and the impact this has n our privacy.

On the Official Google Blog, Andreas Tuerk (Product Manager) posts that “making plans for what happens after you’re gone is really important for the people you leave behind.”

The new feature can be found under the Google accounts settings page and while Google themselves don’t seem overly “wow’ed” by their choice of name the ‘Inactive Account Manager’ section will allow you to configure your data management options e.g. Delete my data after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity.

The launch of this feature on Thursday April 11 2013 has churned up many feelings as you would expect. This is certainly a topic that many people have an option on. What’s yours?

Twitter, our friendly micro-blogging website has caused quite a stir of excitement after buying the music discovery site ‘We Are Hunted’. Twitter are rumoured to be launching a new music service and with #Music displayed on the newly-launched (late Thursday) sub domain music.twitter.com we can see where all the excitement is coming from.

‘We Are Hunted’ announced on http://wearehunted.com/ that yes it is true the “We Are Hunted” Team are joining Twitter and while they are staying quite tight lipped “We wish we could say but we’re not yet ready to talk about it. You’ll hear more from us when we are.” the worlds media is putting 2 and 2 together.

Reports, Rumours and the media Hype (along with a few celebrity tweets) suggests that the plans of this new service will be personalised recommendations on music through its own dedicated app.

An announcement for the new app could be made as soon as the end of the week … but we’ll all just have to wait and see.

Twitter celebrates its seventh birthday today and while some still (yes even now) don’t fully see the benefit of 140 character micro-blogging, twitter is used by 200 million users worldwide and is thought to tweet about 400 million messages every single day.

Back in 2006 it was something that @jack, @ev and @biz had ‘maybe’, ‘possibly’, ‘in their wildest dreams’ thought possible but today it is a reality.

Over the years it has become a platform for business, hobbies, ideas, judgement and jokes. Twitter is used by all walks of life, from the teenager on the beach telling the world how good the ‘surf’ is, to members of parliament giving us a sneak look and what to expect in the budget.

Some may love you and some may hate you …. but either way …. Happy Birthday Twitter!

The Government’s recently announced intentions to replace the current voluntary self-regulation of the press through the Press Complaints Commission with a new independent press watchdog for England and Wales has been well received by many. However, the plans have led to concerns that bloggers could face hefty libel fines due to rules to be imposed by the watchdog, which will be backed by legislation.

Political blogger expresses his concerns

Political blogger Iain Dale has declared that he would “certainly” be covered by the regulations of the new watchdog, which would be established by royal charter, adding that the situation “stinks”. After reading the royal charter, he despaired that “If I don’t sign up and I am successfully sued, a judge would award exemplary damages against me,” adding that “This is madness. All that will do is encourage people with a grudge to make a complaint in the full knowledge that they will never be held responsible for what they are doing”.

The Government attempts to refute these concerns

However, the Culture Secretary Maria Miller has insisted that the criteria which determines the liability of a publisher to the new regulations protects “a single blogger”. She has explained that this is because, to be affected by the new regulations, a “publisher would have to meet the three tests of whether the publication is publishing news-related material in the course of a business, whether their material is written by a range of authors … and whether that material is subject to editorial control”.

The history leading up to the formation of the new watchdog

The new press watchdog has been set up following the recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into press ethics. The inquiry was held in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal and examined the ethics and practices which allowed journalists to hack thousands of phones. The inquiry ultimately recommended the formation of a new independent press watchdog which would be backed by legislation to ensure that it was doing its job properly. However, many of the implications of the new watchdog could be yet to be widely realised.

Google announced (late Wednesday Evening) that it will soon be retiring its beloved RSS Feed Reader! The well-loved (and quite long standing, been around since 2005) RSS Reader has been given the retirement date of July 1st 2013.

According to the official Google Blog, Google have two reasons for their actions.

Firstly the usage of Google Reader has simple declined and Secondly, Google are focusing their efforts and energy on fewer products. The idea being that, by not spreading themselves to thinly they can give the user a superior product experience.

The July “Fond Farewell” date is set a few months in advance to give us all Google RSS Feed users chance to re-group (and get their affairs in order) and move on to an alternative solution.

Google also went on to offer Googletake out as a possible Alternative and thanked us for using the reader as an RSS Platform.

Other options are Feedly, Omea Reader, or The Old Reader.

Lawsuit for Rembrandt Social Media

Fish & Richardson a global law firm has filed a Patent Infringement Lawsuit on behalf of a dead Dutch programmer called Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer.

According to legal papers filed by Fish and Richardson, ‘Surfbook’ was a social diary that let its users share information with friends and family and the mechanism used to approve information was a “like” button.

Rembrandt Social Media who now own the patents for the technologies used to build the Social Media Platform ’Surfbook’ where granted to Mr Van Der Meer almost 10 years ago, well before Social Media Giant Facebook came crashing onto the scene.

Rembrandt’s comment is simply that the patents were used without permission and possibly contributed to the massive success of Facebook.

Facebook declined to comment on either the claim or the Lawsuit.

It is documented in the legal paperwork filed by Fish & Richardson that Facebook knew of the patent (and therefor potentially the infringement) as Facebook themselves makes reference to it in its own social networking technology patent applications.

“We believe Rembrandt’s patents represent an important foundation of social media as we know it, and we expect a judge and jury to reach the same conclusion based on the evidence,” says attorney Tom Melsheimer, counsel for Rembrandt and managing principal of Fish & Richardson’s Dallas office.

An article published on the Internet Retailer online magazine warns against the use of responsive web design for e-retailers, claiming eCommerce websites suffer when using web design style, citing drawbacks for image heavy sites.

Responsive web design is a web design style that aims to take a customers required web design and then craft it in such a way as it will display on a number of different screen sizes, computers and devices. This means that the web designers don’t need to create an alternative design for different devices, like smartphones, tablets and other computers.

The article discusses the views of Raul Justiniano, a web developer for the Original Penguin brand. He claims that although there are benefits to having one site that that works on every device there are limitations when the site has a large number of images and this has a knock on effect with e-commerce websites.

If you consider the appearance of a product thumbnail list on the small screen of a Blackberry you really can see his point. Finding the product you’re looking for could become difficult if this is the primary navigation and it uses text and visual clues to help users find their products.

Displaying product detail can also be problematic, especially if your site is programmed to shrink 50% when displaying a web page on a mobile phone. This is going to affect the quality of the image output to the website visitor.

Philip Brassington of Rake Mark Solutions support this view with a clear image of your product is a minimum requirement when selling online.

“When you have no image your sales of that product shrink to practically zero” he said.

Raul Justiniano recommends that e-retailers create different images for smaller screens.

“For example, a home page image that shows PC users six fashion models might be cropped to show just four models, so that a smartphone user still sees the apparel with sufficient detail.” he says.

Justiniano coins the phrase ‘adaptive design’ rather than ‘responsive design’. In his explanation of this he states that parts of the site should remain responsive where  appropriate with substitute elements to ‘adapt’ the websites design where appropriate.

The cost of adaptive design to the website owner would depend on the site, but would probably remain outside of the budget of most small to medium eCommerce website owners. So until it is included into an eCommerce website package it will remain a web design discussion over a requirement.

At 9am on Sunday 11th November a UK first will occur. The Royal British Legion will unleash a social media Thunderclap to promote Two Minutes Silence in remembrance of all the men and women who have paid the ultimate sacrifice.

A Social Media Thunderclap is a ‘crowdspeaking platform’ that allows a single message to be mass shared simultaneously. The Thunderclap organisation describes it as being like a social media flash mob, helping the single message to rise above the noise of social networks.

The subsequent retweeting or Facebook ‘liking’ of the original simultaneous Thunderclap message, serves to ensure that important causes achieve global recognition by harnessing the power of social media.

“Twitter is a wonderful way to say something, but it’s difficult to be heard,” says Hashem Bajwa, De-De’s CEO. “Thunderclap lets people be heard by saying something together.”

Join the British Legion Thunderclap and Show Your Support

As the first UK organisation to use the Thunderclap social media tool the British Legion will use the Thunderclap to encourage the UK’s 10 million Twitter and 33 million Facebook users to observe the Two Minute Silence on Remembrance Sunday (11am on Sunday 11 November).

On Sunday morning, 11 November, in advance of the traditional Two Minute Silence at 11am, a ‘stockpile’ of tweets and updates made by British social media users will be unleashed.

The message, ‘I’ll be remembering the fallen at 11 o’clock #2MinuteSilence #LestWeForget’ will be broadcast across the social media websites of twitter and Facebook in a simultaneous expression of support.

To join the Thunderclap and show your support simply visit the Thunderclap page – www.thunderclap.it/projects/547-two-minute-silence. Once there you can then support the effort by clicking to authorise your Twitter and Facebook accounts to send this message simultaneously on Sunday 11 November with every other participant.

If you have opted-in to participate, Thunderclap will automatically send out the message at 9am on 11 November.

Helen Hill, Head of Remembrance at The Royal British Legion comments, “We hope to create the largest ever show of online Remembrance by using the communicative power of social media to remind millions of Britons that they have a very personal opportunity to honour the men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice.”

Rake Mark have joined the Thunderclap to show their support and will be observing the two minute silence.