Author Archives: Sal Conigliaro

Safari gestures

In Safari on the iPhone, the toolbar is the bar across the bottom that has the forward, back, share, bookmarks and tabs button. In iOS 7, they’ve changed the behavior so that the bar automatically hides itself as you scroll down the page.

To get it to reappear, you either have to scroll up a bit, or tap near the bottom of the screen. Or so I thought until I discovered that you can swipe forward and back between pages *without* using the toolbar!

To do it, just swipe from the very edge of the phone itself (I usually start by touching the black area between the left/right edge of the screen and the antenna band) and then swipe across.  Voila! Now you can go forward and back in Safari using gestures!

(This trick also works on the iPad!)

toolbar_2

 

 

Where’s the .com key?

Missing the .com key from your iPhone/iPad in iOS 7? It’s still there!

Just tap & hold on the period key!

dotComKey

Inserting photos and videos in your email

Ever start an email and realize you want to include a photo or video? You don’t need to exit the ‘Mail’ app and go into ‘Photos’; you can insert them right from your message!

Check out this tutorial to see how easy it is!

Insert photos into email

(This tip works on both iPhones and iPads)

SPARKcon 2013 is live!

The 2013 edition of the SPARKcon iPhone app is now live on the app store!

Download it today!

SPARKcon iPhone 5

SPARKCon 2013 is coming!

Keep your eyes peeled on the App Store! The 2013 version of the SPARKCon iPhone app will be available soon!

sneak peek

Twitter Performance Analytics

Twitter recently launched their new ads platform. One of the features of that platform is free performance analytics which allows you to see your tweets actual reach (without having to use a third-party service).

You can see how many people are clicking on the links you tweet, how many people have favorited your tweet, number of retweets, mentions and follows/unfollow. And all of the data can be exported as a CSV file!

To access it, just go to ads.twitter.com, sign in with your Twitter credentials then click on the ‘Analytics’ menu item.

 

 

Apple Service Status for Status Board

This panel for Panic’s ‘Status Board‘ iPad app quickly shows you the status of Apple’s various services (iCloud, Services and Stores). It’s very handy for checking at a glance if any of Apple’s cloud services are having issues.

There are two versions of the panel: Summary and Detailed. The ‘Summary’ panel has one indicator for each of the 3 major services (Services, Stores & iCloud). The ‘Detailed’ panel has an indicator for each individual service.

Install the Detailed Panel

Install the Summary Panel

The code is now located on GitHub

WordPress security tips – I can haz blog?

There’s been an increase in attacks on WordPress installations recently (reports indicate that on HostGator alone 90,000 sites are compromised). This is no joke.

If you work with WordPress (especially for your business), you need to take this recent wave of attacks seriously.

Fortunately, there are some very easy things you can do to help harden your WordPress security. I’ve listed them in order from quickest to most involved:

1) Use a SECURE password for the admin user. Something that is a random string of characters with at least 3 or 4 digits and a symbol or two.
uq7M9)gQncD.jM3PiRU is a secure password.
mycatrocks1 is NOT a secure password.

2) Make sure that the admin password isn’t a password used on another site. I know it’s impossible to remember these different passwords (especially when they’re random characters), but there are tools that help you. 1Password is software for your browser(s) that remembers your username/password logins for you. When you’re prompted to login to a website, you press a keyboard shortcut and 1Password fills in the username & password for you automatically.

You can also create secure passwords (like the one above) using 1Password.

3) Use the Limit Login Attempts plug-in. This WordPress plug-in will disable the admin login page if you enter your password incorrectly too many times.

4) Use something other than ‘admin’ for the administrator username. If your admin username is ‘admin’, create another admin user (preferably using something random as the username (like ‘hq7TMXAhDnCXHHUhw’). Then delete the old ‘admin’ account in the ‘Users’ panel (be sure to assign all posts & links to another (non-admin) user).  The idea here is that your admin username is some random string. And that admin account is only used for admin functions, not for publishing content.

5) Use a non-admin account for publishing posts & pages. Never publish any posts as the ‘admin’ user.

6) Enable Two-Step authentication using Duo Security’s plugin. This plugin adds a second level of security by either sending a text, voice call or asking you for a code from their authentication app before letting you login. It’s free for up to 10 WP users per site. If you have more than 10 people modifying your blog, it’s only $3/user/month.

Check out their demo video.

7) Enable mod_security in your Apache config to limit failed login attempts to your wp-login.php page.

Taking a few minutes now to secure your WordPress install will save you hours of pain later (so you can spend more time with your cats).