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Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Beware of Phishing

Phishing is the art of fetching the personal and secret information like user name, password, bank details, credit card details, cell numbers etc. Since many persons hesitate to reveal the personal information on the websites because of identity theft, the phishers have found an advantage out of that. They deliver the mail to you which seems like it is sent personally and is so convincing that it attracts and forces the user to give the personal information. Instead, persons should understand that giving the information on trusted sites is purely secure rather than giving the information by mail to any one.

Certain ways how phishers attack, what mistakes are commonly observed and how you can protect yourself are as follows:-

  • Fake and spoofed emails and messages on cell phones: The main way by which phishers attach is emails and messages. Whenever you receive an email or message with a threat or congratulations like 
    • Send the form immediately or your bank account will be terminated
    • Congratulations you have won $1000, please fill your details and send as soon as possible
    • You have been selected in MNC, register yourself for the interview
    • Your credit card is at the last stage of renewal. Renew immediately
          All these types of messages are fake and they are intended to get your personal information. So when ever you receive such a mail. Do not panic or get excited, rather stay calm and recheck the things.
  • Copy of Popular Websites: This is also very common technique to get the information via fake means. The designers make the copy of certain popular websites and misusing the faith developed by those websites to fetch the information. They just make small changes in the URL of the website like they change www.facebook.com to www.faecbook.com but the design on the page and the website is the same. Even many persons make clone of the bank's website. So when ever you fill your personal data on any website do check the URL twice.

Portable Electronic Gadgets - A need or social symbol?

These days most of the persons do not judge you by what you wear, how you talk, how you behave, in-spite of that they judge you by what electronic gadget(s) you carry along with you like smart phones, tablets, smart watches etc. This scenario is not applicable only to the youth but to every age group. In any party, the status of persons is with smart phones or tablets. If you have something to show like this then you have a status else you do not.

This is not the fault of the people rather it is the impact of the developing technology. The technology has developed to such an extend that every person is in the net of that technology. Every one needs to have access to the technology in order to get updated. In one or another sense, we can say that portable electronic devices are much of a need these days. These electronic devices provide a means of ease in every sphere of life, like instant mail access, instant media sharing via messengers like whats app, any time any where business conferences using apps like Skype, any time any where television using apps like nexGenTv, weather access via AccuWeather, you can create and give presentations any time any where, get up-to date on social front etc. etc., it is endless. 

There are so many advantages of the smart phones and tablets but still for many persons it is just a status symbol. There is no doubt that what a high end phone can provide you features, a basic smart phone cannot provide, but still they could provide all basic needs that a smart phone needs to deliver. We should not use them as a status symbol rather than they are for making our life simpler and faster on technological front.

Sunday, 31 March 2013

What type of images should Designers/Developers use on web pages

Web developers/designers have different types of image formats that they can use on the web, but many times they got confused as which type of images to be used. In general there are three types of images that are best suited for the web pages:-
  1. JPEG
  2. GIF
  3. PNG
All three of them have their own characteristics and they are as follows:

1. JPEG: 
  • It supports 17 million colors 
  • It uses lossy compression technique
  • Size should be reduced without much impact on the quality of picture
2. GIF
  • Supports 256 colors only
  • Uses loss less compression technique
  • Supports animation
  • Low quality
3. PNG
  • Easily load over the web
  • Provides transparency
  • Provides 8-bit and 24-bit channel which could reduce the size
  • Uses loss less compression technique
  • Good quality

It depends upon the developer/designer as to decide which of the type to use. This article will help them to decide when and where to use which type of images. Based on the below table, it becomes easier for the developer to decide when to use which type of images.

Type JPEG GIF PNG
Logo
Photographic
Descriptive
Textual
Transparency
Animation
Colorful
Sharpness
Compression

Monday, 25 March 2013

Moving over from core coding to Content Management Systems

These days core coding ways of developing web sites is getting out of trend and the main reason for that is more use of Content Management Systems.For the new comers it is highly advisable to learn all the basics of core coding. Develop few sample websites so that they could understand the basics as how web pages becomes a website. After getting hands on to the core one should immediately move on to content management systems. The reason for moving from core to content management systems are:
1. There are certain web development standards, which are not so easy for the freshers and also not so easy for the experienced persons. They should learn those standards from CMSs as those standards are already implemented in all CMSs.
2. This is the era of smart word along with hard work. Do hard work on learning the coding skills and do smart work by implementing those coding skills via CMSs.
3. CMSs are easy to implement, as they have their own standards. If we go by the options and features they provide us, we can develop very efficient websites with in very less time.
4. Most of the CMSs are free and their tutorials and manuals are easily available.
5. If you have learned coding thoroughly and you are working on a CMS, then you can excel very well because if you want to develop some advance website features then you have to create certain plugins or modules that are not available in that CMS. If you create a plugin, and you think that could be useful to others as well then you can get that plugin patent and fix a price for that. If it will be really good you could earn a lot from it.
6. These days screen sizes are much variable, which creates problems for the designers but many of the CMSs provides templates that are much responsive, means that got fit to any screen size weather tablet or smart phone. One should just not implement it but simultaneously learn as how to do.