Software Blog Archive - Software Blog Posts on shanemcdonald.ie

How to Fix a frozen iPhone or a Frozen Safari App

by Shane McDonald | Feb 15, 2014 | How to..., Internet & Technology, iPod / iPhone Apps, Software

I was asked today how to fix a iPhone (or iPod Touch) which had a Frozen Safari app (Apples Internet Browser). This can also work for a Frozen iPhone in some situations like an app which is unresponsive. The problem was that Safari on the iPod Touch would not accept any touches to the address bar, search bar or bookmarks – basically the Safari GUI on the iPod was frozen or simply it is a Frozen iPhone. The solution to fix this frozen iPhone or frozen safari app is fairly easy, but not everyone knows it. To fix and unfreeze the iPhone Safari App , do as follows; – Load the Safari App on the iPod Touch / iPhone – when Safari has loaded, press and hold the home button (the circular button in the middle of the iPod) until Safari quits – your iPhone / iPod Touch should return to the home screen. If this does not work you can try do an iPhone reset. The iPhone / iPod Touch reset is done by pressing and holding the home button and the power on/off button simultaneously, until you see the Apple logo and then release – while ignoring the “slide to turn off prompt” when doing this. Its probably useful to clear your cache and cookies when this has resolved; this can be done by Going to Settings > Safari and select Clear History, Clear Cookies, and Clear Cache. You can also ensure no further issues occur by turning off and re-powering the iPod/iPhone once finished this. Hopefully, this should solve any problems if you have an iPod Touch or iPhone with a Safari App which is Frozen or if you have a frozen iPhone, hopefully you are now back up and running. If you are very unfortunate and your iPod / iPhone won’t start at all, review this fix which resolves this issue. Click Here to Read this iPod Full Reset Fix

5 ways to secure your WordPress Blog & avoid downtime

by Shane McDonald | Sep 23, 2012 | Internet & Technology, Software

Securing WordPress

There are millions of WordPress blogs around the world. If you host WordPress yourself you will know that there is often some maintenance to be done. However, many people don’t know and many security issues can affect their blog. Most self-hosted bloggers are surprised to find out that there were things they could have done to prevent the downtime. These are 5 ways to secure your WordPress Blog & avoid downtime. My shanemcdonald.ie site is based on WordPress and rarely do I have issues.

1) Update your WordPress Plugins

Your hosted WordPress installation will have some plugins installed and from time to time these will be patched, improved and in some cases be given security improvements. You will know if an update is due on your WordPress plugins as a circle with a number will appear after the Plugins section on the left hand column of your WordPress Dashboard. Simply click into the Plugins section, select the plugins for upgrade and hit the Upgrade button. It is a straight forward process which is worth checking for every few days.

If you are finished using or no longer use a certain WordPress plugin, delete it from your system. It reduced clutter and also other risks of unsecured plugins.

2) Check your WordPress Installation Updates

Occasionally WordPress itself will be upgraded, at the time of writing this post version 3.4.2 of WordPress is the latest stable release. You will know if an upgrade for WordPress is available as it will be highlighted across the Top of your WordPress Dashboard. This Notification should not be ignored as it usually gives security improvements plus new features. The WordPress upgrade process may include a database backup advisory so if you don’t back up your WordPress databases you should and there are some excellent plugins which allow you to do this.

3) Check for WordPress Framework Updates

If you use purchased or 3rd party WordPress Themes, these may come with a Theme Framework. These framework updates are sometimes overlooked and people don’t even know they are there. Most often if you click Appearance -> Themes you may see an extra dropdown for Update Framework…this may also appear further down the Dashboard left column under Theme Options. you should always know what theme you are working with so that you don’t inadvertently delete or change settings for the theme – also if you are on twitter / the web you may see notifications or alerts for certain themes saying that updates are available for potential security loopholes etc.

4) Check your file and directory Permissions

This is one of the biggest problems on sites which have been attacked or hacked – people don’t set the correct permissions on files and folders. Setting permissions using chmod 777 which is read, write and execute for everyone is one way of asking for trouble. Its like leaving your backdoor open and wondering why you got robbed. There are plenty of tutorials online which explain file permissions and correctly set permissions allow WordPress and you (as the web admin) access, but no-one else.

5) WordPress Table naming and Admin usernames

One other way of protecting WordPress is when installing the system to avoid calling your tables wp_ (this is the default for WordPress) and also by not allocating admin as the username but by choosing something else. This helps avoid attacks on known tables / usernames.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these 5 ways to secure your WordPress Blog will help you avoid downtime. It might help you maintain a safer installation of WordPress, the worlds best Blogging software.

How to Install WordPress : Installing WordPress

by Shane McDonald | Mar 28, 2010 | Internet & Technology, Software

WordPress Blogging software is one of the best and one of the easiest to Install and Setup. This is a basic How to Install WordPress guide ideal if you are installing WordPress for the first time. This is a very quick guide to installing WordPress is aimed at those who already have a working knowledge of concepts such as FTP, Config Files, MySQL Databases and have access to their own web server. This WordPress Install Guide is guided towards Apache servers running on Linux with PHP installed and a MySQL Database available. For version 2.9.2 (version available at time of writing this install guide) the minimum requirements for installation are PHP version 4.3 or greater and a MySQL database version 4.1.2 or greater. If you are unsure contact your website hosting company or check your control panel (e.g. cPanel). You will also need FTP Access to your web server and FTP Software – I recommend FireFTP which is a FireFox Plugin and is quite a good FTP Client.

Step 1 : Download WordPress & Extract WordPress on your PC

WordPress is Free and you can download it at http://wordpress.org/download/ The software downloads as a compressed ZIP file and is about 2.2Mb which would take under a minute on decent broadband. Once Downloaded, you can extract this on your PC. Depending on your PCs setup you can usually right click on the zip file and select “Extract Here…” – a folder should then appear with all the source code in the root directory and 3 subfolders.

Step 2 : Upload your WordPress code to your webserver

Next you need to connect to your web server by FTP. Usually you will be brought into / or if you are lucky /public_html/ The /public_html/ directory is where your homepage’s files are located – if you want your blog to be your homepage you can install the software here – Be warned if you already have content in this directory overwriting it could stop your current site from working. However if you want to have www.yourdomain.com/blog then create a folder called “blog” in /public_html , and upload the code into that directory. You can call the directory anything – but if you are writing about for example Social Media, a good address would be /social-media-blog/ giving you keywords in your web address (always try use keywords in your web address) Uploading the code to the server could take up to 10 minutes. Only when your files have been uploaded , visit the web address where you installed your blog, e.g. www.yourdomain.com/blog If everything was uploaded correctly, you will be presented with a screen telling you that you have to create a configuration file – click the button to create your WordPress config file on-line.

Step 3 : Config – Setting up the WordPress Configuration File

You will be asked for the following; – Database Name … This is the name of the database which you want to link to – Database Username … This is the username for your WordPress database – Database Password … This is the password for the database you wish to use fro WordPress – Database Host … usually localhost but some hosting providers may differ – Table Prefix … set to wp_ but you can change this if you wish for security. If you have entered the details correctly you will then be able to run the Install Script – click the button to start Installing WordPress.

Step 4 : Final Parts of Installing WordPress

For this next step you will be asked for the following; – The Blog Title, e.g. “My First Blog” or “Shanes World of Social Media and Blogging” – Your Email – as administrator you will be notified of major events on the blog – All blog to appear on search engines – Make sure you tick this box so that the WordPress Blog notifies search engines when you post new content. Click Install You will then get a username of admin and a cryptic password. Very important that you now copy this password (ensure it is copied) and click Log In. Log in as admin with the password you got above. Thats it – Installing WordPress is finished … Congratulations you now have a WordPress Blog installed. I hope to extend this install guide to cover how to add plug-ins and themes in the future.

How to fix an iPhone which won’t start

by Shane McDonald | Oct 9, 2009 | iPod / iPhone Apps, Software

How do you fix an iPhone that won’t start?

Have you ever wanted to know How to fix an iPhone that won’t start? If your iPod Touch or iPhone won’t start, then you are probably having a very frustrating time with it.

This is what’s probably happening to you if your iPod Touch or iPhone fails to start. It can be an iOS issue or some form of deadlock within the operating system.

What happens when an iPod Touch or iPhone won’t start

How do you fix an iPhone that will not start?

Using the iPod Recovery Mode helped me!
Hold down the iPod Touch’s home button (circle at the bottom center of the iPod or iPhone) and then plug the iPhone / iTouch into your computer, while always keeping the iPod Home button depressed. This should launch the iPod recovery mode system. Recovery Mode is a specialized diagnostic mode that allows your iPod Touch’s software to be reinstalled.

Warning
This deletes everything from your iPod, so be aware. If you have been synching your iPod regularly the system should reinstall your apps, emails, text messages, settings, and files from the last full synch of the iPod.

If you don’t know what you are doing, get somebody who does … This worked for me, but if you are unsure contact an official Apple registered service company. Also, some online solutions to this issue say to lightly Bang the iPod beforehand … I can’t see how this would help so I wouldn’t recommend doing this!

When to Try iPod / iPhone Recovery Mode
Try this if you’re unable to get a response from the device even when it’s plugged into a computer with iTunes. You may not even get a response if you plug direct into an iPod charger.

How Long does iPod Tuoch / iPhone Recovery Mode Take?
This depends on the number of apps, number of files etc that have to be reinstalled. My iPod recovery took about 90 minutes.

Note : Recovery mode may not be the ideal solution for your iPod issue, but might help if you have tried everything else.

What Caused it to Stop Working
For me, I started downloading an App Update via the iPod Touchs’ App Store section. As the App was downloading I moved to an point in the building where there was no WiFi coverage and download stopped. As soon as I was back in WiFi coverage, I was asked for my iTunes password and within 2 minutes the device turned off – perhaps some sort of unrecoverable deadlock conflict between a half downloaded App and the new download. All further attempts to restart gave the response shown in the graphic above.

All working now, All Apps back on the iPod – all thanks to iPod Recovery Mode!

NOTE – THIS IS AN OLD BLOG POST ON HOW TO RESET OR RESTART AN IPHONE 3 /4 WHICH WON’T START
GET PROFESSIONAL ADVICE IF YOU ARE HAVING ISSUES WITH YOUR PHONE.

PhotoSketch can Montage a Photo Automatically

by Shane McDonald | Oct 6, 2009 | In The News, Internet & Technology, Software

Students in China have proposed that a technology called PhotoSketch can create an Internet image montage from other photos. The project from 5 Chinese Computer Science and Technology students at Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore say that their PhotoSketch research paper can create a unique photo using other photos.

All you have to do to create your PhotoSketch is:

1) Create an outline of the figures you want in your photo, e.g. an Airplane, Bird, and a Sunset

2) Create and add labels for each of the outlined items in step 1, as well as for the photo background.

3) The PhotoSketch system will then search for web images that match your outline.

PhotoSketch will then combine them into a Photo Montage. Apparently, the initial results for the PhotoSketch Demo are something beyond what any current automated tool can provide. The Abstract of the system reads as follows; “We present a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet. Although online image search generates many inappropriate results, our system is able to automatically select suitable photographs to generate a high-quality composition, using a filtering scheme to exclude undesirable images. We also provide a novel image blending algorithm to allow seamless image composition. Each blending result is given a numeric score, allowing us to find an optimal combination of discovered images. Experimental results show the method is very successful; we also evaluate our system using the results from two user studies.” – Tao Chen, Ming-Ming Cheng, Ping Tan, Ariel Shamir, Shi-Min Hu, (Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University & National University of Singapore) The students at T.U and N.U.S have results from a PhotoSketch Demo: Visit http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/montage/main.htm for details

Google to launch Google Operating System: Chrome OS

by Shane McDonald | Jul 8, 2009 | Software

Google is set to launch an Operating System, to compete against Microsoft Windows, promising a lightweight but fast operating system called Chrome OS which will allow for speedy access to the internet and to be virus free. google-versus-windows

Windows (Microsofts operating system) runs about 91% of the world’s personal computers and this threat from Google should not be taken lightly. Google ìs promising a change to PC frustration and an end to conflicts and slow PCs. Also with the drop in PC sales and increase in smartphones a Google Operating System seems very apt and timely. Windows Vista was never really the best and Windows 7, which is due to go on sale this autumn is considered a Windows Vista Replacement. However, Google is unlikely to charge for the new Chrome Operating System. Why would they do this? Well the more people using a Google Os means more people using their services, such as search, email, photo galleries and you tube videos…. this means a better market awareness and better revenue long term for Google. Google has a reputation in having some of the best software on the market so the new Chrome OS will probably be very good when launched. However, all that said, if you like Microsoft Flight Sim or using MS Word or even Adobe Illustrator, you will probably not be able to use this on the new operating system. Compatibility will be an issue. The Chrome Operating System is due for release in summer 2010 and will use parts of the open source Linux operating system kernel. As a result, those on Linux may be able to get a version which would run on a Linux platform … we’ll have to wait and see on that one. It will be interesting to see if the cut Google makes on the market is just a graze or a deep near fatal wound to Microsofts dominance.