Posts by happygeek

Green hat SEO = when your techniques are so old that your marketing efforts go mouldy.

KitSound takes music seriously, so I wasn't that surprised when I read how in recent 'blind testing' consumers were unable to tell the difference between a set of KSDJ headphones costing under £20 and high end headphones costing up to £900 when it came to the audio output. I mention this as I was very surprised when I plonked a beanie hat with a bobble on the top and a snowflake pattern onto my head and plugged it into my iPhone; surprised by the excellent clarity, tone and warmth of sound that was being reproduced by the speakers hidden within it that is.

Obviously, fashion is in the eye of the beholder and while a purple beanie with a white snowflake pattern and a big fluffy purple bobble on the top wouldn't be my own personal choice of headgear (I am more an army-green cadet cap type of a guy), KitSound do produce these audio beanies in a range of different styles and colours so there is a good chance that you'll find something that you, or the person you are buying this for, will like.

While the fashion aspect of the audio beanie is questionable, the audio reproduction certainly isn't. Plug the supplied cable, a woven design to reduce the tangle risk, into your MP3 player, mobile phone, tablet or whatever (I tested it with my iPhone 4S) and you can start to appreciate the quality of the sound that hits your ears. And …

Research results just published by digital marketing agency Visibility IQ would appear to confirm what the savvy marketeer already knows: social video is an important driver for engagement and purchase behaviour amongst online consumers.

The research, conducted by Entertainment Media Research Ltd, was based upon interviews with more than 2,600 consumers between the ages of 15 and 64. Although the research was conducted within the UK, the results are likely to be mirrored in any markets where broadband provision is good and Internet access widespread.

The key findings of the research are as follows:

78% of UK adults who use the internet watch an online video every week. The most popular being 'personal interest or hobby' genres, which were watched by 54% of users every week. But consumers also watch online video for many other reasons, such as news (48%), music videos (45%) and movie trailers (37%).

When you start to look specifically at interest groups then the viewing incidence really rockets: 32% of users watch videos related to gaming every week, this increases to 48% amongst people who consider themselves to be ‘gamers’.

Online video is most frequently watched by males aged between 15 and 34, with 81% watching videos on a daily basis. Students are next on the list, with 78% consumption, and females between 15 and 24 are third on 73%.

When it comes to the audience reach of brand-related social video, 46% watch these every week. Some 36% also watch product …

At the risk of being somewhat obsessed by hitmen after one recent news story here at DaniWeb, I'm running another. This time though, it's cybercriminals and hackers who would hold your computer and data to ransom that are the target of a contract killer. The killer in question being the latest version of HitmanPro, and in the cloud 'second opinion' anti-malware file scanner that's been around for many years now. The HitmanPro.Kickstart feature, however, is brand new and really rather clever.

What it does is enable users to create a bootable USB flash drive which can then be used to start up an infected computer which has been 'locked down' by a ransomware infection. Sure, there are plenty of well documented ways of getting access to your data under such circumstances, but none that I can think of off hand are what you might call easy to use for the average computer user. And sorry folks, but for your average Windows-using Jo(e) who has got caught out by the ransomware hackers then booting with an unfamiliar Linux-based desktop environment does not count as 'easy to use' by any measure. HitmanPro.Kickstart, might be accused of not being exactly straightforward either, what with needing to create that bootable USB drive in the first place, but actually it's very step-by-step driven stuff and once booted the ransomware is removed from within a familiar Windows environment and fully automatically without a bunch of confusing manual tasks being …

Ah, thanks, that clarified things. NOT. Sigh :(

And you... do not know how to construct a question in such a way that it makes any sense at all. Want to try again?

Don't forget:

Rainbow Hat = throw everything at your SEO efforts regardless of shade

I sincerely hope not :)

Becuase PHP is mostly used in web development, so it makes more sense for it to be in the web development category?

Welcome Glen.

Some might argue that there are already quite enough different versions of Angry Birds to last a lifetime, or at least a lifetime of minutes to waste on a mobile gaming platform such as a smartphone or tablet. There is some merit to this, and personally I would be quite happy if Rovio just kept adding new levels and new birds with new attack capabilities to the original game. I wouldn't even mind if they charged me a small fee for these new additions by way of in-game purchases, as the game would still represent excellent value for money. We are only talking about pocket change here after all, Angry Birds is not in the same spending league as the Call of Duty or Halo franchises after all.

But that's not the way that Rovio has chosen to play it, instead it has released a steady flow of new Angry Birds titles over the last couple of years, and like the vast majority of Angry Birds fans (yes, I declare an interest here: Angry Birds is one of the most played games on my iPad and was on my iPhone before my eyesight got too bad to be able to play it that small) I have purchased and played every one of them.

Perhaps I am leaving myself open to being shot down, or plunged into the darkside, by my next admission: I'm not a Star Wars fan. I have found all the films, yes …

There is no such thing as a truly inspirational Hollywood movie, it's an oxymoron. Inspirational movies tend to come from small independants IMHO.

Microsoft has been slowly moving away from the desktop PC software market for many years now, and with the recent launches of Windows 8 and the Surface tablets, along with the latest Windows Phone devices, the whole mobile and touch arena has taken quite a bit of the consumer-oriented focus. It really should come as no surprise, then, to see Microsoft strategically positioning itself in the device integration space: the Xbox SmartGlass app is a prime example of this.

Available initially for Windows 8 devices and those powered by the Windows Phone OS, and then for Android devices, Xbox SmartGlass has now arrived on the iOS platform for both the iPhone and iPad. What Microsoft has done by taking this step is announce itself as determined to connect the dots between the various platforms and markets it plays in, quite literally in fact. SmartGlass is more than just a remote control for the Xbox 360 games console, as the name suggests it's much, much more than that. Or rather, it has the potential to be much more.

Microsoft sees SmartGlass as being an experience enhancer, one that moves the kind of rich and interactive content you expect from your home entertainment console these days onto the tablet or smartphone in your hand. Sure, you can play games on your iPad and iPhone already, but that's not really what SmartGlass is all about; it's all about extending the experience, enhancing the entertainment, controlling your console and …

Why has it taken six years for someone to take a contract out on my life? Or, more accurately, for a scammer to send me an email demanding payment of a bribe in order for him to cancel a supposed contract. The first hitman scam was spotted almost exactly six years ago in December 2006, and transported from email to the world of SMS mobile phone texting a couple of years later. Then it all went quiet for a couple of years, as far as I can tell, but the hitman scam is back and I got one.

Here's the threatening email in full:

Subject: READ THIS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD...

body: This is the only way I could contact you for now,I want you to be very careful about this and keep this secret with you until I make out space for us to see. You have no need of knowing who I am or where I am from.I know this may sound very surprising to you but it's the situation.I have been paid some ransom in advance to terminate you with some reasons listed to me by my employer.It's someone I believe you call a friend, I have followed you closely for a while now and have seen that you are innocent of the accusations he leveled against you.Do not contact the police or try to send a copy of this to them,because if you do, I will know,and I might …

Tonygcyprus is correct, Rugby Football is the right name and many Rugby Union clubs have 'RFC' following the name which stands for Rugby Football Club.

Not sure where cricket and rugby come from as national sports for England though. I would have thought, sadly, that first and foremost it is football (soccer) followed by drinking way too much on a Friday night and causing trouble in the high street.

You can, if people use a photo of themselves as their avatar.

<=== See

You appear to be quite tired if those dark rings around your eyes are anything to go by... ;-)

Like this one ronnelie which is also a Matt Mohwinkel, posting from not only the same physical location but with the same IP? Nah, must be a coincidence...

New research from ISACA suggests that US consumers with 'work-supplied' computing devices intend, on average, to spend nine hours shopping for gifts on them during the forthcoming holiday season. When it comes to the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) brigade, those who use personal mobile devices for work, that average goes up to 12 hours.

According to ISACA’s 2012 IT Risk/Reward Barometer, those who mix their time between work-supplied computers and their own mobile devices will happily reveal email addresses (58%) and mother's maiden name (15%) in order to garner a 50% discount on a $100 item. This behavior leaves them open to targeted fraud and social engineering attack, and exposes their employers to a greater risk surface for good measure.

And they know it, or at least the majority would appear to as 53% agreed that they felt sharing information online had become much riskier over the last 12 months. Not that you would realise it from their actions when the research also reveals that 65% don't bother to verify the security settings of online shopping sites; 36% have link-clicked from social media sites using their work devices; 19% use work email addresses for personal activities such as online shopping; 12% store work passwords on personal devices and 11% use cloud-based services to store work-related documents without their company’s knowledge or consent.

What's more, half of the IT professionals questioned reckon that the risk of BYOD outweighs the benefits. "Companies that embrace …

You do know that buying fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter is, in both examples, against the terms and conditions of membership of those social networks and can lead to termination of the accounts in question. Perhaps that's something you should be telling potential customers?

The only long term, sensible, legal way to build a following is to do it the organic way. Buying followers is just so lame...

Your web browser provides a window onto the Internet, but unless you are timely in updating the client you use then, say researchers with security vendor Kaspersky Lab,that window may be cracked and allow a draft of insecurity to blow through into your network, your computer and your data.

With the majority of online threats coming from the direction of the web, vulnerabilities in web browser clients are increasingly being used in order to infect networks and compromise data integrity. It's why the so called 'zero-day' exploits are so valuable within the cybercriminal community. While zero-days are hard, if not impossible, to defend against the unfortunate truth of the matter is far more people are leaving themselves exposed to attack simply by not keeping their browser clients updated.

Although full version upgrades tend to add a host of new features and improve the functionality of the browser, and as such grab the attention of what you might call the 'lazy updater', the same is not true of minor point upgrades. Yet these minor upgrades are, more often than not, far more important in the overall scheme of things and certainly when it comes to keeping your systems secure. It's the point upgrades that address plug the vulnerability gaps that are uncovered, that provide the enhanced security measures required to keep your data safe.

Using data on browser usage trends from a staggering 10 million randomly selected Kaspersky Security Network customers from various regions across the …

As Michael says, it's not all about 'amazing features' it's all about getting answers to questions and being part of a caring community. On the whole, I'd say, DaniWeb gets it right on both these counts. Certainly, for sure, 100% and with no doubt, the old vBulletin based system that underpinned DaniWeb before the overhaul was utter and complete pants. With knobs on. As one of the people who spent many hours, every single day and often through the night as well, fighting the multiple spam attacks that DaniWeb suffered I can assure you that the new system is better for one very important reason above all others: it means that DaniWeb is still here. Without it I imagine we would have drowned in that sea of spam by now...

eBay is your friend if you want to make a (very) few pounds/dollars whatever, just don't except to get rich with this item. If money isn't an issue then try your local Freecycle. Both have to be better than adding to the growing global unrecyclable crap mountain.

New research published today by security vendor ZoneAlarm, the Facebook Child Safety Report, analysed what 600 kids aged between 10 and 15 and located around the world were up to Facebook. The end result reveals those common behaviours that increase the exposure of children to bullying online, predatory threat and other security problems. The major factor, surprise surprise, that contributes to an increase risk late night usage.

Three activities revealed a positive link with increased risk: adding friends that could well be strangers, playing those Facebook games which require access to account information and, as mentioned, using Facebook late into the night. This latter activity results, according to the research at least, in children experiencing almost twice as many problems as those kids who are offline before midnight.

What's more, these Feral Facebook kids are four times more likely to have large networks of Facebook friends that consist mostly of people they have never actually met. Another of the risk factors identified by the ZoneAlarm report.

The fact that kids active on Facebook late into the night and beyond are exposing themselves to increased risk really comes as no surprise to me, or anyone with a modicum of common sense or understanding of parental responsibility I would have thought, given that such behaviour suggests there is a total lack of parental supervision being exercised. Especially when you consider that the report reveals many of these kids are still using Facebook after 3am. 60% of these …

According to the boffins at Kaspersky Lab, users of Android devices running Gingerbread (Android 2.3.6) and Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.4) are targeted the most by cybercriminals. Gingerbread accounted for 28% of all the attempts to install malware that were successfully blocked by Kaspersky, while Ice Cream Sandwich accounted for 22%.

Over half of the malware detected on Android devices by Kaspersky were, unsurprisingly, SMS Trojans designed to relieve the victim of money by sending SMS text messages to premium rate numbers without the users consent or knowledge. The most popular method of doing this, it would seem, is for malware to disguise itself as the OperaMini browser client such as all the programs that comprise the OpFake malware family which, with a 38.3% share, proved to be the most widespread in the malware market.

A fifth of all malicious programs detected on Android devices were what Kaspersky call 'versatile' Trojans, the vast majority belonging to the Plangton family which collect service data and transmit it to a command server to await further instructions. Those instructions include the ability to stealthily change bookmarks and home pages in order to facilitate phishing and other assorted money lifting scams.

Another security vendor, F-Secure, found that Android malware was on the rise in Q3: up to 51,447 unique samples from 5033 in Q2 and 3063 in Q1. This is also hardly surprising, considering that Android is now the most popular mobile OS by quite some margin. More than …

@kevinwalker142 Much better before you came along and started spamming the forums, thanks for asking. PS you are banned...

Folks, before you reply here, I think we need to be a little careful with regards to the rules, specifically:

'Do not ask for help to pursue any illegal activity including, but not limited to, hacking and spamming' and 'Do not pursue any illegal activity within forum posts or by PM'

General advice about sending data to servers and saving screenshots is OK, but detailed advice on keyloggers is getting into dodgy territory methinks.

I am pleased to report that DaniWeb, based about half an hour outside Manhattan in Uniondale, Long Island, New York has survived Hurricane Sandy. There were no downtimes or outages, and all staff are OK. Not everyone in the tech space has been so lucky it would seem.

Four big online names have suffered outages after Datagram, a web hosting and data center outfit based in Manhattan, lost power.

Buzzfeed, Gawker, Gizmodo and The Huffington Post were amongst the sites impacted by the power loss after Datagram experienced flooding to the basement of its building last night.

Intermap, another New York based data center, also experienced flooding. An email to customers advised that the sub-basement at Intermap's LGA11 facility on Broad Street was experiencing flooding that had destroyed the diesel pumps providing fuel to generators and emergency fuel supplies would be expired within a few hours.

Meanwhile, New York gamers hoping to hanker down with a copy of Assassin's Creed 3 were out of luck after Gamestop battened down the hatches and cancelled all the Northeastern US midnight launches. Gamestop says that all stores will remain closed until it is safe to re-open them. An official post on social media sites urged "safety and peace, Assassins.”

You can check out the progress of Sandy using the Google Hurricane Sandy 2012 Crisis Map which uses Google's new Public Alerts system on Google Maps. The Crisis Map shows summaries of power outage information at a …

I use an iPad and a laptop connected to a large Dell touschscreen on a daily basis. Can't recall the last time I cleaned either, to be honest. Mind you, my eyesight is so bad I probably can't see the fingerprints and smears :)

OK, the finger symbols:

13 (hidden under wedding ring) is the day I both met and got married to my wife Susie.
Anarchy symbol with LF represents the Animal Liberation Front of which I am a supporter.
The ? is just that, it represents my inquisitive nature in all things.
The green V is the Vegan symbol, I am Vegan.
The glider, as pritaeas pointed out, is a hacker culture symbol - I went for a variation of the more common dots/squares and interpreted it as binary.
The pawprint shows my affiliation to FLAG, an animal rights activist group.

The hand tattoos:

The fist/paw on the left hand is an Animal Liberation Front symbol: Animal Liberation and Human Liberation side by side.

The right hand is the symbol for Veganarchism.

As for employers, I have been running my own very successful business for the past 20 years without problem thanks very much Lardmeister. Your prejudices are not shared by everyone. Any potential client (and mine have included Microsoft, British Telecom, News International, Dennis Publishing, The Science Museum, The BBC, Channel 4, Royal Mail to name but a very few) that would not want to hire me due to my ink is, quite frankly, not a client I would be prepared to work with in the first place. It is what I do, not what I look like, that matters.

According to research from data recovery specialists Kroll Ontrack, some three quarters of those workers that had lost data on a broken device didn't attempt to ensure that information was irretrievable before disposing of the hardware.

It doesn't matter whether the hardware itself is a PC or laptop, removable drive, tablet or smartphone, the ugly truth remains that most people simply assume that if the device is dead then the data has died along with it. Actually, data lost through software corruption or hardware failure is more often than not recoverable - at least partially. The study revealed that 62% of those workers questioned who had lost data during the last year were able to recover it one way or another. This is good news, of course, and data recovery experts have gained some quite remarkable skills in bringing data back to life from scenarios where you just wouldn't think it plausible that any information would survive. I have witnessed laptops that were victims of serious fire, smartphones crushed under truck wheels and hard drives fried by electrical surges all give up their data, or at least much of it, when interrogated in the right way.

This kind of data recovery doesn't usually come cheap though, and many people assume that if they themselves are unable to resurrect any data then it's OK to simply throw the hardware away. The fact that corporate data can be recovered, as the statistics from this study show, reveals …

Microsoft knows it has to do something in order to claw back some kind of market position, not now but five years into the future. The culture of computing is changing amongst the young and hip consumer, and it's moving away from the Microsoft Windows-centric vision of the past. While Microsoft remains buoyant within the enterprise, powering business globally with plenty of success, the Seattle tech giant would do well to realise that even this core part of the corporate plan is not immune to the generation now effect. What consumers want today can, indeed almost certainly does, influence how enterprises react tomorrow. And that's where the real problems are for Microsoft and the launch later today of Windows 8.

The latest version of Windows has changed beyond all recognition, or at least it has from the Microsoft perspective. Truth be told, it's pretty old news for the tablet toting, screen swiping, design desiring, cloud-based trend setters of today. I heard Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, talking up Windows 8 on the radio earlier today and he spoke excitedly in terms of how this is as big as the first IBM PC for example, and how Microsoft is re-imagining the world from the world up with Windows 8. Certainly it needs to be a success if Microsoft is to get a proper foothold, even at the very bottom of a very tall ladder, on the smartphone and tablet market where Apple with iOS and Google with …

I have full sleeves on both arms, full backpiece, hands, fingers, chest all done neck next, then legs. After 25 years of being inked, you could say I am my own walking, talking, tattoo reality show.

Read the rules, there's a good chap: "Do not ask for help to pursue any illegal activity including, but not limited to, hacking and spamming"

This thread is closed...

Your comment comes across as an advert for Telesign, a proprietary and somewhat niche transaction verification service it seems to me. It would actually put me off if I was trying to buy something online and had to wait for a verification SMS message and then input a code, or call a number to verify my identity, whatever. There are many less intrusive methods to secure transactions, and oddly enough these are the ones implemented by the vast majority of etailers for the very reasons I have mentioned.

Finally, why would DaniWeb use transactional 2FA of any type when it isn't an ecommerce site?

Seriously, if you are going to drop marketing messages disguised as valid comment into threads then at least do your homework and customise them a little so that the disguise is more than a false moustache and a pair of glasses...

Never go near the zombies. I play Black Ops (online multiplayer maps) as it's the only legal way of killing gobby teenagers...

Mine is called Norman.

Free time, what's that?

The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has slapped the Greater Manchester Police force with a £150,000 fine (reduced to £120,000 for early payment) after a memory stick containing sensitive data about serious crimes was stolen from the home of a police officer.

The ICO has the power to levy such fines if an investigation determines that sensitive data has been put at risk courtesy of a lack of proper data protection being in place. In this particular case it must have been a very quick investigation, filed under the no-brainer category, seeing as the data was being stored on a memory stick which the officer had seen fit to take home with him. A memory stick which required no password in order to access the information held upon it. Information that was stored without any encryption being applied. Information which included details concerning in excess of a thousand people with links to 'serious crime investigations' apparently.

The breach occurred when a burglar broke into the home of the officer and the memory stick was amongst the items stolen during that robbery. According to the ICO, Greater Manchester Police officers regularly used such unencrypted memory sticks. This despite a very similar breach having taken place in 2010, the lessons from which were obviously not learned and which led the ICO to conclude that the police force was not properly trained with regards to data protection matters.

ICO Director of Data Protection, David Smith, insists that it …

Well, the votes are in, and we are happy to be able to announce that the winners are as follows:

The prize for the code snippet which demonstrated the most creative functionality goes to Tony Veijalainen, better known as that popular moderator pyTony for his Python snippet: 'Class based polynomials with magic methods'.

The prize for the most elegant code snippet is awarded to the mysterious L7Sqr for the C++ snippet 'Calculator using shunting-yard algorithm'.

And finally, the prize for the most efficient code snippet is heading in the direction of another moderator (which proves that DaniWeb mods really do 'walk the walk' as well talk the talk when it comes to coding) namely Mikael Persson, a.k.a. mike_2000_17 for his 'Scope-guarded lockable objects in C++11' snippet.

Congratulations to the winners one and all, and our heartfelt thanks to every single one of the DaniWeb members who took the time to both submit a code snippet and to vote upon them.

The results are in, they will be in the newsletter this month. Not sure if Dani wants to publish them here before that goes out or wait until after though...

They get a 'www.daniweb.com' tattoo in the middle of their forehead, it seems only fair.

@juliagarner "I writes for" and "I am also enjoys playing the guitar" are hardly great recommendations for the 'well made products' of the company you work for.

Most observers will agree that Google+ has failed to set the social networking world alight, and is far from being a thorn in the side of Facebook. However, now that Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed he's serious about search, could Facebook possibly compete in the Google hood?

The Facebook founder and CEO has gone on the record to insist that "Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer a lot of questions people have" and reveal that the social network is currently fulfilling a billion searches every day "and we’re not even trying".

Of course, the arguments have raged for years about how Facebook could leverage the information it holds and the most common response thrown into the mix is the perhaps a little too obvious one of advertising. Not that Facebook is ignoring the advertising income potential, but it's certainly not ignoring the evolution of search potential either. Zuckerberg has described the way that Google produces lists based partly upon keywords entered as "some magic" and warned that the online world is evolving and search engines have to evolve with it. People want to ask a question and get a set of answers, and that's where the "pretty uniquely positioned" quote comes into play.

Facebook now has a billion users, and is tracking what those members search for within the site. Zuckerberg has acknowledged that the News Feed feature at the heart of the Facebook user experience shouldn't be seen as just a window onto what …

Think of apps and you probably think of your smartphone. After all, Apple pretty much built an iPhone empire around the concept of apps and users of Android and Windows handsets are just as hooked. Truth be told though, and this 'Age of Apps' has spread far beyond the smartphone sphere. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the social media space.

Facebook is awash with apps, ranging from the useful to the useless. Many of them fall into the 'simply annoying' category, involving the distribution of games invites or high scores to the largely unimpressed and totally uninterested circle of friends of the user. Unfortunately, far more than is healthy have also come along and slotted quite nicely into the security or privacy risk category. Apps which pretend to do one harmless thing but actually perform a far more harmful other, be that leading to malware infection, spamming or phishing attempts.

One popular security risk app type on Facebook over the years has been the 'profile tracker' which promises to reveal who has been looking at your profile recently. Of course, no app can do any such thing, but that doesn't stop people falling for the scam every time such an app is released. And it doesn't stop those people from being at risk of malware infection or account hijack either. As users of the popular social media micro-blogging service Tumblr are now discovering for themselves.

Just like Facebook, Tumblr users can install a …

This is my current routine:

Walk past entrance to gym (which is located in the same converted mill where I rent an office) at 6am

Enter own office at 6.05am

Leave office at 1pm

Walk past gym entrance at 1.05pm

Repeat daily

So, you need an immediate answer to a question you have not asked. Is that right?

One of the great things about social media is the way that it utilises the wisdom of crowds. This concept is perhaps best known through Wikipedia, where user editing can often create some wildly inaccurate entries in the short term but over time these get corrected by the larger volume of editors who truly care about the product they are using. Somewhere else that the wisdom of crowds has made an impact is the consumer review market.

Most of my family, friends and work colleagues pretty much turn to the Internet for a quick and unbiased opinion before splashing the cash on a product or service these days. And why wouldn't they, after all the majority of reviews will be from people sharing their real world experiences of those goods rather than relying upon marketing materials and 'advertorials'.

However, according to Gartner, paid for social media ratings and reviews will account for as much as 15% of all reviews by 2014.

The fact that there are fake reviews should come as no great surprise, anyone who uses social media to scout out hotel rooms and restaurants will be adept at spotting the really quite obvious five star reviews written by the proprietor or a staff member. Most of the time they stick out like a, well, five star review in a pile of one star reviews.

However, with more than half of the Internet population now using social media in some form or other, it is inevitable that the DIY …

So, you've either bought the brand new iPhone 5 or have upgraded your existing iPhone to iOS 6 and discovered, like half the Internet it would appear, that the new Apple Maps which have replaced Google Maps are, to be polite, an utter and total stinking FAIL. I'm no Apple hater, in fact quite the opposite as I own and use an iPad 2 and an iPhone 4S on a daily basis. However, I'm not so much of a fanboy that I cannot call it as it is when Apple gets things very wrong indeed.

Thankfully, having fallen into the latter category and upgraded my iPhone 4S to iOS 6 (which I actually think is rather splendid apart from the godawful maps fiasco) I have found a very simple method of undoing the damage and getting fully working maps back for the iPhone while I wait for Apple to fix things. But more of that in a moment, first though let's take a look at just what exactly has gone wrong.

The problem with the Apple Maps app can be summed up in one concise phrase: not fit for purpose. It has all the look and feel of a Beta test rushed into production before it is ready, and certainly before it has been properly tested. I mean, what is the sole purpose of a map application? Yep, that's right, showing you where you are and where places you might want to get …

The admin team works in a virtual environment most of the time. There are occasions when Dani, James and I have all got together in New York at the DaniWeb offices, however on a day-to-day basis I work from an office in a converted wool mill in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England.

Being DaniWeb editor-in-chief and an administrator is not my only job, although I have been on the payroll here for the last six and a half years now. I am primarily a freelance technology journalist and an Editorial Fellow at Dennis Publishing here in the UK, where I assume the role of Contributing Editor for PC Pro (best selling computer magazine in the UK) as well as IT Pro and Cloud Pro. I also contribute to other publications in the IT Security field such as Infosecurity (I'm a three times winner of the Information Security Journalist of the Year award, and a one time Technology Journalist of the Year for good measure) and during the past 20 years I have had more than 20 books published - the last looking at the psychology of identity in an increasingly online world, which was published by Wiley for the Science Museum in London.

Welcome to DaniWeb, good to know you are finding the help you are looking for here.