Scalar Enterprises Blog

Recently, we produced a new website for our client Athena Guardianship & Education. At Scalar Enterprises, we love a challenge and are always keen to provide solutions for our clients needs so as a follow on project, a first for us, was a Chinese version of the site which we have just completed and made live today.

Take a closer look at the Chinese version of the Athena Guardianship & Education site.

Of course, proof reading was a bit difficult, it’s all Chinese to me

It has been quite a busy few months for us at Scalar Enterprises with a number of quite large projects on the go.

Working with one of our regular local business partners, Graphic Designers, Charles Design Associates, we have just completed a bespoke solution for a website commissioned by ChangeWise Ltd, a Southampton based company specialising in Lean Process Improvement.

This was a “high end”, quite challenging design and as you can see, the graphics are fantastic (as always from CDA). The design requirement included a number of animated features to be included as well.

For a closer look, please go to  the ChangeWise website.

Yesterday was not a good day for me. I twisted my back, spilt coffee on my keyboard and the last straw – I got a demand for £90 for parking at the Marriot Hotel because  I exceeded my car parking period that I had paid for when I had a business meeting with a client recently at the Marriot Hotel in Portsmouth. My clients also received similar surprises in the post.

I have had meetings there in the past but they have introduced this “Parking Eye” car park management scheme since I was last there. To park, you have to enter your registration number into the ticket machine before getting your ticket. I paid for 2 hours parking which I thought would be sufficient but my meeting overran a little and I didn’t give it much thought until today when I received a demand for payment of £90 including photos with time stamps of my car entering and leaving the car park.

Guess there is not much I can do to contest it but I certainly won’t be using the Marriot again for any meetings, or recommending it to anyone visiting the locality either.

Thought I would pass on a warning so others don’t get caught out. Feel free to pass this on.

We all know there are a lot of rogues out there waiting to grab your hard earned money from you so it is always good when you can get a trustworthy recommendation for a business before you use them. This can of course come from various sources but one well known one in our area is the Hampshire County Council Trading Standards “Buy with Confidence” scheme.

The scheme brings together a list of many types of business in the Hampshire area which have all been checked for trustworthiness and compliance with consumer protection laws. Hampshire’s Trading Standards Officers visit & vet every applicant and only if they pass stringent checks are they accepted.

One of our clients, Advanced Mortgage Lending (AML), based in Fareham have just been accepted as members of this scheme and we have just done some updates to their website to incorporate all the details and logo etc so they can share this with all their customers and visitors to their site.

I personally would always recommend AML to anyone, their team are very knowledgeable, helpful and friendly and have always found the best solutions for me so I didn’t need HCC Trading Standards reassurance but now I have that as well !
Image credit: 123RF Stock Photo

We have recently completed another project to convert the Affordable Self Storage website into a new format to make it easier to maintain and also assisted them to re-host the site.

The new site is now up and running so if you need self storage in the Gosport area, take a look at the Affordable Self Storage website which is located in the Sanderson Centre in Gosport.

This is the second web site Steve has done for us. He has taken the brief and produced what we wanted, at a sensible price. This was all very satisfactory as I have found generally that computer people tend to do what they think you need, not what you asked for. Andrew Smith – Affordable Self Storage Gosport

Just launched a new website for local businessman, Ian Geraghty, who is one of the crew members in the Clipper round the world race 2011 – 2012.

Take a look at the video on the home page and get a feel for what the crews have to look forward to in this gruelling race – frightening stuff !

There are sponsorship opportunities available for businesses – see the sponsor page for more details.

Ian is also trying to raise some money during the race for his chosen charity, Catch 22 so why not take a look and make a donation as well.

His site also features a great business opportunity so well worth a visit to see if it is of interest to you.

More details at www.iangeraghty.co.uk

A recent study has shown that more than 25% of passwords used are made up of 6 characters or less which is totally inadequate to provide protection.

Ref: Web User magazine

Believe it or not, the study showed that these are the top 10 most commonly used passwords:

Ref: Web User magazine

Research has shown that around 16% of people use a first name as their password and the most commonly used name is “nicole” apparently.

It is highly recommended that you do not use real words that you can find in a dictionary or names for your passwords. Individual desktop computers can test anywhere between one million to fifteen million passwords per second against lower specification encrypted passwords hence running a basic dictionary password attack on a PC only needs a few seconds in most cases to crack these.

A weak password is an open invitation for profile-jacking, so make sure to use a fairly complicated one. Make it long, add symbols, alternate upper and lowercase letters, insert numbers, etc. Whatever you do, don‘t use the same password for all your social networking tools and other accounts. If your password is hacked, it is a fairly safe bet that the next thing the hacker will do is to try it on all your other accounts.

Increasing the number of possible symbols from which random passwords are chosen will increase the strength of generated passwords of any given length. For example, the printable characters in the ASCII character set (e.g. those on a standard English keyboard) include 26 letters (in two case variants), 10 digits, and 33 non-alphanumeric symbols (i.e., punctuation, grouping, etc.), giving you a total of 94 symbols to use (95 if you count space but this is generally not allowed). However, the same strength can also be achieved with a smaller number of symbols just by choosing a longer password.

Below is some sound advice on passwords from Microsoft.

Avoid creating passwords using the following:

• Dictionary words in any language.
• Words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and abbreviations.
• Sequences or repeated characters. Examples: 12345678, 222222, abcdefg, or adjacent letters on your keyboard (e.g. qwerty).
• Personal information. Your name, birthday, driver’s license, passport number, or similar information.

Test your password with a password checker.

A password checker evaluates your password’s strength automatically. Check the strength of your passwords with the Microsoft secure password checker.

Protect your passwords from prying eyes.

The easiest way to “remember” passwords is to write them down which is okay, but make sure you keep them secure.

See also the Microsoft tips on creating strong passwords

I was really pleased this week to be invited to join the Professional Web Design Directory as an approved designer. This is a reviews directory built specifically for web designers.

Many thanks to my clients who have already added reviews – if you feel the urge to also add your comments please feel free to do so, it would be much appreciated.

We are pleased to announce that the new website for Pyesmead Farm Bed and Breakfast and Self Catering accommodation went live today.

Pyesmead Farm is a family run farm, situated near Romsey on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire and they have been running the B&B for over 20 years.

You can enjoy a relaxing break on a real family working farm on the edge of the beautiful New Forest in Hampshire, renowned for its beautiful scenery and wild ponies.

If you prefer a more easy going relaxed break, you can make use of their heated indoor swimming pool, sauna and coarse fishing lakes or just enjoy exploring the farm.

There are plenty of other things to do around the area as well. Take a look a their website at www.pyesmeadfarm.co.uk and give them a call.