Teknovis

There are some interesting general password observations in The gentle art of cracking passwords, but the list of top 20 passwords disclosed due to the Adobe hack in Analysis reveals popular Adobe passwords is even more insightful! I will include it here for my own future reference:

• 123456
• 123456789
• password
• adobe123
• 12345678
• qwerty
• 1234567
• 111111
• photoshop
• 123123
• 1234567890
• 000000
• abc123
• 1234
• adobe1
• macromedia
• azerty
• iloveyou
• aaaaaa
• 654321

This list really is frightening!

Tags: Adobe

I watched this interesting video about the past and future of Adobe‘s Photoshop – Thomas Knoll: The Story of Photoshop.

The discussion on Adobe’s move to subscription based pricing is particularly interesting. I must admit that I would not buy software under that licensing model!

Tags: Adobe, Photoshop

I have been installing and configuring Firefox a lot of times this week! It is becoming a bit repetitive!

I think that nearly all of the default settings are perfect, and I just change a few of them. Probably the most important of these is that I add more accept languages.

I then install the following add-ons and plugins:

• A nice theme (and I modify the toolbars)
• Additional dictionaries
• Adobe Flash Player

Lastly, I make the following changes to the configuration file (See About:config for instructions on doing this):

• Remove the close button from the tab (see tip 7 in 28 Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks)
• Change the URL text so that it becomes clickable on all operating systems (see tip 15 in 28 Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks)
• Change URL search behaviour so that it returns the normal Google results (see Change Address Bar Search Behavior In Firefox)
• Disable large image resizing (see Stop Automatic Image Resizing)
• Enable spell-checking on all text boxes (see tip 10 in 28 Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks)

I can now reference this online myself :)

Tags: Adobe, Firefox, Google

I came across an interesting article on company names during the week – List of company name etymologies.

I was familiar with the reasoning behind a lot of the listed companies, but some really surprised me such as Adobe and Apple!

Tags: Adobe, Apple

This great tip describes how to remove the really annoying Adobe Acrobat toolbar from Microsoft Office: Removing and Reinstalling Acrobat PDFMaker (6.0 for Office 2000 or XP).

Tags: Adobe, Microsoft

I noticed recently that any time I tried to create a PDF file from Firefox using my Adobe Acrobat PDF Writer the resulting PDF file was unreadable because the fonts were illegible :(

I had some time this evening to look into this problem, it it seems that it is a known issue with older versions of Adobe PDF Writer: Font glyphs incorrectly displayed with certain printer drivers.

Maybe I should look into an alternative PDF Printer, because I hate the way that Acrobat embeds itself so much into my operating system!

Tags: Adobe, Firefox

Today I am going to focus on the Irish involvement in another international standards body called the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance). Information about the history and goals of the OMA can be found in About OMA. There are 4 different levels of membership of the OMA, and these are described in OMA Membership. However, I am not going to distinguish between these membership types. I am basing my lists on the memberships lists in Current OMA Members.

The Irish companies that are currently members are:

• AdaptiveMobile
• Ammeon
• S3
• Xiam

The non-Irish companies that have technical operations in Ireland that are currently members are:

• Acotel (Due to the Irish company Jinny)
• Adobe
• Aepona
• Alcatel-Lucent
• Avaya
• BT
• Ericsson
• HP
• IBM
• Intel
• Microsoft
• Motorola
• Nortel
• Oracle
• RedKnee
• Siemens (Due to Nokia Siemens Networks)
• Sun
• Verizon (Due to its purchase of Cybertrust)
• Vodafone

As always, it is difficult to determine if some of these multi-nations have a technical presence in Ireland.

Tags: Acotel, AdaptiveMobile, Adobe, Aepona, Alcatel-Lucent, Ammeon, Avaya, BT, Ericsson, HP, IBM, Intel, Ireland, Jinny, Microsoft, Motorola, Nortel, OMA, Oracle, RedKnee, S3, Siemens, Sun, Verizon, Vodafone, Xiam

I am a big supporter of standards for technology, and I was reading some specifications from one of the many standards organisations today. I suspect, perhaps incorrectly, that there are many Irish companies involved in international standards organisations. I know that standards participation by Irish companies is something that Enterprise Ireland encourages.

Therefore, I decided to write a series of articles listing the Irish companies that are involved in international standards organisations that relate to information communication technologies. I will also include non-Irish companies that have technical operations in Ireland. (It would be nice if I could replicate this for the entire EU, but I do not have the time for that at the moment.)

I am going to start this series by looking at the W3C, because it is probably the prominent standards organisation in relation to the Internet. I am basing these lists on the online membership list.

The Irish companies that are currently members are:

• Afilias
• ChangingWorlds (but see Amdocs to Acquire ChangingWorlds)
• Cibenix
• DERI (this is a Science Foundation Ireland funded research group that I should have included in Science Foundation Ireland Funded Research Groups)
• IONA
• MobileAware
• mTLD Top Level Domain (also known as dotMobi. I think that it might just use Ireland as an address for tax purposes)
• TSSG (This is a research group. It appears to be responsible for start-up companies that are also involved in the W3C such as Nubiq)
• Voxpilot

The non-Irish companies that have technical operations in Ireland that are currently members are:

• Adobe
• Alcatel-Lucent
• AOL
• Apple
• Avaya
• Betfair
• Cisco
• EDS
• EMC Corporation
• Ericsson
• Google
• HP
• Hutchison 3G (also known as Three)
• IBM
• Intel
• Microsoft
• Motorola
• Nortel
• Oracle
• SAP
• Siemens
• Sun
• Vodafone

The Irish companies that appear to be members based on their own web pages even though they are not listed by the W3C:

• Segala

That took me longer than I expected!

Tags: Adobe, Afilias, Alcatel-Lucent, AOL, Apple, Avaya, Betfair, ChangingWorlds, Cibenix, Cisco, DERI, dotMobi, EDS, EMC Corporation, Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, IONA, Ireland, Microsoft, MobileAware, Motorola, Nortel, Nubiq, Oracle, SAP, Science Foundation Ireland, Segala, Siemens, Sun, Three, TSSG, Vodafone, Voxpilot, W3C