Scrabbling around for a solution

Sunday, July 31st, 2011

There is an annoying glitch that many Lion users are reporting with Safari. On some websites, headers are displayed as a string of little boxes with a letter A inside, looking like a Scrabble tile in appearance. Only Safari is affected, Firefox and other web browsers do not suffer the same problem and will display perfectly the sites Safari baulks at. Microsoft Office users also have similar font problems.

While this has been reported mainly in the Lion community it is not rare in earlier versions of Mac OS, including pre-OSX version, but it does seem more prevalent on Macs using a separate font manager such as Extensis Fusion or FontExplorer. Sometimes these are the cause of the glitch and adjusting settings will provide the solution but there are many more reasons for the problem Scrabble tiles appearing.

Obviously each Mac set-up is different but here are some tips for solving the problem which is almost always caused by fonts.

The first thing to try is emptying all font caches by starting in Safe Mode and holding down the Shift key as the Mac starts, then restarting back into normal mode. Or by using font cache clearing routines in most font managers and also the beta version of Onyx for Lion. At this point check whether the font manager’s preferences are set to automatically activate typefaces for Safari. This can activate duplicate typefaces and so create the scrabble tiles.

All being well that should sort things out but sometimes the problem reappears again soon afterwards, calling for more drastic action. Next, check the fonts themselves. Duplicates and corrupted typefaces are often the cause. Turn off all fonts enabled by the font manager and open FontBook. Using its tools, check for duplicate typefaces and whether any essential fonts are missing.

FontBook will show a yellow triangle adjacent to duplicated fonts in its list. Click on the triangle and resolve the duplicates. Similarly, check in the Web set to make sure Arial, Georgia, Verdana and Times New Roman are listed. Many web sites use these as a fall-back position if other fonts are missing.

If any are missing in FontBook, look in Library/Fonts and see whether they are there, or for any duplicates. The latter may have the same name plus a digit in brackets, or preceded by a hash symbol. These typefaces can be dragged to the desktop. If there are fonts in the Font folder that don’t appear in FontBook’s lists, click on the little plus sign at the bottom of FontBook’s screen, navigate to the Fonts folder and add the missing typefaces.

Still not fixed? If you are using a font manager, deactivate it and restart. Has the problem gone away? If so then it is your font manager at fault and you are down to a painful trial and error session trying all eventualities, preferences and typefaces until you resolve the issue. It is often duplicated fonts again, where one is much older than the other and can safely be deleted. If you can see the typeface the font manager activates, try putting a copy into the ~/Library/Fonts folder. Otherwise, turn each active typeface off in turn until the scrabble tiles disappear. Arial is very often the culprit and luckily is near the top of the font lists.

Microsoft and Adobe software have a nasty habit of installing new typefaces outside of the System’s Fonts folders. These often contain newer versions of typefaces than ones on the main System. In which case these need to be whittled out and placed in the Fonts folder as replacements for the older ones. There is no point in removing Microsoft’s typefaces because they will be automatically installed the next time the application is opened.

If the problem is only in Safari and Lion, it may be something to do with Safari’s new sandbox way of working. This will need solving by Apple’s engineers – report the bug and wait for a solution. There is a possible fix for a Safari sandboxing error listed on page 3 of this discussion here. Rather you than me.

However it is far more likely to be a problem with your own Mac and especially the typefaces on it. This very long article here goes deep into font management and solutions.

My bet is that Arial, Georgia, Helvetica or Times New Roman is corrupted, duplicated or missing.

Are you spending more and securing less?

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Ask most people working in the enterprise IT security sphere what they would wish for and the majority will jump down your throat in a mad rush to call for a bigger budget. My elderly mother continues to warn about be careful what you wish for, and I’ve never quite really understood what she means. I doubt very much, to be honest, that she had IT security budgets in mind at any time during the last 80 years but perhaps she should have done. New research would seem to confirm something that I have often thrown out there, and that is the simple fact that money is not the be all and end all of data security. There, I’ve said it. Sorry.

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Why Microsoft was right to apologise for Amy Winehouse tweet

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

There have been some pretty egregious moves by media and PR organisations recently, taking advantage of tragedies for their own gain.

Microsoft has come under heavy fire for a tweet following the death of Amy Winehouse. The Redmond firm’s tweetbox360 Twitter account posted a message recommending people pay tribute to Winehouse by purchasing the singer’s masterpiece ‘Back to Black’ via Microsoft’s online store Zune.

Yes, it was cynical. All Microsoft had to do was leave out the reference to Zune and it would have been fine. People can buy the album from anywhere after all – in my view they should get it from an actual record shop (remember real things? They still exist apparently). Some have jumped to the company’s defence, but Microsoft didn’t need to promote Zune in that context and shouldn’t have done, so it was right to say sorry for that reason alone.

Microsoft wasn’t the worst offender, though. At least its tweet contained a modicum of sensitivity. It was promoting the music of Winehouse – what she should be remembered for.

Numerous others have chosen to capitalise on the singer’s death, but in slightly more subtle ways. Security companies, for instance, have ironically/hypocritically posted numerous warnings about scammers posting messages on Facebook and Twitter to dupe users. Their aim is to have journalists back their warnings with articles, in turn getting their business coverage. Good writers don’t cave, of course.

Others have been far less surreptitious, the worst being The Huffington Post, which decided to publish an article on how businesses could learn from the tragedy. The writer, Tricia Fox, chose to compare the life of Winehouse to the life of a business. I’ll leave you to spurt out a few curses in disbelief.

These brazen acts of idiocy came after some fairly appalling ‘reporting’ of the killings in Norway, where various ‘news organisations’ assumed the perpetrator was carrying out the atrocities in support of the Islamic faith. But as one considerably more erudite journalist noted, the horrible events in Norway were of a European nature, derived from European ghosts (read Charlie Brooker’s piece here for a more incisive look at the reporting of the Norway tragedy).

During a time when the reputation of media bodies is taking a battering, you would have thought journalists hoping to sell stories to death-hungry civilians, as well as companies looking to promote their brand to writers, would have taken it easy.

But no, death has become a commodity. It is there to be bought and sold. Fox highlighted the fact perfectly in her comparison.

How have we reached this point? I’d cite the end of the Second World War as a turning point. It’s my personal belief that through the rise of mass media and technology, we have objectified death. We have almost crystallised it, wrenched it from ourselves and turned it into an invisible substance, a thing of commercial value.

Death is no longer such a spiritual thing, it is no longer something to be explored within oneself. Compare the Egyptian Book of the Dead to what most people read today and the case is made. Once, the journey to death was something to be taken with the utmost seriousness – contemplation of it was almost the purpose of life itself. Now, death’s meaning has been eroded away, its core has faded, it is something to report on and then make money from.

So, every other company along with Microsoft, be they media firms, technology vendors or indeed anyone who has contributed to the problem of death objectification, should be sorry too.

Maybe we should all be sorry… we’re the ones who buy into it after all.

Go West… err East…no, is it North?

Monday, July 25th, 2011

If you haven’t got a satellite navigation system or smartphone app, don’t bother reading any more than this paragraph. Buy CoPilot Live Premium and you won’t be disappointed. It does everything you need and a lot more besides, running on Android and iOS phones. If you have CoPilot Live 8 already and are wondering if it’s worth upgrading perhaps our experience will help you decide.

CoPilot Live Premium is a brand new app based on CoPilot 9 and not just an update to CoPilot Love 8. This means it will cost the same as you have already paid. Even so, the two prices added together are still cheaper than a dedicated sat-nav and arguably a lot better. In two weeks of testing, CoPilot Live Premium hasn’t let us down and there are still many new features to be explored. As before, maps, POI’s and speed camera updates are free. Try that with your Garmin or Tom Tom.

From initial start-up, CoPilot Live Premium is very different from previous versions. The screen display is less cluttered with emphasis on showing the next turn and the name of the road to turn into, as a large icon and text running along the bottom of the screen. After turning on the text to speech option, CoPilot Live Premium informs you “in 500 yards, turn left into Bayswater Road”. Unfortunately, Emily, who has lived in our CoPilot across Europe, isn’t up to this task and her colleague Eleanor speaks instead.

She sounds a bit like Katharine Hepburn in her ‘On Golden Pond’ voice, all juddery as if she is sitting on a one-cylinder diesel engine. Most of the time we leave her switched off and especially in Europe. After all, Place de Gaulle could be almost anywhere in France and who would know the Rue de Cholet as such when you are looking for the D960. However, once you get into city centres this changes especially if you are following a tourist map and know the road you are looking for.
Text to speech is especially good when you are walking and following Eleanor’s directions. Then you have time to search for the street names hidden behind a boulangerie’s awning or high up on a wall still pitted with bullet holes from WWII.

Getting ‘there’ is another new experience and a lot better than the previous CoPilot Live. From the start you are offered three different route options, based on your personal preferences or motorways or not and whether to allow toll roads or ferries. It is easy to adjust the routes by ‘clicking’ on the road marked on the map in one of three colours. Then dragging the line to the road you prefer to use. As before, CoPilot doesn’t get into a hissy fit if you miss the turning and rapidly recalculates back to the old or a brand new route.

ALK, publishers of CoPilot, ask you to send your automatically recorded routes to them so they can gather real-time data or correct errors. This is done easily from your cellphone as an option in one of the settings. At the same time you can grab some of their live updates such as traffic information. Live traffic data needs a data connection so it limited to the UK or the very wealthy. At only £7.99 per year it is still an upgrade worth buying.

We proved that the route selections are darned good too. Driving from Le Havre into France, CoPilot kept trying to get is to avoid the Pont de Normandie, which costs about a fiver to cross, and instead routing us to the nearby and free crossing of the Pont de Tancarville which would also take us onto our chosen route for very little extra time. En-route CoPilot continued to argue with the Nissan’s sat-nav we were following in the car in front and the route it chose to Saumur cost us about £30 more than CoPilot’s route.

There are still one or two glitches with the maps. For example: CoPilot wants to route me by way of Dover and Calais to get to Dieppe, rather than using the Newhaven to Dieppe ferry just down the road. It recognises the route but thinks the 4 hour crossing will take over 15 hours. It could just as easily route me from Portsmouth to Le Havre or Ouistreham in quicker time than the three hour drive to Dover.

As any sat-nav user will tell you, there are times when motorways meet in a spaghetti of options where getting on the wrong one may mean a round trip of 100 miles to get back to where you needed to choose the correct route. CoPilot Live Premium has tackled this with clearer route markings showing the correct route to take. I need to test it around Paris or Rouen before I will believe it. Where three or more roads combine then depart from each other, while you are driving at 130kph, on the wrong side of the road. Behind is a crazy trucker in a 40 tonne articulated monster, indifferent if he runs you over or not. Remembering Dennis Weaver in Spielberg’s Duel is not a good thing at such times.

The menus for settings and accessing other features of the app, are easier to get at with one tap on the map taking to the most immediate needs with a further button to get to the rest of the options such as POIs, PhotoNav and My Places. Along the bottom of the screen is a horizontal bar with icons for the remainder of the settings. Compared with the previous version of CoPilot it is far easier to use but has advanced options we haven’t tried yet and to be honest probably never will. We have no real wish to broadcast where we are to Facebook or Twitter, one of the new features for those who want it.

One thing we found a little irritating is that on tapping on the Points of Information to find the closest, you are presented by three options for the nearest: Restaurant, Hotel and Petrol Station. Not our chosen three which would probably be: Carrefour, vineyard and Public Toilet. Nevertheless, underneath is are two large buttons saying Search All which brings up a text entry screen, and More Categories, listing all POI types in alphabetical order as well as having a broader selection than earlier CoPilots. These work without a data connection and are downloaded to your cellphone regularly when data is available.

I note that according to CoPilot, my local Co-Op is called a Co-Opreative which just about sums up CoPilot Live Premium. For anyone about to buy a navigation app, it is pretty hard to beat and the price is very reasonable. We are glad we have the new version and going back to the previous one makes us realise all the new tricks you appreciate. With only a short time playing with the options and learning the menus, you’ll co-opreate with CoPilot Live Premium and trust it to get you to your destination. But do take a map with you as well, just in case…

Schizophrenic security syndrome

Monday, July 18th, 2011

I’ve just been reading the latest Secunia global vulnerability half year report and, to be honest, it’s doing my head in. Not because it’s boring or predictable, but rather as it seems to indicate a global epidemic of schizophrenic security syndrome.

Here’s the thing, the report itself is based upon data which is extracted from a vulnerability intelligence database that has information on thousands of software products and their vendors, and which is well respected within the security community as being an indicator of the state of software security when looking at the broadest global picture. Secunia’s ability to continuously track vulnerabilities across such a breadth of products puts it in a pretty unique position within the security reporting industry, which is why I tend to take their reports rather seriously. And why this one is leaving me with a huge headache this morning.

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Two years until Google+ hits 500 million?

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

Remember that pivotal moment in The Social Network when Facebook holds a little party to celebrate hitting 500 million users? If you haven’t seen the film, it’s likely you would have been slapped in the face repeatedly by the slew of stories focusing on the milestone anyway.

Now, if current estimates are on the money, then Larry Page and his minions will be holding a similar shindig in the not too distant future for their Google+ venture. In two weeks, the service has amassed 10 million users, according to an estimate which claimed Google+ membership would surpass that figure today.

Extrapolate that figure in a very straightforward way, and it’ll be less than two years (approximately 20 months) until Google hits the 500 million mark. It took Facebook six years to get there.

My maths here is admittedly pretty lax (even the above estimates from Paul Allen are somewhat flawed, as the man himself admitted). For instance, it doesn’t take into account any withering of excitement around Google+ or the fact that registration is only by invite at the minute. So the eventual date could be a year or so either side of mid-2013.

Nevertheless, it’s startling how quickly the enterprise has gathered momentum. Already it has attracted a host of plaudits with some (a little lazily and unsurprisingly) labelling it a Facebook killer.

Just a few weeks ago it seemed as though Facebook was the only social network that mattered and it would remain so until the final days on earth, so indomitable did Mark Zuckerberg’s company seem.

But as with any major move it makes, Google has shaken things up. It did it in the search space when it first started, it did it with its cloud-based productivity tools and it did it in the mobile space with Android. The Mountain View company has tried to do it with social networking before, but never has it received such instantaneous and widespread approval of such a venture.

Android left others staring on in amazement, drool hanging from their gaping jaws, as it made its way to the top of the smartphone OS pile, trampling on the woebegone faces of Apple’s iOS and Symbian along the way. So don’t be surprised to see Google+ do something similar and overtake Facebook in terms of membership numbers in the not too distant future.

Facebook has reportedly been losing users too. So the timing and the product itself appear to be just right for Google to become the king of yet another market in the tech world.

Whether you like it or not, Google wants to, and will be, a part of your everyday digital lives.

Wi-Fi cracking nutjob demonstrates why WEP is pants

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

I’m starting to get fed up telling people that WEP is about as secure as my garden shed, the one with no lock on it as the door doesn’t close properly. I never got around to fixing the shed as it’s only used by cats and fairies (it’s a long story) and I really don’t care if anyone were to break into the thing. You should care about your Wi-Fi connections though, and although I appreciate there’s a difference between the consumer end of the market and the enterprise end, you might be surprised how small that difference often is.

Indeed, I know of many SMEs who simply do not take Wi-Fi security seriously enough and adopt a very consumerist approach to it. One small business owner I know recently introduced free ‘guest’ Wi-Fi for his customers as a way of saying thanks for their trade, but didn’t think of the damage one rogue user could do to that trade as a result. Think I’m being paranoid? Think again matey boy, this is all too real a threat. IT Pro has been warning about the dangers of not taking Wi-Fi security seriously for ages. Especially when WEP can be cracked in seconds, yes it doesn’t even take minutes any more, using tools that can be downloaded easily enough online and allowing them to use the power of pretty much any decently specced PC these days. Take this example of just how easy, and just how dangerous, Wi-Fi can be without some serious security in-between your network and the bad guys.

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To see is to understand

Monday, July 11th, 2011

I had the opportunity to see the new Samsung phones and tablets recently. Not the ones on sale but prototypes of the devices that will be on sale soon.


They are all very nice gadgets, the phone especially with its superb screen and camera. Although the phone’s back flexes alarmingly because it is made of plastic. Apparently this is to protect the phone if it is dropped, as I am sure we have all done to our phones. My concern was more about how it will react to living in the average bloke’s hip pocket. Sitting down and pressing the phone’s back into to a bunch of keys seemed as though it would crack the case with ease.


Samsung will be selling a revised tablet, more along the lines I suggested when Apple’s first iPad came out. It has a smaller screen size than an iPad but is far thinner than Samsung’s existing tablets and with the screen centred in the frame. The gadget was out of juice when I saw it so all I could to is touch and feel it. At nearly pocket sized it might suit handbag-toting commuters but I think most will go for the new Samsung iPad-alike.


This is a very lust-worthy piece of kit with a fast operating system and user interface, if a little less slick than iOS. Being prototypes, no prices were mentioned but if they get their costings a lot lower than Apple’s iPad 2, Samsung will be onto a winner. The Windows and non-Apple fanbois are, if anything, more rabid than Apple’s followers and will lap up the new Padalikes when they are on sale.


This is all assuming Apple lets Samsung get away with it. As far as I could see the new Samsung is identical to Apple’s iPad, even down to the location and appearance of the buttons. To see it is to understand why Apple has had such a huge row with Samsung. Until recently their relationship was worth over $5 billion to Samsung to make parts for Apple’s iOS mobile devices. In April, Apple accused Samsung of “slavishly” copying the iPad and iPhone. I can see what they are getting at.


It might make sense for Apple to find new suppliers because Samsung is competing with Apple, making its own phones and pads running Android. Having your major competitor’s designs in your own factories makes it easy to guess the direction Apple is heading as well as knowing how much Apple will probably sell them at.


Equally, Apple’s business is enormous, worth tens of billions each year to Samsung and all the other manufacturers. It will take months for a Samsung replacement to gear up, even if the contracts in place will let Apple move. We can assume they will still be partners in the months to come, just as Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel are at Red Bull Racing. They’ve only knocked each other off the circuit once, or is it twice, or maybe three times now?

Children predict future of tech. My arse!

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

It may well be stating the obvious but children are, it seems, the future of tech. What’s more, according to a new study called ‘Children’s Future Requests for Computers and the Internet‘ they also have an ability to predict the future shape of that tech.

The Latitude consultancy designed research, asked children from all over the planet to draw their answer to the question “what would you like your computer of the Internet to do in the future that it can’t do now” and the results were, frankly, not as amazing as some commentators are suggesting. It doesn’t take some spooky kid with glowing eyes and a brain the size of my arse to ‘predict’ that Internet tech should be more interactive, more human, more integrated with their lives and more empowering. In fact, I imagine it takes someone quite grown up to interpret kids drawings as predicting that.

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What do Google+ and Facebook have in common?

Monday, July 4th, 2011

Although many people are still having a bit of a giggle at Google trying, once more, to break into the social networking scene the headline to this piece is not a joke. Yes, I know it’s quite funny to see exactly how Google+ will manage to steal people away from their preferred social networking territory, be that Facebook or Twitter. Hmmm, scrap that and replace with ‘be that Facebook’ to be more accurate. Google has tried before and failed miserably of course, and things are not getting any easier as Facebook continues to get bigger and bigger.

The problem being that once you get active on a social network it’s extremely difficult to move away, for what I would like to think are pretty obvious reasons. Reasons such as the simple fact that your entire online social graph is contained within the boundaries of that place. People invest a fair amount of time and energy building a social graph on Facebook, no, stop laughing at the back again, they really do. Why dump it into the bin of life and start again on Google+ is a question that many will be asking, not only in the media but in the potential user pool as well.

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