In case you were not lucky enough to spot Kenny (our Business Development Manager) and his full-page photo in the Evening Times a while back, I thought I’d post the interview here on the blog.

In fact, we’ve decided to use this to start a “meet the team” series of blog posts, so you can get to know us all a little better!  So without further ado – meet Kenny!

Name:

Kenny Roy

Position:

Business Development Manager for NSDesign Ltd

Describe your workplace:

Modern office, hive of activity, kettle boiling regularly

Is there a dress code?

No dress code rules. Given that we are part of the creative industries with a relatively young workforce ( ok I’m the oldest !) we try and create a culture that’s conducive to innovative ideas and work methods.

What hours do you work?

Although I cover typical office hours I also regularly cover evenings to support  the web-hosting side of the business

Qualifications?

HNC in Electronic Engineering, Diploma in Professional Management and an MBA from the University of Glasgow

What was your first job?

My first job was an apprentice equipment technician back in the days when Scotland had a semiconductor industry

Career Highlight?

Thankfully I’ve had plenty of good ones but most recently we got to redesign the Greenock Morton Football Club website and as a lifelong ‘Ton fan it was great to work with all the team at Cappielow.

Any low points?

Being made redundant due to the demise of aforementioned semiconductor industry

What skills or qualities do you need?

In my current role I think the important skills and qualities you need are firstly a good understanding of how web technology can assist businesses to maximise their potential and also to be able to communicate that in a manner that doesn’t alienate the customer with techno babble. The biggest key skill is being able to listen to what the customers issues are that they’re trying to address and providing practical, cost effective solutions.

Where do you see yourself in the future?

Hopefully continuing the progress we’ve made at NSDesign in recent years. We won the “Outstanding Business” Award at last years Renfrewshire Chamber of Commerce Awards which was a major achievement for us and we’re now looking to build on that and grow our client portfolio over the coming years.

Any advice for those seeking a similar career? 

I think people are now far more aware of what the web is capable of from a business perspective and for anyone seeking a similar career I would say try and understand the technology but be able to explain and demonstrate in simple terms the business benefits of using internet technologies to further your clients business.

What would your dream job be?

As a huge golf fan it would be great to get involved with something like the websites for the Open Championship or the Ryder Cup.

Which celebrity would you like to work beside?

I think working with Led Zeppelin would make for a really interesting working day !

What do you do to unwind after work?

If you haven’t already guessed I play a bit ( ok a lot ) of golf during the summer months and during the dark winter nights I play a bit of guitar although purely for fun.

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Lately we’ve seen an increasing volume of customers with hacked websites, the majority having been compromised with the “IFrame Hack”. It’s not just us – most web hosting companies across the globe are reporting a massive increase in iframe attacks.

This involves the hacker “injecting” some malicious code into your site (normally on all your “index” pages) in the form of a hidden IFRAME, which then tries to infect any vistors to your website with various viruses and trojans etc.  Often you’ll maybe not even realise your site is hacked until Google detects the compromise, and starts to display the dreaded “this site may harm your computer” message alongside any mentions of your domain, meaning anyone finding your site via Google will most likley keep well away.

Have you been hacked?

Use this online tool to detect if you’ve fallen victim to an iframe hack:
http://www.unmaskparasites.com/
(note that it’s not a definitive check, but a great starting point).

How did I get hacked?

In most cases, the hacker has simply obtained your FTP login details, and is freely adding the extra code to your pages at will.  FTP details are illegally obtained in a variety of ways, but it’s understood that the sudden increase of these attacks has been caused mainly by the your own PC being infected by one or more trojan viruses, which simply lifts all the FTP details straight out your FTP application of choice, giving them immediate access to your site(s).

How do I fix my site?

The first thing you should do is change your FTP password.  You can do this via your hosting control panel.  Ensure it’s a “strong” password using a mixture of letters, numbers and symbols, and use a mix of lower and uppercase.  Next you should upload a “clean” backup of your site to the server (if you do not have a backup – ask us to help – and review your own backup policy immediately!), overwriting all your files.  Finally, make sure that you do NOT store your FTP details anywhere on your computer – especially not inside any FTP applications (such as CuteFTP, Filezilla etc) or Website Editors or Content Management Systems (such as Dreamweaver etc).  Ensure that any time you connect to your website using FTP or via Cpanel, that you manually type the password each time – do not use anything that connects automatically.

Increase your security

Once you’ve fixed the site, you’ll want to ensure that your own computer(s) is clean, and not at further risk to trojan viruses or keyloggers etc.  Ensure both your anti-virus software, and your firewall software is up to date (if you haven’t got such software installed, do it immediately), and run full system scans regularly.

We also recommend that you enhance your computer’s security by Downloading and Installing Malwarebytes Anti-Malware – a nice (free) utility that from experience we know finds some trojan viruses and other nasties that certain other anti-virus programs miss.
Get it from: http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html 
Launch, and Update the product, then run a “quick scan”, and allow it to fully remove any trojans etc that it finds.  Once completed, consider a full scan on your system which will take longer.

If you think you’ve been hacked, and want any further help, contact us via the normal support channels.  Do not ignore it!! 

Links to similar articles/discussions on this type of hack

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=901622
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=12422
http://blog.unmaskparasites.com/2009/04/15/malicious-income-iframes-from-cn-domains/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3486931.htm
http://blog.unmaskparasites.com/2009/04/29/another-type-of-iframe-hack-php-exploit/
http://blog.trendmicro.com/another-malware-pulls-an-italian-job/

Other good resources and advice on improving security

http://stopbadware.org/home/security
http://onmycomp.com/onmywordpress-7th-wordpress-security-scan

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I have come across quite a lot of articles recently discussing including custom fonts in web pages. With typography playing such a key role in design, it continues to be one of the major restrictions designers face when designing for the web. When the web world wide web first began the focus was on hyperlinking and allowing access to other documents but considering how far the web has come today and all that is possible, font embedding seems like a basic idea. The biggest underlying issue seems to be managing the distribution of copyrighted fonts. Sifr offers a very useful solution to the issue for the time being, allowing font replacement through the use of Flash. It is accessible across browsers and the text can be selected on the page though some minor drawbacks have been highlighted. Some of these are:

- The inability to alter kerning of the characters.

- Flash has often been criticised for its poor anti-aliasing and this can sometimes show on the rendered text.

- Sifr can be tricky to setup and get working correctly.

- Sifr fonts cannot be scaled when you change the size of font in the browser. It only changes when the page is reloaded. Some consider this quite a serious usability problem, though because Sifr is mostly used on headers and large areas of text that probably wont require scaling, this is debatable.

- It requires the user to have Flash though nowadays almost 95% of web users have this.

A convincing alternative to Sifr which I came across recently is Cufon developed by Simo Kinnunen . The aim of Cufon was to achieve the same effect as Sifr without the need for additional software. Some specific requirements were set out when it was being developed. These were:

- No plug-ins required – The font should be able to be displayed without flash and using only the users standard browser. Cufon uses javascript to render the font.

- Compatibility – It had to work on all browsers. This has been achieved with Cufon displaying correctly on IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox and Safari.

- Ease of use – configuration and setup for Cufon is minimal compared to Sifr.

- Cufon loads faster than Sifr with no flickering, even for larger areas of type.

Cufon works as an interface to Fontforge so it creates an SVG font based on the source font, converts it to VML(as IE only supports this), then is rendered using an engine written in javascript. The rendering engine outputs two versions of the font, one in VML shapes and one using the new HTML5 canvas tag. The font can be loaded into the file easily using the normal <script> tag. The font compresses well also for a minimal file size. The advantages are convincing, however little study has yet been done on accessibility of Cufon and scaling etc yet. Also until the issue of distributing copyrighted fonts is resolved it could be a while till custom fonts become common practice.

http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/

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On Sunday 15th February, NSDesign celebrated 10 years in business – a very proud achievement and the perfect excuse to have a party – with a difference!

Teaming up with the Scottish Rocks Basketball team, we invited over 100 customers to the game against Cheshire Jets, enjoyed a load of on-court shenanigans, before opening up the bar with free food and drink to all..  In summary – a seriously good night.

We started the night (before the game) with our 5 competition finalists taking the court to attempt a free throw.  From the five, one made it, so congrats to Robert Scott who won an iPod:

We then picked Martyn Robertson at random, who won the chance to shoot for a brand new car…  Something we’d been promoting for the past few months, and given us a lot of publicity…  So did he make it?..  Check out this Youtube video for a full summary of all the shots!!

The Game itself wasn’t the best, and the Rocks ended up losing, but as with any Basketball game at Kelvin Hall, the excitement, cheerleaders, and genral fun and games kept everyone enjoyed until it was time to hit the bar…

After the game it was up to the “Kelvin Suite” (a very posh name for the wee bar up the stairs from the court), and everyone enjoyed some free food, drink, and birthday cake (both of them!)…  It was also our opportunity to say a few thanks for clients, like Simon Howarth – our very first customer back in Feb 99, to staff, and to everybody connected to NSDesign over the 10 years…  You can view my “Thank You” speech on You Tube.

All in all… a seriously good night, and one that marks a very special decade of NSDesign.  Here’s to the next 10!!

Check out more of the party photos at Facebook

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It was an honour for NSDesign to represent the Scottish Web Community at last week’s Best Practice Challenge held at London’s Science Museum, and while we didn’t come home with an award, it was a very proud night all the same.

“The judges commended NSDesign as a great example of a UK enterprise that has taken the drive for continuous improvement to heart”

Personally, I think it was the kilts that did it….

Check out the photos here.

All in all, it was a great night, and just to mingle among the “big guns” of the industry was worthwhile, not to mention chewing the ear off Nick Horne – former UK ambassador to the United Nations (and all round nice guy!), and Emily Taylor (Nominet’s Director or Legal and Policy)…  Just so they remember who NSDesign are for next year !!

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Well… here it is – the traditional “hello world” post, to introduce the new blog from the NSDesign team.

Apologies in advance for the lack of effort in customising the wordpress theme, but we wanted to get this up and running before Christmas, and I promise to spend a little more time on it in January.

So why a blog?..  Well, we wanted an informal space where the team could post “non official” news, thoughts and random stuff.  Far too often we’ve had something of interest to say, but nowhere to say it – hence the birth of this blog.  If you’re a customer of NSDesign then be aware that existing support channels will not change..  you’ll still use the online helpdesk etc when you need support – this blog is not to supplement support – It’s just a chance for us to ramble on various issues (some work related, some not), and for you to get inside the heads of some of the staff.  We’re all really nice people (trust me), and I hope you get to know us all that little bit better….

 Ok…  thats enough for the first post.

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