So yesterday I decided to surf over net as I was a bit tired of doing all the “financial stuff”. Lately I go to digg.com and pick up some most popular articles. While some of them are quite crap - there are usually some good ones. For example, this post made me think that I might be better wife if I leave post it notes somewhere (especially after reading male comments). But I loved the comics and quiz site… I filled out two most relevant quizzes. See if you get more than me

Hi.

Today I have a guest post from the CEO of Agile Technologies - Romans Malinovskis (who also happens to be my husband). In case you have heard word “scammer” but are not sure what it is exactly - read on.

We were one of the several to be hit by the scam attack and I actually almost fell for it.

Dear AIB Ireland Bank member,

You have added blue7.cork@yahoo.ie as a new email address for your Aib online Bank account.

If you did not authorize this change, check with family members and others who may have access to your account first. If you still feel that an unauthorized person has changed your email, submit the form attached to your email in order to keep your original email and restore your Aib account.

This was the original email text. The email was sent from: AIB Bank <service@aib.ie> which seems to be legitimate. But of course you do know:

• Email sender can be set to ANYTHING. There are no verification.

Content of email seems to be very skillfully created. However they do have some minor mistakes such as spelling “Aib” instead of “AIB” and also refer to “Aib NetBank”.

• Scammers will use scare technique, which will make you panic and try to trick you into doing silly things.

Email is also very well composed to avoid being blocked by spam filters. Obviously should you receive email from bank it would be using full name and surname which scammers usually do not know.

• Pay attention to “To:” field your email. If it does not contain YOUR email and your full name - this can possibly mean that it was sent to multiple people.

There is .HTML attachment. Attachment is basically this page: http://www.aib.ie/personal/current-accounts which have it’s content removed and replaced by a form asking for: 8-digit registration number, PAC number and home phone number. Also scammers ask to fill in all the digits from the code card. All that finished with blue button with lockpad.

• Never trust email attachments.

I have looked inside the file. If you open it in the editor, scammers have entered a lot of newlines, which makes reading file very difficult. Search for “form” shows offending link:

http://www.advancecolleges.org/Editor/assets/test.php

of course the site have been compromised. (I tried to notify webmaster).

Script itself would record the details you have included on the form and would redirect you to AIB site.

Any of you know how to report this URL / site as offending and potentially dangerous? Modern browsers will verify domains you visit of being harmful.

I would appreciate if readers could direct me to scam report pages.

Thanks for everyone reading my news post about Mobster social worm. It got over 1300 hits. Really appreciated.

Here is some interesting links I collected over this month.

If you like fitness and want to try to do it in army type - check out this website. They have sessions all over Dublin.

Dublin City Enterprise board opened another networking program - Creative D. Interesting, but is it really different Link! and Trading Post?

National Digital Research centre is calling for business proposals. Up to 100% funding available.

I finally signed up for eFax. It’s free fax first month and costs around 10 EUR / month later. I also checked prices for fax machines, but they cost from 70 EUR and they don’t send you e-mail copy.

Check out this really great post of how to deal with late payments from customers.

Two awards is now open - Ulster Bank Business Achievers Award , Digital Media Awards (entry costs 130 EUR) and Golden Spiders 2009 (entry costs 150 EUR).

If you are ever interested about legal things you should be doing in your company, read Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement website. They can answer to all questions - such as how often should you be holding board meetings and what documents should be publicly accessible in your registered address.

Synergy Centre holds 1 lunchtime and 1 breakfast seminar every month for startups and SMEs. We were invited to talk about SaaS applications on 10th of August.

Here is the presentation of saas-lifecycle. Send me mail if you want to know more about:

• how new features kill your applications and why
• why scalability planning is important from the start of the project
• why relaying on existing software / frameworks isn’t always the best solution
• why applications are rewritten every 3-5 years
• how we make web apps the way users like it

I’m sorry to everyone who have been checking my blog for events and hadn’t found anything new from start of July. I will try harder next time to give you events earlier. A lot of conferences are happening in August and September and there is less free events around. That’s probably because of vacations. As usual - events I’m posting is Business or IT related. Feel free to comment if you think some more should be added.

Events Jul, Aug and Sept

• 13th-16th July / ICGSE2009 / Limerick - The 4^th International Conference on Global Software Engineering will bring together researchers and practitioners interested in exploring how globally distributed teams work and how the challenges can be met (prices from $300 - $1200).
• 14th July 19:00 / The Digital Hub / Science Gallery, FREE - Join this brain storming session to discuss the creation of The Dublin Hub. The vision of the Dublin Hub group is to create a flexible, affordable, shared working environment for freelancers, small businesses, the self-employed, and home-workers looking for a desk, or a meeting space in town.
• 16th July 18:00 / Social Media Networking / Kudos Bar, Clarion Hotel IFSC - A FREE Business Networking event that will help you understand how social media can help you grow your business.
• 18th July 10:30 / Open Coffee Dublin / Dakota Bar, FREE - informal event for web / business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
• 21st July 08:30 / Maintaining work/life balance as an Entrepreneur / Synergy centre breakfast seminar, FREE
• 22nd July 10:00 / Quickly Discovering and Understanding your Software Applications / FREE - organised by ASG software solutions
• 22nd July 18:00 / HotHouse United / School House pub - business networking event for all current and former participants of the DIT Hothouse programme.
• 23rd July 08:30 / Free NovaUCD event about security / FREE- don’t miss it as there isn’t much free events in NovaUCD
• 23rd July 18:30 / OWASP Chapter meeting - group dedicated to fighting the cause of software insecurity in Ireland
• 30th July 19:00 / Connector BBQ / The Church - connecting people around web, business and technology
• 31st July 09:00 / Podcasting training courses from Podcasting Ireland / 100 EUR
• 2nd Aug 13:00 / Geeknic / Farmleigh Park - picnic for geeks, there is also a farmers market that day
• 5th Aug 18:30 / 121 Marketing Club / Mint Bar, Westin Hotel - usually around 30+ people is attending event, includes 1h speed networking
• 5th Aug 20:00 / Ireland Girl Geek Dinner / Kennedy’s on Westland Road - meet fellow girls in IT
• 6th Aug 10:30 / Open Coffee Club / Science Galery, FREE - informal event for web / business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
• 14th Aug 18:00 / Free Business Networking / The Bewleys Hotel, Ballsbridge - speed networking and presentation. Great event for networking. Last time more than 60 people attended.
• 15th Aug / CupcakeCamp / Belfast - while I really thought that this was baking event rather than IT, somebody convinced me that it isn’t. So if you wanna go and try it out, let me know afterwards ^^
• 16th Aug 19:00 / Dublin ALT.NET / check website for place (probably The Vaults again), this months talk will be about “ORM with NHibernate”
• 21st Aug 09:30 / SQS Agile Workshop / 4-5 Dawson St, 100 EUR - explore the key principles of agile development with a particular focus on the quality and testing aspects.
• 24th-28th Aug / epicenter - The Irish Software Show / Trinity College, 99 EUR - 197 EUR - the biggest ever event in the software space ever held in Ireland. Should be fun.
• 27th Aug 13:00 / Simply Zesty Summer Camp / The Church, 99 EUR - earn how social media can transform your business
• 10th Sept / OWASP conference / 90-150 EUR - first Irish Application Security conference in historic Dublin University, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
• 10th Sept / Confidence in Action conference / FREE -  if you’re looking to navigate your way through the current economic climate, then Confidence in Action is the perfect place to start.
• 19th Sept / OSS BarCamp / DIT Kevin Street Dublin - open source bar camp
• 19th Sept / BizCamp - website isn’t updated yet, but I’m sure there will be more information closer to date
• 20th-24th Sept / COSAC 2009 / Killashee House Hotel, Naas, Co. Kildare - 16th International Computer Security Symposium (prices from 350 - 4000 EUR). A lot of speakers from outside Ireland. It is self organised event so don’t be afraid of website
• 24th Sept / Mobile Marketing 2009 - explore and develop the many opportunities that has and will drive this sector for the future

Some more information

One week from now on you can promote yourself on Irish Business Women forum. This event happens only once per year and you can promote yourself as much you like and how you like.

If you are just starting networking, few of the Dublin City Enterprise networking groups are quite good. I have heard lot of good things about Link! network. Usually you can attend one event for free to check them out.

If you are in web development check out The Rally Rev-up Webinar about Agile and Rally development methods happening every Thursday. As you might know our company does Agile Scrum development and we are interested in everything agile.

Other non-IT and non-business events you shouldn’t miss this summer is Festival of World Cultures and Electric Picnic at the end of August.

Today is traditional Ligo festival in Latvia. Unfortunately I can’t get Latvia or Cork or Limerick where the celebration takes place. It’s the middle of the working week…

Ligo festival is about dressing up in traditional costumes, putting on flower crowns, singing and dancing traditional songs, making fireplaces and jumping over them, eating traditional cheese and drinking beer. I miss it very much since I first came to Ireland.

Here is some links you might find interesting.

Chrome Experiments is a very interesting project. I love just play around with it. And it works on other browsers too.

I love music on faq.ie and sometimes leave it in background. Almost as good as radio.

Friend of mine created new interesting project about discounts in grocery stores. It should be going good at recession, when everyone is searching for that. It’s name is Cheep Cheep.

If you don’t know something and what to learn it from experts in less than 5min - this site is for you. I actually spent too much time on it because it’s too interesting.

I’m happy to announce that our Scalability Whitepaper (see few posts before) were featured in Feature Friday Section in Irish Developer Portal. See it here: Scalability Whitepaper on IrishDev Feature Friday

Lets start with the fun stuff as it was April’s Fools Day yesterday. Here is list of all pranks by web/tech companies and Locle April Fools joke. Spent all my morning yesterday reading this ^^.

Two new networking groups I found - Southside B2B networking and Venture Network. Heard quite nice reviews about second one

Awesome MMORPG game for primary kids - Club Penguin (my daughter really loves it)

Some interesting things in news about social media - Twitter and social media will be taught primary schools in UK & UK is planning to monitor social sites.

And for those who missed it - IQ Content are still giving away 10k EUR for best business plan.

It is quite comon mistake in web development that people do not test scalability and as more users start using system, it actually breaks. Here is quick PDF to show you all you need to know about scalability and how to deal with it: agiletech.ie/scale

This post is split in different sections. First it’s my review, then there are links to presentations, other bloggers, pictures and even video.

My review of FOWA Dublin

For those who want to see what exactly was happening review #fowadublin on twitter and see what people had been writing.

While a lot of people wasn’t happy with the event, I’m quite glad I got there. I got my ticket to Fowa in courtesy of http://IrishDev.com. Presentations was quite interesting and I met a lot of people interesting people.

Here is my notes from all the presentations. I hope you might find something interesting for you. I didn’t attended last two presentations (as I had to run away), but I heard they were quite impressive. I was unable to spot presentations over the net. Even thought they did promised they will put them out somewhere, I couldn’t find them.

1. “How to sell your web app” by Ryan Carson (organiser of event)

Ryan Carson sold two businesses already and now is building third one. Here is his tips on building business for selling.

• Use balsamiq.com for mockups
• Obsess over numbers (e.g. time user upgrades from free accounts to paid)
• IT projects have around 60-70% profit margin
• Use your own app every day
• Dont plan to get acquired
• Separate Google Analyitics account from company account
• Start the domain transfer early (as it takes months)
• You will have to pay around 30k for lawyers and accountants when selling company
• Do serious tax planning
• When sale takes place, you have to work 100% of your time for about 4+ months to make it successful

2. “Unconventional Web Apps” by Contrast

To be honest I was sure they won’t be able to go through their 200 presentation slides in those 30min, but they really did it and it was awesome, funny and valuable. While it’s kinda hard to put points over their presentation, I could say in general they were talking about how and when break the conventions in web applications. E.g. layout of the home page or signup process. Their ending statement was “Break the rules, question them and have fun.”

3. “Apps for All in a Web 2.0 World” by Robin Christopherson

Really great talk about problems in web applications for those with disabilities.

• Captcha is one of the greatest enemy for blind people. Often even if they have sound version, it is not good enough to understand
• A lot of pages become completely unusable after JavaScript is switched off. So you have to check that before releasing your app.
• Each map should have text version for it. E.g. Google maps have great example.
• A lot of videos auto start. If person opens page like that, he don’t hear text with voice reader any more and can’t stop the video.
• Flickering images is bad for people with Epilepsy
• Videos without any text explenations might be confusing or even scary
• Image alt text is very important and you have to keep it up to date if site changes
• Flash sites are almost unaccessible for people that can’t see
• You have to check navigation by rows and keys (not only mouse)
• See more information at http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/

4. “How to build amazing web apps - Lessons learned from building Twitter.com” by Blaine Cook

Blaine talked mostly about Natural Social Networks and real time updates. His belief is that we are still in stone age for social media networking and it still gonna grow. It’s kinda hard to explain what he was talking about, but he did mention OpenID, OpenSocial, webhooks.org and others. Try to look it up for more info.

5. “The future is Ruby w/o Rails” by Emma Persky

Emma told her about her experience with Rails and w/o them. She believes that every project has to use programming language or framework best suited for that application. Using always Ruby on Rails aren’t the best option.

6. “Yet another web app? Or a successful business?” by Morgan McKeagney, IQ Content

His talk about why few web apps are successful and few aren’t were really impressive. What makes anotomy of success is: product, team&personalities, value, punters, commercial-savvy, local to global. His example was great : there was two groups U2 and The Blades. While second had much better songs, singers and publicity, U2 got global. Why? Because they  had “Vital Financial Breakthrough”. At the end of the day it is always - which one makes more money?

7. “How to build desktop apps that help your web app succeed?” by Matthew Ogle, Last.fm

Matthew told about his experience of building and growing last.fm with using “scrobble” and attention data. He mentioned that it is very important to make application Open Sourced if it is using user data. New software will be launched soon by last.fm - Buffin

8. “Web application horror stories” by Simon Willsison, Freelance

This was my most favorite presentation. We all love to hear how big companies failed on security and how we can improve our own apps not to fail similar.

• XSS - never let inject JavaScript. Don’t let inject HTML or CSS either. (e.g. “sany is my hero” - myspace worm, UTF-7 hole in Google.)
• SQL injection - worst case scenario you can let people do
• CSRF. Protection would be adding the crumb, but you have to protect the crumb by all possibilities. For example, if you have XSS hole, you will have CSRF problems as well. (e.g. Digg allowed to enter script that diggs post. Gmail got filter hacked. ING got funds transfers proceeded.)
• Login CSRF - to avoid it, force user to sign up on trused account
• Clickjacking - new attack with invisible frames (e.g. Flickr had “Don’t click this” worm.). Possible solution would be frame busting, but it will still fail in case of Clicky Game (e.g. how fast you can click on buttons on the game?)
• Do protect Admin access! (e.g. MacRoom life had problems with someone writting that Steve Jobs is dead. Twitter had problems with teenagers hacking admin account.)

Few bad points I was unhappy about

First thing - the wireless was crap. Most of the attendies used either macbooks or iPhones and it was almost impossible to get connection.

Second thing - you had to buy drinks and food. For the price I paid for this event I expected at least get some free drinks or suggestions where to go eat (only sandwitches provided by bar). I heard Contract and IGOpeople both payed €200 for drinks for ppl at the bar. Great to hear that.

ANNOUNCING PRIZE (you can still apply for this)

Announcing IQ prize of €10,000

Slideshows and other info on presentations

Web Security Horror Stories Presentation

Web Security Horror Stories Notes

More info on Sun StartUp Workshop

Notes by Renate Valdes Olmos

How to build webb apps to succeed Notes

Apps for All in the Web 2.0 world Notes

Blog posts about FOWA Dublin

FOWA by Andy (quite unhappy review of the FOWA)

Fuck the Real World by Peter (about one of the last presentations)

Fuck the Real World prsentation review by Thomas Wittek

Unhappy FOWA review by Peter

FOWA Review by Dave Concannon (quite short and very nice review)

John Keys review of all talks

Lessons Learned from FOWA by Kabling

Great speakers, poorly organised by John Breslin

Photos from FOWA Dublin

Flickr FOWA Dublin tag pics

One pic of “Fuck the Real World” speaker

Another pic of “Fuck the Real World” speaker (ppl really loved the presentation)

Paul Seys photos on Flickr

Photo by blurredfocus.co.uk

Paul Seys TwitPic (the one in middle is organiser)

Last.fm presentator on Mobypicture

Fowa crowd on Mobypicture

Movie on after party

The Official FOWA wrap party will be taking place at The

Dandelion Club on March 6th 2009. See youtube