Swashbuckling is an activity normally carried out on the high seas.

But piracy is as rife as ever online.

Notice anything familiar about these screenshots?

You’d be forgiven for thinking someone had got their hands on our carefully crafted creations but unfortunately, that’s not the case.

After a quick trawl of the Internet, our research revealed there are plenty of websites out there imitating both our www.dpivision.com and www.cannybill.com.

It’s just a good job we’re all flattered by it here!

dpivision.com Ltd – Original

Pirate Site 1

Now this person really hasn’t bothered to change very much at all!

Pirate Site 2

And again, another company taking our design and just adding their logo but worst of all, doing a terrible job of it!

CannyBill – Original Site

Pirate Site 1

Well again not much effort has been put in to change our original design. They’ve changed the logo and some text but that’s about it!

Pirate Site 2

Well this is not a pirate site as such, just someone taking our CannyBill and Tradingeye sites and featuring them in their own portfolio!

Date:         Tuesday 20 October
Time:        5.30–9pm (event begins at 6pm sharp)
Venue:     The County Thistle Hotel, Newcastle (opposite Central Station)
Cost:         Free

Software companies of the North East: working internationally could be the next exciting step for your business.  Discover opportunities available and how to take the next step at the “International Working” seminar on 20 October.

Run by Codeworks Connect the trade association for digital businesses in North East England, in partnership with Sunderland Software City this free seminar will give you real life expertise from local businesses who are successfully trading internationally.

Why should you attend?

A full line up of engaging speakers from local businesses will take you through the peaks and troughs on the road to becoming successful international traders.  Learn from their mistakes and get one step ahead at the beginning of the journey!

Listen and learn from local businesses that ultimately succeeded after finding out what not to do the hard way. There are many routes into international working find out which path best suits your company.

•    Using a reseller hear how Ross Cooney at Rozmic currently does it
•    Acting as a reseller Derek Curtis explains what worked for Bond Solutions
•    Joint ventures knowledge of local culture is the key says Andrew Charlton of Back Consulting
•    Legal aspects Speechly Bircham’s Mark Bailey takes you through the legal minefield in a “bite size” presentation
•    Hands on an informative workshop with help from local solicitors WardHadaway, Crutes, WatsonBurton, Muckles and Mincoff Jackson

All our speakers and solicitors are available for questions and answers during the networking session.  Anything you need to know, we will have the answer!

Book your company’s free place today

Places for this free event are strictly limited and we expect them to go quickly. To book yours, call Alison Wilson at Codeworks Connect on 0191 556 1138 or email alison.wilson@codeworks.net

Tell us a little about your company.

Merry Dogs is an online store selling high-quality dog accessories to the UK.  We sell durable and stylish handmade dog collars, leads, dog beds, toys and bowls.  We specialise in products made in the UK and USA by small, dog-mad companies who are producing fabulous, fun and durable products for dogs.

Why did you choose Tradingeye as your ecommerce platform?

Tradingeye was recommended to us by a developer we approached. We wanted Merry Dogs to be a site we could more or less manage ourselves once it was live, and of course it had to be search engine friendly.  And it needed to fit with what our customers wanted from the site – easy to use, with lots of images and background information on each product and a secure shopping environment.

Could you please let us know about your project?

We had a few changes made to the basic package by Tradingeye and then the project was developed by Semlyen, a York-based web consultancy.  Now it is live we do 90% of the work ourselves, and this has worked out well.

Do you have any future plans for the site?

We’ll be adding new products, searching out new suppliers, and developing our two-way interaction with our customers.

Do you have anything else you would like to share?

The site functions very well and customers have commented on its accessibility and usability.

FREELANCE coders and developers are being invited to brush up on their skills at a networking event.

Headed by Sunderland Software City, the event aims to bring together the region’s freelance software coders and developers.

The event, at the Thistle Hotel, Newcastle, will include an informative talk from a leading freelancer, a talk on current software market trends, future job prospects, training and skills and stalls from networking exhibitors.
Food and drink will also be provided.

The event runs from 5.30pm to 9pm on October 14.

To register, or for more details, contact Alison Wilson on 0191 556 1138 or email alison.wilson@codeworks.net.

We are pleased to announce two new features for www.cannybill.com.

Custom Domain Names

By default your CannyBill admin login, order forms and customer my account URL is whatever-you-want.cannybill.com or clientorderform.com e.g.

http://company.cannybill.com or http://company.clientorderform.com

We have developed a new feature which now lets you have your own custom domain name rather then using the default CannyBill ones e.g.

http://billing.domain.com or http://www.domain.com

This is a great way to white label CannyBill as not only have you got full control over the design but now also the URL. Please note however that if you do use your own domain name for CannyBill you would also need to setup and buy your own SSL Certificate.

Under the admin -> settings -> invoice settings -> simply enter the custom domain name of your choice and save your settings. You will now need to change the DNS of your domain name e.g.

billing.mydomain.com. IN CNAME company.cannybill.com.

Please note the dot(.) at the end of domain names.

PayPal Payments Pro

We are please to announce the integration of the PayPal Pro payment gateway with CannyBill. The great advantage of PayPal Pro over the standard PayPal integration which is already built in the is the ability to have auto/recurring billing and also the fact that your customers do not get re-directed to PayPal to enter the credit card number, that’s all taken care on-site.

More information of PayPal and PayPal Pro can be found below:

https://www.paypal-business.co.uk/website-payments-pro.asp

Under admin -> settings -> Payment Gateways -> simply enter your PayPal credentials and you’re all set to go!

We are pleased to announce a new estimates feature for www.cannybill.com.

From your admin -> settings -> invoice settings -> you can enable the estimates feature.

Now the estimates feature has been activated you can now go ahead and create your 1st estimate. Simple go to the admin -> invoices tab -> and click on create new invoice.

Now instead of selecting the invoice option, select estimate from the drop down menu and enter all the required information such as the description and price.

That’s it, you’re all done, your 1st estimate has been created and you can now sent it to your customer with an optional PDF version attached.

Under the admin -> invoices tab -> you can switch between looking at all your invoices or estimates you have created.

We’re happy to announce that the first incremental update to Tradingeye v6 is now freely available, at no extra cost to Tradingeye v6 license holders.

Both the v6.1 upgrade scripts as well as the full v6.1 installation files can be found at: http://forum.tradingeye.com/showthread.php?t=2947 (you must be logged in to access this forum thread). The v6.1 upgrade is available to all Tradingeye v6 license holders only – Tradingeye v5.x users must first upgrade to v6 before then upgrading to v6.1.

http://www.tradingeye.com/upgrade.php

A full list of file changes and bug fixes can be found on the forum thread listed above.

Think you’ve secured yourself against online hackers with a foolproof password?

Well think again because with the number of cases of reported hack attacks on the rise, hackers are getting even craftier at cracking those codes.

But fear not, here at DpiVision we’ve been busy trawling the Internet to find out ways to keep hackers at bay and we’ve stumbled across web geek John P’s top tips on protecting yourself from online crime.

After extensively researching the subject, John’s pretty clued up on how to smash those passwords you and I reckon are rock solid, and now he’s using his knowledge to help fellow friends online.

His first tip is to ditch obvious passwords like your partner, pet or sibling’s name.
Lose naming your password after your hometown, school or favourite football team, and don’t use date of births.

Secondly, use a different password for each log-in you set up.

Many people make the mistake of using identical or similar passwords for all online accounts, meaning that hackers don’t need to attempt to take on steel-ringed websites like banks, they can just hack into the softer site you used years ago to buy your aunt that hat.

Pay particular attention to the difference between using only lowercase characters and using all possible characters (uppercase, lowercase, and special characters – like @#$%^&*). Adding just one capital letter and one asterisk would change the processing time for an 8 character password from 2.4 days to 2.1 centuries.

John has also compiled a list of tips to toughen up your password:

1.    Randomly substitute numbers for letters that look similar. The letter ‘o’ becomes the number ‘0′, or even better an ‘@’ or ‘*’. (i.e. – m0d3ltf0rd… like modelTford)
2.    Randomly throw in capital letters (i.e. – Mod3lTF0rd)
3.    Think of something you were attached to when you were younger, but don’t choose a person’s name! Every name plus every word in the dictionary will fail under a simple brute force attack.
4.    Maybe a place you loved, or a specific car, an attraction from a holiday, or a favourite restaurant?
5.    You really need to have different username / password combinations for everything. Remember, the technique is to break into anything you access just to figure out your standard password, then compromise everything else. This doesn’t work if you don’t use the same password everywhere
6.    Since it can be difficult to remember a ton of passwords, John recommends using Roboform. It will store all of your passwords in an encrypted format and allow you to use just one master password to access all of them.
7.    Once you’ve thought of a password, try Microsoft’s password strength tester to find out how secure it is.

To read John’s full blog, visit http://onemansblog.com/2007/03/26/how-id-hack-your-weak-passwords/

About the workshop

Join designer and author Andy Clarke for a full day learning how to use the most up-to-date CSS in your work today. Be inspired to find new ways of designing using CSS.

Modern web browsers now better capable of rendering advanced CSS than ever before. From highly targeted CSS selectors to new ways to work with layout, colour and typography, if you are a web designer or developer, working with CSS has never been more exciting.

‘Advanced CSS Styling’ is a unique one-day master class presented by Andy Clarke, designer and author of the best-selling Transcending CSS. Spend the day with Andy learning how to use the most up-to-date CSS techniques in your everyday work.

What you will learn

• How to design balanced, inspired layouts using advanced CSS positioning techniques
• New ways to work with colour using RGBa
• Using multiple background and border images
• How to use text and box shadows
• About CSS gradients, reflections and transitions

Of course the browser landscape is varied and each browser supports different CSS properties. You will learn how to design around, rather than hack around these natural differences to create experiences that are enjoyable for everyone, no matter which browser they use. You will learn:

• How to improve a browser’s CSS support using Javascript
• Modernizr and how it will help you to design around browser support
• When using Universal Internet Explorer 6 is appropriate

Web typography is one of the hottest topics in web design and development. As a self-confessed typography perfectionist, Andy will teach you:

• Working with font embedding solutions including Typekit, Kernest and Cufon
• Creating striking, readable type with typographic hierarchies
• How to improve typography with kerning, leading and baseline shifts

In this full day master class, you will also learn the latest techniques for designing in a browser and how to test your designs for web accessibility throughout your design process.

Don’t miss out

Don’t miss this opportunity to be inspired to find new ways of using CSS and how to use the most up-to-date CSS techniques. Places for each workshop are limited to thirty and prices start at only £275.00+VAT for limited early bird places.

Schedule

Come and meet and greet the Dpivision.com Ltd team as we host the after hours fun to a day with a top designer.

Designer and author Andy Clark from Stuff and Nonsense is stopping off in Newcastle to host an Advanced CSS Styling workshop at the Copthorne Hotel in October.

And we have joined forces with him to host and sponsor an evening of socialising at The Salsa Club, giving people the chance to unwind, swap top tips and beef up their contacts book.

The one-day masterclass offers ideas on how to use the most up-to-date CSS techniques of the moment, including:

- How to design balanced, inspired layouts using advanced CSS positioning techniques
- New ways to work with colour using RGBa
- Using multiple background and border images
- How to use text and box shadows
- About CSS gradients, reflections and transitions

Places are running out very quickly so book your place now!

http://forabeautifulweb.com/announcing/newcastle_upon_tyne_2009/

For the CannyBill sponsored after party, we are extending the invitation to our customers.

So come along and say hello to the team at The Salsa Club, West Gate Road, Newcastle on October 30 from 6.30pm onwards and fill yourself up with some of the tastiest free nachos and best Mexican beer.

Just so we know how much free food and booze to order, drop us a line to say you’ll be coming at info@dpivision.com.