App of the day 8: Shhmooze.

Aug 24, 2011 | ,

The both great and terrible thing about the Internet is when using social networks, you can go weeks, months or even years without knowing what the people you’re talking to look or sound like. That’s great! It allows you to hide behind your keyboard and mumble things you wouldn’t ordinarily are say but when it comes to those blog awards, twitter meet up or just a pint or two with people from a mailing list it can be a little difficult to know who’s who.

Calling in Shhmooze to take the stage. Shhmooze is a nice little app that lets you check into whatever location you’re in. When you get the app first you write a small bio and add a picture. This allows people to see who you are and if they don’t know yet, the bio allows them to see what you’re interested in and what you’re all about.

For example, an organizer of an event might invite attendees to use this app. When they get to the location of the event they take a look and they immediately can see other people who use the app that are in the same location. They’ll see the digitalDarragh username and a short description of me. They’ll also see my picture so if they want, they can pick me out of a crowd to introduce themselves. On a side note, obviously I can’t pick them out of a crowd so I make sure that at the end of my profile / bio I write something like: “You’ll see me a long time before I see you so come over and say hello”. I wouldn’t want to come right out and say hay I’m blind. Where the hel are you so I think and hope that’s a better approach.

I like Shhmooze because it tells me who’s there and with that information, I can make sure I get talking to people I know from Twitter, linked in and Facebook. Of course, there’s a messaging feature so if you just want to tell someone to stick around because you’ll be over there in a moment that’s quite easy to do also.

Shhmooze isn’t just available on the iPhone so almost anyone with a smart phone will be able to avail of this functionality.

To add one final note, Shhmooze isn’t just a social networking app. It’s also a great way of helping with professional networking. By including information about your industry and what kind of work your available for you can also attract perspective clients.

Go move shift!

Aug 23, 2011 | ,

I wrote this post on the 1st of September 2008. I dragged it out of the archives because it got lost but I like the message that it sent. It was written as a result of an incident that I had in Stephens green in Dublin. Looking back I was possibly naive to think that this would be acceptable but I don’t think I was wrong to try. I was due to travel to Italy shortly afterword to play music in several towns during a five day tour. I was conscious that I wasn’t practising enough but time in the evenings was tight and I couldn’t seem to play music as often as I would have liked. I find music a great way of unwinding and relaxing so I thought that if I could find a way of playing during the day it would kill two birds with one stone. It would help relieve the strains of work and it would satisfy my need to practise regularly. I picked a day that wasn’t particularly sunny so that Stephens green would be reasonably quiet and I sat in a secluded place that was slightly off the main paths. Now, of course, it should be noted that the Uilleann pipes aren’t as loud as the bag pipes however their still audible from reasonable distances so I appreciate that they could possibly be heard in areas used by members of the public who frequent the park for lunch etc. Stilll, I wouldn’t call my self a great player but I would hope to be a compitant one. I would assume the music I play is at the least unoffencive to peoples ears. Assuming I am regularly invited to play in Ireland and abroad lets say it’s not offensive anyway. After about fifteen minutes I was approached by a park attendant and I was told that I was not permitted to play here as it was in breach of health and safety and they were not covered by ensurance. Keep in mind that I was not busking. I was not intentionally attracting people to the area that I was in although a number of people sat near by when I started playing that wasn’t my intention. I was playing for my own pleasure and I assumed that would be acceptable in a public park. Thinking back on it three years later I’m still angry. There are people busking without proper permits on Grafton street that can hardly play an instrument. There are people begging and annoying people on almost every street in Dublin city centre. All I wanted to do is play for a half an hour in a public park without collecting money, without the aim of entertaining others. I simply wanted to make use of time that is ordinarily wasted during my day with something that I enjoy doing.

Anyway, lets get to the post.

I’m reminded of the song from Christy Moore, a well known Irish singer that tells the story of travellers being viciously pushed from their homes years ago. Go Move Shift. You’re not welcome here. Regular themes that are all too common today still.

I also thought that gone were the days of oppression in this country where freedom to express our native song was prohibited.

Ok, Oppression in my experience today is way too harsh a description however the refusal to allow self expression in one of our nation’s public parks is just as equally negative.

Without wanting to dramatise it, The Irish traditions are dying. Their certainly not as popular in this country as they once were. It therefore stands to reason that you’d want to encourage them. . That doesn’t seem to be the case though. People today are too afraid of breeching copyright to just relax and consider music how it should be. Not a commodity to be exploited but an art to be expressed and enjoyed.

I suppose, I was too blindly optimistic and naive to consider that the performance of an Irish instrument in public with only personal enjoyment as the benefit would be permitted in this, our allegedly proud country.

Question: What does it mean to be proud to be Irish? Do you know? How can you be Irish and proud of it if you don’t embrace the Irish traditions?

People talk about the Irish identity. I don’t know what that is. Do you? Other countries have in the past seen us as a kind, happy and artistic culture.

Look on public transport. Do people seem Kind? When a pregnant woman stands with a clear expression of pain and discomfort on her face and not alone will people not give her a seat but they actually give out to her for being in the way can that even be considered humane?

Look at the many traditional festivals that take place in this country. They have escalated into what are now recognised as huge drinking sessions. The art they represent is only a distant second in the minds of the people who go with the sole purpose of drinking.

App of the day 7: Jelly SMS.

Aug 23, 2011 | ,

I’m sorry to say that this is the second app that’s specific to Irish iPhone users. Sorry about that but it’s an app that’s really worth writing about.

In Ireland we have quite good phone tariffs that provide a certain amount of voice, text messages and data depending on the tariff you choose. However, unless you’re on a customized plan or the company you work for provides you with a phone with a tariff that has been tailored to your business needs to allow you to freely or very cheaply call or text contacts outside Ireland, you will find that keeping in contact with friends or family abroad can be quite costly.

However, companies such as Vodafone and O2 provide an method that will allow you to freely text people outside Ireland using web based text services. Of course, that’s little good when you want to respond to a message someone sent you from England but you’re out for the night and by the time you get home you’ll probably forget to turn on the computer and sign into your customer portal. Of course, you can alternatively just use the web browser on your iPhone and sign in but you’re out to socialise, not to spend ten minutes signing into a website to send a quick text message.

This is where Jelly SMS comes in so useful. This app basically connects to your phone provider’s web text facility and sends text messages through this. This means that when using Jelly SMS you do not eat into the number of text messages provided monthly as part of your tariff. If your phone provider allows you to send text messages to international numbers from the web then you will be able to benefit from this using Jelly SMS also.

Jelly SMS will allow you to use the contacts on your phone so you will not need to create a web based contacts list or even worse, type in the number manually every time you want to send a text message from the web.

The app allows you to send pictures however this functionality is a little misleading. It uses something that SMS aggregators call MMS push. This means that the content is not sent directly to the recipient’s phone. Instead, a message is sent with a URL included. This URL when opened will show you the picture or sound clip that was attached to the message you sent using Jelly SMS. I’m not entirely sure if this is a limitation of Jelly SMS or the web text providers however it is something that should be more clearly documented in the app.

One great feature of Jelly SMS is its integration with maps. A few months ago I had no GPS solution with me but I needed to find a building in an unfamiliar part of Dublin. Using Jelly SMS I sent a message and included my location. When another iPhone user opened the message they were able to see my location with reasonable accuracy and provide me with specific instructions to find my intended destination. Of course, I doubt this is what the functionality was intended to be used for however it’s very helpful in certain situations.

There are two versions of Jelly SMS. The free version limits you to less than 161 characters in a text message as at the end of every message you sent it places a small advertisement in to say that the message was sent using Jelly SMS. The paid version does not include these advertisements and costs €3.99. The add-on to enable you to send pictures in messages was I think €1.79 however I’m guessing here. It may have just been €0.79 but I think I’m right with the larger amount. Of course, it should be kept in mind that this functionality is not what you might expect and does not actually send the pictures in the message. Considering this is a purchasable add-on I would hope that a more clear description is made available within the app of its limitations before consumers purchase it.

Overall, this is a very useful app. The price could come down a little and I would like to see more clear documentation within the app regarding limitations but it’s great at what it does and the developer has ensured flawless accessibility for Voiceover users.

App of the day 6: TaskList.

Aug 22, 2011 | ,

Continuing with my ten apps in ten days posts today I’m going to look at a cool little app called TaskList. As they say, this does exactly what it says on the tin. It doesn’t sync with any services, it’s not flashy, it’s purely functional but it’s very useful.

This functionality will largely become redundant with the reminders app that comes with IOS5 however for voice over users I think the Tasklist app will still be quite useful as it’s very clean and provides fields and descriptions that are quite standard compared to Outlook and windows mail etc.

I like it because although I like to think I have a great memory; it’s inevitable that throughout the course of a meeting I’ll forget a crucial thing that I need to do as a result of a discussion or a point someone raises. The iPhone is fantastic and it really puts as much information as you can Handel at your finger tips however when in a fast paced work environment it’s often more important to enter and retrieve information quickly than to have dozens of apps with an overwhelming array of functionality. I could put items into the calendar but Tasklist is a lot more efficient. What I really find helpful though is that when glancing at or reading with voiceover the task list item on the home screen it shows the number of outstanding tasks for that date and can even present a notification to inform you of a due task. It’s basically an outlook style reminders / tasks function for the iPhone.

Using the Tilda terminal in Linux with full accessibility for Orca users.

Aug 22, 2011 | , ,

This post was origionally written on friday the 29th of February 2008 however over the past few years it got lost due to blog upgrades. Because I’ve noticed a few people looking for this information I thought it would be a good idea to post it again.

Yesterday, I decided to play around with a package called Tilda.  Tilda is a graphical console for the Gnome desktop.  It runs on KDE as well but its GTK based.  The main advantage it gives is more bells and whistles for people who like visual effects.  No, I’m not in to visual effects for obvious reasons however I was curious and I like the speed that it launches at


After installing it yesterday, I was very happy to see that Orca worked with it right away.  When I ran Tilda for the first time, I was given a configuration wizard screen.  Orca spoke all of the focusable objects as if they were made for each other.  In the terminal it’s self, flat review could be used to read the console as you would expect with any accessible application.  Only problem was that Orca didn’t automatically speak new text as it was written to the screen.


To try to rectify the situation, armed only with my Windows screen reader knowledge and my curiosity, I renamed the gnome-terminal.py file to tilda.py.  That didn’t do anything for me.  However, thinking back, I wonder if it didn’t do anything for me because I didn’t restart Orca first before trying tilda again.  My thinking behind this attempt was that Windows screen readers such as Jaws versions before 7 and Window Eyes used a script or macro type function that was more or less tied to the executable of the application.  For example, if notepad.exe was run, Jaws / Window eyes would run the settings / scripts for that file if it found a file named notepad.jsb or notepad.001.   This has changed in later versions of Jaws and Window eyes however I assumed that it was possible that the logic was similar in Orca.    That didn’t work though so I sent a brief email to the Orca discussion list asking for their suggestions. 


Rich Burridge, an Orca developer, took some time out of his busy day to help me.  With some research, he determined that Tilda actually used VTE (Virtual Terminal Emulator) This is also used by Gnome-Terminal and has a lot of accessibility support already.  This meant that it was probably fine to use the Gnome-terminal script as it would most likely behave the same.  Only one small change was required.  He suggested that I add a few short lines to my orca-customizations.py file.  Look at the end of this post for the specific code.
I want to take this opportunity to describe to you how Gnome accessibility differs from that provided by windows screen readers as in Windows, just copying this script from one application to another expecting it to behave the same would be completely unheard of.  Windows screen readers provide accessibility in windows. In Linux”, it’s gnome that provides its own accessibility.  Orca takes advantage of this and provides output customized to ensure that users receive the information they need in a way they can understand.  That’s the short version.  Now for some description. 


In windows, if you are using a screen reader like Jaws and an instant messaging program like MSN for example, Jaws needs to monitor very high level behavior.  I.e, it needs to track changes to the interface, read text from the status bar, monitor the entire conversation history area and a lot more.  It does this to ensure you hear status updates, incoming messages, Contact information and of course, at times, it needs to keep track of your own actions so it can tell you where you are in any given window.  Most of this information is obtained by analyzing the interface.  Only a very small percentage of what Jaws gets from windows is obtained from information that the application or operating system gives it.  In other words, MSN does not communicate with Jaws to tell it that a new message has arrived.  Jaws determines this by watching for changes on the screen.


Gnome on the other hand is completely different.  It provides assistive software such as the Orca screen reader with information so that it can relay this to the user.  In the gnome messaging client, pidgin, Orca is informed when a new message is sent to the message history window.   It then has events determined by scripts to tell it what to do with this information.  So, it doesn’t matter how you have pidgin configured, it will still send this information to Orca which in turn will relay it to the user.  So, bringing it back to the terminal, it doesn’t matter that Gnome Terminal is completely different to Tilda.  Tilda uses different colors, different positioning and a lot of eye candy.  It really doesn’t matter though as it utilizes this VTE that provides the required accessibility information to Orca! 


I should also say here that although my description of the differences between how Windows and Gnome behaves should be accurate, I can’t say it with full certainty.  I’m not a developer and if you are really interested in the low level workings of the Gnome window manager and how it provides accessibility, I’d suggest you look into subscribing to the orca mailing list.


That’s all the background and descriptions out of the way.  If you’re interested in getting up and running with tilda and Orca, use the following instructions:




  1. Go into a terminal.

    1. Press alt and F2 when in the Gnome desktop.
    2. Type gnome-terminal
    3. Press enter.

  2. Install the tilda terminal.

    1. Type apt-get install tilda
    2. Press the enter key.  When prompted to confirm the package download and installation, type the letter y and again, press enter.
    3. Exit the terminal window.

  3. Instruct orca to run the gnome-terminal.py script when you run tilda.

    1. Press alt f2 to start the run dialogue box.
    2. Type gedit then press enter.
    3. Paste the below code into the editor.

      import re
      import orca.settings
      from orca.orca_i18n import _
      orca.settings.setScriptMapping(re.compile(_(’tilda’)), “gnome-terminal”)

    4. Save the document by pressing control and s.
    5. Exit gedit by pressing alt and f4.

  4. Run the tilda terminal.

    1. Press alt f2 to start the run dialogue box.
    2. Type tilda and press enter.


You’re done.  You are now in the tilda configuration screen.  Configure the package to your own preferences then use the ok button to save your changes and start the tilda terminal.  This wizard will not be shown automatically again when you run tilda.  To bring up the wizard, type tilda –C in the launch application dialogue box accessible with Alt F2.


I think that should be clear enough.  Any problems or questions feel free to leave a comment and I’ll try to get to them.


My thanks to Rich Burridge who so generously helped with this.  Without his help I’d probably be working at this still.

Please use strong passwords.

Aug 19, 2011 | , , , ,

I go on and on about security and specifically password complexity but I should probably write something specifically about the strength of complexity of the passwords you choose.

Lets first look at passwords you shouldn’t use: people, pet, book, film and place names are a massive no no. In fact, just don’t use any name. Their exceptionally easy to guess or obtain. Do not use dates of births, you’re lucky lotto numbers, your phone number or your house number. Again, you don’t want to make it easy for someone to guess your password. Even if they can guess some of it it will still make it considerably easy to hack. Finally, unfortunately, it’s no longer enough to just replace letters with special characters when writing words. For example, you cannot write the word Dublin as Dubl1n. Look up dictionaries are used by automated password hacking programs to check for this type of thing.

There is one form of brilliant password but I’ll explain that to you in a moment.

For a traditional password I suggest you use the following rules when creating one.

  • The password should be a minimum of 9 characters. Notice it’s not 7 anymore? Unfortunately, as password hacking programs evolve, the complexity and strength of passwords must evolve faster.
  • A password should contain a minimum of 2 uppercase letters, 2 lower case letters, 2 symbols and 2 numbers.
  • You should never write down your password.
  • You should change passwords every 30 to 90 days depending on the importance of the data or system you are protecting. For example, I change my main password manager’s password every 14 days. This protects my other passwords so it’s important that it’s regularly updated. I have a password that I use for my test Linux virtual machine. This is updated every 90 days because it’s not protecting any important data and it’s only connected to a hand full of systems.

An example of a secure 9 character password is:

2$Fwp%3wT

I try to stay away from using symbols such as the at sign and the quotation mark because these can symbolise the end of a password in some systems so they may cause conflicts. Of course, I choose the characters in my password based on the application it’s protecting so that I have some way of remembering them. This might mean that for a Linux box running Fedora I start the password with a capital F. Of course, it goes without saying that I’m giving misleading information here as I’m not going to be stupid enough to give you a hint that would empower you to hack my passwords but the policy I follow helps me to remember my various passwords while being completely obscure to everyone else. The skill of creating highly complex passwords is something you learn over time. Everyone has their own technique, their own standards and their own way of remembering passwords. On the point of remembering passwords, remember there are applications out there specifically designed to help with this.

Taking a step forward away from passwords, we have pass phrases. What most people don’t realise is that standard password fields generally don’t have a maximum limit. Or, if they do have a maximum size it’s about 250 characters. Why not use sentences or phrases instead of passwords. Of course, these phrases can’t just be words and names. That would become equally easy to hack all be it over a longer duration. That’s something I should probably mention. The longer your password, the longer on average it takes for a password hacking tool to determine what it is. Therefore a pass phrase should cause password hacking tools to take much longer to hack your account. The longer it takes to hack an account the more likely it is that the systems intrusion protection system or firewall will recognise the attempts and block the offending systems IP address.

Good pass phrases will be a sentence that include as many letters between A and Z as possible. Of course, like passwords, it’s great if you can add in a few capital letters, numbers and special characters.

For example, a great pass phrase is something like this:

The big brown dog jumped over the lazy fox.

Written in a strong pass phrase this would become something like:

Th3 b!g Br0wn D0g Jump3d 0v3r Th3 l@zy F0x.

Ok. I’m replacing letters with symbols and numbers here. That’s not always a good idea but it at least gets us started.

I use a pass phrase like this for almost every important system that requires a password. So should you!

My perfect keyboard.

Aug 19, 2011 |

I’m not asking for much am I?

All I want is the perfect keyboard with the following features.

  • It should come in three parts. The left part should have the left side of the home keys, the right should have the letters starting with h and the right side of the keyboard should have the page up, down, arrows and numpad etc. This would mean that I can spread out the keyboard or put it together during the day. I find it very tiring to just leave my arms and hands in the one position for 8 hours from Monday to Friday. I’d love to have the ability to have some variety.
  • It should have laptop keys. These should be very responsive. In fact, anyone who has used the Pacmate will probably agree that the keyboard on that device was the nicest keyboard ever made. I want keys that are firm, very fast with a definitive click when their pressed. The keys should be removable for cleaning and they should be made of a very tuff plastic.
  • There should be a space between the keys similar to that on the Apple keyboards.
  • The keyboard should be very flat.
  • It should be possible to tilt the three separate parts of the keyboard so that they slope to the left, right forward or back. Again, I would like to be able to move my wrist to different angle after a few hours of typing. It would reduce stress and strain on my hands when typing for such a long time every day.
  • The keyboard should have ten programmable buttons. Four on the left 4 across the top and two small buttons between the space between the arrows and the six function buttons for page up, down, end, home, delete and insert.
  • There should be no LED for functions. Instead, the button should be touch sensitive and should vibrate if that function is enabled. For example, if the caps lock was enabled and the caps lock button was touched it should vibrate quickly to indicate this. Same with the numlock and scrole lock.
  • The keyboard should be connected via USB.

Would I be pushing it if I also wanted it to have the ability to control up to three computers at once?

Now, let me explain why I am so fussy.
I type for hours upon hours every day of the week. My fingers rarely even get a break on Saturdays or Sundays. I’m fortunate that I don’t experience any issues due to repetitive strain but I’m always very mindful of it and I try to ensure that I change the position of my hands frequently while typing. Even if it’s just a case of elevating my seat so that my arms in a different position I’ll try a number of things during the day to reduce the strain on my wrists and fingers.

I’m currently using a Microsoft comfort keyboard. It’s lovely to type on but the keys aren’t responsive enough so when I’m typing very fast the shift key isn’t depressed quickly enough so instead of getting one capital letter in a sentence I get two. I don’t experience this problem on laptop keyboards. I’d have no problem saying it was bad typing if this is the case and believe me, like everyone else, I have my bad days but I know that I could be more accurate if I had a keyboard where the keys would respond fast enough.

I don’t ask for much do I?

App of the day 5: KyPass.

Aug 19, 2011 | ,

Day five and the iPhone apps just keep on coming. I’ve discussed password strength and security on this blog a few times over the past few years. I can’t over state this at all. If you don’t have strong passwords, it’s entirely your own fault if your security is compromised. I have no sympathy for people who use names, dates of birth, addresses and other easily identifiable passwords when they find that their credit card details are stolen or someone is impersonating them on a social network such as Twitter.

The problem of course is that after a while, all of these complicated passwords become impossible to remember. The average person should have a password for logging into their computer, a password for their Email and different passwords for every website or social network their a member. This probably adds up to a minimum of five passwords for the average computer user. It’s unfair and unrealistic to expect someone to remember all of these. That’s why password managers are so useful. Something like Keepass can be installed on your computer and provides for quite a secure method of storage for passwords. At most, you’ll need two passwords. One for KeePass and another for logging into your computer. Wow. How many times have I just written the word password?

The great thing about Keepass is that it allows you to store passwords on a dropbox account. This means that every computer you use can access the same encrypted password file therefore you can access the information easily without using pen drives or other methods to transfer the passwords around.

With the usage of Dropbox, you can even get access to your passwords from your phone. KyPass is a brilliant little iPhone app that brings Keepass off the computer. Simply download the app, within the settings, configure it to use your Dropbox account and it will do the rest.

Unfortunately Kypass only supports authentication using passwords whereas the desktop application KeePass supports windows authentication, certs and passwords separately or in conjunction for authentication. This is much more secure than a password alone but if access to your passwords is required on the road, the slight reduction in security may be something you can justify.

KyPass is €1.99 from the iTunes app store and it’s worth it if like me you use a lot of different passwords to secure your data and personal information

App of the day 4: iSocialize free

Aug 18, 2011 | ,

Welcome to day four of the ten iPhone apps in ten days series. Today, I’ll look at a social network app that I use primarily for Facebook but that also works with Twitter, Google plus, YouTube and loads of other social networking sites.

iSocialize is a very simple app. It’s basically a connecter to other social networking sites. The nice thing about it is that it remembers credentials so you don’t need to enter them every time you want to look at something. iSocialize follows ideas by companies such as AOL with their instant messenger and Microsoft with windows live. The app tries to bring all your social networks into one place. This is very nice for some users. The one consistent interface makes it quick and easy to learn.

As Facebook users that require Voiceover for accessibility are aware, the Facebook app is less than usable and there are no signs that it will ever improve. iSocialize free is far from perfect however it’s a major step forward in comparison. iSocialize allows you to look at your feed, like and comment on entries posted by your friends and update your own status.

It would seem that iSocialize simply loads certain parts of the Facebook, YouTube, Google plus and Twitter mobile web pages however it seems to also strip away some clutter.

For users that are not concerned with Voiceover accessibility, iSocialize is still beneficial. Because it connects a number of social networks in one app it’s a very efficient and easy to user interface.

As indicated by the name, iSocialize free does not need to be purchased to avail of this functionality.

App of the day 3: Email Signature Pro.

Aug 17, 2011 | ,

Day three of my ten iPhone apps in Ten days series will look at Email signature pro. Again, without meaning to focus on this kind of thing, this app adds a feature that I’m sure many of us would really like to see incorporated into the iPhone by default.

Email signature pro provides the ability to create custom signatures that you can use for multiple Email accounts. For example, your signature for personal mail may just include your name and possibly a website or Email address. However, the signature for your work address might need to include various contact numbers and disclaimers.

Email signature pro allows you to add properly formatted links, lines to separate the signature from the main Email and even allows you to include an image such as a logo in the signature.

This application costs €3.99 from the iTunes store however a light version of the app is available for free. The light app allows you to attach images to signatures etc. however only works for one account.

In my experience, this app is a must-have for anyone who uses more than one Email account from the phone. It saves a lot of time and it allows for very professional signatures.