The Scene: You absolutely cannot remember that amazingly complex and easy-to-remember password that you set on your shiny new macbook, and you’re running out of possible password combinations.

Well, don’t freak out, because it happens to the best of us. In fact, sudden password amnesia can happen quite a lot when your life requires you to have a passkey for almost everything that you do now a days. Of course, it is tempting to merely have one or two stock passwords  that act as your trusty go-to in the matter, but this kind of password duplication leaves you open and prone to having your secure information compromised by a random brute force attack or worse.

If you’re anything like me, then chances are you have way too many passwords for way too many accounts, and about a couple of times a week you’ll just blank on that password you quite literally just entered.  This is especially complicated if the password  you’ve forgotten is the administrator password on your machine, it can seem like quite an insurmountable obstacle to overcome.  Thankfully, I’m here to deliver you the good news that in fact you can too crack you own password on OS X if you are in dire need, and I’m going to show you how to do so!

The even better news is that there are a couple of ways of doing it!

Method 1: Use your Install Disk

1. Simply pop in the grey OS X install disk into you mac, and boot from disk.

2. Here select your language and allow the installer to load files

3. When the installer desktop loads, select Utilities from the drop down like so and choose Reset password

4. When the Reset Password dialogue box comes up, select the volume (aka the drive)  where your locked account is located, and the correct user account and you’ll be able to choose a new password and password hint question.

5. There will also be an option at the bottom to Reset home folder permissions and ACLs

6. Reboot and log in to your account, and remember to write your new password down!

Method 2: Trick OSX into re-running first boot

This much easier method is also perfect if you do not have your install disk handy, all you need to do is execute some commands at boot.

1. Reboot your machine, and when you hear the start-up gong press the Command + S key.  This will start up the machine in Single User Mode.

2. Once you find yourself in this command line interface you need to load the volume (hard drive) which contains the account you’ve locked yourself out of.  In  almost all cases this will just be your boot directory so type:

sudo mount -uw /

and press return.

3. Next remove the file on your hard drive that tells the macbook that the initial set up has already been done on that machine. You can do this by typing the following and pressing enter:

rm -rf /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

4. Then perhaps the easiest part of the whole process is executing the reboot command by typing the following and pressing enter:

reboot

5. Once the machine boots back up you will notice that it is running just like the very first time you turned it on. You will have to select your keyboard, and language .

6.  Next it will prompt you to transfer your information from a previous machine, you will want to select do not transfer my information now and click next.

7. Next it will ask you to configure your apple ID and iCloud, you can choose to do this or you can skip this by pressing the Command and Q keys at the same time. Just keep skipping all the irrelevant prompts until you get to create a new user account.

8. Create a new administrator account on the machine, as well as passwords and challenge questions. You can name this account anything you want because you are just using it temporarily to get back into your locked OSX account.

9. Once you log in to your new account, go to system preferences  and then accounts.

10. In accounts, select the account you are locked out of on the left hand side and click “Reset Password” in the right hand panel.  Once you are done, you can opt to delete the new account you’ve created or keep it as a secondary master administrator account.

and of course…

11. Write down your username and password if you’re gonna forget it!

Next time, we’ll be showing you how to do the same on your Windows machine- because we all know forgetfulness transcends OS boundaries.

- Stefan Avlijas @ XiiTec in Vancouver

With summer winding down and yours truly firmly planted in a seat behind his desk for the foreseeable future it seems to be an appropriate time to get back to talking over the finer points of SEO.

So let’s get cracking,  first up on the agenda should be no surprise to the internet marketing veterans amongst us, yet that does not make it any less important to consider.

So question at hand then is… what makes good link-bait?

Well, on the surface this may appear to be a really personal preference, it would seem that different users would find different things appealing so fussing over it would be counter productive.

Fortunately for the fussy ones among us user preference is not as fickle as many people would make it out to be.  Sure the market is wide and varied, but that does not mean that you shouldn’t take steps to tip the scales in your favour when it comes to getting hits on your site.

There is a tendency to over think Google’s (also Bing and Yahoo… I guess) ever changing algorithm, and to frame it in very black and white terms.  I’ve combed through countless blogs after every update telling you to post more from column A and less from column B if you want to stay on top of the game.  While this very technical approach might be appropriate for extremely competitive SEO keywords in which one desires the #1 ranking, it is also time consuming and puts your SEO wizard at risk of burnout.  So I implore you to ditch this tired approach and let your creativity shine through to the top.

The question we should be asking ourselves as SEO experts when creating new content for our pages is “What do people want to see today”.  This of course is a direct nod to the importance of quality and new information of the internet.

Google takes its hints about how to display relevant search results from the kinds of pages people go to an link each other to.  Currently, info-graphics, images, videos and all kinds of media are all the rage on the web- especially pictures with text overlaid on them (although I fear in several years this may just prove to be a constant of the internet and not a raging fad).  So producing 8000 word missives about the merits of a quality primary education would probably not draw many viewers outside the hard-core education community.

If we really want to attract the masses, well we sadly have to pander to them.  This doesn’t mean debasing the value or integrity of your postings, but simply tailoring the look and content of the pages that your content appears.  Remembering to include valuable visual graphics can be a saving grace for a really long entry, while one might think that with 400 hits a day at some point every single word that you blog about is going to be scrutinized and read to oblivion, chances are that 399 of those hits are just

stopping on by to skim the text while copying the image url of your informative and provocative info-graphic on education funding versus Olympic spending.
The point is here folks that including what people want to see shouldn’t feel dirty or underhanded, no more or less than fitting your fishing line with the latest and greatest flashy lure in order to catch what you’re looking for.

- Stefan Avlijas @ XiiTec in Vancouver

Speculation has been rife that OEM  licenses for the shiny new edition of Windows would cost astronomical amounts, as much as 100$ per license.

Luckily for those among us who will be falling  over themselves to implement windows 8 it has been confirmed  that the price will be only a paltry $85-$90!    So while early adopters with money in the bank breathe a sigh of relief and buy themselves something nice with that $15 the rest of us are left to collectively roll our eyes wondering what the astronomical cost to the end-user will be.

All of this really is doing very little to dispel the lingering uncertainty that the jump to windows 8 might not even be worth it for the majority of workstation and laptop users.   This should be a concern for Microsoft, as it traditionally represents much of their market in terms of consumer computing.

With competitors like Ubuntu, making significant inroads into the market such as their partnerships with major players such as Dell, IBM, Lenovo and, ASUS- Microsoft should rightly be looking over their shoulder.

To be fair there has been a lot of speculation on  Windows 8, and all of us trashing it online and in the real world might be forced to eat a slice of humble pie upon launch should it be worth the price tag.    Should this not happen however, it is possible that we might be seeing a different strategy being employed by the Microsoft marketing team to grab a slice of another competitor’s market.

By pricing Windows 8 licenses in a high bracket, it is possible that Microsoft sees itself wresting the high end tablet and touch screen device market from Apple.  Costing licensing for OEMs three times more than Windows 7 might be a strategy to keep the market from being flooded by cheap Windows 8 devices and devaluing the new OS’s brand image.

Yet Microsoft’s wish to push the brand in the direction of Apple’s traditional market could backfire on them severely, by vacating the low end affordable device spectrum they abandon many of their traditional customers who realistically could not afford hyper-expensive iOS devices, and in large found that they retained all the functionality and more with their Windows devices in terms of integration and software.

All the negative press generated by this aside, it is possible that Microsoft’s exec’s came to the decision that individuals likely to purchase a tablet or a touch screen device would likely already find themselves in a higher income bracket,  thereby already excluding their “traditional” demographic from the market.   Combined with the presence of inexpensive Android devices on the market, this may be a very intentional move to try and fill a void that Microsoft perceives in the market.  Interestingly enough, the valuable and successful marketing of the XBOX360 versus the PS3 was based exactly on the reverse of this principle, with few people willing to initially shell out the astronomical amounts required for a PS3 around launch Sony was forced to keep bringing the price down so that it could compete with the XBOX360.

Why Microsoft would swap their time honoured and successful marketing strategy is beyond me, but it isn’t altogether out of character for the company to have such blundering missteps in terms of product launch and marketing, lest we forget another flashy much touted Vista which unfortunately still haunts the recent memory of many Windows users.

That being said, it would perhaps be prudent then not to make two out of the last three OS launches be a total disaster.

Let’s hope they prove me wrong in a big way, or not, either way yours truly will probably be holding onto my W7 for the foreseeable future.

-

Stefan Avlijas @ XiiTec in Vancouver

As reported by security week, the new Flame virus that has been wreaking havoc with computer systems in the Middle-East has been using a fake Windows authentication certificate in order to redirect alleged connections from Microsoft’s Windows Update to the malicious target servers.

The three modules of Flame- Snack, Gadget and Munch download themselves as a fake update on the infected computer and then proceed to install themselves on the local machine.

These three modules work to infect other machines on the network, routing web traffic through the Flame compromised computer first in an effort to spread the malware across as many machines in a network as possible.   The Gadget model provides the necessary binary signed by a certificate pretending to belong to Microsoft in order to trick a Windows machine into accepting the “Update” connection in the first place.

Senior director of the Microsoft Security Response centre,Mike Reavy alleges that Microsoft is looking into the issue- as he detailed in his blog

To increase protection for customers, the next action of our mitigation strategy is to further harden Windows Update as a defense-in-depth precaution,” he added. “We will begin this update following broad adoption of Security Advisory 2718704 in order not to interfere with that update’s worldwide deployment.

If you are concerned about your network or system’s ability to respond to emerging cyber threats, check out five must have capabilities for controlling modern malware and stay tuned to our blog for all the latest in tech news.

Stefan Avlijas @ XiiTec in Vancouver