Although it may be a rare and exciting occasion for some, for others, travel is just a part of their day to day life. Many business people are often required to travel long distances to get to important meetings, present at trade shows, or attend conferences etc, and there’s no denying it can sometimes take its toll.
Travel is stressful, and while there’s no real way of preventing the inevitable, we’re always looking to make things easier for you! We’ve put together ten awesome travel hacks to try and make your next journey miles easier…
Top Support for Brand New VPN Gateways in VPN Tracker 365
We’re pleased to announce that yet another new VPN Tracker 365 beta is now live and available for testing! This version offers compatibility with three brand new device profiles from NETGEAR, Telekom, and Sophos, as well as continued support for OpenVPN connections; the newest addition to VPN Tracker 365 announced last week.
After months of careful planning and testing, the moment many of you have been waiting for is finally here… Following popular demand, the first public beta of VPN Tracker 365 with support for OpenVPN devices is now live!
Hey team players – an exciting new feature has landed at Mail Designer 365! Say hello toMail Designer 365 for Teams.
What is Teams?
This brand new feature allows you to purchase multiple Mail Designer 365 Business plans and assign them to your team members for an ultra productive team workflow. The best part? Teams has a super convenient joint billing feature. Say goodbye to multiple confusing invoices throughout the year. Regardless of whether you pay monthly or annually, you’ll receive one straightforward, summative invoice for your whole team at the end of each billing period.
The Teams feature is easily accessible via your my.maildesigner365.com portal. Click on the Teams tab, where you can set up a team, enter your billing information, and then purchase and manage your Mail Designer 365 Business plans.
Teams is just the start of a brand new journey for Mail Designer 365. We still have loads of exciting things planned on our roadmap for 2018 to make your collaborative workflow easier and more productive than ever. Stay tuned for more!
Interested in setting up a team for your business? Find out more here.
Security expert teams are warning about a critical security breach in the current WPA2 WiFi encryption standard. Potential attackers are now able to break, monitor and manipulate WPA2 encryption with so-called “KRACK attacks”; caused by a weakness in negotiating security key management.
Be proactive – What you can do to mitigate security risks from KRACK-Attacks:
In order to keep your sensitive data safe from prying eyes, you should use a VPN. VPN Tracker World Connect will keep you safe while using WiFi on your Mac and iOS devices until security fixes start to roll out for clients and network hardware.
VPN Tracker World Connect instantly encrypts all your online activity with the highest encryption standards. Whether you are away on a trip, working at the office or simply at home, your data is protected on every WiFi connection.
The leading network device providers are currently working on security patches for this issue. Be sure to keep checking if a patch has appeared for your WiFi device. You can find more technical information about KRACK attacks here: https://www.krackattacks.com
Great news for all of you design enthusiasts out there: TOWER ONE is taking Mail Designer Pro to a whole new level. Mail Designer 365 is the ultimate new subscription model solution for professional HTML email design.
Under the TOWER ONE brand, we aim to transform Mail Designer 365 into one of the world’s best email newsletter design services and create an easy-to-use, productive tool for creative professionals and email marketers everywhere.
Mail Designer 365: A model for the future
Here at TOWER ONE we are always thinking about the future and how to provide the optimum user experience. Many of the most popular feature requests received by equinux (such as countdowns, analytics, image hosting etc.) require a cloud-based service to work. As part of TOWER ONE, an equinux company with cloud experience, Mail Designer will be improved with ongoing services for cloud features, as part of a subscription model.
Mail Designer 365 offers you continuous feature updates throughout the lifetime of your subscription, and always provides complete compatibility with the latest macOS. The new version is perfectly optimized for great performance with macOS 10.13 High Sierra.
Subscribers can also look forward to an exciting development roadmap we have planned for the next 12 months; containing updates for design tools, creative content, cloud services, and more.
A whole new world of features
Mail Designer 365 has so much to offer:
#MadeForDesigners – Mail Designer 365 reaches new heights with an array of brand new layout and design features. Drag and drop ready-made layout blocks to create complex designs in minutes or save and reuse your own creations with the brand new custom layout blocks feature.
#MadeForCreativity – Professional image editing tools and photo-filter effects allow you to express your creativity right here inside the app. With just one click you have access to a world of effects such as brightness, contrast, sharpness and 10 unique filters for stunning newsletter designs.
#MadeForSmartphones – You can easily use Mail Designer 365 to adapt your designs for the newest mobile devices on the market – including the iPhone 8, iPhone X, and Google Pixel. #MadeForYou – We designed the new and improved UI especially with you in mind. Larger icons and a search & sort feature help you to find your designs instantly and the brand new Mail Designer 365 News platform provides you with expert design tips and marketing know how.
And there’s even more… See the complete list of features here!
Get started with Mail Designer 365
You can purchase Mail Designer 365 today from our website or from the Mac App Store. Simply install the app and choose the plan for you to get started. Hey existing customers! If you are already a Mail Designer user, you benefit from an exclusive upgrade offer. Discounted plans start from just $49.99 a year! Lock in your discounted price before October 31st and enjoy your lifetime discount.
The US Manufacturer, Ubiquiti, founded by former Apple developer, Robert J. Pera, rolled out into the network scene at the right time. Their high-performance wifi technology with easy centralized management have made Ubiquiti one of the most in-demand networking solutions on the market. On top of that, Ubiquiti has been brought to the spotlight with its UniFi Access Points. Their high quality coupled with a relatively inexpensive price tag has made Ubiquiti one of the most sought after brands in the networking market. UniFi also offers great gateway options for small teams, start-ups, and larger corporations.
So how can you use your Ubiquiti UniFi as a VPN gateway for your Mac? No problem with the latest Ubiquiti UniFi Security Gateways firmware and with VPN Tracker 365. With our new and detailed Ubiquiti Configuration Guide in VPN Tracker 365, getting Macs connected to VPN on your UniFi is effortless.
VPN Tracker 365 Gateway support NEW More than 25 VPN Gateways are supported
With the latest version of VPN Tracker 365 (Download), we’ve added support for additional new VPN Gatewaysfrom well-known manufacturers: D-Link, FortiNet, NETGEAR, Watchguard and ZyXEL.
The new models are listed below, you can find all 300+ supported devices on our compatibility page.
Update & Availability: The latest VPN Tracker 365 version with Ubiquiti UniFi Security Gateway Support is free with your VPN Tracker 365 Plan (Download the latest VPN Tracker 365 version here).
New customers can get their VPN Tracker 365 for only 69.99 EUR per year (covers all personal Macs). Benefit from the robust and secure VPN Tracker features for your business and personal needs. Customers with older VPN Tracker versions can upgrade for a discounted offer. VPN Tracker is compatible with macOS Sierra and already supports the latest Public Beta of macOS High Sierra.
Apple is known for doing things with more attention to detail than most companies. So it should come as no surprise that even App Store gift cards with their promo codes have a few secret details that help make the experience more Apple-like.
So what powers the simple App Store promo codes? Secret fonts, special dimensions, and many more.
SHA1 is a cryptographic hash function that is used to verify signatures and other security-related files. Basically, it lets you quickly check that the file or digital signature you’re being shown is actually the real deal.
What’s all the fuss about?
In the last few years, researchers theorized that it might be able to create a fake file that matches a genuine file’s SHA1 signature. It was all just a matter of computing power and given the way technology works, that it would be possible in the next few years.
At that’s exactly what has happened: the Google team used a clever technique and Google’s vast server infrastructure to create a fake PDF file with the same SHA1 hash as their reference file.
What does SHA1 have to do with VPN?
When using a VPN, the server and VPN app go through several steps that let each side verify they’re talking to the right person. There’s Phase 1, during which both sides set up a secure channel to talk over. Then they use that during Phase 2 to establish the actual VPN tunnel used to transmit encrypted data.
SHA1 can be used in both of these setup phases to verify the authenticity of the data being exchanged and is configured by default for many VPN vendors.
So is a VPN that uses SHA1 at risk?
For single files like their PDF example or website certificates, Google’s research definitely shows that switching to SHA-2 is an important and necessary step.
However for VPNs, the attack is not feasible due to the short key lifetimes used:
In Google’s research, they needed the equivalent of 6500 single CPU-years to create their fake file.
In your VPN tunnel, a SHA1 hash is only used for 1 hour on average, before it is swapped for a new key. And the hash algorithm is used to verify a packet that has already been encrypted. So an attacker could only use this attack to sneak a fake packet into your data – and they’d have to compute in within 1 hour. To actually read your data would still be impossible, as the encryption algorithm means there are effectively two layers of security an attacker would need to break.
Security setup within VPN Tracker 365
Extra protection: use SHA-2 with your VPN
The latest VPN gateways also support SHA-2 hashes (e.g. SHA-256, SHA-384 or SHA-512). These are more modern, highly secure SHA variants that can’t be broken. SHA-2 has been supported in VPN Tracker since 2015 and is in our default configuration for many popular VPN vendors, including SonicWALL.
Secure: SonicWall TZ600 Gateway (uses AES-128, AES-192 and AES-256 with SHA-256)
The future
We always recommend using the strongest encryption available to you. So switching to SHA-2 algorithms if your VPN gateway supports it is a good idea. However SHA1 is still secure, provided you use a relatively short key lifetime and, more importantly, always pair it with a strong encryption algorithm (such as AES-128, AES-192 or AES-256).
Update 21. February: It looks like this experiment is over and the charts are back to the way they were. Was it a sneak preview of things to come? We’ll keep this post updated.
The App Store Top Charts are one of the most popular ways to find the latest trends on the store. In fact, Apple has received some criticism in the past for an over-reliance on Top Charts for new app discovery.
But with subscriptions becoming increasingly popular, the Top Grossing charts run the danger of becoming stagnant: monthly recurring subscriptions all but guarantee certain apps a spot in the Top Grossing charts, making it almost impossible for new apps to break into the Top Grossing charts.
Now it looks like Apple may be testing out a new algorithm to fix that.
I guess: „Top grossing“ no longer incl. renewals, only new/first paid/subscription sales. Charts shake up evrywhr #appstore#apple#itunes
As Till noticed, it looks like recurring revenue no longer counts towards your chart position.
We’re very familiar with the charts and where the top apps in that category usually rank. This past weekend, a lot of apps in the Entertainment category suddenly dropped way down in the charts. What the heck?
A quick investigation revealed all the biggest losers offer subscriptions. And left at the top of the charts are big-name brands (such as Netflix who probably have enough new users coming in to keep them in the top spots) and paid apps.
Recurring revenue no longer counts towards your position in the Top Grossing Charts.
So far we were able to confirm this the German iOS App Store, as well as on the Mac App Store.
A boost for paid apps
This change is great for paid apps: They can compete on equal terms with subscription-based apps, now that the subscription app ranks aren’t being inflated by their recurring revenue. A glance at the charts shows a lot more indie paid apps in the top 25 spots.
It’s good to see Apple trying new things out on the App Store and given the emphasis placed on recurring subscriptions last year, this change makes total sense. Lets see what it does to the charts over the next few weeks!
P.S. If you like this and you’re a developer, we’ve got two great tips for you:
