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Google Right to be Forgotten…but what about business data?

Recently, the European Union Court of Justice (ECJ) passed new legislation that allows for data to be removed from Google that is deemed "inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive". Google is the leading search engine used within the EU and as such this legislation means Google have been handed the responsibility of curating the dissemination of information, information which in the main they do not own or control.

So Google get to decide, based on some rules, what data is to be "forgotten". So what does this mean for businesses and their data?

Google have a defined process in place to handle removal requests. This process is only applicable to residents within the European Union, which means that, for example users in the USA would be able to still see the link that has been removed by a request within the EU.

Data everywhere! Integrating SharePoint & ClearBooks (Part 1)

A bit of background

As you'd expect from a Software Company like Magnifica the systems we use to run our own business are without exception hosted solutions.

Our talented team of engineers can build pretty much anything however we're not in the business of re-inventing wheels i.e. if there is a system or product that does a job well then we just get on and use it, no questions.

We use tools like SharePoint and ClearBooks to run our business. Adopting these great productivity tools gives us more time to focus on creating solutions for our customers. Of course being a software company means we are always looking at new ways to innovate. That's why we decided to build a SharePoint app that consumes data from ClearBooks via its SOAP API.

Seminar: How Software can Improve the Efficiency and Quality of Test Certification in Manufacturing

Using real world examples we will discuss some of the common problems manufacturers experience when generating product certification documentation.

In the UK manufacturing is revered for its high standards and quality levels. With this comes a growing need to compete and to provide value added services such as comprehensive documentation along with the products we produce.

Clients more than ever require as much information about their products and it can be a challenge to get this data our of internal systems and easily turn it into meaning full reports for clients. Using software you can automatically generate branded, standardised certification packs that include things like:

Why you should add Salt to your passwords?

When building software storing passwords as plain text is a bad idea. Storing passwords as plain text means you store the exact text your user has typed into the input filed within your application. This approach is as unsecure as you can get - anyone with access to your database (authorised or unauthorised) can simply view passwords and copy them.

A better way to store passwords securely is to use a hashing technique before saving a password to the database. Hashing performs a one-way conversion on a piece of data transforming it into another relatively short piece of data. By one way we mean that it is very difficult, in fact practically impossible, to reverse it and find the initial piece of data from the resulting "hash".

Tech tip: MapQuest JavaScript API not loading tile images

While using MapQuest's Javascript API with OpenStreetMap to create a mashup that displays contractors on an interactive map the map suddenly stopped rendering tile images. Instead the MapQuestion cogs background was shown.

The Solution

After doing some research we discovered Twitter Bootstrap contained CSS that makes every image tag have a maximum width of 100%.

Removing this CSS rule for images within the MapQuest map containing div resolved the problem.

#map img { max-width: none }

Implementing Windows Workflow Foundation and a custom State Machine

In today's business world workflow is an integral part of any business process software. In Magnifica’s Fibre framework workflow is implemented using a combination of two different approaches

• State Machine
• Sequential Workflow

Using a mix of these approaches we are able to quickly map complex business processes in the bespoke software we develop. In this post we describe how each approach is used and how the interact.