Or maybe not

I just learned that the theme I wanted to use as a test on this site won’t work on WordPress.com, as it’s not one of the pre-installed themes available. I understand the security motivations behind the policy, but it’s unfortunate because it means I can only use this site as a test for those themes already chosen by WordPress, of which none are all that great. This site also doesn’t allow plug-ins, but we already knew that as they too are a security concern, so I won’t be able to utilize this page in the ways I had hoped.

Because of that, this will be the last post on this site. Starting today, I will only be updating and posting to the new site, IS301.com. I would encourage everyone who still follows this page to point your browsers there, where I will continue the great posting traditions established by this site, and with increased functionality, content and interaction. You are all welcome to become active over there, or even lurk if that’s more you’re thing.

Either way, join us! It’ll be fun!

It’s Alive again!

And this site is about to become a Frankenstein, but I mean that in the best way possible. As an added bonus, it also means the header image is now more appropriate than ever.

First, is301.com and www.is301.com both point to GoDaddy’s servers, and the site is finally up and running for real this time. It has many new features such as front-page logins, commenting through social media and lightboxing. You can see the new post announcing the site’s rebirth and the added features, as well as intentions for future feature expansions on the site itself.

The new site will now be my primary site, while this one is going to be used as a test-site of sorts. I’ve been feeling as though the site in its current state, while good, could be better and provide its content in a more involving, engaging manner. The current site has a very efficient layout, a good font size, outstanding sidebar organization, and is easy on the eyes, but I just feel it could have more ‘oomph’ to it.

To that end, I have been testing a new layout on a virtual server here on my local machine, and I will likely be switching this site over to that layout, so other people can test it. If any of you still reading this site would like to offer some preliminary, beta-test thoughts about the new layout I have included some screenshots below (You’ll notice the address bar says “localhost/is301/wordpress/” which shows it’s running on my PC at home). The image below shows the post-slider at the top, that slides between header images for each post, while clicking on one takes you right to that post, and posts are summarized with a ‘read more’ link.

Possible new layout

After scrolling a little

You’ll also note the ‘About’ page that tell a little about the site and the class, the ‘How to sign up’ page that walks you through the process of signing up for WordPress and even setting up your own blog!

A snapshot of the ‘How To Sign Up’ page.

You’ll also notice the ‘Student Blogs’ link at the top of the main page. I am considering having students set up their own blogs, and I will list them all on that page. I think that’s a pretty good idea, but there is a lot of administration that can go into them. I’m still thinking about it.

Update!

As I had mentioned earlier, I was planning on transferring my domain to GoDaddy, a company I’m not overly thrilled with, but regulations prevented me from moving the domain for 60 days.

I decided to call GoDaddy and ask them about that, and ask if I had no choice but to be held hostage by Domain.com, and they said yes, with a ‘but.’ After speaking ill of GoDaddy, it turned out their representative was very helpful, and we ended up simply pointing the domain to a WordPress account on GoDaddy’s server, so typing in is301.com will point there instead of to Domain.com.

This was the penultimate and extreme measure I had to take to get things running again.

That would take a few hours to propagate though, so in the meantime I decided to try disabling plugins on the site while it was still hosted on Domain.com. A couple of days ago I had downloaded the entire site for backup purposes, and it downloaded almost 50,000 files over 7 hours. That struck me as odd, and from the folder names I was seeing it appeared to be caching information. That number of files guarantees a slowdown in anything, but I was using a plugin that was supposed to manage the cache and significantly improve overall site speed.

I don’t know why I hadn’t put two and two together earlier, or why Domain.com couldn’t figure it out, but I suddenly had a lightbulb-above-the-head moment when I realized the caching plugin must be storing those tens of thousands of files for caching purposes, and likely slowing down the site.

So I disabled it. And guess what?

The site came to life. It’s response times were greatly improved. I even considered cancelling the GoDaddy account, however even with the improvements in load times it was still not up to my expected response times, and I had such a bad experience with Domain.com’s non-existent customer support (that should have been able to look directly at the site and recognize a caching problem from their end), so I decided to continue with the forwarding anyway.

I’ll have to rebuild the site, but I have all posts, comments, and even images thanks to WordPress’ Export ability, so I just have to upload a single .XML file, reinstall some plugins, and re-upload the images (re-assigning header images will be the bastard of the whole thing) and it should be good to go at long last. I’ll update, and even post a new welcome post, when it’s ready.

And therein lies the problem.

So here’s what happened

Well, it has been a harrowing few days with some sleepless nights. Unfortunately, the new site is still not responding and I have been getting the run around form the webhost, Domain.com. Here’s where it all stands:

I was able to create the site quite easily, however the next day when I announced it was live, it started responding very slowly, or not at all as seen in the screenshot below:

Fascinating!

I contacted them, and told them what was happening, and asked them to look into it. They claimed it was being cause by a plugin (that they installed, might I add) known as Mojo Marketplace, which offers themes and whatnot, things I don’t need. They told me to deactivate it, and they also claimed they had increased the level of memory my account was able to access:

I told them that did absolutely nothing, and then suddenly it’s not Mojo Marketplace, but ‘an issue’ that they never actually state they are attempting to fix.

I believe this is BS. First off, if this was the case they would have said that the first time and not told me it was Mojo Marketplace. Secondly, they are being very generic and not communicating any specifics about the nature of the problem. Third, whatever the problem is, there is absolutely no reason it should take a week to be remedied. I told them all of this in an email and demanded they refund my money and cancel the service. It was only $49, but it’s a matter of principle!

What did I get in response?

You know, I don’t think they’re listening to me. Actually, they’re now just giving me the runaround.

I’m disappointed. I based my choice of domain.com on references and recommendation and it turned out to be very bad indeed. I had many great features installed as you saw in the previous post, and the worst part is I can’t transfer the domain to a new host for 60 days! That is mid-October and well in to the new school year.

Even so, in attempting to contest the charge with my bank, it turns out they withdrew the charge or never charged me in the first place. I have set the domain to transfer on that date in October to GoDaddy (I really didn’t want to use them either, but at least they’re reliable), however domain.com could even give me trouble then; they could refuse to release the domain or keep it locked like a jealous ex in a divorce. I can unlock it manually, but I hope it doesn’t come to that.

So we’ll see where it goes. I’ll fall back to this site and continue making posts here in the meantime, however if they actually follow through and get the site to become responsive again I’ll post the exact same welcome post one more time. If not, the new site will come online in October, and domain.com can buy me Bonestorm or go to hell!

It’s Alive!

(UPDATE: It has become apparent that the new site is now occasionally not loading, or loading very slowly. I have threatened the host, domain.com, to fix it. If it is not remedied by tomorrow, I will moving the whole site to a new host which may take a couple of days. I will keep everyone informed here).

For those of you still checking in (and I can tell from the bar graph some of you are still around; don’t try to hide! Two days ago there were 170 views!), the time has come. I have utilized the terrifying power of lightning and tech-voodoo to bring is301.com online! It wasn’t easy, and it took a lot – A LOT – of tweaking, configuring, and consulting with shaman to get it working, but it is finally up and running. It’s still going through some growing pains, but it’s fully functional for what it is as of now.

In case you missed it up above, here’s the link to the new site: www.is301.com.

You’ll notice it looks very much the same as this one, and that’s because it is still running on the WordPress platform and I’m still using the same theme. It was a deliberate choice; I didn’t want to make too many changes on the user-facing side of things, but I assure you there are many tweaks under the hood that will make the overall experience much better.

Here are just a couple of the changes you’ll see:

First, you’ll notice there is a login box right there in the left sidebar. That makes it easy to log in right from the page as opposed to having to use a dedicated login page that redirects afterwards, and the same credentials you use for this site will work perfectly on the new one. You can also register and retrieve lost credentials form there as well. Very convenient! It was having some trouble with the tabs aligning properly, although it seems to be working now, so if you notice anything wonky let me know.

New Login Box

Speaking of logging in, you no longer need to use a WordPress account to leave a comment. When you click inside the comment box, it will expand to offer a range of options including the standard providing a name and email address (which is NEVER shared publicly!), but it now also includes options for commenting through your WordPress, Facebook, Twitter or Google+ account as well. If you’re already logged in to one of them then you can comment away. If you’re not, a pop-up window will provide a convenient login screen so you don’t have to leave the page. Keep in mind you have to click in the comment box first for these options to appear, that helps avoid spam.

A whole mess o’ new login options

If you’re not logged in to the service you’d like to use for your comment, a convenient window will appear.

Speaking of social media, each post now has a range of share options to meet even the most varied taste. You can email a post, print it, share it on Facebook or G+ or Twitter or whatever it is you kids do these days. You can share it from within the post itself or even from the main page. So share away!

(Sing this caption to the tune of ‘Roam’ from the B-52’s) Share if you want to, share around the world.

All these features are great, but the feature I’m most happy with is the new Lighboxing. This means that when you click on one of the images in the post, it will dim the rest of the webpage and show the image in its own floating window that will dynamically conform to the size of your screen. You can click outside the window to close it, or click on the little ‘x’ in the upper right corner to do the same.

However, if there are multiple images in a post, you can click the image itself or the right/left arrow superimposed over the sides of the image to scroll back and forth through the post’s images, and in the case of multiple images within a post there will be a little ‘play’ button by the ‘x’ that will play a slideshow. I also have image-gallery functionality installed, although I don’t use that too much on a blog like this since they are mainly for reviews or editorials.

Anyway, you can see an example of the lighboxing feature below, complete with controls.

Lighboxing example, but it only works on the new site so go over there and try it!

There are many behind the scenes tweaks as well, from full caching to heavy-duty comment-spam filters to automatic platform updates to name a few. Even with all this there is a lot of potential, and I already have ideas for the future.

One of the things I didn’t do was add Disqus or Livefyre commenting. They are more robust, threaded commenting systems (Livefyre can be seen on Engadget and Disqus on LazyGamer, as examples). Although there is no charge for them, WordPress offers comment stats and threaded replies, and this site just isn’t big enough (yet) to warrant the extra administration; between 30 to 50 comments per post would warrant the change, and I’d love to see that kind of regular activity so I’m working on increasing the visitor count and keeping my fingers crossed.

I also didn’t opt for a paid, premium theme. There are some very nice ones, however this is still, ultimately, a blog for students and anyone else who is interested to learn and share about technology, and as I said earlier Ididn’t want to make too radical a change right off the bat. I kept it to a consistent look and feel, with enough improvements to start moving it to the next level. If the time comes in the future that the site needs to graduate to a more advanced theme, I’m all for it.

I will likely make posts less frequently during the time between now and when Fall semester starts, since I have to continue adding features and tweaking performance; this new site can run slow sometimes and I’m working with the host to resolve that. I also have to prepare for the upcoming semester, and all that will eat into posting time, however I do intend to keep making them. I will also make duplicate posts until fall semester starts, however it is likely to end then, so make this page your new destination if you’d like to keep up with the goings on!

So there you have it! Let me know what you think, if it should have been more, or less, or it’s fine the way it is. If something doesn’t work, or doesn’t align right, or catches your ears on fire please let me know so I can fix it. I’ve already spent what seems like 900 hours deep in the code of it all, so what’s another 78?

Remember this site is ultimately for all of you. Present students, past students, and anyone else who wants to join in, all are welcome. I hope to see you around!

How to protect yourself from viruses

Well, not you, you know, but rather your digital devices. It came up in class and I was asked again by a few of you as to what programs are available to guard against malware that might infect your machine, so I thought would offer some suggestions.

Oh, also there will be a big announcement tomorrow regarding the site. You know what it is.

So first, I advise against paid services for your home machines, especially Norton/MacAfee/Symantec. There are many free alternatives that work very well, while those big ones and their ilk are dilettantes, wanting to protect your machine and monitor ports and watch incoming/outgoing traffic and monitor webapges and it ends up using a ton of computing resources and they’re difficult to uninstall, leaving traces of themselves all over your hard drive and registry. The free options have paid versions, but as an individual user you don’t need them, and their virus definitions, which allow them to recognize viruses, are updated just as often.

Also, please be aware that any digital device can be infected with malware, and for those who think Macs are immune I have some bad news for you as well.

It can happen!

Having gotten that out of the way, I have provided some alternatives below. Keep in mind that each of these offers strong virus protection, but their features beyond that are usually pretty comparable, such as HTTP scanning to protect you against visiting malicious webpages, and real-time system monitoring. You also want to be sure the virus definitions are always up-to-date, and in fact right after installation of any of these that’s the first thing that will happen, then set them to update automatically. Ultimately, the one that is best for you depends on what you need and what you want.

One final thing, absolutely do not run more than one simultaneously! Not only will it unnecessarily tax your system resources, they’ll try to scan each other interfering with their ability to perform their tasks and possibly providing false positives.

And now, your choices!

AVG (PC / Mac)

AVG has been around for a long time, and they recently updated their interface to bring it more in line with modern design trends. Their malware detection and removal is effective, it actively monitors your system and your browsing (it even claims to monitor your Facebook browsing), and it has been around for a long time. They have a free version for individual users which can be downloaded from the link provided above.

AVG antivirus

Bitdefender (PC)

Bitdefender is another stalwart product that has been around for quite some time and is quite popular as an antivirus tool as well. They have also expanded their capabilities, and according to their webpage they will even monitor for rootkits which are subversive programs that let people access your machine remotely without your knowledge, and it even claims it can determine unknown threats based on how regular programs are supposed to work. Either way, it has been long-trusted as an anti-virus program.

Bitdefender

AVAST (PC / Mac)

AVAST has been around, in one form or another, longer than all the others. While it’s antivirus capabilities are very strong, there are some opt-ins during installation you want to watch out for; it’s best to choose a custom installation and un-check anything you don’t want. Strictly speaking as an antivirus service, it works very well.

AVAST antivirus

Avira (PC / Mac / Android / iOS)

Although you don’t hear the name Avira all that much, it has been around since the 80’s and is very highly regarded as an antivirus program. It has a small footprint, smaller than most of the others even, meaning it uses less resources (generally) than many of its competitors yet still offers a full suite of protection options. I personally don’t have as much experience with this one as much as the others, so if you’re the experimenting type you can let us know how it worked for you!

Avira antivirus

Windows Defender (PC, obviously)

Windows Defender is a new program in the grand scheme of things, only becoming available for the first time with Windows Vista, however if you have Windows it’s likely all you need. It can be activated/deactivated from the ‘Action Center’ under ‘System’ settings in the Windows Control Panel. Surprisingly enough, it works very well and is as effective as the other programs I’ve listed, but it doesn’t provide any feedback or too much interaction, while the other programs listed provide a lot of information, detail, and hands-on control.

Windows Defender

Malwarebytes AntiMalware (PC)

Very well known, well respected, and well trusted, Malwarebytes Antimalware is an anti-malware program, however the free version needs to be run manually. In other words, while all the others offer real-time monitoring, this one doesn’t, you have to run a scan deliberately. However, it is so well regarded that many people do a once-a-week scan using Antimalware, in addition to their regular protection with one of the others.

Malwarebytes’ Antimalware

That’s all I have for now. Although it’s just a list with some brief comparisons and explanations, hopefully it provides a starting point. Remember, whichever you use is really a personal choice; they’re all comparable and it depends on which one you feel the most comfortable with. Experiment (but don’t use two at once!) and see what you think. The more security becomes an issue, the more you will need this type of thing.

Be sure to do an initial deep scan once you’ve installed your choice!

Interactive map of undersea fiber-optic cables

If you remember our discussion of networking, we talked about the Internet backbones which are vast, high-capacity fiber optic cables that traverse the ocean floor and connect major regions, countries and continents in a gigantic, overarching network that we refer to as the Internet.

Fiber optic cable is used because, as you’ll remember, it is not susceptible to interference from outside forces as it uses light being sent through a shielded, or in the case of fiber optic, ‘cladded,’ cable. These pathways can be owned and managed by academic or government institutions, as well as private telecommunications companies.There’s a great explanation of the physical cable on Wikipedia of all places.

I sensed some doubt in a few of you that cables were truly stretched along the ocean floor. Well, they are, and I would like to present you all with a link to the Submarine Cable Map, which provides a ton of information about each individual sub-oceanic fiber backbone that is out there today. That’s a picture of it below.

You can click on any of the trans-continental or inter-continental cables you see on the map and it will provide you with a wealth of information for each one, including when it was ready for service, what points it connects, and who owns it with their website. Some of them are owned by 20 or more companies!

The map uses standard controls for zooming and navigating, if you’ve ever used Google Maps you’ll be fine. You can click on any backbone segment to see relevant information, and click on an empty part of the map to reset them all. It’s very interesting to see the ways all the countries and continents connect among and within themselves.

an interesting selfie conundrum

We all know selfies are inane, unless they’re taken by Lord Vader of course. But Vader notwithstanding, we’ve all seen the dumb trends – from selfies of people wrapped in cellophane to the dreaded Duckface. Or any of these. And, well, all of these. They’ve been analyzed sociologically, and even linked to mental illness. But now, thanks to a wildlife photographer and a dispute with Wikipedia, an issue has cropped up over selfie ownership. It sounds pretty easy, Wikipedia’s stance is that whoever took the selfie owns it, which makes perfect sense. You take a selfie of (obviously) yourself, you own it, even if other people are in it.

But consider the ‘selfie’ below:

According to this article on itv.com (from which the above image was lifted), this image was taken by the monkey itself when it swiped wildlife photographer David J. Slater‘s camera. The picture was a huge hit around the world, of course, perhaps the only animal selfie ever taken, and nicely framed to boot! Plus, my Chinese zodiac is the monkey, so I have an affinity for it right away.

Mr. Slater wants ownership of the picture which Wikipedia is now using without recompense to the photographer, because they believe it is public since the monkey took it, and even if it wasn’t it would actually be owned by the monkey since it took the selfie in the first place.

The whole thing is just bizarre. I mean, if your dog or cat or ferret inadvertently snaps a selfie of itself, do they own it? Perhaps it could be re-framed as an issue of who owns the device and the intent behind the image. I don’t know, but what I do know is this is one of the most bizarre intellectual property, technology and ownership stories I’ve ever seen.

I’ll just add it to the list of reasons I don’t take selfies.

The Future of this site

Before I get to the post, I would like to offer a heartfelt thanks to everyone who provided such positive feedback about this blog during the session. It was wonderful to hear all you learned form the posts that were made and what you discovered. It was a risky (remember that?) switch from the tried and true Blogger platform, but I believe the WordPress platform offers more flexibility, administrative tools, and potential for the future. But I really do appreciate the overwhelmingly positive response.

Building on that, and as I mentioned briefly in class, now that class is for all intents and purposes done, I have been asked by several of you if the blog will stay up after Friday. It certainly will, you are all more than welcome to continue to visit and comment if you so wish and I will continue to make posts that you (hopefully) find as interesting and relevant as any of the ones made during the session. I will also try to provide more in-depth how-to’s based on some questions I was asked over the session, and if you have anything you’d like to see or know more abut please be sure to ask. Many students both new and old still ask me questions and I’m happy to respond. If it warrants a post, I’ll put one up.

I will also, at some point in the hopefully near future, move the entire thing over to its own domain. I have already registered is301.com, and while there is nothing there yet, by making the move I intend to add additional interactive and social features making the site more dynamic and inclusive. I’m excited about it and we’ll see how it goes.

I’ll be making a few more posts this week so you have a chance to get any comments in, and thanks again for a great session.

 

Federal websites don’t screw around

This won’t be a very long post, I just wanted to show all of you that the federal government wants to be very clear in your expectations of privacy when using their websites. It also fits perfectly with the discussion of security and privacy we’ll be having tomorrow (or today, depending on when you see this). I was recently using the IRS.gov site when I was presented with this window:

It almost sounds scary, but to be fair it’s no secret this happens. It happens on most websites, actually, government or not. Their wording sounds Orwellian and apocalyptic, but it’s par for the course when conducting business online. I actually don’t have a problem with it, you can’t have 100% privacy and also have 100% security, you have to make sacrifices in one to have any amount of the other. Even so, the wording is so forceful it gave me pause. Maybe I should have used my real name instead of the pseudonym “Gleeson McNasty.”