Decompiled

RSS What?

RSS - We’ve all heard about it (or at least should have by now), but may not really understand what it is, what it does, and how it can add value to what we do every day.

RSS, originally an acronym for “Rich Site Summary” today is known as “Really Simple Syndication” and is a technology that allow us to aggregate news and information with very little effort and time. In the “Old Days” of the internet, in order to keep track of sites or news we found online, we had to rely on the option of Bookmarking or creating “favorites” in our browser, and then manually visiting these sites to see if there were any new updates or additions. If your in a position where you need to keep up on lots of topics, news, and changes that happen daily, then you will likely build a collection of bookmarks that could grow well into the hundreds. Let’s face it, at that point there is no efficient way you can manually organize and check each of these sites individually and still keep up with all your daily responsibilities at the same time.

RSS To The Rescue!

Why is RSS a better option than Bookmarking? Simple! Time, Effort, Near Real-time news access. Think of it like this: Instead of making the time and effort it takes to run out to your local news stand for the various daily news papers, the news is now delivered right to your doorstep. Now consider the morning news edition, the evening edition, the late edition, etc. That adds up to a lot of news papers and a lot of trips to the news stand. And what about breaking news? There’s a good chance you’d miss out on something timely if you had to go get it yourself. RSS takes all the time and effort away from getting your news and information and delivers it ALL to you, keeping you informed and up-to-date!

Wow, That’s Great, But How Do I Use it?

To get started with RSS, you first need a RSS or “feed” reader. There are many available, but my favorites are Netvibes (netvibes.com) and Google Reader. For the record, I use netvibes for all my RSS needs. Because readers have different methods for adding and managing feeds, I will not cover that portion here and save it for another post.

Once you have decided on a reader, the next thing you need to do is find the RSS Feeds you want delivered.  How do you do that? RSS feeds have adopted an icon that makes identifying them easy.

Standard RSS Icon

RSS Icon in Firefox Address Bar

If you see this icon on a web page or in your FireFox Browser Address Bar, then the site or page you are on has a live RSS feed that you can “subscribe” to or add to your RSS Reader. Some sites may also simply provide a “subscribe” link but be careful to be sure it is an RSS feed link and NOT an email newsletter subscription link.

Copy Link Location

Once you have located the RSS Feed link you can right-click the link and select “Copy Link Location“. This will copy the URL of the RSS feed to the clipboard of your computer. Once you’ve copied the URL, you will need to paste it into your preferred RSS feed reader where it will display headlines, links and descriptions of the host web page or site.

Again, depending on your preferred reader, adding feeds may differ and I will not describe the different methods for each reader here. Consult the FAQ or instructions available from your Feed Reader for information on that.

RSS Feed Url Seen in Firefox

Wikis are great for sharing, documenting and archiving information. We Recently launched one for our company’s intranet to improve communication and allow better collaboration. Because wikis are intended to be an open platform to promote communication and collaboration equally across the organization, we try to encourage everyone to contribute. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that people can have different ideas regarding good page format, or may not know how to properly format a page at all. This can quidkly lead to mess of unruly pages that are difficult to read and navigate. So, I put together a list of five tips that I thought would help make formating wiki page content a little easier and make the pages less challanging to read and navigate.

When creating a new page, or editing an existing one, keep these tips in mind.

1. Say No To Word: Unless the wiki has a built-in feature to deal gracefully with Microsoft Word syntax, Please Please Please…avoid copy-and-paste from word documents. Word documents create ugly HTML syntax that is difficult to edit and manage within the wiki (or any wysiwyg or web editor for that matter). It also creates pages that are structurally difficult to read and navigate without additional formatting and editing. As an alternative, save word documents as Rich Text Files, or plain text files then copy-and-paste into the wiki from there, then edit and format the content in the wiki using the wiki editing tools.
2. Use Headers and sub-headers: Add headers and sub-headers when appropriate to organize your content on the wiki page. Using headers will not only help to visually separate each important section of your page, but they will also auto-create a page index or TOC (Table of contents) making it easy for users to find and navigate page content.
3. Making The list: Use Ordered (numbered) lists and Unordered (bulleted) lists when creating lists of items. This makes each item in a list easy to identify and improves readability.
4. Use An Opening Introduction: If your creating a new wiki page, always try include some information in a small paragraph at the top of each page describing what the content is about, and how it can be used. It is also helpful to include a small description below each heading and sub-heading as well. This helps readers to quickly identify the content and how it can be used.
5. Can I Quote You On That? : Provide citations and supporting links to references when possible. Besides giving credit where credit is due, citations allows readers to confirm the validity of your input and lead them to additional sources of reference.

Do you have any other tips? Please leave a comment and share them here.

Why Use Active Directory with WordPress?

I recently set up a WordPress Blog internally for our company to use over our intranet to help improve communication, collaborate, share and develop ideas, and stay informed about company announcements or current events.. etc.

One of the requirements I had was to allow authentication against our Active Directory. Yes, we operate a Windows network primarily, but you can also authenticate against other LDAP directories as well. This was important from an IT position as well as the participants of the blog. I felt people would be more likely to participate if they didn’t have to manage separate user accounts for each service on the intranet. I also set up a Wiki that is Active Directory enabled. I’ll post about that at a later time. The point is, it makes little sense to create different credentials for each user with each new service. It not only becomes a hassle for IT to track and manage the accounts, it’s also a drag for participants to keep track of and manage their username and password pairs for each service. The result would most likely lead to lack of use and that is not what we want.

Integrating the existing Active Directory accounts means that each participant can access these services using the same credentials they use to access or log into their network accounts and desktops. When time comes to change passwords, you need only to update the Active Directory account and your done. Simple! What could be better?

Starting Point

The first thing we needed to do was find out how to include AD Authentication with WordPress 2.5. There are a small number of plugins that claim to allow AD Authentication, but from what I came across, most of them were older and no longer actively maintained. But…there were two in particular that still showed signs of being actively maintained and had promise.

The first was was aptly called “Active Directory Authentication”

The other plugin and the ultimately the one I managed to successfully include is wpDirAuth.

The Trials

Although I was able to get wpDirAuth to work with WordPress 2.5, there was a catch. The current “Official” release of wpDirAuth as of this writing is version 1.2 which is not compatible with WordPress 2.5 so there was some work involved to make this happen. I visited the wpDirAuth plugin page to look at the install directions. They seemed easy enough. It wasn’t until I actually installed and activated the plugin that I realized it wouldn’t work. My next stop was the support channel that the author set up to help troubleshoot install and authentication issues. It was here that I learned there was a patch already available and provided by a generous wpDirAuth user - Adam Yearout. I applied the patch and then tried to login with my network credentials again, and … No luck! By now I was scratching my head. Searching and reading all the information I could find, I finally found myself on the wpDirAuth Developer Support Channel. This was another channel set up specifically for developers. It was here that I uncovered some clues as to what was happening and a small code tweak that was necessary to overcome the problem. Apparently, the author of the plugin assumed that the login name was also the name associated with the Active Directory Account Email, which in most cases is true, but not always. For example username: johndoe would by default have an email johndoe@domain.com. In my case, my email and name and login name were not the same, so the logic that the plugin author used would not work. The good news is that the fix is a fairly simple one if you know where to look and the dev channel contained all the clues needed to find the info.

Setting up wpDirAuth with WordPress 2.5

For this how-to, I am using wordpress 2.5 installed on an Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server With Apache2 and PHP5. There is no GUI and I am not running an ftp server on this server so all settings and changes are completed using putty over SSL. (more…)

I received a number of call from friends, family, and clients complaining that they were unable to access the internet on Wednesday July 9th. The first one had me puzzled. Running through the typical troubleshooting process. and finally disabeling the Zone Alarm Firewall which resolved the access issues. Then the next call came in with the same issue, Then another..etc. The common factor for all these systems were that each system was was running windows XP SP2 and Zone Alarm. So What was it about Zone Alarm that all of a sudden prevented access to the internet?

The Problem

After a bit of poking, proding and searching, I came across the cause to this problem. Microsoft released a few security patches on Tuesday. One of these patches (KB951748) was released to address a DNS flaw that could lead to DNS cache poisoning. Unfortunately, the hotfix conflicts with Zone Alarm and prevents internet access. Systems that were setup to automatically download and install Windows Updates received this patch.

What I can’t believe is that I’ve seen and heard “Professional” support people actually suggest the fix is to uninstall the firewall. Seriously? Are you Kidding? That is not a solution!

Other suggestions were touninstall the hotfix. Although this would work, you might still be open to the DNS flaw and at risk. Another was to turn the firewall settings to Medium protection. Not as bad as removing the firewall, but still not really an option.

So how does one overcome this annoying issue?

Zone Labs recommended solution is to download and install a new version of Zone Alarm released to resolve this little issue.

Other less desirable and temporary options are:

Uninstall The offending Microsoft HotFix

1. Click the “Start Menu”
2. Click “Control Panel”, or click “Settings” then “Control Panel”
3. Click on “Add or Remove Programs”
4. On the top of the add/remove programs dialog box, you should see a checkbox that says “show updates”. Select this checkbox
5. Scroll down until you see “Security update for Windows (KB951748)”
6. Click “Remove” to uninstall the hotfix

Set Zone Alarms protection to Medium

1. Navigate to the “ZoneAlarm Firewall” panel
2. Click on the “Firewall” tab
3. Move the “Internet Zone” slider to medium

On April 2nd, Gary Vaynerchuk (blog-twitter) was hit with a double dose of motivation, posting not one, but 2 videos. His first was a Big Giant Internet Wide Global THANK YOU!! which got him thinking about doing the right thing and helping others and just being a good person. In his own words, “We need this message of doing good and helping others”. A lot of the conversations surrounding Social Media, the internet and life in general are about how to exploit it and turn a profit, Gossip, and conroversy. Does any of that really matter? Well, enough already! Gary has made an official call to action to spend the day on 4-3-2008 spreading the love and talking about Good People!!

A Few Good Men (and Women)

Do know any good people? Spread the word, talk about them, blog about them, twitter about them, tag them. Do whatever it takes to let world know that Good People DO exist!

I was recently asked “why only allow plain text email formats for not only reading messages received, but also for our bulk outbound messages”. Apparently, some of the natives have grown restless and want to include large bold colorful type and pictures and bells and whistles with their messages. Whats the problem with that? Well, there are several.

I’m pretty sure that most people (I’m talking average people here) don’t know what HTML even means, never mind how to properly write and test it. HTML is the mark up language used for writing web pages, not email messages. It has a specific form, syntax, structure, and should conform to current standards. If not written correctly, you will experience problems of one sort or another. Then there is the problem of writing for different displays, engines, platforms etc. Each of these also introduces their own set of quirks, hacks and workarounds.

HTML email also has a history of security related vulnerabilities and issues, for example:

• embeded content
• scripts
• the ability to include links whose text is different from it’s target
• tracking and beacons

It’s no secret that Microsoft has released warnings on a number of seperate occasions stating that opening a specially crafted HTML email messages in their popular email software would lead to your system being compromised “just by opening the message”. That’s it, end of story. (this is not an invitation to bash microsoft)

HTML is also popular with SPAM and PHISING and because of that, spam filters are likely to give HTML messages a much higher SPAM score, increasing the chances of that message getting buried by a filter.

These are very generic samples and I could write pages on the subject but they also give an example of how inbound HTML can represent a security risk and how outbound messages are put at an increased risk of not reaching the target, or being unreadable.

According to RFC 2822, plain text is the default format for email and therefore is supported in all compliant readers. HTML formats however are not required to be supported. There is also an issue of non-standard support and proprietary rules among HTML rendering engines and software, which introduces compatibility issues and broken pages or layouts or even in some cases, completely blank pages.

Here’s my perspective. If the intention, and ultimately your business, is to get your message to your target or audience, don’t you want to know that they will be able to read it. Plain text gives you that guarantee. HTML is not as reliable.

So what do you think?

• Do you prefer HTML email over Plain Text?
• Does your company disable or limit inbound HTML email?

Yesterday morning (Feb 13/08), I attended the Social Media Breakfast 5 (SMB5) where the focus of the event was set by a single statement: “How Twitter has changed my life — and can change yours”.

The event was hosted by Bryan Person and featured presentations by:

Scott Monty @scottmonty
Laura Fitton @pistachio
Doug Haslam @dough
Jim Storer @jstorer

You can view their presentations at:
http://topazpartners.blogspot.com/2008/02/social-media-breakfast-presentaions-how.html

Each speaker was allowed 5 minutes to present his/her story and experience, describing how twitter has changed their life and each presented some really great thoughts. It was very interesting to see how they each made twitter work for them.

In keeping with that theme, I figured I could write a quick post to share my experience with twitter, and how it has changed my life with more of a personal twist. (more…)

Today I learned that Google is testing a new Free Mapping Service that will enable mobile phone users to determine their approximate location and retrieve mapping information without the use of GPS. Google continues to amaze me with their new products, ideas and innovation.

The details of how this all works are still unknown to me, but it has been speculated that that “general” location or area will be determined based on the closest receiving cell tower. Google has referred to this “general” location as “neighborhood-level information”. Sure, you won’t be able to get specific long/lat location, but (and this is my own speculation) you can get close enough to determine what shops, restaurants, events, etc (read consumables) are in the “general” area, and maybe develop an ad service suggesting locations of interest based on the users profile, habits, etc.. You know the typical song and dance.

Heres another hook. For all this to work, the mobile user will be required to download and install Google’s Free software on their mobile phones to use the service. Now I don’t know about you, but this is screaming “ANDROID!!!” Android is Google’s ambitious open source call to a mobile phone operating system. If your not familiar with Android, see my earlier post.

Finally, take into account Google’s announcement to bid on on wireless spectrum in the 700MHz band in late January when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission begins auctioning that resource, and things start to add up. This isin’t much of a surprise because Google had dropped some nuggets of information in the recent past showing some interest in this, but it was always unclear as to why.

Heres my take. Google has the collective resources to feel the winds of change surrounding their core internet based services. Users are not tied to their computers anymore. We are sharing information and data, collaborating across devices and platforms, making phone calls from our computers and browsing the web on our phones. Google sees the opportunity here and wants a piece - The First Piece. Traditional service providers are scrambling to change their business models to adapt to the open exchange and this is where Google has the advantage and always has. Google has developed some strong strategic alliances on the internet and mobile playing fields, and now they (Google) are putting all the pieces together. Don’t get me wrong. It won’t be easy, and there is a long road ahead for them, and many who would love to see them stumble. Either way, Google is about to shake things up.