The NY Times had an excellent article about password security but here’s the most important parts:

FORGET THE DICTIONARY If your password can be found in a dictionary, you might as well not have one. “The worst passwords are dictionary words or a small number of insertions or changes to words that are in the dictionary,” said Mr. Kocher. Hackers will often test passwords from a dictionary or aggregated from breaches. If your password is not in that set, hackers will typically move on.

NEVER USE THE SAME PASSWORD TWICE People tend to use the same password across multiple sites, a fact hackers regularly exploit. While cracking into someone’s professional profile on LinkedIn might not have dire consequences, hackers will use that password to crack into, say, someone’s e-mail, bank, or brokerage account where more valuable financial and personal data is stored.

COME UP WITH A PASSPHRASE The longer your password, the longer it will take to crack. A password should ideally be 14 characters or more in length if you want to make it uncrackable by an attacker in less than 24 hours. Because longer passwords tend to be harder to remember, consider a passphrase, such as a favorite movie quote, song lyric, or poem, and string together only the first one or two letters of each word in the sentence.

OR JUST JAM ON YOUR KEYBOARD For sensitive accounts, Mr. Grossman says that instead of a passphrase, he will randomly jam on his keyboard, intermittently hitting the Shift and Alt keys, and copy the result into a text file which he stores on an encrypted, password-protected USB drive. “That way, if someone puts a gun to my head and demands to know my password, I can honestly say I don’t know it.”

STORE YOUR PASSWORDS SECURELY Do not store your passwords in your in-box or on your desktop. If malware infects your computer, you’re toast. Mr. Grossman stores his password file on an encrypted USB drive for which he has a long, complex password that he has memorized. He copies and pastes those passwords into accounts so that, in the event an attacker installs keystroke logging software on his computer, they cannot record the keystrokes to his password. Mr. Kocher takes a more old-fashioned approach: He keeps password hints, not the actual passwords, on a scrap of paper in his wallet. “I try to keep my most sensitive information off the Internet completely,” Mr. Kocher said.

A PASSWORD MANAGER? MAYBE Password-protection software lets you store all your usernames and passwords in one place. Some programs will even create strong passwords for you and automatically log you in to sites as long as you provide one master password. LastPass, SplashData and AgileBits offer password management software for Windows, Macs and mobile devices. But consider yourself warned: Mr. Kocher said he did not use the software because even with encryption, it still lived on the computer itself. “If someone steals my computer, I’ve lost my passwords.” Mr. Grossman said he did not trust the software because he didn’t write it. Indeed, at a security conference in Amsterdam earlier this year, hackers demonstrated how easily the cryptography used by many popular mobile password managers could be cracked.

IGNORE SECURITY QUESTIONS There is a limited set of answers to questions like “What is your favorite color?” and most answers to questions like “What middle school did you attend?” can be found on the Internet. Hackers use that information to reset your password and take control of your account. Earlier this year, a hacker claimed he was able to crack into Mitt Romney’s Hotmail and Dropbox accounts using the name of his favorite pet. A better approach would be to enter a password hint that has nothing to do with the question itself. For example, if the security question asks for the name of the hospital in which you were born, your answer might be: “Your favorite song lyric.”

USE DIFFERENT BROWSERS Mr. Grossman makes a point of using different Web browsers for different activities. “Pick one browser for ‘promiscuous’ browsing: online forums, news sites, blogs — anything you don’t consider important,” he said. “When you’re online banking or checking e-mail, fire up a secondary Web browser, then shut it down.” That way, if your browser catches an infection when you accidentally stumble on an X-rated site, your bank account is not necessarily compromised. As for which browser to use for which activities, a study last year by Accuvant Labs of Web browsers — including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer — found that Chrome was the least susceptible to attacks.

SHARE CAUTIOUSLY “You are your e-mail address and your password,” Mr. Kocher emphasized. Whenever possible, he will not register for online accounts using his real e-mail address. Instead he will use “throwaway” e-mail addresses, like those offered by 10minutemail.com. Users register and confirm an online account, which self-destructs 10 minutes later. Mr. Grossman said he often warned people to treat anything they typed or shared online as public record.

The bad news is- eventually you will get hacked, no matter what. So be prepared, with a list of sites and banks that you may have to call when it does.

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You’d think we’d be able to stop spammers easily- because we can track them down via their IP- but even spammers are smart, they try to get many computers at different IP addresses to do their sending for them. The general and his girlfriend could have used some of the anonymous IP browsing tools available, but even then, you have to be careful about what else is on your computer because things like Java or Flash can help id you.

A really good tip for all of us, is to have multiple browsers on our computer, with one like Firefox or Chrome for general browsing, but then only using Safari for anything requiring a password or secure transaction.

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Old site- circa 2010 to mid 2012.

The new site, incorporates the new identity, a much more focused front page, with calls to action. We’re still working on adding functionality. Note, the content hasn’t changed- just the way it’s displayed- this is the beauty of WordPress:

A new look and feel, with a focus on registration

We’d love to hear what you think of the new design in the comments.

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Mozilla is a global non-profit dedicated to putting you in control of your online experience and shaping the future of the Web for the public good. When you use Firefox, you’re supporting that mission and making the Web better for everyone!

The video below explains more about Mozilla’s non-profit ideals and the spirit behind our mission. Enjoy!

via About Mozilla

The above video explains the brief history of the web, and more specifically the history of Mozilla. It achieves this by utilizing eye-catching motion graphics and animations. The video is useful and relevant for it’s brief history of the web, and is a great demonstration about the impact that a video can have on your site. It’s easy to forget the days of dial-up internet connection, AOL, spam popups on every website, etc. The web experience is very different than it was 15, 10, and even 5 years ago. Gone are the days of building a Geocities website in Notepad. Companies like Mozilla are pushing the web in a new direction at a very rapid rate.

The video is also valuable to Mozilla not only because of its effectiveness in creating a sense of community for its users, but also because the goal of the video is to get donations. It’s only after we get the the emotional impact of the video that we are asked to donate, which in my opinion is much more effective than a few paragraphs from the guy who invented the wiki. Mozilla tells us that they are here to build a better internet, and while they are doing so they will continue to make their products available for free to their customers. It’s hard to argue with that – I am writing this post in a Firefox browser and checking my mail on Thunderbird, both of which are free.

These are the tools that are available to us. To be a part of the web community and, more importantly, get people interested in what we are doing, we should capitalize on these tools.

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Who ends up in moderation is all covered in the Settings > Discussion part of your dashboard. I don’t make people register, only requiring name and email address to be able to comment, so as not to make it too difficult to contribute. There are lots of other options, but covering all of them would make this a very long post.

They contain the following info:

New comment on your post: “Post title”

Author: with the name that that the commentator typed in. (IP. address)

E-mail: the email that the author typed in

URL: A site address that will show up as a link- if they have a site of their own.

Whois: a link to whois.arin.net which may tell you where the person was accessing your site.

Then the comment.

Underneath will be “You can see all comments on this post here:” with a link to your post and all the comments

Permalink: link- a link to the exact comment (which has a unique URL if you click on the time/date stamp of each comment if you are accessing it from the site’s front end)
Trash it: a link to take you to comment moderation to delete a comment.
Spam it: a link to take you to comment moderation to mark it as spam.

How to tell SPAM from real comments?

There are several things I look at right away:

• Does the name seem legit. For some reason spammers often use names that sound odd- or unique. This is the first clue.
• Is the IP from one you recognize- or is it a US based url? A lot of spam is from other countries or odd ISP’s You can always click on the Whois link to learn more
• Does the email address seem legit? If it’s some odd combination of letters and numbers, or something you wouldn’t tell someone for an email address it’s not. I make it mandatory to enter an email address in comments, but that doesn’t stop people from typing in abc@abc.com etc.
• If the URL is to an unrelated commercial site- for viagra, cigars etc. you can almost guarantee it’s spam unless your site is about E/D or smoking. Click to see where the link takes you and you’ll know what their intention is.
• Content is the key- if they are just saying how much they like your site- delete or spam. Comments are to add to the discussion or create additional value. Trust me, no one comments on your post and says “I’m so glad I found this site. I’m going to bookmark it and visit often” on a post from a few months ago. That’s a random spammer. Also, if the grammar is bad, or the comment has nothing to do with the post- spam it.

There are all kinds of comment moderation tools as your site becomes more popular. Logging in with other social media ID’s can help considerably, but try to always have a way that people can login without having to use Twitter or Facebook. Social Login Plugin can help. There are also tools like Intense Debate and Disqus that can help thread and moderate comments via the community.

You’ll also get trackbacks- which can be SPAM. Trackbacks are notifications that post like comments on your site, but are just links to other sites that have linked to your post. Some people don’t allow comments, only trackbacks, so that they don’t have to be bothered with dealing with their community. Seth Godin who has millions of readers runs his site like this. It’s a very one-directional, arrogant way to run a site in the days of the social web, but, it’s up to you how you want to deal with your community. Trackback spam can be a big pain in the butt, but usually it means you are doing something right- or they wouldn’t value a link from your site so much.

But the best part of moderating comments is…

Responding to comments on the site. Have the conversation with the person who took the time to read and comment on your site.

Everyone who comments is starting a conversation with you, engage and enchant and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a trusted expert in your field.

Helpful links on the WordPress interface for comment moderation:

Found this article explaining the WordPress moderation interface: Learning to Love Comment Moderation by Heather R. on the WordPress.com site. It explains the interface, although the action menu only appears on mouse over in current versions- an odd UI that isn’t entirely intuitive.

A Guide to WordPress Discussion Settings by Craig Grella on WPMU site fully explains the discussion settings in the Dashboard>Settings>Discussion

and there is a whole section on the WordPress Codex: Comments in WordPress

And here is a video from WordPress to show you the quick view of recent comments on the Dashboard and how to moderate from there:

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Many of the fonts are all cap display faces, but, there are some really interesting fonts to choose from and you get to name your price.

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I tried it… this is what I came up with:

The Next Wave is a leading edge, authoritative marketing/innovation resource that creates lust and evokes trust using all forms of media and PR opportunities in order to position our customers as leading experts in their field, transforming their business models and marketing methods for growth and success.

It’s not exactly automated, but it brings structure to your thoughts. It also gives some stats:

Mine was 44 words, 11 seconds and 2 repeated words.

The average was 231 words, 56 seconds and 4 repeated words. Obviously, a lot of people are a bit long winded.

Feel free to leave your pitch as a comment to this post when you do yours, or send it to websitetology@thenextwave.biz.  I’d love to see it and promote it in the next newsletter.

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But, you don’t want to sit at the computer when every auction closes? Here is the secret- use a sniping service like eSnipe.

Esnipe allows you to place as many bids on as many auctions as you want (in a “bid group”) where it will automatically bid your max dollar until you win.

Example- my girlfriend wanted a Sonicare toothbrush. These cost about $116 new, but plenty are available on Ebay auctions NIB (new in box). We bid on a bunch of auctions to end up at $65 with shipping. E-snipe kept bidding and losing, until, jackpot- we won one with free shipping for $54! Cost to us- esnipe sells credits for pennies on the dollar bid- so under $1.00 extra to get a toothbrush for half price.

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If you haven’t been backing up then you need to run, don’t walk, to buy an external hard drive that’s at least as big as your computer drive as well as some kind of backup software. We’re a Mac shop, so system 10.7 has Time Machine built in which does hourly backups, but before that: Super Duper and Carbon Copy Cloner were our backup software of choice.
And, while it’s good to have a backup handy right next to your computer – what if your building burned down? Do you have a backup offsite?

There are remote backup services available that can backup your computer over the internet at night, but just remember it will take a while to upload the files.
While tape drives used to be a great option and give you multiple versions of the backup, they are also slow. Besides, with the size of harddrives going up fast and prices coming down all you need a couple of external hard drives to keep your data safe.
Large offices can have a central server to store critical info, and have it all backed up centrally or on a redundant drive.

One neat trick for really important stuff is to e-mail it to your Gmail account, which has lots of space.

Something to think about next time you’re working on a huge project.

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From their course description:

WORKSHOP BEGINS: View upcoming workshop schedule for dates

WORKSHOP LENGTH: 4 weeks

TUITION: $199.00 ($179 for Design Insiders)

INSTRUCTOR: Jesse Friedman

You likely know it as a blogging platform, but WordPress has evolved into a full content management system and has been embraced by developers and designers all over the world. Building your website on WordPress can be simple and quick, or it can push the limits of your creativity through thousands of plugins, themes and widgets available for use with the system. Join Jesse Friedman on a journey to create your first WordPress site. In just 28 days, you’ll learn about server requirements and hosting, customization, resources available inside and outside of the WordPress community, functionality—and at the end you’ll have a site of your own.

In this course you’ll learn:

About creating your first website in WordPress

Server requirements and hosting

Selecting themes and functionality

Choosing the right settings

Who should take this course:

New web designers

Marketing professionals

Entrepreneurs

via 28 Days to Your First WordPress Site | HOW Design University.

We’ve been teaching Websitetology since Nov of 2005- and have graduated over 1000 brilliant websitetologists who are using WordPress today. We realize we’re not an online course, but, we’ll gladly come to your town to teach any group of 10 or more.

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