The trick to getting videos from your media library to show up correctly:
The trick is to make sure there is an address for the FILE URL in the Add Video window before you click INSERT INTO POST.
Category: Uncategorized
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Add a favicon to your website.
A favicon is a small image (16×16 pixels) with a .ico filename extension that lives in the home directory of the website. It will display next to the address bar, and on the tab, in your browser. You also have to add some code to the page, within the <head> tag area. There are services on the web to create favicons, some free, and there’s a way to create one in Photoshop. In order to create it in Photoshop, you need to download and install a plugin for Photoshop that will allow images to be saved in the .ico format. It is also possible to use .gif, .jpg, or .png images as favicons, but they reportedly won’t work in Internet Explorer. (I haven’t tested this.)
This page explains how to do it in Photoshop:
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/jennifer/favicon.html
This is where you can get the plugin that enables Photoshop to save as .ico files:
http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/
Click this link to see the one I created according to these instructions:
http://people.umass.edu/kskelly/
The following link takes you to a page where you can create the favicon online, and then download it. It actually downloads a “package” which is a .zip file containing the .ico file, and an animated GIF (filename extension .gif) that scrolls the same image annoyingly. Note that on the page where you download the file, there is also a little frame on the right with the code you need to insert in the page head. You can copy it from there and paste it into your page code.
http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/
There are others. Google ‘favicon.’
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Enabling Google Analytics
Here are the full set of steps for enabling Google Analytics on your blog:
- Log in to the administrative dashboard of your blog.
- Click on the Plugins link on the right hand side of the banner.
- Click “Activate” to the right of the line with “Google Analytics.”
- Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/
- Click the “Access Analytics” button.
- Click “Add New Profile” in the banner to the right of “Website Profiles.”
- Enter the URL of your blog. The “http://” is already supplied, so enter e.g. “websites.umass.edu/username”.
- Click Finish.
- Select the string that looks like UA-#######-# and copy it.
- Now go back to the admin pages of your blog and click on “Settings” in the banner.
- Click on “Ultimate GA” in the line just below the banner.
- The box labeled “Account ID” should now have that same number in it, but if it doesn’t, you can paste it in now.
- Click “Update Options.”
- After some people have visited your blog, which for me takes a loooong time, you can go back to Google Analytics and click “View report” in the line next to where your blogs website is displayed. This wil take you to the report for your blog and you can see how much activity your blog has seen.
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Conficker Eye Chart
Check out this web page, that gives you a quick and dirty diagnosis whther your computer is infected with conficker:
http://www.joestewart.org/cfeyechart.html
All of the images are linked from various security websites. If you have something blocking access to those sites, the pictures will not appear.
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April Fool! Conficker is no joke
Conficker has already caused a fair amount of mayhem, but what does it do? There is still some mystery as to the true intent of the scofflaws that wrote conficker, but it seems that it is set to unleash a lot of activity tomorrow, April 1. McAfee’s Avert Labs Blog has a couple of posts about it for somewhat more detailed information.
In that article, they explain that there is a 90% detection rate across all AV vendors. So keep your antivirus software updated, and doing a scan today with updated virus definitions is probably a wise idea.
Also, Microsoft has been aware of the vulnerability expolited by conficker, and there is a patch that will prevent infection. Keep Windows up to date. If you’ve been doing that all along, via Automatic Updates, there’s a good chance you’ll see no ill effects from Conficker. If you’ve been letting those updates linger for a while before installing them, do an AV scan today just to be sure.
A couple of articles of interest:
http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/conficker.html
http://www.symantec.com/norton/theme.jsp?themeid=conficker_worm&inid=us_ghp_link_conficker_worm
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Combofix
Think you may have a virus? Don;’t know what to do? This is what the consultants in Software Support use: Combofix.
Many computers come in in various states of viral siege. The exploits have slipped past the anti-virus software. It doesn’t matter which. We see computers that are infected, with all kinds of AV software running, and up to date. Free or Paid. Enterprise or Consumer. They have been rendered useless by the latest generation of exploits, which somehow get in, and bury themselves so they can’t be seen under normal operating conditions. Theoretically, you could boot in Safe Mode, and you should be able to see everything, but where would you look?
Enter Combofix. There are times when there will be 4 or 5 people in a row in software Support, all at some stage of a virus cleaning with the use of Combofix. We don’t know how it works. The people at Bleeping Computer don’t want those secrets loose in the black-hat community. What we do see is many computers coming in compromised, and walking out clean.
Follow the links to obtain Combofix, along with instructions for use. One step we at Software Support don’t do is install the Recovery Console, one of the early steps in the process. It won’t cause any harm, but it will cause your computer to offer you to choose between the Recovery Console and Windows every time you boot thereafter.
Another point of interest is that when Combofix is done, it opens a log file for you to examine. The typical computer user will not understand this log. Bleeping Computer does not post any explanation of the log or how it is to be used. They just tell you to send it to them for analysis. If you don’t wnat to deal with it, you can just close it. It will remain in your computer, right in the C:\ directory, for future viewing. Often, just running Combofix will be sufficient to take care of the whole job, especially if you took remedial action right away. But sometimes there are things you need to do to follow up, and this is usually indicatedin the log. We have learned to read the log file, so if simply running Combofix doesn’t do it for you, you can bring it to Software Support.
So if you don’t want to come here for help, you intrepid users can try it yourself. after using this seemingly miraculous program for the past 6 or 7 months, we have not seen any significant problems with running it, and feel that the everyday computer user can use it safely. That being said, you should take note of Bleeping Computer‘s warnings to the contrary and decide for yourself. They make it sound pretty scary. When in doubt, save your important files to CD or some external media first.
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McAfee Avert Labs Blog
A blog by McAfee that actually shows some information about security threats. A lot of it is over my head, but this looks like a place where they get to the point and aren’t afraid to spill the beans.
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How to post a PDF file
- Start a blog post, or new page.
- In the toolbar at the top of your editing window, browse for a file to upload:
- Click the Add Media icon. This is the star-shaped link on the far right.
- Click Upload in the dialog box that pops up.
- Browse for your file, set the Title, Caption and Description information.
- Click Insert into Post.
- The result is this link: SWS Computer Dropoff Proxy Form
- You may want to adjust the behavior of the link to the PDF file (open in same window, or new window). In your editor, highlight the link, then click on the link editing tool in your editing toolbar (mine looks like the link of a chain). This opens a dialog, in which one of the fields is Target. Choose your preferred behavior there.
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Pretty good security article…
…for as long as it’s available.
Check out the article 72 Tips for Safer Computing on the PC Magazine web site. Unfortunately you’ll need to click through many pages so they can maximize the number of ads they subject you to. But the information is pretty good, especially if you haven’t spent much time thinking about computer security.
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To begin…
This is obviously just getting off the ground at this point, if that. Feel free to pose questions, supply answers, and I’ll be attempting to keep this site abreast of developments that are pertinent to the technological issues we face here at UMass.