Martin Spriggs

Earlier this week I was able to secure a Samsung Chromebook and have Google essentially “emulate” the experience a school technology administrator and a student using the device might have. Normally Google will not allow an off-the-shelf Chromebook to connect to a Google Apps environment. So with a 30 day variance my objective with this project is threefold:

1. Determine the fit for our typical WELS classrooms considering a 1:1 computing initiative (primarily our high schools and elementary schools). This will include the budgetary impact and suggested ways to fund them.
2. Test the administrative capabilities of Google Apps and the Chromebook to see if our overworked technology coordinators will save time with a more centralized computing environment approach
3. Identify web-based applications that will serve as suitable substitutes for traditional (i.e. PC-based) applications used in classrooms.

Each blog post in this series will examine a different aspect of the project, but what I’m looking forward to the most is the feedback I hope to get from teachers and school technology coordinators.

Introduction
For those not familiar with the Chromebook or Google Apps, here are a couple of links to get you started: 1) Intro to Chromebooks and the Chrome OS, 2) Google Apps for Education. In short, the combination of a internet-only netbook and online web applications suggest a student computing experience that can be flexible and manageable by the teacher and school tech guru. This is not a traditional computing environment. It is entirely browser based — Google Chrome in this case. All content that is created needs to be stored “in the cloud” as the Chromebook has only limited and temporary storage. This also means that no traditional downloadable or disk-based application can be installed on the machine. So every application needs to be able to run in a browser. This, I believe, will be the challenge. As we go through the review, things will become a little clearer if you are still a bit fuzzy.

Installation
The setup process for starting a Chromebook and getting a student going on it right away is a snap. The school, of course, needs a Google Apps account. Refer to the previous link to get signed up. Any school can get one for free. This will provide email, document storage, calendaring, web sites, chat, etc. The school technology administrator will need to create accounts for each student who will be using a Chromebook. You don’t really need one laptop per child to make this work, but each child will need an account on Google Apps. One of the sweet things about a Chromebook is that anybody with an account can use the device with no fear of any security issues. The laptop is just a web browser and thus there are not files left on desktops or differences in applications. Therefore the laptops can be shared easily. It doesn’t matter which one the student grabs.

Before the laptops get distributed for use by the students the administrator will want to start each one and follow the setup instructions. It takes about 2 minutes (depending on whether the Chrome OS needs to be updated–it happens automatically). You will need to find the local wifi, enter the credentials for it, and then “enroll” the laptop. It’s a simple key combination and then enter in a username and password that belongs on the Google Apps domain. After that, just log off the machine and close the lid. When the student opens it for the first time, all they will have to do is enter their Google Apps username and password. Their desktops, applications and extensions will be all ready for them. I’ll write about how to set that up in a later post.

My guess is that the prep time per machine will be about five minutes tops. The domain setup will take longer depending on how much customization you want to do, but that discussion we’ll save for another day.

First Impressions
After one day with the Samsung Chromebook and just playing around with the Google Apps configuration settings, I will not have a lot of depth to my reactions. But here are a few…

1. The Samsung Chromebook is adequate, but not a powerhouse by any means. I’m probably not going to be able to provide a very balanced review as the only thing I really have to compare it to is the Macbook Air. The two are similar in size and weight, but that is about as far as it goes. Now the Macbook Air is about three times the price, and you can tell. The place where I notice the most is the screen, especially viewing angles. Having said that, I think the Chromebook is perfectly suitable for classroom and homework use. It seems durable. The keys are responsive, as is the touchpad. There are special keys on the keyboard well suited to web browsing–a search key replaces the caps lock, and browser type buttons (back, forward, full screen) have replaced the function keys.

2. One of my first challenges was trying to fine a tool to write this blog post. I do most of my writing on a Windows machine and absolutely love Windows Live Writer. It allows me to write one article and publish across the three blogs I maintain. Working within the Chrome OS I was unable to find an “app” that came close to providing that kind of functionality. To be fair, that grade of tool is also not available on the Mac OS X. I wound up simply using the built-in web-based authoring tool within WordPress. Two of my three blogs are WordPress based. The extra step of course is that I have to copy the content from one web site to another.

3. Setup was a joy and at first blush, the configuration of the domain and user preferences looks to be equally as easy. This will be key as an initiative like this must be administrator friendly. Admittedly the fact that everything is web-based can be a double edged sword, but in the case of centralized administration and user updates, this is the way to go.

Conclusion
Overall a great start. The hardware seems workable, the setup easy and the entire concept of cloud computing in the classroom intriguing. My next post will cover the Google Apps configuration process and how easy/hard it will be to configure a standardized computing environment for any student who cracks open a Chromebook.

I tend to use a few browsers in my professional and personal computing lives for many different reasons, but the one I prefer is Google Chrome – for basically three reasons. Chrome, at least in my experience, is faster. Chrome runs Gmail, Reader and the new Google+ better than the other browsers. And finally, Chrome offers just the right amount of customization to allow me to optimize my time in the browser, which is a lot. So I’d like to just highlight five ways I have customized Chrome to keep things efficient.

1. Set the start page to the Apps window. Many apps exist that can be placed on that screen, so for me it acts like a launcher. I can launch my email (Gmail), RSS reader (Google Reader), task manager (Remember The Milk), image editor (Picnic), and almost any other Web 2.0 application right from one screen. As an added bonus, I have access to my “Most visited” sites and “Recently closed” sites at the bottom.

To get the Apps window to show up first when launching Chrome, click on the wrench icon in the upper right, select preferences and go to Basics on the left. Then make sure “Open the home page” is selected in the “On Startup” group and “Use the New Tab page” is selected in the Home Page Group. BTW, you can add your favorite Apps by clicking on the Web Store icon.

2. Always show your bookmarks bar. This will come in handy once we go through setup #3 below. This will allow you to have one or two click access to your bookmarks. If you don’t have an app on the Apps screen, you can nest all your favorite websites in your bookmarks. So when you click the star icon in the browser to set a bookmark, just be sure it is placed in a subfolder on your Bookmarks Bar.

To insure that the bar is always visible, again go to preferences (wrench icon) under Basics and select “Always show the bookmarks bar” under the Toolbar group. While you are there you might as well click the “Show Home button” so you can always show your Apps listing when you want. (see #1 above)

3. Now on to the cool extensions. Use Xmarks to keep your bookmarks in sync. Xmarks, now a part of LastPass (see #4 below) allows you to add and manage bookmarks in one browser and have them stay in sync on any other browser on any other computer where you have also installed Xmarks. It’s free and works well.

To add extensions, click on the wrench icon one more time, click Tools, and then Extensions. Click the “Get more extensions >>” link at the bottom and search for Xmarks. Follow the instructions and you are on your way.

4. Install the LastPass extension. Many of us have and use more than one password. In fact, everybody should be diligent about varying their passwords from site to site. LastPass makes that easy. I’ve written about LastPass before, so I won’t go into detail here, but in short, it manages all your passwords and then fills them in to the appropriate fields on a website for you automatically. Just follow the same instructions as #3 above to get it installed. Just a note, it is worth the $12 a year to purchase the premium version.

5. Use Diigo. I’ve talked about Diigo before and find new uses for it each day. Diigo allows you to bookmark any site, annotate that site with notes or highlights, and then share that bookmark with otherpeople or groups of people, like your WELSTech friends. You don’t want every site you are interested in on your bookmarks bar (see #2 above). But you do want to be able to go back to and reference sites when needed. Diigo does much more than that of course. I couldn’t compute without it in this Web 2.0 world. Install the extension using the same directions as #3 above.

Well that’s it. You now have a pretty good picture of what fills my screen once Chrome is launched and I’m working on the web. It might improve your computing experience as well.

This post is a part of the
Summer 2011 WELS Hacker
series on the WELSTech Podcast.

There are many “solutions” available for sharing files either with yourself while you are on a mobile device or other computer, or with others. There is Dropbox, Sugarsync, MobileMe, Box.net, LiveMesh, etc. The list is growing everyday. Yet, I think one of the easiest and cheapest solutions is PogoPlug. Recently they launched a software only version that might work well for many of you. Previously you had to buy a rather expensive PogoPlug device that you would plug into your network and then attach a hard drive. Now however you can use your own computer as a storage device and gain access to those files from anywhere in a secure fashion, or share those files with anybody you choose. Here’s a quick tutorial for sharing an entire folder on your hard drive with a friend.

1. Download and install the free Pogoplug software from: http://www.pogoplug.com.
2. Go through the fairly easy configuration steps to get the computer registered and give yourself a Pogoplug account.
3. Launch Pogoplug and then right click on the Pogoplug icon in the system tray (works essentially the same for Windows or Mac. Then select “Open Pogoplug Preferences”.
4. Go to the Remote Access tab and turn on remote access (lower left area of screen are two radio buttons). This will allow you to get access to your files from anywhere and also share them with others.
5. Click the folder icon with a plus sign on it in the lower portion of the screen and select a folder you’d like to share with a friend/co-worker.
6. Once you have successfully turned on remote access to that folder you are ready to share it. You need to do that via the web access tool. Once again right click on the Pogoplug icon in the tray, but this time select Web Access. You will need to login with your newly created account name and password.
7. You should now see your computer and the folder you opened up to remote access. Click the box next to the folder and then the share button at the top. The next screen should have the folder you selected as the default folder you’d like to share. Go ahead and click next.
8. Type in the email of the person you’d like to share the folder with, type a quick message and select any other options you’d like to use. You can force the user to login, which is a bit more secure, by checking the appropriate box at the bottom. You can also make it totally public via the “More Sharing Options” link.
9. You should be good to go. An email will go out and as long as your computer is on and the Pogoplug software running, they should be able to see and download anything in that folder.

I’ve found that this is a great way to share really large files that can’t be sent via email or even other methods like Dropbox. If you want to create a two-way, or multi-way file share where your friends and co-workers can upload files to your computer as well as download, visit the Settings link in the upper right of your my.pogoplug.com main screen. You can then give user accounts and permissions to certain areas of your computer.

This post is a part of the
Summer 2011 WELS Hacker
series on the WELSTech Podcast.

My wife Debbie and I have been reading through the Bible in one year. It’s been a wonderful experience to do it together, and there is something special about reading it out loud. I will have to say however there are some very challenging parts of the Old Testament to actually read out loud. You probably all know the parts of I’m talking about. Yes, those sections filled with extremely hard to pronounce names. Here is a sampling from our reading this evening…

“Those who sealed it were: Nehemiah the governor, the son of Hakaliah. Zedekiah, Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashhur, Amariah, Malkijah, Hattush, Shebaniah, Malluk, Harim, Meremoth, Obadiah, Daniel, Ginnethon, Baruch, Meshullam, Abijah, Mijamin, Maaziah, Bilgai and Shemaiah.” (Nehemiah 10:1-8)

You get the idea. While we do our best we have found that listening to someone else read sections like that is preferable – namely Max McLean via the Listener’s Bible. This audio Bible is available for MP3 download for $49. However it is free if you use YouVersion on one of many mobile devices including the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7 and Android. I’ve mentioned YouVersion before. Just a wonderful little application that provides the entire Bible in digital form, as well as reading plans, bookmarks, note taking tools, and more.

Once you happen on a chapter in the Bible that you’d like to have read to you, click on the microphone icon at the bottom of the screen and you will hear the beautiful voice of Max McLean. This is an excerpt from Max’s bio on the Listener’s Bible home page:

“Max McLean is President of Fellowship for the Performing Arts, narrator for the Listener’s Bible audio line, and speaker on the daily radio program Listen to the Bible which airs on over 670 radio affiliates worldwide. But he is best known for his theatrical presentations of The Screwtape Letters, Mark’s Gospel, and Genesis. Each of these has received critical acclaim in a wide array of publications including the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.”

He is good and provides a depth to the reading that you will enjoy. What’s more…he seems to have a good handle on Hebrew pronunciation! I would highly recommend giving him a try.

You can also listen online to any selection by using the Bible Gateway website at: http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/audio/.

Of course there are many personal uses for an audio bible, which could include downloading the entire recording and playing it in your car each day on CD or MP3, using the 1 Year Bible Version, or simply playing selected passages as mentioned above. Beyond that however there are some other more public ministry uses that include:

• playing selections for your classroom or catechism class,
• using the recordings as background “music” in the narthex or other church locations,
• providing copies to shut ins or those with vision difficulties,
• as a pronunciation guide for some of those difficult names of people and locations,
• to assist with Bible passage memorization
• as a giveaway to visitors or confirmands,
• and the list goes on.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention our very own Through The Bible in 3 Year audio podcasts read by retired Pastor David Witte of Fond du Lac, WI. Those can be found at http://www.wels.net/streams/podcasts/series/through-my-bible. These take a somewhat slower pace through the Bible, but allow you to listen through the Bible in 5 to 10 minutes a day.

Audio books are very popular these days as we often find ourselves in situations that we can’t really open a book and read (in the gym, running/walking, in the car), but can still listen to God’s word in some ways via a very similar delivery method as was practices in ancient times…having it read to you. Enjoy.

This post is a part of the Summer 2011 WELS Hacker series on the WELSTech Podcast.

Anybody who takes pictures these days and needs to publish them to a website, photo gallery or some other digital home has had to face the painful task of opening every photo to either convert, resize or otherwise edit more than just a few shots. Teachers who take photos of the class field trip or webmasters who are handed a DVD full of shots taken by a member of the church picnic know what I’m talking about. Those files can be huge…way too big to put on the web. Yes, you could open each and every photo in iPhoto or Windows Live Photo Gallery and edit/resize/convert each one. But you don’t have to. Use IrfanView. (IrfanView is not available on the Mac unless you use Parallels, VM Fusion or Bootcamp. However you could use a program like GraphicConverter7. It’s not free, but works pretty well. This is one of those programs that doesn’t have a good companion on the Mac however).

IrfanView is a free little photo editing program that has a rather robust batch editing toolset that you will find very useful if you are ever faced with the mass adjustment tasks that many of us have to do. Here is a quick step by step to get set up and cut those large .jpg files down to size in seconds. This will work for the popular RAW format as well as many other file formats.

1. To get started you need to download IrfanView from their website at http:www.irfanview.com. Click the download link and pick one of the mirror sites to download the exe file. Any of them will do.

2. After downloading the file, double click to install. Accept all the defaults, but watch out for the screen that asks you to install the Google Toolbar. If you don’t want to do that, make sure to uncheck that box.

3. After install, go ahead and let the program run for the first time.

4. You will then see the rather spartan user interface. Click on File in the top menu and then Batch Conversion/Rename. You may also just hit the B key to open the same window.

5. You will then be presented with a screen so chock full of options you won’t know where to begin. It really is fairly easy however. First of all you will want to find some pictures to resize. Use the window in the upper right of the screen to navigate to the file/files you want. Once selected, click the Add or Add All button to have them show up in the Input files window on the bottom right.

6. Now work from top to bottom on the left column full of commands. For this simple resize exercise you will want batch conversion. You could also rename them all at the same time to something more meaningful than IMG_098.jpg to something like KidsAtCampXXX.jpg, but that is up to you.

7. Since you have jpgs already and jpg is a good image format for the web, might as well leave that box alone. If you chose to rename, you will want to type the desired “pattern” in the next box.

8. Your output directory is important. If you click on the “Use current (“look in”” directory, it is going to save them right back to the same folder it found them. I suggest using a new directory just for this purpose however.

9. So far you haven’t really selected any settings that will change anything about your file, unless your files weren’t jpgs in the first place. Here is where it gets fun. Select the check box that says “Use advanced options (for bulk resize…).” Then click the Advanced button next to it. Presto, you have the world of photo resizing at your fingertips.

10. You can do almost anything on this screen imaginable. All we are interested in is the resize section. Click that check box and enter in a desired width. I’d recommend just a width, or just a height to keep the proportions of the image correct. Depending on what you’d like to use the photo for, I’d suggest some like 500px or smaller. You can play around with this to determine how big/small you want your images.

11. The last thing you might want to do on this screen is set the DPI or Dots Per Inch in the last box under Resize. So under Set DPI Value enter some number under 75. Usually for web images you want something even under 50 or even 30. You can play around with this too to see how good the image looks that small.

12. We are almost there. Click OK to close the Advanced box, then we are set to press the magic button – Start Batch.

You should now have a folder full of resized images ready for the web!

This post is a part of the Summer 2011 WELS Hacker series on the WELSTech Podcast.

Most of you are probably familiar with Google Docs – Google’s offering for cloud-based word processing docs. It’s OK, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could get those familiar Microsoft Office programs in the cloud? Well, now you can. There are cloud-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote all available…for free (with Project and Visio coming soon). Let’s walk through how to set this up.

1. The first thing you will need to do is sign up for a Windows “Live” ID with Microsoft. Just go to http://www.live.com and click on the Sign Up button. Fill in your info and you’re set. If you have ever used Hotmail, MSN Messenger or XBox Live, you already have an ID.

2. Now with your freshly minted ID, login to live.com. You will see all kinds of social options. For now you can ignore those. Later you can hook up Facebook and all kinds of other things to the account, but right now we are interested in the link at the top called SkyDrive. SkyDrive is your hard drive in the sky. It can hold up to 25 gigabytes of data AND it supports the cloud versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. I should say at this point that the cloud versions of these applications don’t have all the features of their big brother computer based counterparts. However, they are just fine for general word processing and the like. If you have Microsoft Office on your computer you can sync documents back and forth, or go into the full product for some serious editing. It should be noted it doesn’t matter if you use a Mac or PC, or what browser you are using…although Internet Explorer is recommended.

When you hover over the SkyDrive link, you will see a listing of everything you can store on your SkyDrive – photos, documents, as well as the ability to create new documents. Go ahead and click on “New Word document.”

3. Give your document a name and hit “save”. You may have noticed there was a link called “change” next to “sharing”. We’ll come back to that.

4. Now you are in full on edit mode. You will see the edit window and the all too familiar ribbon toolbar. Go ahead and write your novel, or sermon, or lesson plan.

5. Once you are ready to save, all you have to do is click on the little save disk icon in the upper right, or click on the File tab and click save. It saves it to your SkyDrive for future access. You may have also noticed the “Open in Word” option at the top. If you have Word installed, go ahead and try it. Once you hit save there, it saves the document back to the SkyDrive by default, where Microsoft takes care of backing things up for you. Even if you use advanced editing features like footnotes, etc. they are saved to SkyDrive as well. You can’t edit them online, but you can “Open in Word” at any time to continue your advanced editing work.

6. Now about sharing. This part is really cool. Click the File tab and then “Share”. You can use the slider to share this with different groupings of people, or you can type in email addresses of those you’d like to share the document with. They will need to have a Windows Live ID as well. But once they have that, they can come in to edit the document with you…at the same time if you like. You will see what they are working on, and they will see your edits. This even works if you both open up the document in your local copies of Word. This works for Excel and OneNote as well.

Give it a shot. Microsoft has done a nice job of bringing their popular Office suite to the web. There are many other features I have not even touched on, but I’m sure if you kick the tires yourself you will begin to see the possibilities.

This post is a part of the
Summer 2011 WELS Hacker
series on the WELSTech Podcast.

When people mention "tablet computing" you probably think they are more than likely referring to Apple’s iPad. However, there is a growing group of non-Apple engineered tablets that might be worth a try as Android’s "Honeycomb" operating system has closed the gap a bit in the race for tablet computing supremacy. There are two major benefits of moving toward an Android-based tablet over the iPad: 1) price, and 2) flexibility. Because we are in the process of building WELS apps for both platforms I purchased one of the higher rated Android tablets from Asus to test things out. The model that I purchased was the Eee Pad Transformer. It is a 10 inch tablet that allows you to attach an integrated real keyboard (on which I’m typing now) and "transform" the touch-based tablet into a nicely equipped netbook, complete with a couple of USB ports, SD Card slot and video out.

The cost of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer is about $100 dollars cheaper than the equivalent iPad, not including the keyboard which is in the $125 dollar range. The screen is beautiful and is in the 16:9 format which makes viewing wide screen movies/videos a more pleasant experience than the iPad. However, because of the longer/narrower form factor, it is most usable in landscape format. Holding it in portrait mode seems odd and is a bit too narrow to be useful.

Another place the Eee Pad shines is in the flexibility of the Android Honeycomb operating system. I will say it is not as elegant as the iPad, but far more configurable. You can add "widgets" that can take up more of the screen real estate than the rigid tile system of the iPad. Nice home screen views of your calendar and email are totally doable and very handy.

Battery life is acceptable, but not on par with the iPad. However, if you add the keyboard, which has it’s own battery, that can add up to over 15 hours of battery life in my testing.

I’d give a slight edge to the iPad for it’s app store, but Android is a close second and gaining every day as more developers realize the large potential of creating apps for the Android platform. Most of the main/useful apps are available in the Android marketplace. One complaint however is that many of those that work great on an Android phone, don’t look or even install correctly on the tablet OS Honeycomb. One of those apps that doesn’t fare well is the WELS ONLINE app. We’ll have to work on that.

While I think the iPad as well as the Eee Pad will work well for anybody looking to move into a tablet, the sweet spot foe either is in the education space, and specifically the classroom. Adding the keyboard option to the Eee Pad makes the tablet a nice netbook for heavier duty typing, but the elegance of a tablet when you don’t need that.

Here are a couple of links that provide much more detailed information about the Eee Pad if you are interested:

• http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Pad_Transformer_TF101/
• http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/asus-eee-pad-transformer/4505-3126_7-34467853.html

Even better news…if you are are interested, our ShopWELS program is offering the Eee Pad on sale right now for only $395 while supplies last, or until the end of July. The keyboard can be ordered separately. Just visit http://www.wels.net/shopwels/product-month.

One way to add a little visual interest to your church or school website is by adding Photo Galleries of select images that visitors might find interesting. The idea is to not overwhelm them, but give them a sense of the sights they can expect to see when visiting you.

Before I get into the technical details of getting these on your website, just a few suggestions about what images to select:

1. Don’t publish group shots. Close-ups of one or two people are preferred. Visitors don’t have an appreciation for the shots you have of the 20 kids who make up the 5th grade class or all the members of the choir that sing on Sunday morning. Try to find photos that capture those neat facial expressions that preach a sermon or send a message.
2. Try to insure that the tonality of the photos is the same. Don’t throw in photos that have a red or blue cast with others that are more faithful to true skin color, etc. Just because it has great composition doesn’t make it a great candidate if it’s tonality isn’t up to snuff.
3. Make sure you have secured permission from the subjects in the photos to use them in a public/promotional way. While it is not illegal to use photos taken of people in public places, it’s just good form to ask.
4. Try to avoid too many shots of buildings. It’s ok to have a few just to give them a flavor of your beautiful facilities, but don’t go overboard. They are going to come there for the people and the message, not the place.
5. Limit the number of photos to a dozen or so. No need to share the entire family album with them. They probably won’t sit there and watch for too long anyway regardless of how compelling or stellar the photos are.

Now, on to the technical details of getting your gallery on to your web page. For these steps I’m going to assume you upload your photos to Flickr. It really doesn’t matter what service you use as they all have similar functionality. I would say you should absolutely use a service rather than house all those photos on your own website. Just a couple reasons include disk space savings and better management tools are usually available through services like Flickr.

1. First you have to upload your photos to Flickr. Once you’ve selected the ones you want, go to your Flickr account and hit the upload button. It’s right on top. The steps are pretty simple.

2. Put your desired photos in a “set”. You do that by clicking the “Organize & Create” button and dragging your photos onto the blank area in the middle of the screen to “batch edit” them. Then click on the “add to set” button at the top, name it, and you’ve got your set.

3. Go to your Flickr home page, click on the little arrow next to“You” and then “Your Sets”. Click on the set you just created. This will open the set up for viewing. You will notice in the upper right corner a button that says “slideshow”. Go ahead and click there to start the slideshow. You must be logged in to your account at this point.

4. Once the slideshow starts to play click the “share” link in the upper right corner. You will see code in the second field there called “Grab the embed HTML”, and below it “Copy to Clipboard.” Go ahead and click that link. Now you have the code you will need for your website. (Note: If you really want to get fancy you can click the “Customize this HTML” to tweak how the gallery will look once embedded on your site. Very cool.

5. Go to your website and find/create the page you’d like the gallery to appear on. You will need to find the “edit HTML or source” button/mode. It is different for each website management tool. Most will have some way to enter HTML code directly in. Without this you will not be able to embed the gallery.

6. Once you are “editing the HTML or source code” just paste the copied embed code from Flickr, save the page and you’re done. Sweet. It should look something like this…

If you have other methods for displaying photos on your site, please feel free to share. Examples are always welcome!

This post is a part of the
Summer 2011 WELS Hacker
series on the WELSTech Podcast.

“abc123.” Yes, that is not only a popular Jackson 5 song, but one of the most common passwords used by people when signing up for access to website content or services. Throw in “password”, “123456”, and “letmein” and it is little wonder that people are so nervous about the recent hacks (i.e. break-ins) of such high profile sites as Sony, the CIA, the State of Florida and PBS. I know, creating and remembering passwords can be hard, but you know you should be doing better. Here are a few tips and tools to keep your computing life and your personal data a little safer.

1. Don’t use the same password you use for your Twitter or Facebook account as your online banking password. In fact, the absolute safest you can be is have a different password for every site or service you use. A pain you say? Maybe. But there are tools that make this totally doable. The one I use is LastPass. You may have heard that back in May they were potentially hacked as well. That turns out not to be true. They observed unusual activity on their service and encouraged all their users to change their password as a safety precaution. That “expect the worst” attitude is a good one for a company like LastPass.

If you aren’t familiar with how an online password management service works, it is rather simple. They maintain an online database of all your usernames and passwords, then ask you to create one super secret password that will unlock all the others. LastPass has browser plugins that allow you to “autofill” username and password fields once you visit a site it recognizes that you’ve stored information about. Viola, you are in. What this allows you to do is to create very strong passwords (or let LastPass do it for you) that even you would have a tough time remembering. Let’s say one that is a random set of numbers, letters and special characters 12 deep. I’ve been using LastPass for over 2 years without incident. You can even get an app on your smartphone. Plus the app works on every platform and in every browser.

One note, just be sure to make your LastPass password very strong, change it regularly and resist the urge to write it on a post it note affixed to your monitor

2. Don’t store or write down your most sensitive passwords, like your online banking password. While you want these passwords to be very strong, you don’t really want them to sit anywhere permanently. If your memory is failing and you simply must put it down somewhere or your will not be able to stop thinking about it – write it on a slip of paper or post it and affix it in some obscure location like the underneath side of some obscure desk drawer.

3. Use at least 10 characters in all your passwords and make them a mixture of letters, numbers and special characters like !#$%. Really the best defense against hackers is to make your password something that can’t be looked up in the dictionary like “pencil” or “sunburn.” Password cracking programs can crack a nine character password in 2.5 months, but a 10 character password takes more than 19 years to run all the possible 10 character passwords. So keep it long and unpredictable. Here is a fun video talking about the issue: http://www.rocketboom.com/passwordology/.

4. Use some kind of mnemonic device (like ROY G BIV to remember the colors of the rainbow) to help you remember complicated passwords. Here is an example of what I’m talking about: http://www.aber.ac.uk/cgi-bin/user/syswww/gw/mnemonic. Refreshing the page loads fresh ones.

5. Never email your password or save emails with passwords that have been given to you. Email is one of the most insecure communication tools you have. Especially if you use web-based email services like Gmail or Hotmail. If your password to those services isn’t secure and you have private information stored in email (password, SS#, tax return attachments, etc), you might as well post that information on your front door.

Hope these tips help. The point is you have valuable information that is also “valuable” to hackers. Take appropriate steps to protect it. It’s really not that hard. A lot easier than recovering your identity or life savings. It is also important if you are in a position to maintain or store data about other people, either congregation members or school children. A loss of that kind of data has far reaching consequences. If you have password tips and tricks that you’ve found useful be sure to share.

This post is a part of the
Summer 2011 WELS Hacker
series on the WELSTech Podcast.