There is a lot of great free software out there that provides tremendous value. Smart programmers always want to showcase their talents and I love the fact that there is a never ending stream of interesting applications coming from the developer community. I won’t even start to mention some of the free Mac apps that I use that help me day to day, there are too many to mention. However, I discovered this great little golden nugget yesterday for those people who have a Mac laptop and who frequently bring it to different locations. These could be students or business people or just those on the go.
It’s called AirPort Location, and the premise is this. It runs in the background (requiring AirPort WiFi to be on an enabled). Once it detects a WiFi “fingerprint” (essentially, either one particular WiFi ID or a series of detected WiFi IDs or some other environmental variables) it then automatically configures your Mac environment (based on however you set it up in the application) to that environment. For example, at home, you may have a certain default printer, want your Mac to automatically attach to a networked storage device, want you screen to be a particular brightness, and certain apps to be launched. When AirPort Location detects your home WiFi, it will set up your environment that way. Then, when you go to work, once AirPort Location detects THAT WiFi environment, it changes your Mac to meet THOSE settings.
While there is a bit of a learning curve, some trial and error involved and the documentation could be a bit better, it definitely DOES work. You have a wide variety of things you can control like:
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by Michael Sheehan on July 13, 2010
in Apple, application, Fix It, General, Hardware, how to, HTD Tech Tip, Linux, Microsoft, Open Source, Review, Safety, Security, Software
I’m sure that many of you have heard of the Find My iPhone service for MobileMe that helps you locate missing iPhones or iPads. Or the equivalent on Windows Mobile phones called My Phone. And I’m sure you know about LoJack that helps you locate stolen cars. LoJack also offers a service for computers as well, for a price. There are other offerings that help you locate lost or stolen laptops out there too, but most of them are expensive. For me, it’s a bit easier to justify spending a little bit on a service like MobileMe (which does a lot more than just the “Find My iPhone” service and is good for multiple devices), and it is a lot easier to lose or have a phone stolen. Laptops are a little trickier in that they are bigger and don’t usually have built-in GPS’s or location services.
But today I came across (actually using StumbleUpon) an Open Source project called “Prey” which has taken the difficulty of setting up and configuring a behind-the-scenes service that lets you locate you lost or stolen laptop. The service is FREE and works on multiple platforms (Linux, Windows and MacOS).
Some of the highlights of the features are:
- Geo-location Aware – the Prey developers have created a way to triangulate the location of your stolen or lost laptop (assuming it’s on, of course, and connected to the internet) based on publically indexed WiFi hotspots.
- Wifi Autoconnect – this innovative feature detects if your laptop is connected to an active network connection and if it isn’t, it will try to connect to a nearby open WiFi access point.
- Lightweight – the developers coded the Prey application in bash which, according to their site, means that it has virtually no dependencies.
- Modular – Prey has a variety of different functions or modules. Read on to find out some of the different items that can be configured.
- Strong Reporting – you can configure the types of reports you get from your laptop like running programs, recently modified files, active connections, screenshots of the active desktop, and even a webcam capture.
- Alerting – you can configure Prey to pop up messages on your laptops screen, change your desktop picture (Mac/Linux), send out an alarm sound or speak an alert.
- Auto Updating – once you install Prey, you can forget about it. It will update itself (if you want it to) to the latest version automatically.
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Recently, some high-profile blogs that are running WordPress have been hacked or hijacked by malicious users (e.g., TechCrunch). The worst thing is having to try to recover from such an event, you not only have to repair your site, but also your reputation. So, spending a little bit of time trying to prevent or at least make it a bit more difficult for a hacker to take over your WordPress blog is time worth investing.
I have had my fair share of my blogs (both work and personal) getting attacked (denial of service attack, hidden iFrames in my code, SQL injections and my server repeatedly being hit with brute force SSH login attempts from overseas). I have learned a lot from over 5 years of blogging, however I am by far no expert in the security field. But, what I can do is provide a growing list of tricks and tips as well as plugs that you can use to make your WordPress blog a bit more secure. This is not an exhaustive list nor have I personally implemented everything that is on here. I simply wanted to provide a list of items that you can do that may make your blog a bit more difficult to crack. Some security is better than no security, in my opinion. If a bot or hacker spends too much time trying to get in, they will hopefully move on to find something different and easier.
A Word of Warning: Do note, having many plugins running will degrade the performance of your WordPress blog. Some of the plugins run only on demand while others are present and running all of the time, so your mileage may vary. Also, some of these plugins might not work well together. Lastly, a few of the items below require you to have SSH access to your WordPress environment or server. You may have restrictions in place by your hosting provider as well.
The List of WordPress Blog Security Measures
- Do Regular Backups – back up not only your database regularly but also be sure to take a full copy of your entire WordPress directory. A great WP Database backup plugin is “WP-DBManager“. What I do is run a DB backup and then do a complete file backup since the DB backup is within your WP directory and will be copied when you download.
- Scan Your Files for Oddities – I wrote a post on how you can scan a local copy of your WordPress files to find code injections or iFrame. There are also some plugins that can help with that like “WordPress Exploit Scanner” or “AntiVirus“.
- Change Your Password – make it something difficult to figure out. Don’t use numbers in place of letters because everybody does that. Use special characters.
- Rename Your Admin User – there are a couple of ways to do this. You can do some MySQL commands to do it or you can use a plugin to do it for you. Either go into a MySQL manager like phpMyAdmin and rename the user “admin” to something else, or run a command like:
update tableprefix_users set user_login='newuser' where user_login='admin';
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Over that last couple of days, I have had the “pleasure” of moving a blog from one hosting provider to another (not that difficult of a task) but ALSO changing domains in the process. While I don’t think this post should the definitive set of instructions, it is a combination of information that I read and gathered, in conjunction with my own experience.
I actually did this migration a couple of times, not by choice mind you. But the process of doing this multiple times aided me in coming up with the steps that follow. The steps worked for me and were based on trial & error and research.
First off – WARNING – this is tricky for some and very easy to screw up. Don’t come crying to me if you mess something up beyond repair. I’m not a PHP or mySQL guy, I just play one on TV (essentially know enough to be dangerous). I will help where I can but I too had to do a lot of research, reading and trial and error before I got it to work.
Just for reference, I moved my blog from http://weblog.techdad.net to http://www.hightechdad.com.
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