Jul

22

Bag Open. Cat Out. Internet in danger! OpenDNS to the rescue?

Filed Under Blogging, Doing, How to, In the life, News, Web | Leave a Comment

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PDP-11/45 lock
Creative Commons License photo credit: Jef Poskanzer

One little secret that your ( Provider) has likely been involved with is the -wide patching of the Multi-vendor DNS Issue.

Simply, this issue could allow malicious evil-doers to redirect your surfing to that they control, intercepting important and private information (such as passwords, banking info, etc).

Frequent Black Hat Speaker Dan Kaminsky today announced a massive, multi-vendor issue with DNS that could allow attackers to compromise any name server - clients, too. Kaminsky also announced that he had been working for months with a large number of major vendors to create and coordinate today’s release of a patch to deal with the vulnerability.

of this industry-wide vulnerability and the collaboration (to fix the flaw) was originally scheduled to be announced at the Black Hat Security Conference in August, but due to the vulnerability being published elsewhere, the presenter thought it best to release the information so that people can take the appropriate actions.

What can you do?
Basically, this is a complex issue, but it boils down to a test and a very fix.

The test:
To find out if you are vulnerable to this issue, you can use the DNS checker link on Kaminsky’s webpage here (in the upper right corner).

The fix:
If you are vulnurable, then you can either A) wait until your fixes their DNS servers, or B) set your own computer’s DNS strings to point to OpenDNS servers.

I highly recommend option B.

The OpenDNS website has friendly, easy to implement instructions on converting your DNS settings and also offer a whole host of additional features your current may not have:

Features

I’ve written about OpenDNS before, so feel to check out these previous articles and then help save the .

And if you do test your using Dan’s page, please post your results in the comment section! I’ll start things off by adding mine.

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Jul

18

Merging domains — important things to consider when you feel the urge to merge

Filed Under Blogging, Doing, How to, Web | 4 Comments


pet doctor | bicycle mad scientist
Creative Commons License photo credit: Kevin Steele

A recently asked me for a bit of advice regarding merging two corporate domains. Two organizations, with similar or complimentary lines of are now one. What to do about the left-over . A quandary.

Below I’ve outlined 6 areas to consider, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I guess the only reasonable quick- is to first understand the goal for the merged . Once you understand that, you can begin to questions about the goals for the new website.

Let me create a fictional example to help illustrate the situation, then dive into the six points, and then I’ll outline a couple of things to think about for each of these points.

Obviously there are many more things to consider, but this is a blog post and not a downloadable eBook :)

Please leave your thoughts on what I’ve missed! I want to learn from you…now on to the example:

Ben’s Bikes (a local mountain bike retailer) has merged with Sammy’s ski and sports shop. Ben’s Bikes is a market leader in this region, with over 40% of the annual sales volume in new mountain bikes. They also have exclusive dealership agreements with a number of the premier mountain bike manufacturers in Europe. They have a very loyal and select clientele and are considered the ‘go-to’ shop for all regional mountain biking aficionados.

Sammy’s cycle shop is a general bicycle retailer. They don’t really specialize, but they do have a wide selection of mid-priced bikes in all categories (road, mountain, touring, cruising, kids, etc). They also have multiple locations in the local geographic region.

The businesses have merged and are operating as Ben & Sammy’s cycle therapy. They have a small internal team tasked to manage the website integration.

Now that we understand the landscape, we go back to the quandary of the website. Let’s get to some important questions:

broken bike
Creative Commons License photo credit: casey atchley


These are the visitors to your site; your potential or past customers. Questions you should be asking your team include:

  • Who are you servicing and what are their goals for using your website? This is basic and should be asked before any website is designed (or redesigned).
  • What’s the purpose? Is your website there to appointments, to take orders, or to provide a catalogue of information? Your new site will depend on how well you that questions, and how well your understands that purpose.
Nou web de Brompton
Creative Commons License photo credit: marcbel


This is what your is looking for. Audiences conduct research and order .

  • Inventory — both sites likely have similar , so which do you keep and which do you ditch? You can’t make decisions until you’ve evaluated all the assets.
  • What about unique to one …is it still relevant in the new landscape?
  • Keep only that supports the ’s ability to fulfill the goals of the site. Everything else is distraction.
Blog Juice Calculator
Creative Commons License photo credit: inju

Juice
Both sites have some engine pagerank value. This is the value of
the page to a particular set of keywords or term. It determines how high the page appears in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when a particular phrase or keywords are searched upon.

  • Determine if pagerank is really important to your needs, or not, and consider appropriate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques in your merge process.
  • 301 Redirects — if you’re creating a new , you’ll need to set these up to ensure that the engines know that the previous businesses haven’t vanished, just merged. Setting them up can be a bit technical but is very important to ensure that visitors who’ve bookmarked the old pages are appropriately redirected to the new site.
Shop
Creative Commons License photo credit: perreira

Ancillary touchpoints
Over the development of the two previous , you’ll find that there may be some touchpoints including RSS feeds, tag feeds or even
regular newsletters. You’re going to have to consider migrating
all these to the new site.

  • Now’s a good time to evaluate the integration of your entire process. Where does fit? How about feeds of particular streams…or newsletters? This is where your marketing team will have some valuable input too…really!
  • If you’ve had a website, you’ve likely been measuring traffic to that site. Well, since you’re merging sites, now is the perfect time to re-evaluate your website measurement strategy. Will you continue using the or consider purchasing a contract with a provider? What kind of reporting do you need? What kind of decisions are you going to be making based on what kind of data?
New Orleans Annual Bicycle Beauty Pageant
Creative Commons License photo credit: robholland

Changing external linking
Both have been around for a while, and have a fair number of inbound from other sites and articles.

  • These help build pagerank ( Juice). Yes, they’ll automagically flow through when they hit the 301 redirects, but it’s also good to contact the sites directly and them to update their . This is a great time to (re)establish with your website network…work the side of the medium :)
Bright Orange
Creative Commons License photo credit: alq666

Promotion on your old sites
Regardless of all the work you do, your old will still be bookmarked or linked in old etc. If, perchance, that someone does click on an old link, help them find your new location.

  • Keep your old sites live for a year or two. names are pretty cheap these days. After you’ve merged them into the new site, kill the old on the old sites (to reduce the size of the sites you’ll need to maintain) and leave helpful messages on the appropriate landing pages. Use your analytics and server logs to determine heavily visited pages.

I’m not the expert…what do you think!
As I mentioned, this is not a , just a blog post. So, there are many more things to consder in the merge process. I’ve listed a few above, but what do you think? What have I missed that I shouldn’t have? Leave your thoughts below.

Jun

19

Key Messages from the Gerry McGovern Masterclass, Ottawa, May 5-6, 2008

Filed Under Blogging, How to, Review | 1 Comment


Wild Abandon
Creative Commons License photo credit: dandy_fsj

To wrap up this interview series with Krista Vieira, we’re featuring the Key Messages generated by conference attendees.

If you missed the interview series read these:

Key Messages from the Gerry McGovern Masterclass, Ottawa, May 5-6, 2008

  • We need a clarity of understanding of what our website is for.
  • To much choice = no choice.
  • We must focus on what our customers want. Why are they coming to our website? What task are they trying to complete?

Customers

Customers are:

  • Harsh, demanding and difficult
  • Skeptical and cynical of authority
  • Have the power on the - not the organization
  • Dictators, not kings
  • Impatient
  • Quick to use they’re favourite button - the Back button

reality #1: The takes the power to control information away from the organization and gives it to the people.

The is about giving real information and facts. The allows people to get to know a subject better or make a better decision. People can comparison shop; read reviews; find out what other people think, etc.

The is the land of A.D.D. We live in a money rich, time poor economy. Time is our most valuable resource. We measure our website’s success by the time it takes users to do something; the quicker they perform the task, the better. The sin of the modern economy - though shall not waste my time.

reality #2: Using the is not a planned activity; it’s rushed, impatient and hurried. People are searching the in between commercial breaks, after they’ve put the children to bed, when they’re tired. Accept this: the is ALWAYS fitted in between something else.

Building Trust

  • People trust people like themselves, not authority figures. They will trust the factory worker more than the CEO.
  • Give the truth on the not or marketing. This will build trust.
  • No one believes an organization is perfect, so they don’t expect it.

Importance of Simplicity

  • We read on the like we’re riding down an escalator.
  • needs to be direct and to the point. Think speed of and clarity of message.
  • The is an active doing medium, so use the language of . Don’t talk about what you’ve done or what you’re going to do. Don’t become the passive communicator, become the active facilitator of the .
  • Every time you add to your website, you complicate things. There is always a trade-off with simplicity. To make something more means something else will be more complicated. Focus on doing your top task well, then worry about the rest of the website.
  • Something that’s easy is immediately doable. Show by doing; don’t talk about it. For example: doesn’t have to explain to you how to . The simplicity of it immediately makes it usable.
  • Don’t talk about an form, let people use it.

Remember, are built from, and function, on words.

The is Self- or Having a Customer-Centric Website

Only having information on the is the greatest mismanagement of a website. People are not coming to looking for information. Do you go to an information booth and just them to give you information? People come to the to solve a problem.

Information only has value when associated with a task. Identify the most important tasks and make sure your customer’s can find them and complete them quickly.

reality #3: Sometimes we spend so much time doing things wrong, that we don’t have the time to do things right. The best focus on their top tasks and keep improving them. They find out how people are reacting.
3 core rules of self-:

  1. Convenience
  2. Speed
  3. Price (the is the land of the cheap deal)

If you can’t do price, you’d better do the other two really well.

reality #4: Having a customer-centric website means the focuses on what the customer wants. When an organization doesn’t know its customers or what they want, they end up with a put-it-upper website: can you put this up for me by Thursday? The 20,000 page website is built by put-it-uppers.

Economies that aren’t successful put numerous steps in the way of their customers. For example, in Peru it takes 289 steps to set up a company.

We measure success by the amount of time it takes people to do something.

To have a customer-centric website:

  1. Identify the top tasks
  2. Speak the language the customer is using. Don’t make them use the organization’s language.

The is where you go to do stuff. In order for a person to do something, a website must be useful. We must potty train our so we get rid of the we-we’s: We did this; we launched that.

We must focus on what the customer wants to do.

Additional Resources:

Jun

15

Content Management Solutions: Upcoming series on Gerry McGovern’s web writing masterclass

Filed Under Blogging, How to, Social Media | Leave a Comment



rem:living well is the best revenge
Creative Commons License photo credit: visualpanic

*** Update ***
Oversite on my part, here’s some to the articles in the series directly:

This brief post is just to let you know that I’ll be taking a road less travelled this week by introducing an interview series with a co-worker of mine. She’s because she was able to dodge my Zombie-brain-eating-behaviour while enlighteningly (new word alert) engaging in an interview.

As you’ve no doubt gathered from the title of this post, we’re talking about her recent visit to a Gerry McGovern Masterclass on . Put another way, the guru of was spilling the beans on engaging for the …not easy stuff to do!

The series will run for 3 days, and the 4th will have a great summary / key messages document that was produced at the end of the two-day conference.

So if you’ve ever wondered what a Masterclass with Gerry McGovern is like, then check in daily. Sign up for the RSS feed (if you’ve not already) to ensure you don’t miss an installment. If you’ve read Gerry’s ( Killer Web ContentContent Management Solutions: Upcoming series on Gerry McGoverns web writing masterclass (image: ) ), then some of what we’re talking about will be old hat…but there should be a surprise or two in store for you as well.

Jun

5

Just how easy can publishing on a Wordpress blog get?

Filed Under Blogging, Review, Social Media | 4 Comments


LCD Smartie running the BigNum plugin on a 20x4 Parallel LCD displal

via Wikipedia

Very easy. Ridiculously easy. Deliciously easy!

Zemanta is a plugin that works on the administrator side. Basically, it analyzes your post content, then starts recommending (like the one to the right) and to other articles based on your post .

As well, when you set it up with your Amazon.com partner information, it’ll even automagically build to they carry, such as this classic usability Don’t Make Me Think. Though I’m not sure how that’s working…need to play with it more.

Anyway, it is an interesting way to include more from around the web in your post, if you feel the need to use a utility to help you with your research :)

Just how easy can publishing on a Wordpress blog get? (image: )

May

29

Use Web 2.0 tools to save time and be more productive

Filed Under How to, In the life, Social Media | Leave a Comment


Someone's Lost Schedule Book
Creative Commons License photo credit: ASurroca

For a while I’ve been using a few 2.0 applications that, on their own, are great, but when when partnered with other 2.0 apps, become superstar efficiency optimizers.

The applications
Consider Jott, IWantSandy, and Twitter.

Jott is a to text . You call a number, say your message, and moments later it’s emailed to you (or a group), turned into a reminder, added to a list, or sent to 2.0 applications (called Jott ).

IWantSandy is a ‘virtual assistant’. She’s able to manage your , build and manage lists, manage groups, and share your lists with others.

is a ’status update’ that allows you to post your status (your to the “What are you doing?”).

Connections are key
Standalone, they’re all good, solid, 2.0 applications. But where they really begin to shine is when you let them talk to each other, and other applications. Here’s a example:

  • Use to have Sandy remind you to backup your blog on the 13th of each month
  • In the window type d s r the blog on June 13, 2008 @monthly
  • which means Direct message to Sandy (s is Sandy’s name), Reminder (r) …(the text Sandy is to remember) on June 13, 2008 (the start date of the reminder) @monthly (a special Sandy tag to make the event repeat.

Depending how you’ve got Sandy set up, you’ll be reminded through , or SMS message to your mobile device (or all three).

AFK? Use Jott When I’m out and about, I use Jott to work with Sandy to get things done. Here’s the same example using Jott:

  • (Dial into local Jott number, Jott answers) Who do you want to Jott?
  • (Me) Sandy.
  • (Jott) Sandy.(repeats to confirm) Is this correct?
  • (Me) Yes.
  • (Jott) Got it. BEEP-TONE-TO-RECORD
  • (Me) Reminder. the Blog on June 13th 2008. Tag Monthly.

Extending further
, Jott and IWantSandy all embrace openness, to varying degrees. Depending how you configure each, they can update your calendar ( Calendar, 30Boxes, etc), your local through CSV or iCal files, really the sky is the limit.

So, what have I missed? How are you using these (or other applications) to make your life easier?

May

27

Things I learned moving my blog to a new hosting service (it’s easy!)

Filed Under Blogging, How to | 3 Comments


Things I learned moving my blog to a new hosting service (its easy!) (image: 2526037333_07b840e3ec_o)Over the last few weeks you’ll may have noticed that I’ve been and twittering about my blog from the .net to .com.

A few years ago I managed to grab BradGrier.com when it came open, but I’d not decided what to do with it until recently. I’d been having some performance issues (my blog, that is) and decided to test a new hosting provider.

So, the issue. How to move the blog, keep the same look and feel, not lose any Google Juice, and not lose any feed subscribers. Not a trivial set of considerations!

Of course, I turned to my good for advice:

  • How to Move Your Wordpress Blog To A New Web hosting - great technical advice on backing up and restoring your WP blog
  • Use the WordPress Database Backup plugin - I wrote about it recently when my blog crashed, but backups created with it are entirely suitable for use in blog migration
  • Redirecting incoming traffic to the new blog - well, since I’m using the same data structures and permalink structure, the only is one from .net to .com, this was quite ; a .htaccess 301 redirect as described here and here. Slightly technical, but not really too tough.
  • subscribers was also quite , since I use Feedburner to manage subscriptions: simply the Feed Title and Original Feed URL on the Feedburner Feed Details page. DO NOT THE FEED ADDRESS as this will disconnect your readers from your feed — a bad thing :)

A couple of other observations:

  • Set up your new blog/destination site first. Complete importing your data and building your look and feel. Yes, also duplicate posting to this site. You will want to make sure as your readers move they don’t lose any …especially for the tardy ones.
  • Immediately the Feed address in Feedburner. Any new subscribers will never notice, as you are posting to both sites right?
  • Prominently post about the fact that you are your blog. Add a widget or two to the sidebar (make them obvious) to alert your readers to the fact that you are . You want them to begin to identify with the new URL, not the old one, as soon as possible.
  • After a week or two, close commenting on the old feed, with a message directing readers to the new site.
  • After another week or two implement 301 redirects. And test them! @hownottowrite and @lijit both recommended, through twitter, this HTTP header scanning tool and FireFox plugin to validate the redirects (thanks again!).
  • Finally, remember every place you’ve ever used the URL / name, and it.

So, after all that…did you notice? :)

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May

23

On time management and GTD

Filed Under Doing, Review, Social Media | 6 Comments


Moleskine Concept Diagram 1
Creative Commons License photo credit: jazzmasterson

Lately I’ve been working with a few that help me streamline my various tasks and workflows. Over the next few posts, I’ll dive into them and my reasons for using them.

First off, the Two Minute Timer.
If you’ve been been under a rock for the last few years then this to David Alan’s , Getting Things DoneOn time management and GTD (image: ) and the Two Minute Rule applied to Processing will be meaningless. The following is for you (via Wikipedia):

Process

When processing a , a strict workflow is followed:

  • Start at the top.
  • Deal with one item at a time.
  • Never put anything back into ‘in’.
  • If an item requires :
  • Do it (if it takes less than two minutes), OR
  • Delegate it, OR
  • Defer it.
  • If an item does not require :
  • File it for , OR
  • Throw it away, OR
  • Incubate it for possible later.

If it takes under two minutes to do something, just do it immediately. The two-minute rule is a guideline, encompassing roughly the time it would take to defer the formally.

The Two Minute timer in actionAll right then, you’re up to speed on the Two Minute Rule. The I’ve been using to help me keep track of two minutes isn’t the ‘official’ two minute timer, rather an un-official one created with .NET.

Elegant in its simplicity, the Two Minute Timer works. Plain and . Easy to read, and easy to use. Not much more to say but that’s part of beauty. It simply works.

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