Shai Perednik.com » security

Getting Started With Content Management Systems

System — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:00:25 +0000

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

The need to update websites faster to keep content fresh has been ever growing. Ever since the first business owner wanted their Web designer to update their website faster, content management systems have played an important role on the Web. Why does this matter to you? How do you know if your company is ready?

In this article, we will look at how to tell if your organization needs a content management system. We will also give you information on the abilities of content management systems to help you better understand what they can do. While content management systems may seem complex, their entire purpose is to streamline your workflow and make your life easier.

A content management system allows you to create, manage, store and edit massive amounts of content without any HTML programming skill. Because you are able to edit your content from any computer with an Internet connection, you no longer have to rely on third-party developers or companies to keep your website up to date. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Every company would like to reduce costs and increase productivity.

Also consider our previous articles:

10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS
Goes over what features to look for when choosing a content management system.
10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites
Explains the mistakes we all make when running our websites. The nature of those mistakes varies depending on the size of your company. As your organization grows, the mistakes change. This post addresses common mistakes of large organizations.
Developers Toolbox
Offers tools and resources to help you achieve your goals at a more hands-on level.

1. What Is A Content Management System?

If you have never heard the term before, a content management system (CMS) is a Web-based solution that makes it easy for a company to manage website updates internally. For many companies, updating a website is not something to look forward to because it can be a lengthy and, over time, expensive process. Most companies search for easier means of accomplishing their goals. The solution that many large and small companies have found is a CMS. The easy-to-use application allows your company to control its online identity with little to no knowledge of Web design.

Do I Need a Content Management System?

While you know your business better than anyone else, if you answer Yes to any of the following questions, your company would likely benefit from using a CMS-based website.

Does your company update its website content frequently?
Does your website contain over 10 pages?
Do you constantly outsource simple website updates to third parties?

Although building your website with a CMS may not save you money up front, if you need to be able to manage your own content in a timely manner, you will certainly be cutting costs in future. You will increase your organization’s speed while reducing its effort. With a CMS accessible from any computer with an Internet connection, you will speed up the process of approving, publishing, and updating.

Some CMS’ have in-page buttons to speed up the process of editing content, while preventing users from accessing the admin interface.

Because a CMS has built-in organizational features, content is easier to find and nearly impossible to lose (unless you delete it by accident). You no longer have to spend a lot of time on simple tasks or duplicating your efforts. All of your content is created, managed, published and edited from a single location with very simple, easy-to-use tools. Because using these tools requires very little training, you can start managing your content almost immediately.

If you have identified your business goals and recognized that your website will play a role in them, you should begin the process of implementing your own CMS. There is no set list of requirements for a content management system because each organization has unique needs. Keep your requirements to a minimum, but be sure to allow for the future growth and demands of your company. Enlisting the help of a Web design and development company to assess your needs is a good idea.

2. Essentials Of A CMS

Three key elements that every CMS has, one way or another, are templates, content and meta data. Understanding how these three elements interact with the other CMS features is important: the template is the graphic wrapper of your website; without the actual content, you would have no need for a website; and the often over-looked meta data helps with search engine optimization.

An example of a CMS theme that has the same look and feel on every page.

Templates control how your content looks on the page and are extremely helpful when you have to produce a lot of pages (10+). The template is a graphic wrapper that usually looks the same on every page of the website, regardless of the content. It makes your website’s look and feel consistent. When you want to change the template (say, the color or an image), you have to make the change only once and it will be reflected on every page of your website. Popular CMS’ such as WordPress and ExpressionEngine have many free or premium templates available online that can reduce the cost of and help you customize your system.

This is the typical layout of a WYSIWYG editor, which has features that are standard in word processors today, such as bolding, italicizing and justifying paragraphs.

Content is created, managed and edited independent of all other CMS elements. Content could be anything from the text on your “About” page to the photo on your company press release. All content is normally managed through a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get) that has integrated photo uploading tools. This helps you create new pages on your website, manage and edit existing pages and assign pages to multiple areas without having to copy them.

Facebook does an excellent job of pulling an external page’s title and description meta data when you post a link to it on a fan page or wall.

Meta data plays a key part in search engine optimization (SEO). The great thing about a CMS is that it makes it nearly impossible for you to forget to add this information, thus helping your website’s search and index ranking on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Meta data contains such information as category, author, publishing date, title, brief description and keywords.

One great use of meta data is for automatically adding a title and description to links posted on social media websites such as Facebook. This not only saves you from having to retype this information but keeps your content relevant as well. This information can also be pulled by search engines and any other website where your website is listed, so make sure to put some thought into writing it.

3. CMS Features And Functions

Content management systems come with many standard features to help you create, manage and edit your content. In addition to standard features, additional features can be added to the flexible system framework. These additional features are often referred to as add-on modules or plug-ins. Because a CMS is very flexible, you can use it for a simple website with little content or expand the features to support a complex website with a lot of content. Here is a nice list of high-profile companies that use a CMS for their websites, which will give you a good idea of how far you can expand these systems.

Standard Features

These features are what make your content management system so extensive and highly flexible. They allow you to publish, edit and organize content and manage members, and they contain a variety of built-in security features.

With these straightforward tools, you can see how easy creating and managing your content is.

Publishing is made easy with the in-depth features of a CMS. Without any knowledge of HTML programming, users can create, manage and schedule content with ease. These powerful tools help free up time within an organization by streamlining the whole process. A user can create content, set the category (i.e. the section in which it will be published) and then set it as a draft for later review.

Once the content is reviewed, it can be scheduled to be published, say, seven days from then. Once you have reached that step, the rest of the process is automated. You can write and complete a week’s worth of articles ahead of time and take a vacation without having to worry about publishing new content, because it will publish itself (if you have done your part).

Typography often causes headaches for writers, especially if the writers are not HTML savvy, but the task is made easier with built-in text editors. With most CMS’, your text can be automatically formatted to produce XHTML-valid typography. This saves you the hassle of hand-coding every piece of content and leaves the “fun” bits to the system itself. If you paste disallowed characters, such as curly quotes, bullets or accents, from text editors like Microsoft Word, they will automatically be converted into an HTML-valid equivalent.

Another great feature that many CMS’ include is automatic linking. This feature saves you from having to manually link URLs that you add to your content. All of these features are useful because they make your workflow more efficient when you create a lot of content. And if you prefer to enter your own HTML code every time because you don’t trust the automated process, you have that option as well.

Organization is a key part of maintaining a website. With a CMS, all of the content is stored in one place, only once, and is accessible from any location with an Internet connection. Content can be saved in a number of states, such as draft, published and archived. So you can keep unfinished and finished content in separate places, with different attributes. This is especially handy if you like to write content ahead of time and want to be able to easily find it when it comes time to publish.

Draft: this is work in progress and is not visible to the public.
Published: content that is visible to the public.
Archived: previously published content that is tucked away in a safe place, away from the main navigation. Typically used with blogs.

Member management helps you control all aspects of your website’s users. As an administrator, you have full control over how many people can access your website and how much control they have themselves. This can be extremely useful for a large company, where many people (author, editor, publisher, etc.) are responsible for creating and maintaining content. You control how many hands are in the cookie jar at each stage of the creation process.

Administrator: has complete control over all users and access to all of the website’s administration features.
Editor: can publish and mange their own content as well as other people’s content, etc.
Author: can publish and manage their own content.
Contributor: can write and manage their own content but cannot publish it.
Subscriber: can read content, view and write comments, receive newsletters and so on, without being able to edit anything.

Build-in security measures give you one less thing to worry about. You no longer have to worry about session management, robots trying multiple passwords to hack your account or losing data when processing forms. Almost every CMS has different session management configurations, so you can set the preferences that fit your security needs.

With the built-in “multiple password denial” feature, you can make sure that multiple users cannot access your system simultaneously with the same log-in credentials. In addition, you can automatically lock out users after several incorrect password attempts and allow forms to be submitted only once. This helps prevent loss of data and attempts to hack your system via password.

Additional Features

You can integrate add-on modules, or plug-ins, into your CMS to add value, improve accessibility and increase functionality. With the right combination of features, you can create a website that fits your business plan and helps your company achieve its goals. While the number of additional features that you can add is endless, we will focus on the major ones here.

GoMediazine is a great example of blog integration.

Company blog functionality helps keep your website fresh and can be a very useful marketing tool. While CMS’ have evolved into complete website solutions, they were originally intended to manage blogs. Most blogs were used as personal diaries or breaking news outlets. Adapted to business use, they can be very useful for letting customers and clients know about what’s new and exciting with your company. If you sell products, you can announce new items or sales. Some businesses, such as GoMedia, use their blog purely as a community-building tool to publish educational information.

The Electrorack website is a great example of seamless e-commerce integration.

E-commerce integration makes the user experience on your website a very comfortable one. Being able to sell products and services from within your website would be ideal for any business. Some companies, including Electrorack, have seamlessly integrated their e-commerce solution into their CMS. The user doesn’t even notice that they are jumping from one platform to another because the look and feel are so consistent.

The DesignByHumans website has a great integrated user-based community.

Discussion forums are a complete community-building solution that helps your website’s visitors exchange ideas. Users can create topics, offer feedback on existing topics and interact with other users. How you use a discussion forum depends entirely on your needs. Design by Humans uses its forum to post company news and to let their artists and customers interact for free.

This website has a photo gallery set up on its system for album postings.

Photo galleries are used by millions of people around the world. Online photo sharing is becoming this era’s scrapbooking. With the increase in social media use, people can easily send everyone they know a link to their latest photo gallery. The Memory Museum can display photos easily through the customized gallery on its photography blog. Businesses can use this feature to showcase recent events or feature products. By organizing and displaying photos from within your CMS, you can have all of your content in one location.

National Geographic has an intuitive integrated video management system to help users view their video content through the Web.

Video management helps you organize, edit and distribute video content. You no longer have to upload videos to YouTube or Vimeo and then manage them separately. You can manage your video content just as you manage your website’s pages. You can upload almost any kind of video and then share your albums and videos on your website and on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and Digg.

CMS’ vary in the video management features they offer. But most let you upload multiple files at once (in batch) and automatically create thumbnails. Once videos are in the system, you can track viewer behavior as well as feature content based on popularity. National Geographic integrates videos into its articles and offers them separately for others to embed on their own websites.

Apple offers extensive multi-language support and uses multiple URL extensions to differentiate content.

Multi-language support lets you offer content in multiple countries within a single CMS, allowing visitors to choose their preferred language. While most small companies do not need this feature, it can be helpful. The support features may not actually translate content (and if they do, they won’t do an accurate job), but they do let you feature content in multiple languages, which is extremely useful for corporate websites that operate globally. Because Apple operates in many countries, it offers its website in many languages.

RSS feeds typically show excerpts of content and images (if any), as shown above.

RSS feeds are a really simple way to syndicate the content on your website. With the explosion of RSS readers, which constantly check a user’s favorite websites for new content, RSS feeds have become essential. It does not matter whether you update your website daily or monthly, your readers will be sure never to miss an update. Millions of websites publish RSS feeds on a regular basis, and yours should not be an exception. With people’s attention spans shrinking along with their free time, letting users choose the content they want to read through an RSS feed is helpful.

A newsletter can be a great way to reach out to users who are interested in your content, especially if yours is designed as well as TV Guide Daily Scoop’s.

Newsletters/mailing lists are an extremely helpful feature, especially if you have a lot of users or want to expand your base. Many mainstream users still do not use an RSS reader, and some of them may prefer to receive your content in their inbox rather than by visiting your website every few days. You can integrate newsletters into your system and set the feature’s functionality. Usually, you will be able to manage subscriptions, create a template, compose the newsletter in a WYSIWYG editor, manage your archive and track open/click results.

Google Analytics shows detailed information on your website’s visitors, at no charge.

Statistics/tracking is an essential feature for any website. To effectively run and market a website, you need to know as much as possible about your visitors. Analyzing whatever data is available prepares you to achieve company goals, focuses your marketing initiatives and converts visitors into regular users. You will have information on how many people visit your website, where they live, what content they view and much more. Google Analytics is one of the most widely adopted analytics programs that are available for CMS’. Its popularity is partly due to the immense amount of information it provides about your visitors for free.

Where Can I Find A Content Management System?

You know the size of your organization and how much you can spend on a CMS. These factors are good indicators of where to start your search. Actually finding one can be a daunting task, but if you have a clear idea of what you are looking for, you can quickly weed out the options that don’t fit your needs. Finding a solution that helps your business achieve its goals is important. Many businesses, large and small, use all kinds of different CMS’ to manage their content. Start your journey by using the resources listed below.

Further Resources

Check out the following related articles and resources:

45 Incredibly Useful Web Design Checklists and Questionnaires
You are much less likely to overlook important aspects of your website if you follow this checklist, which covers content, usability, accessibility, standards and more.
15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website
Lists some important things to check before taking your website public.
10 Designer’s Checkpoints To Be Aware Of
A list of things every designer should know about their website.
List of Content Management Systems
A list of notable content management systems that can be used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation. Many of them are built on top of other content management frameworks.
Compare Multiple CMS Solutions (technical)
This is a community service for anyone looking for a means to manage website content.
Many useful resources on how to design and develop for these CMS’, including many free templates:
How To Improve Your Branding With Your Content
Branding experts speak the truth when they say that a winning brand communicates why you are your prospect’s only solution. If you can’t achieve that, at least convey why you are your prospect’s best solution.

(al)

Go to Source

Getting Started With Content Management Systems originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 8, 2009.

WordPress Exploit Scanner helps you keep your install clean

System — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:00:54 +0000

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Security, Blogging, Web services, Web

WordPress has become a victim of its own popularity. The blogging-based content management system powers a huge amount of websites, and has become a target for hackers. Site hacks have been around for a long time, but recently they seem to have evolved.

In the past hackers would gain control of a site just to prove that could, then typically post a quasi-incoherent message on the site to prove their hacking prowess and illiteracy. Now hackers have become more advanced, and hacking has become financially motivated. Hacks include embedding links (some hidden, some not) for the purposes of gaming search engines, and instead of crowing about their conquest, hackers are now trying to hide and cover their tracks as much as possible.

This means that site owners are losing their confidence that their sites have not been compromised. With recent highly publicized exploits that allowed hackers to take control of out-of-date WordPress installations, it became even more important to make sure your site is clean.

If you’re running a WordPress site on your own server, one step you can take to make sure that it is clean is to install and run the WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin. Beware, the exploit scanner is very thorough, and it will likely report a lot (and I mean a LOT) of false positives. It essentially reports any hiding behavior, which some of the plugins on your site might be doing for very normal reasons.

Even with the false-positives, the WordPress Exploit Scanner is a useful tool in any blogger’s toolbox.

WordPress Exploit Scanner helps you keep your install clean originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

WordPress – Download Squad – Blog – Website – Content management system

Go to Source

WordPress Exploit Scanner helps you keep your install clean originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 5, 2009.

Trick Out Google Apps for Your Domain [Google Apps]

System — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:00:20 +0000

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

You registered a domain name and set up the free Google Apps Standard Edition to get Gmail, GTalk, GCal, and GDocs running behind it. Now, take a look at some advanced settings Google Apps (for your domain) makes available.

What the what? Sometimes we refer to all of Google's regular, free, public products as "Google Apps," but today we're referring to the product formerly known as "Google Apps for Your Domain" as just plain "Google Apps." (Note to Google: Come up with a clearer naming convention.) Give this flavor of Google Apps a domain name you own—like yourfamily.org or example.com—and it puts Google services behind it. If you've got a regular Google Account and you@gmail.com email address, that's cool—you can forward mail for you@yourdomain.com address to and from it. But Google Apps lets you create and manage several users associated with your domain and enable various services for them. Google Apps (for your domain) comes in several flavors: Standard Edition (free for individuals and non-affiliated groups, what we’re going to cover here), Premier Edition (for businesses), Non-Profit Edition, Education Edition, and Government Edition.

Nerd Threat Level: Orange

This flavor of Google Apps is only useful to people who own their own domain name (or want to purchase one), and who plan to set up a workgroup behind that domain. For example, if you’re Carol Brady and you register thebradybunch.com domain name, you’re going to want to set up several users at that domain. With Google Apps, Carol could create a greg@thebradybunch.com account, a marcia@thebradybunch.com account, all the way down to Cindy, Bobby, Alice, and Tiger. When Marcia gets hitched? Carol can add her spouse to the family domain. When Alice moves onto greener pastures? Carol could shut down or suspend her account.

The two key advantages to using Google Apps this way are: 1.) you get a custom you@yourdomain.com email address that you can take with you to another email provider if Gmail goes away or you want to transfer it. Your regular @gmail.com address is married to Google’s service, so you can never use it with another provider. 2.) You get system administrator-level capabilities for setting up your workgroup’s IT needs with Google’s easy interface. We’ve already done an an overview of what Google Apps can do; if you haven’t already, here’s how to get it set up with your domain.

If you’re not using Google Apps but you’re interested, know that it takes a low level set of system administrator skills to get it up and running. You’ll need to configure domain settings, such as your email MX record for your domain at your registrar. It depends on who you used (I recommend NameCheap), but most likely your registrar offers a settings panel to configure these things. You’ll also have to verify your domain by adding files to the web site, most likely via FTP or another method.

With me? Good. Take a look at some of the gems buried in Google Apps’ administrative interface. Access it at google.com/a/yourdomain.com, replacing the “yourdomain.com” part with, well, your domain name.

Name Your Domain

Google Apps give you the option to give your domain a human-readable label beyond just example.com. For fun and an inflated sense of self-importance, I called mine "Gina Trapani Enterprises," which you'll see in many of the screenshots here. You can set up your domain's name in the Google Apps Dashboard, under Domain Settings>General. You and your domain users will see this name in your apps tab titles, and when you sign into any service.

Map Multiple Domains to Your Account

If you own multiple varieties of your domain name—for instance, multiple top-level domains like example.com, example.org, and example.net—you can map those to a single Google Apps account using domain aliases. To add another domain to your primary domain, from your Google Apps Dashboard> Domains settings> Domain names, click "Add a domain alias" to set another up. (This is located at https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com/DomainSettingsDomains, but replace "yourdomain.com" with your domain.) As you can see from the screenshot, I've got both ginatrapani.org and ginatrapani.com running under Google Apps. This means that if someone emails user@ginatrapani.org or user@ginatrapani.com, those messages all wind up in the same place. This also works for totally different domains, not just different top-level domains (.org, .com, .net, etc).

Manage Domain Users and Groups

If you've got only a few users to create, you can add them to your domain one by one. However, if you've got a large group, Google Apps offers a bulk upload option. To use it, you make a spreadsheet of user's first and last names, username and password, and upload that to your Google Apps Dashboard. (Visit https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com/Users, but replace "yourdomain.com" with your domain.) You can also create user groups or mailing lists with various flavors of permissions—accessible to the outside world, only reachable from people sending from inside your domain, and with custom roles for each user (member or owner). For example, a softball league might have an "Umpires" group, a "Coaches" group, and a "Players" user group.

Activate Your Services

Once you’ve set up your domain’s users, it’s time to activate the services you want to provide. Google Apps Standard comes with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, an iGoogle-like start page, Google Docs, Sites, and Mobile services. (Sadly, there’s no Google Reader. Wah!) Activate servcies from the front page of your GApps Dashboard, and log in and use them at the /a/yourdomain.com URL provided in green below each service.

If you click on the “More Services” link, you’ll see more (less popular) services, like Contacts (for accessing your contacts list outside Gmail in Calendar and Docs), Sites (which appears to be a simple intranet application), custom applications hosted on Google App Engine, and even Labs services that include a URL shortener and Google Moderator. I haven’t used any other services extensively besides Gmail, GCal, and GDocs in my Apps account, but the more adventurous should dive right in.

Enable Pre-Release Features

One of the biggest complaints about Google Apps accounts is that they’re usually the last to get new and experimental features like Gmail Labs. (Yes, that took an excruciatingly long while.) To speed up the process and get new features in your Google Apps account faster, in your Dashboard under Domain Settings>General, check off "Enabled pre-release features."

(While you’re there, it can’t hurt to check off “Enable SSL” box in the section below that to encrypt your users’ sessions automatically for a higher level of security.)

Create a Catch-all Email Address

One of the advantages of having your own domain name is that you have control and access to every single word combination @ yourdomain.com email address that you want. If you create a "catch-all address," you can forward any email that comes to your domain and doesn't match a user to a specific address. This means that if you wanted to use custom email addresses on the fly—like amazon@yourdomain.com when you register for an account at Amazon, or lifehacker@yourdomain.com when you register for an account at Lifehacker, you can do so without having to create custom addresses. Instead, set up your domain's catch-all address to forward to your user account. To set up a catch-all address, in your Google Apps Dashboard, from the Service Settings drop-down choose Email. There you can either reject mail that comes to addresses that don't match a user, or set up a catch-all forwarding address as shown above.

Share Calendars, Contacts, and GDocs Within Your Domain Only

Where Google Apps really shines is in its workgroup-level permissions-handling. In Google Docs as well as Google Calendar, you can choose to share docs and calendars with everyone within your domain only. That means if someone leaves your team and you suspend their account, they automatically lose access to sensitive workgroup data in one shot. You don’t have to remove them from every doc and calendar you’ve ever shared with them. Conversely, when you choose the “Share” option in Docs and Calendar, you have the option to share with everyone in your domain, instead of individuals, as shown here.

Likewise, Google Apps can automatically share a global address book across your domain users. When you add, remove, or update a user from Google Apps, with Contact Sharing enabled, everyone’s Google Apps Gmail Contacts list gets automatically updated. (So when someone changes his or her name, that change goes out to everyone’s address book in the domain, too.)

Essentially, Google Apps Standard Edition gives you IT director-level administrative control over your workgroup’s domain, for free. For more adventures in Google Apps migrations, see Scott Hanselman’s thorough writeup on how he switched his family from Outlook and Thunderbird to Google Apps.

This article only scratches the surface of what you can configure Google Apps to do. GApps users, what are your favorite tips and settings? Give ‘em up in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, likes her GApps goodness and a portable domain name, too. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Go to Source

Trick Out Google Apps for Your Domain [Google Apps] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 28, 2009.

Export All Your Google Docs to a ZIP File [Backup]

System — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:40:07 +0000

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Google Docs has officially thrown open their data doors, allowing users to back up all their documents to whatever formats they choose and compressed into a ZIP file. It’s serious peace of mind for those concerned about the cloud.

The feature seemed to arrive very recently without any official blog post or explanation, but it seems to be working for more than just a select few testers. The only catch to using it is selecting all your files, as the Google Operating System blog explains. I frequently "hide" (or basically archive) documents I'm not using frequently, so I only had to head to the "Hidden" view in the left-hand view selector—those with more complex filing schemes should try the "All Items" view, or a wildcard asterisk search to pin down what they want.

Once you’ve selected or searched for what you want to export, you’ll have to scroll all the way down until all the documents are exposed, then hit the checkmark box to select them all. Finally, right-click somewhere in your selected docs, choose “Export,” and tell Google how to export your word, spreadsheet, and PDF files.

While you’re securing your Docs data somewhere other than on Google’s servers, take a peek at other free tools to back up online accounts—you'll feel a bit less tethered to the whims of various server administrators and account security representatives.

Google Docs Batch Export [Google Operating System via Digital Inspiration]

Go to Source

Export All Your Google Docs to a ZIP File [Backup] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 26, 2009.

Volery relaunches as Ninite – still a hassle-free way to install great, free software

System — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:40:06 +0000

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

While most users won’t find Ninite all that useful (there is one exception which I’ll be writing about later today), the “computer friend” or family technician will probably love it.

Instead of sitting around while you wait for a dozen of your favorite apps to finish installing on a pal’s computer, just check off what you want on the Ninite web site, launch your customized installer, and sit back while the magic happens. Or raid your buddy’s fridge – hey, even free work deserves some kind of compensation, right?

The list of available apps has increased since Volery debuted, and now includes more than 50. Among them are favorites like Firefox, Google Chrome, Skype, VLC, OpenOffice, Microsoft Security Essentials, ImgBurn, 7-zip, and many others.

As Brad mentioned before, pay-only pro options are coming but details are still a bit unclear. According to the site, they may include things like local and network share download caching, as well as a totally silent mode.

Now, as freeware or donationware I think Ninite makes sense. I’m not sure users who would find the advanced features useful will be all that excited about paying. After all, you can pull off this kind of kung fu with Ketarin and a little bit of elbow grease — and Ketarin is completely free.

Pro tip: when you launch your customized installer on Vista or Windows 7, you may need to right-click and run as administrator for Ninite to install properly.

Volery relaunches as Ninite – still a hassle-free way to install great, free software originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sponsored Topics:
Microsoft – Freeware – Google Chrome – Mozilla Firefox – Microsoft Security Essentials

Go to Source

Volery relaunches as Ninite – still a hassle-free way to install great, free software originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 24, 2009.

CrashPlan – a cross-platform, affordable, powerful backup solution

System — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:20:19 +0000

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Time Machine is good, but sometimes glitchy, with remote disks connected to AirPort Extreme behaving erratically, and other limitations to what you can do – not least that you can’t back your data up online. And that’s where new cross platform backup solution, CrashPlan steps in.

Developers, Code 42 Software offer the solution, making it available free to consumer and small business users, with the more powerful and robust CrashPlan+ service introduced yesterday for enterprise users (which costs $59 US for real-time backup and web restores). In other words, this easy-to-use solution scales for every user, from individual to enterprise users.

The software will automatically back your data up to other computers, external hard drives or even the company’s eminently affordable online back-up service. (And it’s all protected by hardcore security protocols – CrashPlan+ offers 448-bit encryption).

Online service, CrashPlan Central, offers unlimited online backup/storage and costs from as little as $3.50 US per month for individuals and under $5.00 for a family plan (there’s a free 30-day trial, also). You're not required to sign up to CrashPlan Central though, because CrashPlan can back up to friends’ computers for free.

The software is widely compatible – Windows, OS X, Linux or even Solaris platforms are all covered. Users can backup in multiple ways: locally, remotely and online. CrashPlan also offers automatic backup, which the company claims to be so efficient users won’t even be able to tell it’s going on.

The solution reduces file size by using advanced compression technology. It identifies duplicate files and parts of files and stores them only once. When files change, only the new information is backed up.

Once your files are backed up, CrashPlan continuously checks your files are 100% healthy and ready to restore when you need them. If it finds any problems, it fixes them.

CrahPlan+ offers version retention – the ability to specify rules for removing versions and files from your backup after you no longer care about them. It’s also pretty easy to set the frequency of backups and the number of versions to keep, using slider controls to specify versions to retain over specific periods.

The user can set the frequency of backup, for example: hourly for the first week, while a file is being worked on, then retaining fewer versions as the file gets older.

Code 42's co-founder Matthew Dornquast said, "Relying on cloud computing as your only backup can be dangerous, as Sidekick users recently found out. CrashPlan can back up to local disk, a friend's disk, and the cloud in the form of CrashPlan Central. Spreading the risk this way make your data safer."
"Other backup systems use disk space in a comparatively wasteful way. CrashPlan's frugal approach means less disk space and backups are faster and much more efficient."

CrashPlan works on PCs, Macs, Linux and Solaris. It will also back up from any of the operating systems listed to any other platform it supports.

Go to Source

CrashPlan – a cross-platform, affordable, powerful backup solution originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 22, 2009.

Five Best Software Update Tools [Hive Five]

System — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:20:05 +0000

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Rather than wait around for your software to notify you of updates (let’s face it, a lot of applications never will), these five handy tools keep an eye on your apps, alert you when an update’s available, and streamline the updating process.

Photo by Wesley Fryer.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite software update tools, and now we’re back with the five most popular nominees. Read on for an overview of each, then cast your vote for the one you like best in the poll below.

Note: Clicking on the screenshots below will enlarge the screenshots to their original size.

FileHippo Update Checker (Windows, Free)

FileHippo.com is a software download site that hosts tons of both freeware and shareware, so the FileHippo Update Checker is a natural extension of their web site—only better. The lightweight application (the download is 155kb) scans your computer for installed apps in seconds, compares your installed version with the FileHippo.com database to check for new releases, then lists all detected updates in a list in your browser along with links to download your updates. FileHippo Update Checker is a free download for Windows only. (Original post)

Synaptic/APT (Linux, Free)

The Advanced Packaging Tool, a.k.a. APT, is a free tool built into most Linux distributions and many variants that handles the installation, removal, and updating of software packages. APT is a tool that went a long way toward making Linux a bit friendlier to the masses who aren't comfortable installing or compiling software packages on Linux, but it runs from the command line, so it's still not all that friendly to folks joining Linux from the Windows or Mac worlds. That's where Synaptic comes in. Synaptic is a graphical front end to APT that makes the tool wildly more user-friendly, and—yes—it handles checking for and updating software with aplomb. (Folks using Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution among Lifehacker readers, take note: Synaptic will be replaced by the Ubuntu Software Center—another APT-powered update tool—in April of 2010.)

AppFresh (Mac OS X, Free)

AppFresh is an automated update checker for Mac OS X. The tool scans your computer for installed software and checks for new versions against the database at web site i use this. Aside from also encompassing the functionality of Apple’s built-in Software Update utility (if you install this, you won’t need to run that), the app filters your updates and installed applications in a number of useful ways, and provides descriptions of each tool in a handy info panel along with release notes. Perhaps most impressive, AppFresh can automate the update process for many of the apps so you don’t have to go through the tedious process of downloading and installing every single update by hand. AppFresh is free (though currently in a “Development Preview”, which could mean it will eventually cost money), Mac OS X only.

Update Notifier (Windows, Free)

Update Notifier is a small, portable software update utility that quickly scans your installed applications and lists your available updates in a small window, complete with links to sites where you can download updates. The application includes options to filter all your installed applications, updates only, major updates (2.0 to 3.0), minor updates (2.0 to 2.1), and build updates (2.0.0 to 2.0.1). If you register for an account at the CleanSofts.org web site (the companion site to the application), you can also set up a watch list and let the site email you whenever updates to apps on your watch list are available. Update Notifier is freeware, Windows only. It’s also portable, which could come in handy next time you’re heading to your after-hours job moonlighting as your family’s IT person. (Original post)

Secunia PSI (Windows, Free)

Secunia Personal Software Inspector takes a bit more of a doomsday—i.e., security-focused—approach with software update. When you run your first scan after installing Secunia, you'll be presented with a list of insecure apps that have available updates, "end-of-life" apps that are no longer being supported by the developer, and patched apps that have the latest security updates. It's not the most user-friendly of the bunch, but the interface is packed with information and tools for making sure your installed software is running the latest and greatest security updates. Secunia PSI is freeware, works with Windows. (Original post)

Now that you’ve perused the favorites, it’s time to cast your ballot for the software update tool you like best:

Which Software Update Tool Is the Best?(trends)

Surprised your favorite didn’t make the list, or just want to share what makes your software update tool of choice so great? Let’s hear it in the comments.

Go to Source

Five Best Software Update Tools [Hive Five] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 18, 2009.

US Army video surveillance powered by Apple

System — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:00:40 +0000

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Hardware, OS, Software

Security System News is reporting today on the US Army’s decision to use Mac OS X and Apple servers to run four video surveillance systems. When reliability and security are paramount, says Chris Gettings, Mac OS X is the choice. Chris is the CEO and president of video management software manufacturer VideoNEXT.

“You’re not going to have some of the memory-leak issues that seem to plague different versions of the Windows systems,” he says. “And mission-critical customers appreciate that.”

Additionally, Mr. Pat Mercer, who has actually installed Mac-based systems for “…[a] large government entity” notes that low bandwidth, security and reliability are what those IT departments demand. “That’s where the Mac conversation begins,” he notes.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the US Military using Apple products. In May we saw a story of soldiers using the iPod touch as an in-the-field translator. In December of ‘07, we published a post about more wide spread military adoption of Apple hardware and software. Of course, we can’t forget the life-saving iPod.

[Via AppleInsider]

TUAW US Army video surveillance powered by Apple originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Go to Source

US Army video surveillance powered by Apple originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 17, 2009.

NirLauncher puts hundreds of Nirsoft and SysInternals apps in one tidy package

System — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:20:53 +0000

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Freeware, Troubleshooting

NirSoft has developed a truckload of useful little applications over the years, many of which you’re probably carting around on a USB flash drive if you do any admin work.

Now, thanks to the availability of the NirLauncher beta, Nir’s applications are easier to download and use than ever. Included with the NirLauncher executable are more than 100 applications including password viewers for various apps, command line utilities, web video tools, and loads more.

As Nir points out on his blog post, at least one of the apps in the suite is probably going to trigger a false positive from your antivirus app of choice.

Continue reading NirLauncher puts hundreds of Nirsoft and SysInternals apps in one tidy package

NirLauncher puts hundreds of Nirsoft and SysInternals apps in one tidy package originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sponsored Topics:
Download Squad – NirSoft – USB flash drive – Freeware – Winternals

Go to Source

NirLauncher puts hundreds of Nirsoft and SysInternals apps in one tidy package originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 7, 2009.

AVG releases version 9 – Free version to drop on October 15th

System — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:20:09 +0000

Automatically pulled from Google Starred

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Windows

AVG 9 is finally here — and like other 2009/2010 antivirus suites the emphasis in the new version is on speed, performance, and minimizing the impact on system resources.

Even the install process has been streamlined, with developers reducing the number of tedious, finger-numbing mouse clicks from 22 to 11. Thank you, AVG, for doing this. It’s a little thing, but no techy enjoys tapping “next” nearly two dozen times.

Grisoft says scanning speeds have been increased by as much as 50% and that version 9 also reduces Windows boot lag by 10 to 15%. The firewall is more intuitive and has been made less intrusive — another small but welcome change.

The paid versions are available now through the AVG web site, and we’ve been told that the much-loved free version will be good to go in ten days.

If you’re a believer in free antivirus, your preferred version will be up for grabs on October 15th. Keep your browser tuned to free.avg.com — that’s where the download will appear when it goes live. Of course, you’ll also be able to read about the release here at Download Squad.

AVG releases version 9 – Free version to drop on October 15th originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sponsored Topics:
Download Squad – AVG – antivirus – Security – Microsoft Windows