Category Archives: Software

Tips, Tricks, Enhancements

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I love the things that make my job easier, make a task simpler, or help protect me in the event of a problem. I collect lists of these things so that I can share them with you, my dear blog readers. Enjoy!

Lazarus
A web browser add-on that auto-saves any web form you are filling out. Never again will you lose that perfect Facebook political argument reply you’d been working on for an hour until your browser crashed. It be free. It be cool.

Feedly
This is what has replaced my Google Reader account now that Google has announced it will be shutting down Reader this summer. It’s simple, though it takes a little getting used to, and it will import all your feeds from Google Reader automatically.

Mailplane
My favorite way to use GMail and Google Calendar on my Mac(s). It lets me keep multiple accounts open at once in a tabbed interface, seamlessly switching back and forth to get things done. It also works with Google tasks.

Category: Browsers, Internet, Links, Software

Leaving Evernote

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Leaving EvernoteYesterday I got the email that millions of other people got in regards to Evernote resetting my password due to someone hacking into their user data system.

The investigation has shown… that the individual(s) responsible were able to gain access to Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts, and encrypted passwords. Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Evernote are protected by one-way encryption. (In technical terms, they are hashed and salted.)

After following the very geeky discussion about it in /r/netsec I was left wondering if I was placing too much faith in Evernote to protect all the brain dumps, notes, files, and private information I like to store in it.

Cloudy with a chance of security breach

After stumbling across this blog post entitled “Evernote doesn’t really care about security” I became convinced that it was time to leave Evernote. The security breach was actually the last straw in a number of things that have been bugging me more often than not — frequent crashes being the chief one.

Sometime around when Evernote added Skitch, the whole shebang started crashing on me frequently. I’m a premium Evernote user, and dealing with the app crashing multiple times a day quickly became aggravating. It has been almost unusable at times. That does not bode well for something you need to access frequently throughout a given day.

Then there were the issues where my notes were not synching between my laptop and my desktop, which I don’t really need to go into. You’ve probably had them too, if you are an Evernote user on more than one computer.

Lastly, I mentioned I was a paid Evernote user, but I never found myself using the paid features. The other big issue for me was with tagging – I would add tags to notes but then forget about them and never use them to find things. The inability to organize notes hierarchically is very necessary to me as someone who thinks that way due to my years as a sysad and developer, and I couldn’t get used to everything having to be arranged with tags.

Faith In The Cloud?

So my question yesterday became: “Where do I put all this info I have in Evernote that is more secure and can be synched and access between my phone, laptop, and desktop?”

Security experts mostly agree that putting secure information in the cloud is not a very good idea. But I want to have faith that it can be, and there are companies making an effort in that regard. I turned to a solution that was right under my nose: Google Drive.

Why Google Drive over Dropbox or some other service? Because it integrates easily with everything I already use, and more and more features and interactions with it are becoming available. I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.

I’m still working on moving everything over from Evernote to Google Drive, and it’s not a simple process, but I think I will be able to live with it. I’ll also be able to rest a little better knowing that, while my data is still in the cloud, Google seems to value it more than Evernote.

Other fed up users are coming up with their own solutions for replacing their faith in Evernote.

What will be yours?

Category: Internet, Practical Security, Security, Software, Tech | Tags: , ,

Evernote 5 for Mac

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I love Evernote and I use it a lot to keep my life organized. Still, I wish it had a few things that it doesn’t:

  • Notebooks full of notebooks. I’d like to nest things more deeply. It keeps things organized better than tags.
  • The ability to work with non-Evernote-approved scanners. I want to scan my receipts, docs, and pics to Evernote without having to buy a new scanner/printer.

That’s about it. Until now.

Evernote 5 came out the other day for Mac, and I gotta say I don’t like the new interface. It feels like it introduced extra steps to find things. I’m not crazy about it at all, and I’m hoping there will be a way to revert to a simpler interface.

What do you think?

Category: Software

So long, old friend.

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After 10 years, I am quitting Firefox and moving to Chrome. This is a big change for me. I’ve used Firefox since it was called Phoenix. I’ve written magazine articles about how much I loved it. I’ve rubbed elbows with its developers and championed its cause.

But I gotta move. Chrome has evolved and has surpassed my old friend. I do not feel great about having to depart from my allegiance with the browser that began the death of Internet Explorer, but I really can’t justify clinging onto it anymore.

Since becoming a full-time Mac user last year, I’ve noticed the flaws of Firefox. The locking up, the memory leaks, the slowness. It has become quite annoying.

Now that I’m a full-time user of Google Apps at work and at home, it just makes sense.

Now that my favorite plugins for Firefox are all available for Chrome, and even some new ones that are awesome, it just makes sense.

So after I gave Chrome a decent trial this week (something I’ve done in the past just for kicks), I have decided it is time.

Category: Browsers, Internet, Software

Better WP Security

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I have been cleaning up a lot of hacked websites/malware and doing security updates and hardening for WordPress websites lately. Ideally I’d be able to lock down a client’s server more thoroughly, implement a good firewall, and run some intrusion detection software, but since many people can’t afford this sort of thing and are on shared hosting environments, I have to lock down what I can.

For hardening WordPress I have traditionally been a fan of Secure WordPress, but lately it has seemed a little too simplistic and not proactive enough. Malware infestation on websites has been spreading like wildfire lately for whatever reason, so staying on top of things is a must.

WordPress Firewall 2 seemed to work pretty well in the past, but it would often kick back false positives which caused issues with plugins and prevented things from working that should otherwise not have a problem. Not to mention it hasn’t been updated in a while.

I was happy to see that Sucuri made their premium plugin free recently. It is pretty slick and has some cool features, and I really like what Sucuri does for web security.  But with this plugin they are trying to walk the line between simplicity for the end user and comprehensiveness for being secure. It’s kinda weird to use for that reason, as you don’t really get a good understanding of what is being done behind the scenes.

I tried this a few weeks ago and orginally gave it up, but I have since returned to Better WP Security, especially now that I can specify an email address to send notifications to and can disable warnings in the WP admin area. These are things that mattered a lot to me, as they would inevitably lead to clients or bosses emailing me asking what all these warnings were. The recent update to the plugin fixed all that, and I’m a happy camper.

I really like that the plugin shows you what needs to be done, makes it easy to do it, and keeps you well informed about what is going on behind the scenes. There is intrusion detection, there are logs, there are password strength policies, there are database tweaks, there are database backups, and there are many other ways to tighten up security. You don’t find so many useful tools in one place with any other plugin.

You should try it – Better WP Security (website) – Plugin Download

 

Category: Internet, Security, Software, WordPress

Linux Is Here To Stay

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You may have read here before about my ventures with Linux on the home pc, where things must work for the whole family, not just me the Linux Geek.

Back in March or so, I grew tired of Windows XP on my home desktop. I was sick of having to keep up with WGA cracks (ahem), sick of bloated crapware, and not interested whatsoever in Vista.

So, I installed RedHat Linux (Fedora Core 6 to be exact). This was highly tolerable for a couple of months since I was used to using it at work all the time, and I am well versed in RedHat operating systems. However, it caused issues for Alicia because it just wasn’t intuitive enough, and it didn’t just work. There was always some fingling needed to be done in a terminal window.

I decided a few weeks ago that I would install Ubuntu 7.4 Fiesty Fawn, and I haven’t looked back since. When I learned that Dell was shipping PC’s with Ubuntu instead of Linux, I knew it must be time. The installation was fast, and it was insanely simple to do. The Ubuntu developers have thought of everything, and it seems like they are driven to make something with mass appeal that is better than Windows. In my opinion, they have.

It just works. Plugged in my iPod, it worked. Plugged in my old NTFS data drive, it worked. Plugged in my USB card reader, it worked. All of it works. Needed a codec to watch some video clip, and Ubuntu went and found it easily, letting me start watching within seconds.

The final test of Ubuntu’s readiness for the masses was how well my wife handled it. So far, the only complaint is that she cannot listen to music she bought from iTunes (until I work around that). So all in all, Ubuntu passes with flying colors.

Category: OS's, Software, Tech
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