A piece of malware that masquerades as antivirus software has been found on 200,000 web pages or almost 30,000 unique sites, says computer security group Websense. The exploit, which mostly affects sites built with WordPress, places a short piece of injected code at the bottom of a page…When a user loads the page, they’re redirected to a page in the .rr.nu top-level domain that mimics a Windows security scan, then asks them to download a malicious program to supposedly clear viruses from their computer. It’s a scam that’s been running in various forms for years, and Websense says it’s been tracking this particular threat for several months.

They’ve got some info on the header and such - if you use that system it’s worth looking at.

PS: We’re on Expression Engine. You’re safe.

It appears some larger companies have been cold-called with promises to pull them into the WordPress network, and some Ellis Labs customers (Expression Engine and CodeIgniter clients) have been the recipients. Which makes Wordpress tempting…Sure - the software is free, but the corporate hosting costs and support contracts can be eye-watering. Expression Engine has a nominal up-front cost ($300 for a company license) and free support - the opposite of WP. But because WP appeals to the instinct of getting something for nothing, it’s gaining traction more quickly than any other CMS. 

The big trick, it seems, is get the foot in the door, get the software on the customer’s iron and then “blog the hell out of it”. Then they’re hooked into a service system once they realize their business depends on it (and that they’ve outsourced their control). Seriously, “self-hosted starting at $15,000 a year” is never the price - it’s the starting point - and it’ll be far more expensive. Having worked for the #1 and #2 online newspapers in the Netherlands, I’ve experienced this “bait-and-switch” first hand, and I’ve seen many people lose their jobs because of presumed promises. 

In a previous work life, in a now-defunct company (an arm of a publish group that was once the defacto leader) we went through the same cycle. It was a classic example of a top-heavy corporate collapse…too many cooks, not enough ingredients…and for the most part fueled by the move to WordPress.

We used a several products, all tuned to the project needs. We started migrating out of an existing, aging standard (if you want a hint, thing 10 minus 4, separated) and started moving to a new, more flexible and powerful platform. Were re-directed and railroaded into using WP via a political choice (eg, it’s wasn’t a technical choice). Development - which required huge customization of the WP software, took months longer than expected. Of course the technical arm was blamed because Corporate were sold something else.

Corporate Project Managers decided to bring in external developers with specific experience in WP (hell, we only had 20+ people with decades of experience with PHP, SQL & Oracle, CodeIgnigter, C++...how could we be trusted?) and the development time only got longer. Unified corporate services (like the portability of user accounts)  became fragmented, developers were constantly being redirected by featuritis, and some websites never were finished. From WordPress came service outages that lasted days (we never had more than minutes in the past), constant security patches and updates, and a continual chase where, if you cared to look up, became obvious that for business (who appreciate fixed costs) that the path we took was more expensive than they expected. But clearly it had to be the fault of the developers - management was promised that WP was cheap and easy!

The Architects left, then Development managers. Front-End teams were the first to feel the cut, then a bit later back-end developers. Project websites closed or were sold off, their managers being fired first, then the teams migrated into corporate, then disposed of soon afterwards (Except email marketing - luckily having a 1998 skills set is still required). The site catalog was cut to 1/3 of previous size (we did over-segment the market, but not by 2/3rds) and crown jewels were sold off. In the end, the company management left, unable to steer their own course. The company was closed, remaining assets sold-off and small chunks of the remaining sales groups were absorbed into the publishing parent.

And of the sites? Those few that made it are hardly changed from pre-WP versions 2 years old. Most are gone - ah, but the programming mess remains! Here’s a nice trick - Every site requirers a separate account, and some of them have very interesting logic. Ever heard of a site where you couldn’t recover your password by sending an email? Yeah, me neither, but in these cases you needed your email and your handle - not login name, account handle - to recover the account. Let’s face it…that never happens, so old users just had to sign-on as new users. If you’re a kid from 9-16, what difference does abandoning an account mean? Nothing to the kids - but if you as a company can show constant growth in registrants, even if it doesn’t match the page views even remotely, then you can tell your ad network you’re growing. There’s a word for that.

Yeah, I’ve been holding that in for a while now…

Let’s recap:
So to keep costs down, they grabbed free software, segmented development, hired externals to start building without clear, unified development goals (which only doubled costs), dropped or sold-off corporate assets, lost or abandoned market share and let the company collapse onto itself from the top-down.

I’m pretty sure that part wasn’t in the cold call.

1) The press wildly inflates speculation on the new Apple (insert your favorite device here) - eg, iPad with stereo speakers, card reader, dueling cameras, supre-hires screen…all kinds of stuff

b) Then the speculators and naysayers come out, and also odd bits of personal bad news - eg, standard ram, no card reader, Steve very sick, Jony Ive possibly leaving Apple. The stock take a significant dip. Larger stock groups buy in.

iii) The products come out, the bad news is debunked, and generally the reception to the (product) is good. The stock jumps back up in a few days. Big groups sell out.

Profit!
Cynical, repeatable profit.

I expect to see an announcement card for and event soon, then hear about earnings successes in this months’ conference call, and then the event where the next iPad is announced. Maybe a thinner, DVD-less MacBook Pro (I just got a current MacBook Pro so it’s time to reveal a new one, of course).

Boom - boom - boom.

With Cook still working behind the scenes as COO, Ive still designing, Shiller still shilling, Apple continues to fire on all cylinders.

Happily, Andy Clark from Stuff and Nonsense, a UK design site, has taken upon himself to supply us a great starting point: his contract killer, a great starting point for an easily-read, socially-friendly contract that you (probably) won’t ever need a lawyer for. Of course, it probably wouldn’t be bad to run it by a lawyer in your part of the world, just in case… 

On October 7th, Facebook announced it would begin to let people download all the personal information they’ve put on Facebook. All you need to do is:

It will take a bit of time for Facebook to compile it, and once you get a note that it’s ready you’ll have to prove it’s your data, but boom - one nicely organized zip file with all your assets. You prove it’s your data by identifying friends in photos not in your account, so a hacker would have to know you fairly well to download the file.

Off you go!

This is just a bit of an interesting infographic, but as with anything on “teh interwebs”, take with some grains of NaCl. For instance, the caloric intake for an average US adult is very likely wrong. A thread on Reddit has noted that the CDC has established an average US adult male consumes “2475 calories and 1833 calories (per day) for females”, not 4000-calories per day as in the graphic. There’s a list of references in the graphic - check them out.

What this does show however is that while there’s often skewed information on the net, it can lead to good conversation and fact-checking, especially through sites like Reddit. You just have to learn which “reddits” are worth reading and which are snark-factories.

Ultimately, it seems that the goal of the Internet is actually working - that the demographic born to the Internet is smarter, more politically active and more willing to share America, but that’s another post…

It seems the initiative died last week, or month…hard to tell…and the connecting website that makes all of this possible just disappeared. It’s probably not the workload for writing, but instead I believe there was a great underestimation of how much coordination was required to get this going.

I too found myself lost for words. Hopefully should this happen again, we’ll all be better prepared. 

Until that time, I return to my regularly unscheduled schedule.

Read it.
Learn it.
Live it.

And download the PDF for when you stupidly remove the LucidaGrande.dfont from your /System/Library/Fonts/ directory.

No…I admit to nothing.

Caveats:
• This was developed for the EE 1.6x but it should be very similar in 2.1x installations
• Requires the use of jQuery for the Control Panel extension and the commercial Multi-Language Module from PutYourLightsOn.net
• This presumes 2 languages, but more can be used following the guide
• We try for pure EE-solutions whenever possible - no hacking or php/js and exposing the security
• Since we’re describing EE tags, normally they can’t be displayed inline (because the system immediately processes them). Using the code tag will ruin the reading, so when you see something like [base_path] realize the parenthesis are replaced by brackets.

Start - Setting-up the different language paths and removing the index.php from the URL:

We’re presuming you have a default language (in my case English) set in your General Preferences > Site Language setting. All you need to do is add the module, add the extra languages and add some files to make sure the [base_url] starts out of the correct path.

• Install the module (follow the directions on that - easy enough)

• Add a additional language in the module using the correct ISO 639-1 code for your extra language (en = english, nl = dutch, es = spanish, etc)

• Add a directory to the root of your site for each additional language using the matching ISO 639-1 code. This is always lower-case.

• Modify your path.php file to add 2 new variables [base_url] & [user_language]. The important bit is at the bottom:

changes to point to your default language (replace “mysite” with your site and your particular base language)

• Now add .htaccess to the root using the EXCLUDE LIST method of removing the index.php. You’re including only the directories you want the system to look into:

• The module comes with spanish and italian directory file example - use one of them and move the 3 files to the server
- index.php = you can leave alone
- .htaccess = modify the path in the Rewrite Rule to point to your desired language, in my case it’s Dutch

- path.php = modify the last lines like the above default language, but this time to add the new language path

There are enough folks out there having trouble with removing index.php - removing two of them is worth pointing out. This caught me a few times.

The module’s instructions are clear enough; there are 2 basic methods for language replacement: the tag method, where you add a tag via the module and it does the swapping:

and Conditionals based on your current [base_path]:

You’ll note that it uses the default [title] but also an alternative [title_] field. In my custom fields, right after title I’ve added a title_nl field, keeping the lowercase iso convention. This is the method of doing dynamic content - each language element having its own field (I loop through using a FieldFrame set, for example).

Links are your first enemy in multiple languages, so you need to find an alternative to [permalink] and [auto_path]. Let’s re-write that example to add a link:

So what happens here is that depending on your current [base_path], the link does away with the [title_permalink] and rebuilds the path from the root up to the article. If I had a templates directory called “site” and in there an article view page called “view”, it’d look like this:

Pagination doesn’t use [title_permalink] but rather [auto_path]. Specifically for Pagination, you’d want to add a new [paginate_base] parameter to your [entries] tag:

This points the Pagination auto links used by [if next_page] [if previous_page] to the correct language.

The next time you’ll see [auto_path] is in a site search, and unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a similar method for a search_base. What I’ve done in this situation is to use the weblog_id to point me to the correct category link:

and then just use different results pages for each language.

To return podcasts to a playlist, you have to use the iTunes 9 trick:

Then your podcasts return in a playlist in the correct order, but you’ll have to toggle it on again to update the playlist list.

This bug has existed since iTunes 9 and it seems to only be getting worse. Hopefully Apple will fix it soon - I can’t believe they don’t want us to listen to podcasts in a playlist! C’mon Apple - fix this already!

Not Apple’s fault you got your hopes up. You wanted to believe in every fantasy out there and so you did. That’s about your religion - not Apple.

Then there’s the Whispers. About a sales rep speaking higher than his pay grade, he’s a “insider with exclusive access”. Some CEO who blabs for a bit of self-promotion on every front page (but he’s not at the event…hmmm).  Part of this is genuinely newsworthy - but for week’s we’ve seen fanboy renders and ridiculous articles that make the product everything from the Second Coming to the moment Apple lost it. Speculation, endless speculation, that drives traffic, that angers readers, that drives traffic, that engorges fanboys, that drive’s traffic, that also drives stock prices unnaturally high in expectation and hinders entire market segments. If you’re financially involved in Apple, in some commercial way, shape or form, I’d imagine you’d feel it almost your ouroborostic duty to create, conflate, regurgitate and re-gorge on every other bit of speculation out there.

Not Apple’s fault your stock dropped after the launch. You wanted people to believe you knew something you didn’t, that you were something you were not. Makes writing easier if you get your own “Princess Diana” to promote/slate/reconcile, I guess. A proper journalistic source? Sorry - you don’t even appear relevant this morning - you’ve been caught with a sock in your pants.

This is not a healthy ecosystem. Replace “the media” with “the banks” and We The People would have had them in front of Congress by now.

If you’re disappointed in Apple this morning, I’d say you’re blaming the wrong people.

I say that because people today poo-poo the Mac and it’s graphic interface, and there are generations living now that have no idea what it’s like to boot up a tape-drive and wait 5 minutes for a text adventure to start. And rightly so: these were neanderthal systems and the more advanced graphic systems left this branch of early hominid-interface far, far behind. You have to know where you came from to appreciate where you’re going.

For years, there was a constant howling about what the next steps should be. I genuinely missed my Newton (I still have one, a 2100, sitting on a shelf - near pristine and unused) but the downsides were too much to bear in this connected world. For years, at every coming of a MacWorld, the whispers that a new “tablet was coming” drove bloggers into a delicious madness.

Such speculation considered the Tablet to be a small, light Mac. With Apple’s current success, desires morphed it into a big iPhone. Big iPhone = Dumb Tablet, at least to me. The core of the iPhone’s success is it’s ability to move small bits of information to and from you - a photo, a video, a web page, a tweet. Small screen, small consumption.

Enter the Apple Invite for the 27th of January 2010:

Looks like whatever it is, it’s primarily a creative device. The Zapruderization of the invitation has already fueled another day’s speciousness and speculation. The truth is, as we always already know, not to be found on webpages anywhere. This is the age of the news we want, not the news we need.

I know nothing other than what I’ve experienced with the iPhone (v1 & v3), my Newton, a decade of experience with Macs and my desire for a Star Trek slate handed to me by a pretty yeoman. But since blogs are a suckers game…I’m in.

What I’d like to think is this:

But that’s all I can guess at, given what we all know; anything more is a mugs game. I’ve got the credit card warmed-up and parked in the garage, raring to go. I’ll let you know what happens to my bank balance in a bit over a week..

Is it too late to make a resolution?

Die, die, die…

As you know, we’ve banded together to motivate ourselves to actually (gasp!) write in our own blogs. To actually put content…up.

Shame, shock, horror - doesn’t everyone perpetually blog?

Answer: No - not if you have a life.

Some of us have to be prompted, shamed, encouraged, lead by a carrot on a stick, and if not, then beaten with that stick.

Writing can be the most frustrating thing in the world. It can also be the most transformative thing too - but part of the process is getting past the “have. to. write”-pressure and setting one’s thoughts free. Perhaps this initiative is a good thing - I’ve already written two posts this month, as well as half-built a new portfolio website. Procrastination is falling by the wayside, and co-incidentally my intake of Nespresso is on the rise.

(Hmmm - Nespresso. Say what you want about Nestlé, but they’re doing the Nespresso brand the way it should be.)

Anyhoo - it’s motivation, and all motivation is good.

So I hope to see you, fellow Project 52’ers, here and there. Check out the Google Groups Project 52 discussion and if you like it, come join us. I expect this to take shame some time, as we all learn from each other and create communal threads (perhaps every week a new discussion point might be fun..)

And off we go!

Let’s cover apprehension first: I’m a web developer, and unlike many of my peers I’ve worked with only 2 big companies over the past 10 years, not hop-skipping from one job to the next. There are pluses and minuses on both sides, but for an American, moving to another country - different language, different work/life mix, different mindset…different everything - the best thing to integrating into a culture (aside from marrying someone there) is getting stuck into a company.

The thing is - as a non-EU citizen, you need to have the company sponsor you. That means them navigating the changing channels of immigration policies, tax credits and financial barriers, etc. Very few are inclined, unless you possess a skill that is in need, and happily web development is such a skill. The problem is, ultimately, you can be too jacketed in a company, especially when they know you can’t actually leave without leaving the country as well.

I’ve been fortunate in my first two companies - the initial group were tied to government and big business, and could move glacially slow, but we were asked to always innovate and so we went from FrontPage websites to Flash (yes, sorry, it was 2000) and up to Broadvision and Documentum-based sites. The latter also goes to show that often large organizations are moved to change not by needed technology but by valued partnerships. Documentum, a great package for document storage and archival, can’t make a website without considerable back-end programming. Ultimately we moved on to a smaller application, ExpressionEngine, that did more than either of the previous powerhouse efforts - but only with major management changes.

The next jump went to a company who has long-since run fast and actively tried new technologies, but it too suffered from politics and internal wrangling. I came to work on the EE platform, and while I (and others) could try many options, the final choice of Wordpress was made long ago, for reasons long since invalidated. So, considering the number of css developers alone who can mark-up a WP template, it’s no surprise they no-longer do new development in-house - far too expensive. Still, you grow and learn, and they were fantastic people to work with—one of the few groups I’ll genuinely miss.

So here I stand - where to next?

I love the Netherlands, but they’re often more management-driven than solution-driven. Do I work for another company? Do I start out on my own. My heart says the latter, but previous work habit instills apprehension, and that can divert energies. Must. Stay. Focused.

Where to next…that’s the $2010 question…

So what do I moan about now?