Enjoying being alone in your Internet?

Don’t get it?

Catch Eli Pariser’s talk on TED about how algorithms could be shaping our view of the world.

Every year, thousands of entrepreneurs, change-makers, innovators and scientists gather in Long Beach, California for TED, the world’s leading thought conference. In 2011, the audience included executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and many other Silicon Valley startups.

So when Eli Pariser explained the filter bubble concept and then called on them from the main stage to change how they do business, it wasn’t at all clear how they’d react. Watch the video to see what happened:

YES! but smart jerks!

“SQL injection is a code injection technique that exploits a security vulnerability occurring in the database layer of an application. The vulnerability is present when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and thereby unexpectedly executed. It is an instance of a more general class of vulnerabilities that can occur whenever one programming or scripting language is embedded inside another. SQL injection attacks are also known as SQL insertion attacks.”

With all the new changes that happened the last months I had to redesign my Business cards.

Thanks to Lisiane‘s help I was able to do end up with something not to bad.

However, I’m still looking for a logo, a cool font and an online printing service.

If you have any suggestions don’t hesitate to leave a comment!

1. GTranslate:  Using Google technology it easily translates your site into many languages (up to 58).  This would definitely be helpful on my own site I am building for my Homeowner’s Association since we have many immigrants.
   You can find out more about this extension at: GTranslate
2. AcyMailing Starter:  A very helpful tool for managing the distribution of newsletters and other materials, mailing lists, etc.
   You can find out more about this extension at: AcyMailing Starter
3. JS Yahoo!Weather:  Provides local weather information.  Uses Yahoo weather RSS feed.  This would be a nice addition to my Web site where my focus is on my local neighborhood.
   You can find out more about this extension at: JS Yahoo!Weather

By visiting www.joomla.org you can find these and many, many more extensions!!

Every blogs, all the news and everybody is talking about the today event: The IPad2.
But I’m not the everyday average geek.
I won’t let me drag by Steve Jobs in that vicious circle that is going to make me beg in front of an apple store to put my hands on this shinny tablet.

No no no guys! We are so much better than that!

Today, it’s the day we won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.

I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.

…..

Well… If I could afford it… I might consider it but for now:

I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.
I won’t talk about Apple and the Ipad2.

WHY STEVE!!!
WHYYYYYY!!!!!

As hard as it is to find the time to blog on a week with just 7 days, I thought to talk to you about security; and when I say “I though”, I of course mean that I have been ask to talk to you about security ^^.

It is mainly when we deal with personal data and financial transactions that we need security. We want to make sure that your money is going to go on the right already-overflowing-with-money pockets.
Corporations are ready to pay a big deal of cash to make sure they are not going to have any problem of… public relation ^^.

That’s the million dollar (probably trillion dollars) question that has been answered by Netscape in the early 90s with SSL 1.0. We know that the internet without SSL is insecure, since data are routed all over the place in plain, decrypted form. So how can we start a secure session knowing that the medium is insecure? Well, it actually takes a pretty cool algorithm that I won’t waste my time trying to explain!
Yep I have no idea how this algorithm looks like. I ignore it and it ignores me ^^.
So, Netscape came out with this new SSL 1.0 protocol (secure socket layer); and with the magic only known from the true and pure computer geeks it has been upgraded to SSL 3.0 in 1996 and it’s now SSL 3.3 since 2008 also known as TLS 1.2 for Transport Layer Security.

PNG is not GNU… you’ve got to love it!

So, how does that work?

Ok let’s take an example by saying that I want to blackmail one of my buddies with pictures taken on a beach of South of France. You know… the kind of beach you don’t want to have any pictures taken ^^. Let’s call that fiend Gislaine.
So I want to send to Gislaine a package that she and I are the only one to know the content. The SSL method tells me to send to Gislaine a package with a lock that I am the only one to have the key. I send it to her. She can’t open it but instead she is going to put her own lock and then send it back to me. Now, I can safely remove my lock knowing that Gislaine is the only one able to open the last lock. And finally Gislaine is going to receive her package with only her lock and open it.
What SSL does not tell you is that Gislaine have an impressive amount of weapons and that she is going to beat the crap out of you… or me in that particular case.

Blackmail implies backfire!

That’s how SSL works. Every time you open a browser and point it to an address with https:// in the address bar, that same package/lock scenario is going on in the form of a handshake. In the case of the internet though, the locks are two independent private key / public key algorithms, one locally and one remotely.

So now that you know that the Internet is a little bit more secure don’t hesitate to send me your social security number, your bank account information, any financial goods or some compromising pictures of Gislaine at vincent.vieules@gmail.com.

Have a fun and secure trip on the Internet.
And don’t forget: The worst is never disappointing!

I was supposed to explain you what are the different user types of a WP blog.
So for now let’s take a look here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities#Administrator

Summary of Roles
• Super Admin – Someone with access to the blog network administration features controlling the entire network (See Create a Network).
• Administrator – Somebody who has access to all the administration features
• Editor – Somebody who can publish and manage posts and pages as well as manage other users’ posts, etc.
• Author – Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor – Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish them
• Subscriber – Somebody who can only manage their profile

PS: At least we all know I’m an awesome user of google ^^

I hope everybody knows what CMS stands for, or at least what it is…
No, it’s not the newest SMS/MMS technology -_____-‘

So for those of you who just arrived from Egypt and Tunisia and haven’t spent a minute on the Internet since the dot-com bubble of 1999, here is a short definition.

What is this!?

“A content management system (CMS) is a computer software system for organizing and facilitating collaborative creation of documents and other content.” – Wikipedia

A CMS is a server based alternative to traditional tools used to create and maintain web sites. In short, a CMS is software that makes it easy for non-techies to organize and manage web content. It simplifies the process and puts the website back into the hands of content creators, allowing you to spend more time on what really matters— the adventures of the surviving passengers of Oceanic Airlines flight 815, er… I mean: your content duh!

And you know what’s more awesome!? It’s Open-Source!
Everybody can contribute to improve the CMS in itself and it’s free to use!

In conclusion: It’s not going to cost you a penny, it’s very handy if you too are not capable of writing 2 lines of PHP without your brain freezing and are narcissistic enough to think that what you think deserves to stay on the World Wide Web forever!

A Name!! Who gives a %$&* about a name!?

WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, Liferay, eZ Publish, Mambo…
I can tell that you are impressed by my knowledge! Well… be more impressed by this list of CMS on Wikipedia.

My all time favorite is WordPress (WP).
It’s probably not the most sophisticated but it’s “user friendly” enough for me and my developer capabilities. I heard some comments saying that WP is not a CMS because it’s more appropriate for blogs and not websites.
WROOOOONG!
WP is here to help you manage your content so by definition it is a CMS. And as you will see with few examples you can make blogs look like websites with WP.

But basically there is no perfect CMS; it depends of what you want to. For example, a company with a more complex workflow would prefer enterprise solutions like Webspace or Liferay. And I’m not even making this up; it’s what my company actually uses.

The show must go oooon!!

It’s time for some real life examples of what you can achieve with a CMS such as WP.

The two examples below were design by Lisiane Lagouarde, a friend of mine who currently works as a Web Project Manager in France. She designed those 2 websites using WP. You can find other examples of websites made with different CMS by clicking on one of the two pictures below.

And before the next shout out, to another of my co-workers, take a look at what my awesome web design skills can do:

Let’s put WP aside now and take a look at the 2 next examples. They are made with Drupal by my current boss Jenny Cohan who’s a Senior Web Producer at the National Democratic Institute (NDI). As you can see Drupal is more a CMS to create websites then blogs. But it also implies that it’s harder to configure in order to have something that really fits your needs.

The Lesson :

CMSs have been created in order to make website design accessible to everyone so that we may all contribute to the World Wide Web. And frankly it is like marriage: for better or worse!

It also helps businesses to make great websites for a limited cost by facilitating the development process.

But my own personal conclusion is that content management systems are made for lazy free-riders like me who still need to figure out how to use the office coffee machine… at least for now!

So if you too never have the motivation to create a website/blog feel free to join me… CMS made it easy ^_^

It’s after a long and awful evening that I decided to start on a new project: Provide to the grown up geeks a library of stuff to do. It’s time for you like for me to reconnect with all the geekiest things out there. If you don’t have time to search on all those specialized websites to find something to do for the next 2 hours, www.whats2geek.com will be for you!

The context: ITD210 at NOVA community college
A web development class I decided to start about 3 weeks ago in order to move on. Stop slacking on some foreign college degrees and start showing off!

The awful nigh: The day after tomorrow
If you too, you felt like you lost 2 hours of your life watching this movie, you know how I felt all night long. I prepared myself for class; my ATM told me that I had insufficient funds; I got lost on the highway; arrived to the campus to learn that the school was closed; got busted by a cop to take a wrong turn on an empty parking lot.

The Lesson: The worst is never disappointing!

NewsGeek issue 1 of Whats2Geek

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