Open Source Activism

Have you ever wondered how to put live streaming video onto your website/blog. Here are some simple steps to do just that.

1. Go to Ustream.tv
2. Click Sign Up (upper left beside login) and fill in required data
3. Fill in Profile data
4. Fill in the Email Contacts and Twitter information if you want to publicize your new stream or skip this step with the small print at below the line
5. Give your show a title. I’d suggest using your website name.
6. Click Save Show - Do Not broadcast yet
7. Customize any settings you wish at this time. This can be done later as well.
8. Click “Go to Show URL” beside the Broadcast Now button
9. Click Embed beneath the video screen, this will display your embed code
10. If you want to allow comments to you live video click the “Embed chat with video stream” check box below the embed text.
11. Click Broadcast Now once done customizing your show settings or after you title your show
12. Click inside the embed text box and hit Ctrl-A (select all) then Ctrl-C (Copy)
13. Open the admin section of your blog/website in a new browser window
14. Create a new page, called Live Video or whatever you want it named
15. Paste the embed code into your page and save it
16. (Optional) For higher quality audio/video install the Flash Media Encoder
17. You are ready to broadcast now. Click “My Shows” at the top pf the UStream.tv window
18. Open your blog page if you want to test the view delay. I would not recommend doing this on a live broadcast, you will be distracted by the delay and the overlapping sound.
19. Click “Broadcast Now”
20. Clcik “Start Broadcasting” to broadcast. This will not save your broadcast unless you also click “Start Recording”
21. When your broadcast is complete remember to click stop. At this time you will have the opportunity to save your recording or delete it.

I hope this was helpful to everyone. Feel free to ask questions if you need further explanation on one of the steps above.

After Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account got hacked, I have been asked for tips for online password security. Here are my basic tips:

• Don’t use your email password on other websites
• Turn off network/file sharing on your laptop while traveling
• Password tips
  • Do not use your address
  • Do not use dictionary words
  • Do not use yours or a family members name
  • Do not use your birthdate, anniversary date, etc.
  • Use a mix of Upper and Lower case letters
  • Replace vowels with numbers (not all of them)
    • 1 for i
    • 0 for o
    • 3 for e
    • 4 for a
  • Add a number to the end of the password
  • Make it at least 8 characters long
• Password Suggestions
  • Use the first letter of each word of your favorite book
  • Use the first letter of each word of a famous quote
  • Take part of 2 words and put them together, like the first 4 letters of a childhood nickname and the last 4 of your pets name
• Change your password every 30-45 days

UPDATE: This section was added since the revelation that the security questions were used to reset the password. The are tips to help with security questions.

• Always create a custom question if available
• DO NOT use information that is public knowledge, like birth city or your home town.
• Most sites allow multiple questions, if so mix up the answers, i.e. use the answer for question 2 for question 1, etc.
• Add a number sequence to your answer
• Gov. Palin used her high school name for where she met her spouse. This was easy to guess since it was public knowledge. A suggestion for this would be to use something like the time of day, or the exact date instead.

You want to make the security questions difficult to guess while easy to remember. It’s your life so you know the details, use them to protect yourself. Generalities will leave you vulnerable.

Hope this helps you and always be very careful online. Remember, if you put it online, there is virtually no way to be 100% safe from prying eyes.

I had one of my Joomla sites get hacked last night. It was on Joomla 1.5.3. The hacker only changed the front page and did not get to the database or other websites on the server thankfully. If you have Joomla installed please update your site immediately to the 1.5.6 Security Release.

See the Joomla Security Blog to review details of the flaw. Basically, someone get the password for the first user in the list. If that use is still the admin user or if they can guess the username of that first user, you are hacked.

I would like to give you some things to think about with your web presence. The first thing is to determine your web address or domain name. The importance of this can not be underestimated in this Internet connected world. The name should be easy to remember and it should be available as a domain name. In addition, make sure the .com, .net. and the .org at a minimum are available. You should consider the .info and .name as well if this is for a business or a political campaign. Your goal is to make a memorable domain. Buying multiple extensions helps protect your domain identity.

Acronyms can be used as well, but again, make sure the full domain is available. One of the main reasons this is important is that your political adversaries will buy the domain name if you don’t. They will then use this to circumvent and distort your message and efforts by stealing your visitors.

The next step is to make use of your entire domain identity. You do this by pointing each extension to your main site URL. You can do this with the following steps.

1. Choose which extension will be your main URL. Most will be the .com extension unless you are an organization, then choose .org. this example use .com as the main url
2. Park the secondary extensions on top of you main domain. This is done via your hosting company.
3. .htaccess specifics (Save a copy of your .htaccess file before making any changes just in case something goes wrong
   • Wordpress Blog Example (assuming name permalinks being used)
     • Make all links remove the www
       

       RewriteCond !^www\.yourdomain\.com !^yourdomain\.com

     • Make all .org extensions become .com
       

       RewriteCond !^yourdomain\.org !^yourdomain\.com

     • Make all .net extensions become .com
       

       RewriteCond !^yourdomain\.net !^yourdomain\.com

     • Repeat for all other extensions
   • Mediawiki Example (assuming name permalinks being used)
     • Make all links remove the www
       

       RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yourdomain\.com

     • Make all .org extensions become .com
       

       RewriteCond !^yourdomain\.org !^yourdomain\.com

     • Make all .net extensions become .com
       

       RewriteCond !^yourdomain\.net !^yourdomain\.com

     • Repeat for all other extensions

There are couple of benefits to following these steps besides protecting your domain identity. The first is that it allows people who forget which domain extension to use to still get to your site. Second, all the different extensions now get counted as 1 by Google and other search engines.