November 2012 archive

Nov 21

My Report Into FIR #678 – Facebook Mobile Sharing, Barriers To Blogging, and Social Media with Israel/Hamas

In this week's For Immediate Release episode #678 on Monday, November 19, 2012, my report covered:

If you are a FIR subscriber, you should have the show now in iTunes or whatever you use to get the feed. If you aren't a subscriber, you can simply listen to the episode online now. There is a TON of other great information in the weekly episode relevant to those involved with PR, marketing and other forms of communication, so I'd encourage you to give it a listen.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Nov 20

DNSSEC Workshop at Japan’s Internet Week 2012 on Wednesday, Nov 21, 2012

Internet Week 2012Are you attending Japan’s Internet Week 2012 in Tokyo this week? And do you want to learn about how DNSSEC makes DNS and the Internet more secure?

If so, there will a DNSSEC workshop/tutorial tomorrow, November 21, 2012, from 9:15 to 11:45 in Akiba Hall.  More information can be found at:

https://internetweek.jp/program/t9/

As I am not able to read Japanese, I am relying on Google Chrome’s translation but what I see there sounds like quite an interesting session with multiple case studies.

It’s great to see DNSSEC conference sessions happening in Japan and we look forward to seeing the growth of more signed domains and validating resolvers within Japan!

 

Nov 20

PSY, MC Hammer, the American Music Awards – and The Amazing Power Of The Internet

Psy hammer 1Seriously? The American Music Awards closing out the evening with a song sung almost entirely in Korean?

Wow.

Let's just reflect up on that for a moment. The American Music Awards... ending with a song sung...

... in Korean!

A song where the only words that the vast majority of the audience actually understood were "Heyyyyyy, sexy lady!" and "Gangnam Style". (Well, and the overlay of MC Hammer's "Too Legit To Quit" song last night.)

But the rest of the song was entirely in Korean.

How cool is that?

Forget for a moment what you may think about the actual "Gangnam Style" song from PSY and whether you love or absolutely hate the "horse dance" thing he does. Forget about whether you think the whole meme is overdone with everyone and their brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents and babies (and animals) doing remakes and paradoies of the song. Forget about whether you are so sick of it and hope you never hear about it again.

Forget about all of that.

Think of the moment. Think of the fact that a 40-year-old awards show... again, the American Music Awards... closed its event with a song by a Korean performer sung almost entirely in Korean.

Amazing.

And we see here again the amazing and awesome power of the Internet and how it has fundamentally changed the ways in which we communicate.

Without the Internet, PSY might have been extremely popular within Korea... but probably would have remained almost unknown outside the country.

Instead, because of the Internet his music has been seen and heard 100s of millions of times in basically every part of the world. And here he is is... on stage with MC Hammer closing out this award show.

I love it! Even as I am not personally a particular fan of the song (nor did I watch the awards show)... I delight in the fact that here in the US we celebrated that song.

Score another one for the power of the Internet to unite us all and enable us to experience the creativity that is in all countries and among all people... and in all languages.

Very cool to see!

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Nov 19

Got A DNSSEC Project That Needs Funding? Apply to NLnet Foundation Before Dec 1

NLNet FoundationDo you have an open source project (or the idea for one) related to DNSSEC that needs funding? Perhaps a new tool that will make it easier to use DNSSEC?  Or perhaps new software that supports the DANE protocol to increase the security of TLS/SSL? A browser plugin?  A program that makes it easier for registrars to pass DS records?  A measurement tool for DNSSEC usage?

Or do you want to add DNSSEC capabilities to an existing program, like the Jitsi team did when added DNSSEC validation to VoIP?  Would you like to build DNSSEC validation into your tool or service?  Would you like to add DANE support to your browser or other tool?  Would you like to add DANE support to another service beyond the web?  Do you have a use case where DNSSEC-signed TLS/SSL certificates would greatly add another level of security?

If you have any ideas along these lines, the NLnet Foundation is funding projects through their “DNS Security Fund” and THE NEXT APPLICATION DEADLINE IS DECEMBER 1, 2012 at 12:00 Central European Time (CET).  You can read more and find out how to apply at:

http://www.nlnet.nl/dnssec/

That page lists at the bottom some of the many projects that the NLnet Foundation has funded.  Their most recent “Open call for funding” gets into more details.  There is one very important note:

There is one important condition which is that any software or hardware that a project produces must be available under a valid open source licence (GPL, BSD, Apache, etc.).

As long as you are fine with that, you may be able to get some level of funding through NLnet Foundation.

We’d definitely appreciative of all the great work that the NLnet Foundation has funded to date. Tools like Unbound, DNSSEC-Trigger and the multiple DNSSEC developer libraries they have supported have made it so much easier to get DNSSEC deployed.

Now it’s your turn – what can you develop to help get DNSSEC more widely deployed?    If you’ve got an idea, the NLnet Foundation may be able to help… apply before December 1 to see if they can!

P.S. Note also that if you can’t apply before December 1, the NLnet Foundation accepts proposals six times a year, with deadlines of February 1, April 1, June 1, August 1, October 1, December 1.

Nov 19

What Is The Future Of The Levelator? (The Podcaster’s Ultimate Quick-Fix Audio Tool)

LevalatorWhat does the future hold for the awesome "Levelator®" tool, now that The Conversations Network is shutting down all of its websites at the end of 2012?

That's certainly the first thing that popped into my mind when I heard the word that Doug Kaye was declaring "Mission Accomplished" and shutting down the TCN websites and moving their content to other locations.

The "Levelator," in case you aren't aware, is a truly awesome piece of software for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux that can take an interview recorded with varying audio levels and turn it into something great for listening. As the bottom of the Levelator page says:

Do you believe in magic? You will after using The Levelator® to enhance your podcast. And you'll be amazed that it's free, now even for commercial use.

So what is The Levelator®? It's software that runs on Windows, OS X (universal binary), or Linux (Ubuntu) that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next, for example. It's not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all three. It's much more than those tools, and it's much simpler to use. The UI is dirt-simple: Drag-and-drop any WAV or AIFF file onto The Leveler's application window, and a few moments later you'll find a new version which just sounds better.

For those wanting the gory details, the site contains a detailed description of the "Levelator Loudness Algorithms" that explains how it does its magic. The FAQ, also, includes some helpful information.

Normally, when I'm recording podcasts in my home office with my podcasting rig, I'm able to control all the audio levels, even if I'm interviewing someone over Skype. So in those cases I don't need the power of the Levelator.

But... if I'm recording an interview with multiple people over Skype, I only have one feed for Skype into my mixer and so I can't control the varying audio levels for the different speakers.

Similarly, if I am recording a panel session typically speakers are sitting at different distances from their microphones and they naturally have different levels of their voices.

In either of those cases, the Levelator has been a HUGE help in making my recordings sound that much better.

It's also insanely easy to use - just drag a file onto the interface and drop it. That's it.

Now it's now always on target. A time or two I've actually liked the original better, but that's often because I've got noisy backgrounds or other issues. But probably 95% of the time it does a truly wonderful job making the audio sound better.

So what is its future?

I don't know.

Doug Kaye's post about the future of TCN says only that they intend to continue to make the existing content available. It's not clear from reading that what will happen to the Levelator. Will it be updated? Will someone continue to maintain the software? Will it be open-sourced so that the community could maintain it? Or will it just fade away?

The @levelator Twitter account did provide some hope in an October 3 tweet saying plans are still being discussed:

Levelator future

I do hope Doug and his team are able to find a way to keep the Levelator around. It truly is an awesome tool and it is and was a tremendously generous gift to the Internet community to make it available for free.

I look forward to learning its future... and meanwhile, I've made sure I've downloaded the most recent version so that I'll have my own copy around for a while.

Have you used the Levelator before? Has it helped you? What would you like to see the TCN team do with the Levelator?

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Nov 19

IPv6 Lessons From The US Air Force

US Air Force logoWhat is the US Air Force doing with IPv6?  What lessons have they learned in their IPv6 deployment so far?

In a ReadWrite article in August titled “How The Air Force Is Flying Toward IPv6,” writer David Strom spoke with Doug Fry, the engineering lead for the USAF Transition Management Office (TMO), about the challenges the USAF faces as well as the lessons they have learned.  I found the article’s description of the scale quite interesting:

The Air Force base furthest along in the transition process is Eglin in the Florida panhandle, which also happens to be the service’s largest base – covering more than 600 square miles and employing more than 30,000 people. To give you an idea of the size of the base, it has 30,000 individual IP addresses assigned, to a wide mix of both computing and embedded equipment. There are two core networks, 14 access layer devices, and 5000 in-building switches. That is a lot of gear to migrate over to the new networking protocols.

Indeed that is a lot of gear!  The article goes on to list 8 lessons the Air Force learned.  The article has the full descriptions, but I’ll summarize them here:

  1. Don’t go with your first address plan, but think about ways that you can make it more hierarchical and improve it.
  2. Make sure your core and IOS routers are all IPv6 compatible and can run dual stack protocols.
  3. Make sure all your monitoring equipment is up to snuff.
  4. Now is the time to make sure your entire network documentation actually reflects what is actually deployed.
  5. Upgrade your router firmware or replace them to handle IPv6.
  6. Build a test lab that replicates your entire network if you can afford to.
  7. Understand how things will change when you add new desktops or network infrastructure to your IPv6 network.
  8. Finally, participate in the next World IPv6 Day in June and other experiments to prove out your installation and deployment plans.

Good thoughts from people in the process of deploying IPv6. We look forward to reading future articles as they move forward with their IPv6 deployment across all their bases.

Nov 19

FIR #678 – 11/19/12 – For Immediate Release

LinkedIn endorsements, Google's mobile Alternate Reality Game, libel laws include Twitter, big changes at social sites; Ragan promo; News That Fits: sponsored digital content, Dan York's report, Media Monitoring Minute from CustomScoop, Coca-Cola reimagines the corporate website, listener comments, survey shows desire to social media ROI tool, TemboSocial promo, Michael Netzley's Asia report; music from the Chris Greene Quartet; and more.

Nov 18

Embracing Simplicity In Blogging

What if a blog post is simply text? No fancy images. No links to additional articles... except maybe one or two that might provide the immediate context (and perhaps not). Can I truly write that way?

As I wrote about last week, one of the steps I will be trying this next while will be to do exactly that - write posts like this one that are just... simple. Perhaps even... (gasp!).... brief!

In this case, I am using the Blogsy editor on my iPad. For tonight, I am not going to go out and find just the perfect image that illustrates simplicity. I will leave it as a block of text.

Can I eliminate all the trappings of what I consider to be "what should be done" in a blog post? Can I instead embrace the simplicity and just let my words flow?

Stay tuned... this will be an ongoing test... :-)

Nov 17

Using iRecorder on the iPhone For Quick Podcasts – With WiFi Transfer

Ever needed to record a quick audio recording on your iPhone and then rapidly transfer it to a computer? There are many recording applications out there for the iPhone, but one I've found helpful is the aptly named "iRecorder".

On Friday I read an email from Shel Holtz that he and Neville had to record this coming week's FIR episode on Sunday morning and they needed our reports by then.

Knowing that today was going to be crazy and also knowing I had a number of tasks to do yesterday that kept me away from my office where my podcast rig is located, I whipped out my iPhone and used iRecorder to record my report. The interface itself is super-simple to use - just one button to push to start recording.

Irecorder

The reason why I like iRecorder, though, is that it has an extremely simple WiFi interface for transferring the recording. I just tap the down-arrow icon in the upper left corner and... ta da... it gives me a URL to hit in my browser:

Irecorder wifi

A quick trip to that URL in my browser shows me all the audio files I can download:

IRecorder browser

A click on the link and the audio file is down on my computer. Now all I did was bring the audio into Audacity, do a minor bit of trimming and then export it to MP3 to send to Shel and Neville.

Simple. Easy. Fast.

Now, I don't feel the audio quality is as good as what I get on my podcasting rig, but that's understandable... this was an iPhone being used as a field recorder. It was a bit too "hot" for me with some clipping going on. But it enabled me to get a report quickly together and submitted when I didn't expect to have time to do so.

It's a cool little tool... and you can find it in the iPhone AppStore.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Nov 16

Facebook FINALLY Adds Sharing To iOS/Android Apps And Mobile Web

Facebook5 2One of the strangest things about using Facebook on a mobile device, either through Facebook's mobile website or directly through the mobile phone apps has been this - there has been no way to "share" links!

It has seemed a very odd piece to leave out, given that much of what goes on within Facebook is the sharing of links and other information.

This week, though, Facebook finally got around to fixing that. First, they updated their mobile website (m.facebook.com), as noted on Mashable and other news sites.

Second, they rolled out a new version of the iOS and Android Facebook apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

Facebook noted all this in a brief news article on their site.

As a user of the iOS apps, I'm pleased to see this, and look forward to now being more easily able to share links and other posts in my Facebook NewsFeed. It's nice to see the "Share" link in my iPhone's feed:

Facebook share

Have you upgraded already? If not, look in your AppStore (on iOS) and get ready to finally start sharing...

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either: