The story of the story:

[...] Around 3pm on Saturday, December 5th a link was posted on FlyerTalk.com to the FBO.GOV website where there were details of a contract for screening services in Montana that had been out for bid (the FBO link is dead now; there is a cached copy here).  In that bid package there were a number of attachments including two different “redacted” copies of the TSA’s Screening Management SOP.  The copies were actually slightly different but the general content was substantially the same.  That post was out there for almost 24 hours before I stumbled upon it and decided to see what was in the document.  Three clicks later I was reading a “redacted” copy of the SOP, something that the TSA meant to put online.  About 10 minutes and a couple more clicks later, however, I was one of a couple folks who realized just what we were looking at and what the situation was.  It took me another hour to get a blog post together and at 4:16pm EST on Sunday afternoon the post went online.  

My blog doesn’t have all that many readers regularly so I’m honestly not really sure how it went from there.  What I do know is that someone thought it was worthy enough to put a link up on http://news.ycombinator.com/, a self-described “Hacker News” social media site.  From there the story made it to the Wired Threat Level blog as well as BoingBoing.net (two sites that I really enjoy, FWIW) and Jaunted.  On Monday The Register in the UK picked up the story as well, noting how foolish security through obscurity generally is in the process.  Chris Elliott, a syndicated travel writer also picked up on it during a chat on Monday afternoon and posted a blurb about it on his blog.  US News & World Reports had a piece as well.

At that point the story probably could have died.  But it didn’t.  Tuesday saw the story picked up by SlashDot in the morning and Gothamist in the afternoon.  Fortunately the site is hosted by systems that can handle the resulting SlashDot effect and the blog has stayed online. 

And then, it went mainstream.  The Cleveland Plain-Dealer had an article out on the story on Tuesday afternoon.  ABC’s World News Tonight led off their broadcast with the story (and some really bad computer stock images).  The Washington Post followed up on the story as well.  That story was published late Tuesday evening online and is on the front page, below the fold, of today’s print edition.  The Associated Press put together a piece that was been picked up by a number of outlets on Tuesday evening, including USAToday, Yahoo! and MSNBC.

Overnight Tuesday night/Wednesday morning the BBC got into the game and USAToday had an original piece in their Today in the Sky blog.  It was on page A22 of the dead tree edition of the NY Times, running the AP wire piece as well.

Yeah, to say that this one has legs is a bit of an understatement.

[...] This is obviously pirated, but a neat idea to sell it on USB :)

Imaginative. Success, Skype.

Background and story at AdAge.com.

[...]The free add-in provides the means to export data from Outlook into various other formats so that they can be imported into other applications or processed directly.

The add-in is compatible with Microsoft Outlook 2007 and will install a new toolbar into the application after installation. It will also install various runtimes that are needed to run the Outlook add-in. The options to export the data from Microsoft Outlook is then available from the new toolbar. It is here possible to export Outlook emails, notes, appointments, contacts or tasks into the following formats: MSG, unicode MSG, RTF, TXT, CSV, ICS, vCard, HTML, XML

The user can either select an Outlook folder or single items for the export of the data. Outlook Data Export can be downloaded from the program’s page over at the Codeplex website. It is only compatible with Microsoft Office 2007.

Handy.

[...] Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson -- or his successor in the next government) the power to make "secondary legislation" (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).

What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright. Mandelson elaborates on this, giving three reasons for his proposal:

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a "three-strikes" plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to "confer rights" for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to "impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement" (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright "militias" can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

Mandelson is also gunning for sites like YouSendIt and other services that allow you to easily transfer large files back and forth privately (I use YouSendIt to send podcasts back and forth to my sound-editor during production). Like Viacom, he's hoping to force them to turn off any feature that allows users to keep their uploads private, since privacy flags can be used to keep infringing files out of sight of copyright enforcers.

[...]

Is the picture really as bad as Cory Doctorow makes out?

Toronto-based entrepreneur Razor Suleman needs to hire 17 people over the next month.

He could have chosen traditional methods – from newspaper ads to online job boards or head hunters – to fill the IT, sales and marketing positions at his rewards and recognition business.

Yet in a soft job market, he and a growing number of employers are favouring an option they say is faster, more efficient and a whole lot cheaper: social media sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn. The shift marks a sea change for the world of recruiting as the use of employee and customer networks to find candidates becomes the new normal.

[...] His approach is simple: distribute job postings to his employees, who then place them on their Facebook status updates, tweet them to friends who re-tweet them, and share them through LinkedIn networks. He sent out word about the jobs last Friday; this week, his company expects 1,000 people will show up at its two open houses.

I reckon this will become common as more people do it and report their successes.

It's not for everyone, just as tweeting or blogging isn't for everyone. Read the Globe & Mail's full report for a great deal more of this story.

Digital marketing company Razorfish has just launched its third annual FEED survey of 1,000 "connected consumers." The survey is focused on online consumer behavior. This year Facebook and Twitter feature prominently. 40% of respondents "friended" brands on Facebook, while 25% reported following brands on Twitter. What's more, Razorfish found that consumers access brands on Twitter and Facebook mainly for deals and promotions.

Of those who follow a brand on Twitter, nearly 44% reported that access to exclusive deals is the main reason. On Facebook or MySpace, 37% said that access to exclusive deals or offers was their main reason for friending brands.

Over 1/4 of respondents reported having followed a brand on Twitter, which is encouraging news for companies wanting to use Twitter to promote themselves.

43.5% reported following a brand to get "exclusive deals or offerings," which again is a statistic that companies should take note of.

An even higher percentage of respondents have "friended" a brand on Facebook - a whopping 40%. Considering that Facebook is a social network that started out as a way for college kids to network, this is a statistic that will make companies and organizations take note. If you want brand recognition on the Web, according to these statistics there's a very good chance that Facebook is a place you want to be.

Jump-out text from RWW's post for me is the para about Facebook. Here is again - note my emphasis in bold text:

"An even higher percentage of respondents have "friended" a brand on Facebook - a whopping 40%. Considering that Facebook is a social network that started out as a way for college kids to network, this is a statistic that will make companies and organizations take note. If you want brand recognition on the Web, according to these statistics there's a very good chance that Facebook is a place you want to be."

I agree with Mitch Joel on this - 24 minutes and well worth watching every single one of them. You'll learn something watching and listening to this conversation.

Beautifully created.

[...] At today's Enterprise 2.0 conference, Yammer announced that 50,000 networks have been established with its service. We asked Yammer's Steve Apfelberg what the size of these networks look like. He said they run from a few people to a few thousand, with an average of about 25 to 50 people per network. He declined to provide details about the number of paying clients but said they are showing revenues. But if you did the math, it could be extrapolated that Yammer has 1.25 to 2.5 million customers. How many of those are paying for the Yammer service?

[...] Here's an interview with Apfelberg and a demo of the Yammer service:

I know of around a dozen companies in the UK where Yammer's in use, set up informally by groups of employees. None are paying for the service yet.

[...] Now, if you're using Google News and can't find the perfect section, just create your own! You can do that by adding the relevant keywords. Then, if you are happy with the resulting section, you can publish it to a directory so others can benefit.

We have created an initial set of sections to get you started. There's one on Space, and others on topics such as U.S. Foreign Policy, Global Trade, Solar Power, and Hollywood. If you like them, click on "Add this section" and they'll appear on your home page.

The feature is currently available in the Google News editions for Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and we look forward to expanding it soon.

A picture from the US. Bucking a trend?

What to do if you have any info -

Phone: +44 845 838 4699
Email: investigation@findmadeleine.com

There’s an interesting article in the current New York Review of books (predictably, a book review) detailing the history of the National Security Agency, that shadowy power-behind-the-power to which we surrender much of our privacy. That in itself is interesting, but I found the introduction a bit shocking: the NSA is constructing a datacenter in the Utah desert that they project will be storing yottabytes of surveillance data. And what is a yottabyte? I’m glad you asked.

There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte, a thousand terabytes in a petabyte, a thousand petabytes in an exabyte, a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte, and a thousand zettabytes in a yottabyte. In other words, a yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000GB. Are you paranoid yet?

Heh, nice to know what a yottabyte means, never mind the Big Brother concerns :)

[...] Here are some very basic facts:

1. When you purchase software, you are purchasing the rights to run the software according to the terms of the End User License Agreement (EULA) that comes with that software.
2. When you install that software, you are agreeing to the terms included in the EULA you purchased.
   - For instance, in the Windows 7 EULA it states, “By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. Instead, return it to the retailer for a refund or credit.”
3. When you purchase an Upgrade license, the included EULA states that you must already own a qualifying full license to upgrade from in order to use the Upgrade license, hence the term “Upgrade.”
   - For instance, in the Windows 7 EULA it states, “To use upgrade software, you must first be licensed for the software that is eligible for the upgrade.”

To put it simply, here is a graphical representation of what this means:

General Example		Example with Product Names

In stark contrast to:

General Example		Example with Product Names

So when these posts and write-ups state that you can install clean from an Upgrade piece of software and they fail to mention that you need to own a qualifying software license to be legal to use the Upgrade software for the installation, they give the impression that because it is technically possible, it is legal to do. Unfortunately, by doing this, they irresponsibly put end users at risk of loading unlicensed software. Because of this, I am putting this post up to try and clarify the truth behind what an upgrade license is and provides so that hopefully people will not find themselves misled by some of these other posts and articles that may mislead them to believe something that is very wrong due to their lack of inclusion of this important piece of information.  If the posts or write-ups you saw did include this information, then kudos to that writer for providing the accurate information.

This is why DRM or whatever equivalent evolves will be around in the future - trust in people is really difficult sometimes.

The number one reason people give us for not upgrading to the latest version of WordPress is fear that their plugins won’t be compatible. As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new “Compatibility” feature in the plugin directory, powered by your votes. When viewing a plugin in the directory, select a WordPress version and a plugin version from the drop-downs. If there has been feedback about this WordPress / plugin version combination, we’ll show you what percentage of responses marked that combination as compatible vs how many marked it as incompatible.

...

What a great idea. Much too hit-and-miss right now in knowing plugin versions and what would work in a new WP.

As you might have noticed, we use Thesis for this site. We also use Thesis for a lot of client work.  And while we dig Thesis, one of the things that becomes a pain in the ass when using it, (or any theme that provides admin control of layout and design) is having to manually add common layout and design settings that we use regularly.  With the release of Thesis 1.6, this has become even a bigger issue due to all the new font and color control features.

As things move forward, more and more skin designs will start incorporating admin panel settings rather than relying on the traditional style sheet approach. And that means skins will become less and less “plug & play” because you will have to spend time inputing dozens of settings to get your skin to look like the original demo. And skin designers will need to spend a bunch of time creating additional instructions that list all the items that need to be changed. (For a great example, check out all the work that went into Ben’s post on his latest skin).

That seems like a bunch of needless work to me, so I asked Dax to break out the import/export tools we use that deal with Thesis into a stand alone plugin. The concept is pretty simple. After you upload and activate it, you can download individual data files for Thesis Options, Design Options, and all OpenHook content. (located at Appearance > Thesis Import/Export)

So once you have completed a skin design, or custom layout for a client, you can just export the data files and then bundle them with the plugin. Once the skin is installed, the user simply uploads the bundled data files and all the original settings, hooks, etc. will be imported.

The only words of caution you will need with this plugin has to do with the restore functions. If you click on those links before you have saved a backup, all your settings will be lost!

Download Thesis Settings Export Plugin Here

Yes! This looks exactly like the answer to my question!
Via Chris Pearson.

Fiery race-car crashes, exploding oil refineries, policemen shot in the chest at point-blank range -- these are just some of DuPont's new social-media tools. Fearing that it's losing touch with young professionals who don't read traditional media, the chemical giant developed a social-media strategy anchored in viral video. Digging into its archive, it pulled out some of its most spectacular product test and demonstration footage. And this became the core of a series of three-minute programs hosted by video blogger Amanda Congdon and distributed widely across online video sites.

See all the videos at http://stories.dupont.com/

Presentation recorded at WordCamp Seattle 2009.

[...] All the information that appears as part of Google Social Search is published publicly on the web — you can find it without Social Search if you really want to. What we've done is surface that content together in one single place to make your results more relevant. The way we do it is by building a social circle of your friends and contacts using the connections linked from your public Google profile, such as the people you're following on Twitter or FriendFeed. The results are specific to you, so you need to be signed in to your Google Account to use Social Search. If you use Gmail, we'll also include your chat buddies and contacts in your friends, family, and coworkers groups. And if you use Google Reader, we'll include some websites from your subscriptions as part of your social search results.

Trying it out...