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• Recent Posts

  • W3C and ADA what?
  • Prepare For a New Computer
  • How’s the PHISHING?
  • Hiding Your Email Link from SPAMMERS
  • RSS Feeds and the “Angry Gator”

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  • Mr WordPress on Hello, Department of Music

On November 9, I wrote the following to the Mac Users in an email addressed to all department users:

Safari, does not work properly with the W3/ADA compliant CSS menu on the portal site and is not fully W3 compliant…

…..several folks have asked me what W3 and ADA mean, and what they have to do with anything. For those that are interested, here goes:

W3 stands for the “World Wide Web Consortium“. This international organization is directed by Tim Berners-Lee who, from the words of Wikipedia (and pretty much everyone else):

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born June 8, 1955) is an English developer who with the help of Robert Cailliau invented the World Wide Web.

I am sorry, Al Gore did not invent the internet or the world wide web. And you can not look at this “invention” without considering the impact of the work done by the US military’s ARPAnet, Marc Andreesen at UIUC, and others.

The W3, or W3C, is the standardization organization of the world wide web. The organization represents the group that sets the standards for all protocols, services, and content delivered via the world wide web. Both Microsoft and Apple tend to push technology and initiatives that fall outside the norm and convention to achieve their own goals.

What does this have to do with things? Until the Spring and the release of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows, all Internet Explorer browsers fell outside the “conventions” and standards of the rest of the world. IE 7 is vastly better than previous versions. Apple’s Safari still fails many compliance tests and will not run the ADA compliant menu system of the Portal site. Safari promises a new release any day that is more compatible.

What does ADA compliance have to do with a website? Sit in front of your computer, have a friend tie a scarf around your head, covering your eyes, and navigate through the department public site.

ADA compliance means that people using assistive devices can navigate through your web pages without difficulty. For example, one of our faculty members site using a university template, scored 34 warnings on the ADA compliance test at: http://webxact.watchfire.com/ . Improving our ADA compliance was the goal of rewriting the portal page.

Please ask if you have further questions or need assistance.

Faculty Checklist, preparing for a new computer:

• move all your personal data files to the “‘My’ Documents” folder
• check for “orphaned” data files by searching for files with *.doc, *.xl?, *.md?, *.db?, *.rtf, *.mid, *.sib, *.mus extensions, using the built-in Windows Search tool. (Mac users, use the finder. Most of your document files may not have extensions.)
  
• remember to save your bookmarks (1, 2), address books(1, 2) and other personal configuration files
  
• just before your scheduled appointment, backup your data files and any personal configurationi files to the IBERT server (or other external device)

Installation:

• Call I.T., User Services to schedule the installation of your new computer (XT. 6000)
  
• Make certain that the installer has a way to get into your office, a clear pathway in your office when they arrive, and plenty of time for the installation (at least two hours).

When the Installer arrives (make certain that they are aware of the following by highlighting this section and pointing it out to them):

• All department faculty use a dynamic registered, assigned IP and you will register their hosts after you leave.
• The faculty member has a copy of the Office license for their machine. The license appears as an invoice. Tell them to contact Rich Duggan in the College if they have questions about this.
• Set the administrator password to: xxxxxx (this will be sent to you via email)
  
• Department staff will reset this when we configure the printer and other things.

When the Installer leaves:

• Register you computer for internet access, assigning the IP number I gave you at: http://www.udel.edu/network . Unregister your old computer at this time.
• Verify that things are set-up to your liking
• Contact us via: music-help@udel.edu
  • we will pick-up your computer
  • we will install the printer drivers for the network printer and change the Administrator password

You get an email as follows (this is a real email received by someone in the department):

---

Subject: lesson nedeed
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:18:51 +0000
From: kenneth jackson <kenjack004@hotmail.com>

Glad to tell you that,my son will be coming to the United State for holiday.Will be more than glad if you can teach him everyday from 2pm-3pm or your suitable time(1 hour per day from Monday-Friday for two weeks making a total of ten lessons,teach him on your field of knowledge.If you can make it,kindly get back to me with the cost of your teaching for two weeks in the dates of October 15th-30th.He will be coming to your house for 1 hour each day for two weeks.I have someone that will always drive him down to your house His name Sam,he is 13 years old. I will want you to calculate 1 hour per day from Monday-Friday for the whole 2 weeks and get back to me.Looking forward to read from you.
Best Regards

---

What’s happening? You are a victim of a simple and basic PHISHING attempt. Someone is just trying to get a positive reply back verifying that your email is legitimate.

Read more:

• PHISHING
• E-mail Spoofing
• Social engineering
• Defensive Computing
• Stopping Email Abuse

In general, to grab any link on a web page to insert it into your own web page design, right-click the link and select (Copy Link Location*).

Regarding your own email address, remember that, in general, the more it appears as: yourusername@udel.edu ….. the more JUNK mail you will get (also, turning on “vacation mail” …. increases junk-mail greatly ….. the longer it is on ….. the more you will tend to get because “phishers” get a solid hit that this is a real email address …. and then they can start “phishing” with more customized information that might fool you**).

That is why our department friend and guru, Adam Leff, created the “virtual email links” on our public pages. Basically, if you go to your bio page on the department public site, you can right-click (or the equivalent on a Mac) on the email link to copy the link. In your case, the link is:
http://www.music.udel.edu/sendmail.html?id=x

…….where the final “x” represents your ID within the email “virtual system”.

Other ways to hide your real email are shown at:

• http://www.dynamicdrive.com/emailriddler/
• http://www.robelle.com/tips/email-cloak.html
• http://tools.blogflux.com/emailscramble/

……..and if you’re using Dreamweaver, a great tutorial is at:

• http://www.cll.emory.edu/it/faqs/#15

I will update this information as needed.

* the actual words may be slightly different on your browser

** How much is your email address advertised?  Do a search for your email address on the web.  Try several search engines.

According to Wikipedia.org, RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. Collectively, RSS feeds are used to publish information to the web. Any content that is updated often is a prime target for RSS feeds, such as updated blog entries (as in these pages), news headlines, new real estate listings, mortgage rates news, new library books arriving at Morris Library, stock reports, and even podcasts.

To view the feed content, you need a “feed reader”, more often called an “aggregator” (a ha! the title of this post had a bit of relevance, grabbed your attention for a second, and a bit of humor). A user drags the RSS icon into their aggregator or sometimes by clicking an icon in a browser.

From that time forward, the aggregator checks the “feed” to see if there is updated information….alerting the user when that happens.

I use the aggregator plug-in for Firefox. The aggregator sits at the bottom right of the browser. I have BBC News, Department of Music News, My Courses/WebCT, Sarv Blog Stream (from Heidi), and CNN News programmed. Similar to a stock report, the headlines from each area scroll by with the latest titles. When I want to read more, I click on the title. Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari browsers all handle RSS feeds, but require more interaction from the user than a true aggregator.

Aggregator functions are often built-into some portal web pages offered by ISPs (internet service providers). There are some web sites that only offer aggregator services. Many “busy people” use client software running on their computer. iTunes is a specialized aggregator for media feeds.

There are several stand-alone programs, including “BottomFeeder” and “FastTrackNews“. Many of the “web site” aggregators offer an email forwarding feature, notifying the user when a certain number of update “hits” have occured.

If you have an account on IBERT, the department NAS Server, you can back-up your files often. Additionally, using the University’s licensed VPN client, you can access these files from any location with a broadband or better connection.

In “Finder”, select the “Go” menu and the “Connect to Server” menuitem.  In the server address, type:

• smb://ibert.music.udel.edu/<username>   …for example, I would type:
• smb://ibert.music.udel.edu/budclark

You will be asked for your username and password (the network will report as BACKBEAT usually).   The folder will open.   That’s it!

If you have an account on IBERT, the department NAS Server, you can back-up your files often. Additionally, using the University’s licensed VPN client, you can access these files from any location with a broadband or better connection.

In Windows, right-click the “My Computer” icon. The “My Computer” may be on your desktop or in your “Start” menu.

• Select the text: “Map Network Drive …”.
• In the “Map Network Drive” dialog box, select a Drive letter
• In the “Folder” box, type: \\ibert.music.udel.edu\<username> …. for example, I would type: \\ibert.music.udel.edu\budclark
• Select the “Reconnect at logon” box and press the “Finish” button.

In a few moments, you will be asked for your username and password. When you are connected, your folder will open. Backup your documents to this folder. Only you can access items left in this folder. If you are working on a group project, please ask for a “group project” folder and I will create an account for several folks to use.

Welcome to the Music Technology News blog site. With this site, I will deposit many of the instructions and rants that I would normally send via email. I’m going to save email for the really important stuff.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed of this site to make sure you have all of the alerts and information as soon as they are available.

When I write something using “technical jargon”, I will always attempt to link that jargon to a definition somewhere on the web, usually Wikipedia.

Enjoy!

Bud Clark