Facebook Release New Wordpress Plugin


The new Facebook Wordpress plugin allows to make your website more social by integrating many of Facebook features. 
The plugin in its version 1.0 was just released and it contains the following features according to its authors:

• Post to an Author's Facebook Timeline whenever they publish a new WordPress Post or Page.
• Mention friends and Facebook Pages. This posts to their Timelines as well as lists them on the WordPress Post or Page.
• Post all new WordPress Post or Pages to a specified Facebook Page.
• Like, send, and subscribe buttons can be enabled in a click and are fully customizable.
• Facebook Comments, including full SEO support.
• Open Graph Protocol integration.
• Recommendations bar, which allows users to click to start getting recommendations, Like content, and add what they're reading to Timeline as they go.
• Activity Feed Box. This shows the Facebook user the activity that their friends are doing on your website.
• Recommendations Box. This shows the Facebook user recommendations of pages they should visit based on the actions their friends are taking on your website.
• Like, send, and subscribe buttons.
• All of the above features can be easily enabled with checkboxes on the plugin and widget configuration pages.

Facebook Insights (http://www.facebook.com/insights) integration included. This plugin also supports internationalization and mobile.


Facebook for Wordpress Link


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Secret Space Encryptor - Universal Encryption Software for Android

Until Google builds in encryption into Android a data security conscious user has to rely on a 3rd party application to encrypt sensitive information. One such useful tool available at Google Play is called Secret Space Encryptor by Paranoia Works. 


It's a very simple, intuitive, and powerful application allowing the user to store encrypted passwords, encrypt text messages, as well as local directories and files. 


It weights in at 3.71MB and requires only the following permissions: 
Storage to modify SD card content
System tools to prevent phone from sleeping


That in itself is very conservative considering most applications rely on many more permissions with Network Communication being the most widely used. On top of that developers provide the application source code, which can be downloaded here.


Application Features:

• Password Manager, Message Encryptor and File Encryptor integrated in the all-in-one solution

• Store and manage all your passwords in one secure place with the Password Vault

• Keep your messages and other texts safe from unintended readers with the Message Encryptor

• Encrypt your private and confidential files or folders with the File Encryptor

• Available encryption algorithms in this version of the SSE: AES(Rijndael) 256bit, RC6 256bit, Serpent 256bit, Blowfish 256bit

• Encryption engine based on the Bouncy Castle Crypto Library

• This software is Open Source

Screenshots:

File Encryptor Screen

Password Vault Screen

Message Encryptor Screen

Links:
Secret Space Encryptor @ Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paranoiaworks.unicus.android.sse&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5wYXJhbm9pYXdvcmtzLnVuaWN1cy5hbmRyb2lkLnNzZSJd

SSE Source Code: http://www.paranoiaworks.mobi/download/downloads.html

Developers website (mobile version): http://www.paranoiaworks.mobi/sse/



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"Don't mess with the Internet"

Texas Congresman Lamar Smith, sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act 

Don't mess with the Internet! After the largest ever online blackout protesting SOPA these two huge billboard ads right at the doorsteps in his home district will be a good reminder not to mess with people's freedom and what the crowd wants. All paid for by no one else but the Internet people who chipped in as part of an online campaign to put those up.

Courtesy of fightforthefuture.org

Educate yourself more:


FightFortheFuture: http://fightforthefuture.org/billboard

Don't Mess with the Internet Campaign: https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/dont-mess-with-the-internet-billboard-in-lamar-smiths-home-district

Lamar Smith: http://www.vice.com/read/lamar-smith-sopa-copyright-whoops

SOPA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act




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Calculate how much is Facebook making off of your data on the stock market.

It's all about how much Facebook "knows" about your life. The more details the better they can target their money making content at you. While losing your privacy online is unavoidable to a certain degree, it really gets unacceptable once you see what, where, and who is tracking your every move online. One way to find out more about who cares about what you do online is to use browser plugins like disconnect and Collusion.

Getting back on the subject, the same folks who wrote those plugins let you calculate how much money all of your personal data on Facebook makes for them on the stock market

I was worth ~$360 being a male at 32 at my current location were the biggest factors.

Links:
How much is Facebook making off of your data on the stock market? https://fbme.disconnect.me/login

disconnect & Collusion browser plugins: https://disconnect.me/tools



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Another method to find out if the OS is running in virtual environment

Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and CentOS have a tool called 'virt-what' that detects if the operating system is running in a virtual environment.

It can detect the following environments:


hyperv: Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor
ibm_systemz: IBM SystemZ (or other S/390)
ibm_systemz-direct: IBM SystemZ hardware partitioning system
ibm_systemz-lpar: LPAR on an IBM SystemZ hardware partitioning system
ibm_systemz-zvm: z/VM guest running in an LPAR on an IBM SystemZ hardware partitioning system
linux_vserver: Linux VServer container
kvm: KVM hypervisor using hardware acceleration
openvz: OpenVZ or Virtuozzo container
parallels: Parallels Virtual Platform (Parallels Desktop, Parallels Server)
powervm_lx86: IBM PowerVM Lx86 Linux/x86 emulator
qemu: QEMU hypervisor using software emulation
uml: User-Mode Linux (UML) guest
virt: Some sort of generic virtualization
virtage: Hitachi Virtualization Manager (HVM) Virtage hardware partitioning system
virtualbox: VirtualBox guest
virtualpc: Microsoft VirtualPC
vmware: VMware hypervisor
xen: Xen hypervisor
xen-dom0: Xen domU (paravirtualized guest domain)
xen-hvm: Xen guest fully virtualized (HVM)


To install it run:

yum install virt-what

Usage is as simple as running it without any options.



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How to find out at command line if a system is a virtual guest.

There will be times when it will be necessary to check if the system that you are currently SSH'd into is a hardware or virtual based guest. Before it was easy, just issue an 'eject' command and go check yourself which machine has the CD tray open. Before there were no mixed environments, so things were easier. 


There are couple of ways to figure it out.


1. Use the 'dmidecode' utility. The following command will show basic hardware information for the machine:


dmidecode | grep -A 10 "Handle 0x0001"

Output:

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
Manufacturer: VMware, Inc.
Product Name: VMware Virtual Platform
Version: None
Serial Number: VMware-XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX
UUID: XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXX
Wake-up Type: Power Switch
SKU Number: Not Specified
Family: Not Specified

The key to the answer is the 'Manufacturer' line. Normally, on a physical hardware it should show the name of the manufacturer: Dell, HP, IBM etc. If the system is virtualized, it will display the hypervizor name. 


2. If the system is hosted on VMware server, then an easy but not foolproof method to find out if the guest system is or 'may be' hosted in virtualized environment is to look for guest support tools that may be installed. In case of VMware one should look for vmware-tools:

rpm -qa | grep -i "vm"

Output:

VMwareTools-7300-82663
xorg-x11-drv-vmmouse-12.4.0-2.1
xorg-x11-drv-vmware-10.13.0-2.1


This doesn't necessarily mean that the system is virtualized but can at least hive a hint about that. 







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Fedora 16 x86_64 and Picasa Segmentation Fault

If you run into this error while trying to start Picasa on Fedora 16 64 bit system:

/usr/bin/picasa: line 189: 5216 Segmentation fault (core dumped) "$PIC_BINDIR"/wrapper check_dir.exe.so /usr/bin/picasa: line 248: 5325 Segmentation fault (core dumped) "$PIC_BINDIR"/wrapper set_lang.exe.so

 then, what fixed it is doing the following:

 - install the 'wine' package:

 yum install wine

 - copy the 'wine-preloader':

cp /usr/bin/wine-preloader /opt/google/picasa/3.0/wine/bin/wine-preloader

 Picasa should start now.

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