Websites Worth Watching...

November 2007

WAI: Strategies, guidelines, resources to make the Web accessible to people with disabilities.
W3C

The Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative is a division of the World Health Organization.
HINARI

The Internet Public Library was founded by a group of grad students at the University of Michigan’s School of Information and Library Studies.
IPL

One Laptop per Child
OneLaptopPerChild

reCAPTCHA Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart. The program is used by websites as a defense mechanism against spam-generating bots.
reCAPTCHA

Reuters Labs Viewdle Beta, founded in 2006, is a facial recognition digital platform aimed at indexing, searching, and monetizing video assets. Reuters Labs can search within hundreds of hours of video content.
Reuters Labs Viewdle

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Project Prospect website helps to bring clarification to the technical world of chemistry dating back to the 19th century.
Royal Society of Chemistry

What-Is-What is a reliable source of technical vocabulary definitions. It’s quickly becoming a tech bible.
What-is-What

Thanks A. Jones and EContent

Wireless Security??? Say it slowly...

November 2007

What retail wireless security?

TJX may be in a class all by itself in terms of the number of records compromised in a data breach. But the retailer apparently has plenty of company when it comes to wireless security issues of the sort that led to the compromise it disclosed earlier this year. A survey of over 3,000 retail stores in several major U.S. cities by wireless security vendor AirDefense Inc. reveals that a large number of retailers are failing to take even the most rudimentary steps for protecting customer data from wireless compromises. Among the biggest issues: weakly protected client devices, wrongly configured wireless access points inside stores, data leakage, poorly named network identifiers, and outdated access-point firmware. According to AirDefense, about 85 percent of the 2,500 wireless devices that it discovered in retail stores, such as laptops and barcode scanners, were vulnerable to wireless hacks. Out of the 4,748 access points that were monitored for the survey, about 550 had poorly named SSIDs that could give away the store’s identity. “One thing we did not expect was the large number of point-of-sale devices that looked as if they had been turned on” and left in essentially the configuration in which they arrived at the store, said AirDefense’s chief security officer. Many of the access IDs that were being used by retailers had names that were dead giveaways, such as ‘retail wireless’, ‘POS WiFi’ or ‘store number 1234’,” he said. About 25% of the access points that were monitored used no encryption at all. In total, of the 3,000 stores monitored, about a quarter of them were still using the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol for encrypting traffic. WEP is considered to be among the weakest of the encryption options available today and was the standard in use by TJX when it was first breached.

Movie Info: AVIs on MACs

November 2007

What are AVI files?
AVI is not a true file "format" it is a "container format". Inside the file can be about anything, meaning it can contain video audio compressed using many different combinations of codecs. So while MP3 and JPG can only contain a certain kind of compression (MPEG Audio Layer 3 and JPEG), AVI can contain many different kinds of compression (eg. DivX video + WMA audio or Indeo video + PCM audio), as long as a codec is available for encoding/decoding. AVI all look the same on the "outside", but on the "inside", they may be completely different. Almost all tools on this site are not just DivX tools, but also AVI tools, so will probably work with other codecs.

There is no such thing as a "normal" AVI file, but the closest you can get is probably an AVI file that contains no compression. AVI files has been around since the time of Windows 3.1, so by no means is it a new thing, and is probably the most common video format around (although its popularity wavered a few years ago, but has since come back with a vengeance due to the emergence of DivX). AVI files may also have limits under Windows 95/98, and for more information, please read this article. Note that AVI files without file limits (other than the Windows Fat32 file limit) are usually referred to as OpenDML AVI files.

The easiest way to play AVI files on my Mac?
The first time you encounter an .AVI, QuickTime may open the file, but all you see is a blank or sickly green screen, no audio, and an error message. This means that you lack the necessary codecs/decoders for proper playback.

Almost all files you will encounter have a video track in some flavor of DivX with an audio track encoded as VBR mp3, or lately, ac3. While QT can play an .AVI with a CBR mp3 audio track, a VBR-encoded track will play with a great deal of stuttering or drop out completely after a few seconds.

Some older files may have been encoded with MP42 or MP43, two of Microsoft's earlier entries into the mpeg-4 field. Decoders available here (missing link).

Still older files may have been encoded with one of the Indeo codecs, none of which have been ported to OS X. If you wish to view such a file, download the full set of Indeo codecs and install in QT in OS 8/9. Regarding Indeo compression, there is a QT decoder for Indeo 263 (I263) that has worked for me in OS 9 and lower. The author says he doesn't know if it works in OS X and I have not tried it there either, but here is the link for the decoder.
Here are the most common solutions:

Use an alternative player, such as VideoLAN Client (aka VLC) or MPlayer, both UNIX players now ported to OS X. If a file does not play properly in one of these players, then your chances are slim of ever getting the file to play on a Mac.
Download DivX Doctor II, the 3ivx codec, and the .wma decoder and install as directed. Use DivX Doctor to convert the .AVI into a .MOV. Note: DivX Doctor is extremely intolerant of errors and sometimes creates a .mov file with bad synchronization.
Purchase the trial or pro version of the DivX 5 package, which contains an MP3 decoder for AVI's to play natively in QT. The free version does not contain the MP3 encoder and allows you only to encode a DivX video track in a .MOV
Note: If 3ivx and DivX 5's video codec are installed at the same time, 3ivx will take precedence, though the mp3 component will work flawlessly. If you wish DivX 5 to decode the video track, then remove the 3ivx component from the QuickTime library folder and restart QuickTime.

Quicktime adheres to the AVI standard. The problem is that AVI files with VBR MP3 audio tracks are not supported (it's a hack to the AVI format), so you get no sound or very stuttering sound when you try to play it. DivX Doctor works by correcting the audio information and sticking it in a Quicktime movie file with the video. Thanks danslagle.com

Video Links: Gobble Gobble

November 2007

If you know how to use Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express click the following urls.

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/ http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/
If you are new to NLE (Non Linear Editing) start with FCExpress.

iMovie 4.0.1, this is part of Apple's iLife software package that also contains iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, and GarageBand. As of January 2004, new Macs should already have iLife 04 pre-installed so if your Mac is new, you probably have the newest version of iMovie.

If using Fansubs:

• Explicit (freeware): This is used to split AVI files into smaller parts.

If using DVD rips:

• OSex (freeware): This is used to rip DVDs as unencrypted VOBs.



• DiVA (freeware): This is used so you can convert the VOB files into iMovie-friendly QuickTime files.


• Clip Creator (freeware): This is used to split the QuickTime files into something that iMovie can digest.

Exporting Software

• D-Volution (freeware): This is used to convert exported DV files into DivX 4.1.2 files.



• ffmpegX (shareware): This is used to convert QuickTime MPEG4 to XviD 1.0.1 files.

QuickTime Components

• DivX 5.x (freeware): This is used so you can load AVI files properly in QuickTime. There is a free version but if you want to fiddle with the features of the 15-day Pro trial version, you can download that here.



• FFusion 2.2 (freeware): This is so you can import DivX clips into iMovie.


• 3ivx (freeware): This can do the same as FFusion. I just list this here as an alternative if you find FFusion unstable.

Useful Stuff (you probably don't need it for this tutorial but it could come in handy)

• QuickTime Pro (29.99 upgrade): It's like a swiss army knife for editing movies.



• Movie Montage (5-minute-per-session demo): Used for cataloging movie files.

Thanks D. Ramos

Multiplying Mac Trojan???

November 2007

Multiplying Mac trojan not epidemic yet.
Security firm F-Secure has discovered 32 variants of the Trojan that targets Mac operating systems, but claims about its powers have been wildly overstated, according to experts. A chief research officer at F-Secure said the Trojan was not an isolated incident, and those behind it seem “serious about targeting Mac users as well as Windows users.

And they keep putting out slightly modified versions of the Trojan for the Mac too.” The Trojan is being disguised as a codec, a device used to decode digital streams. If it is downloaded, it alters a computer’s domain name system server, redirecting the machine to sites of the malware distributor’s choice. The prime purpose appears to be to make money when people click on ads served on the sites. Another F-Secure official said that while this shows that Macs are “starting to get interesting for the bad guys,” the Trojan does not mean Mac platforms are facing a malware epidemic.

IBM spends Billions and Billions...

November 2007

IBM to spend $1.5 billion to improve computer security.
IBM will spend $1.5 billion developing computer security products in 2008, a sum that could double the company’s previous spending. $1.5 billion “is much more than we’ve ever spent,” a general manager in IBM’s services unit who is responsible for security programs told The Wall Street Journal. The company would not say exactly how much it previously spent on data security, but an analyst from Pund-IT Research said $1.5 billion could double IBM’s typical spending on security research and product development, according to the Associated Press. IBM issued a press release Thursday saying IT security is becoming more difficult because of collaborative business models sophisticated criminal attacks and increasingly complex infrastructures.