Noted: Wordfence Security Plugin for WordPress via The Many Faces of Mike McBride

Wordfence Security Plugin for WordPress via The Many Faces of Mike McBride

Wordfence

One of the challenges of hosting your own site and using WordPress is security. As WP has gotten more and more popular, it has become a huge target for hackers of all sorts. I’ve had my own fair share of old installations getting hacked and causing problems for live sites, rogue files, brute force login attempts that create a denial of service, DOS attacks against XMLRPC, and so on over the years.

Recently, I came across a mention of a security plugin called Wordfence and decided to try it out. It scans your install for any changes made to the WordPress core, theme and plugin files by comparing them to the original from the WordPress codex. 

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New Media 101: Why don’t we update our web sites? from “The Why, What and How of Blogging”

Part of the New Media 101/Blogging 101 series…

A quick clip from this 45 minute presentation — The Why, What and How of Blogging.

Watch the entire presentation

New Media 101: Why don't we update our web sites? 

Transcript:

Our web sites are arid fields of old information, in most cases and the reason is — it’s not your fault — it really isn’t. It’s technology’s fault. It’s people like me who can’t write — or couldn’t write — systems that allowed you update your web sites easily.

If you have to bring up Dreamweaver. If you have to bring up a web site editor program to edit your web site, guess what? You will never update your web site. (indistinct audience comment) If you have to bring up a huge program and actually edit static pages, you’re probably not going to update your web site. Simply because it is too difficult for your average person.

 

Previously on New Media 101/Blogging 101:

More information on Douglas E. Welch and Careers in New Media:

Noted: The Big List of IFTTT Recipes: 34 Hacks for Hardcore Social Media Productivity via Social Media Today

The Big List of IFTTT Recipes: 34 Hacks for Hardcore Social Media Productivity via Social Media Today

Ifttt

IFTTT is one of our favorite tools (and one that I’d imagine you might love as well). We use IFTTT in a number of neat ways here at Buffer, and there are loads of different options available through IFTTT for powering up your social media marketing. I thought I’d share a few of our favorites and some that might help you work smarter, too.

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Noted: Easily Take Studio Quality Smartphone Video with the iStabilizer via iPhone Hacks

Easily Take Studio Quality Smartphone Video with the iStabilizer via iPhone Hacks

IStabilizer

There’s a lot going on out in the world. If you blink, you might miss it. That’s why the iStabilizer is so great. It helps you see everything that happens, capturing occurrences from all degrees and angles like your own personal extra set of eyes. To get shots that you could only imagine otherwise, you need the iStabilizer–and you can get it on sale right now from the iPhone Hacks Deals Hub.

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Noted: Broken Link Checker for WordPress from The Many Faces of Mike McBride

Broken Link Checker for WordPress from The Many Faces of Mike McBride

Brokenlinks

After 12 plus years of blogging, I’m sure that you can imagine that there must be a lot of links that I’ve shared that may not actually go anywhere any longer. That is true, but I never really knew how true until I grabbed a copy of the WordPress plugin Broken Link Checker.

I installed it over on my child abuse survivor blog, and out of curiosity I went ahead and let it do it’s things.

Sure enough, it found a few hundred broken links and presented them all to me in a list, like you see below.

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Video: New Media 101: Where do you find content? from New Media Question Time

Part of the New Media 101/Blogging 101 series…

A quick clip from this 30 minute presentation — New Media Question Time for UCLA Voiceover Class.

Watch the entire presentation

 
Nm101 where content
 

Transcript:

You need to capture ideas as they occur to you, because we tend to throw away lots of content every day. We simply have a great idea on our walk or in the shower, whatever, and don’t capture it and it’s gone. It’s very rare that you get those ideas back unless there’s similar stimulus to trigger them again. Most times, they just kind of go down the river of thought and you never think about them again.

Integrate it into your life. Think about those questions that come into your life that you’re answering for other people. Think about the opinions that you’re being asked for at a party, at a dinner, by friends, by family. What are your opinions? Maybe that’s worth sharing in your podcast, if it’s on the topic of your podcast. Read the news. Read your RSS feeds. Read blogs. Check out stuff on the Internet. Set up Google News Alerts to trigger you with — to send you email when there’s a new news items on your topic. I’ll think you’ll be surprised how much content is really out there and how much information is available to you to draw upon to use in your own shows.

We have so many tools at our fingertips today that simply weren’t available 10 years ago. It’s easy to go out and shoot a video — of very high quality. It’s easy to go out and record audio of very high quality. We carry a little movie studio — for the most part — a little audio studio, in our pockets these days, along with a camera, a video camera, and a ton of other tools. There’s really no reason for you not to be marketing yourself every single day because the tools are there. The tools are no longer your limitation. It still tends to be our own limitations about marketing that hold us back.

One of things I recommend to people, too, is to get good at grabbing the content that you already create. If I’m at a museum and I’m visiting and looking around the collection, I’ll take photos. I’ll take some video. I’ll maybe do some audio. I’m going to be there anyway. I’m going to be engaging in activity anyway. It’s not like I made a special trip out there or anything like that. I’m already there doing the event. Why wouldn’t I capture some of the content from that event to later share on my blog, on my podcast, whatever? I see a lot of people who don’t do that. They go off and do some very cool things, but then they don’t capture anything to share with their friends, their family, and their audience, later.

 

Previously on New Media 101/Blogging 101:

More information on Douglas E. Welch and Careers in New Media:

Noted: Apple brings back free summer camps for kids with moviemaking, storytelling workshops via AppleInsider

Apple brings back free summer camps for kids with moviemaking, storytelling workshops via AppleInsider

Apple camp

U.S., Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K. in the months of July and August. Enrollment is free, and parents can sign up at AppleRSVP.com as registration opens in their region.

In the “Stories in Motion with iMovie” camp, Apple will teach young learners how to create movies on their Mac using Final Cut’s little brother. Apple says the curriculum will include storyboarding, filming, creating a soundtrack using the iPad’s unique version of GarageBand, and finally bringing the final edit together on a Mac.

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Noted: The Mozart Project via Kottke.org

The Mozart Project 

Mozart project

The Mozart Project ($14.99) is a book about the life and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Or is it an app? Stephen Fry calls it “a completely new kind of book”…you read it in iBooks but it acts more like an app than anything. Over 200 pages of text by leading Mozart scholars is accompanied by hours of music, videos, photo slideshows, all sorts of other goodies.

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Noted: A Drone Designed To Follow And Film You Is Smashing Its Kickstarter Goal via Business Insider

A Drone Designed To Follow And Film You Is Smashing Its Kickstarter Goal via Business Insider

Hexo

Xavier de le Rue is founder of Palo Alto-based Squadrone System and an action sports filmmaker, and his company is currently raising money on Kickstarter for the HEXO+, a drone designed to autonomously follow you with a video camera for the sake of getting great (and otherwise expensive) aerial footage for your video projects.

The project was born out of necessity, and it’s already crushed fundraising goals, raising over six times its $50,000 goal — he and his crew “needed a solution that would make aerial filming possible in the most remote places: on mountains, in the snow, and in all sorts of unpredictable situations that were quite a pain to deal with when trying to sync a drone pilot, a cameraman and a rider.”

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Noted: Start Filming with the iOgrapher Bundle via PhotoJoJo

Start Filming with the iOgrapher Bundle via PhotoJoJo

Iographer

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a well made video with high quality sound all made on an iPad? There are no words.

Pair your iPad with the pro quality Rode VidMic Pro Boom and iOgrapher video rig, to really get a handle on your next film project.

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New Media 101: Use New Media to Gain Visibility from “New Media Question Time”

Part of the New Media 101/Blogging 101 series…

A quick clip from this 30 minute presentation — New Media Question Time for UCLA Voiceover Class.

Watch the entire presentation

 
Nm101 visibility
 

Transcript:

In today’s world, the way we get jobs, the way we get attract opportunities to us, is by telling people what we do and how well we do it and the fact is, the best tool we have for doing that is — for showing people what we do and how well we do it — is new media. It’s making a video. It’s recording and audio podcast. It’s doing a reading of an audio book for a friend. It’s performing our own music. It’s live streaming our own performances of our band or us as an individual. It sharing what we do with as many people as possible. In that way, you attract opportunity to you. You’re trying to give people as much opportunity as possible to stumble upon your work. If you’re not out there sharing what you do and how well you do it with people, you’re limiting the opportunities that are going to come to you. You’re limiting the opportunities that are just going to show up knocking at your door, because people simply don’t know about you.

Most importantly, if you’re not being presented with opportunities to show people what you do and how well you do it, you’ve got got to create them yourself. You’ve got to do what we did — start your own reading, get together with a group of people and start putting together a radio show — like an old-fashioned radio show — where you can all use your voices, can all play different characters, can all act. Do a video series where you go out and interview people. Do whatever it takes for you to gain exposure.

 

Previously on New Media 101/Blogging 101:

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Noted: YouTube will start removing suspended accounts from channel subscriber counts on June 16 from ReadWriteWeb

YouTube will start removing suspended accounts from channel subscriber counts on June 16 fro ReadWriteWeb

YouTube today announced plans to improve the accuracy of subscriber counts on channels starting next week. On June 16, the Google-owned company will remove suspended accounts from all channels’ subscriber counts. While this means you may notice a minor drop in your subscribers, you shouldn’t see any impact on your views or watch time since they are not active users.

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Noted: Keep Your Mobile Device In Place Every Time When Taking Memorable Photo And Videos via Lifehack

Keep Your Mobile Device In Place Every Time When Taking Memorable Photo And Videos via Lifehack

Mobile tripod head

Taking pictures with a smartphone can be a daunting task. Trembling hands can instantly ruin a memorable shot. The problem is, perfect shots only happen once. Let the moment slip and you’ll be regretting it for the rest of your life. With the Shoulderpod, you can be sure to capture all of life’s greatest moments. The mighty stand is compact and fits effortlessly in the palm of your hand.

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Noted: This New Tool Will Make Your Articles Effortlessly Tweetable from The Buzz Bin

This New Tool Will Make Your Articles Effortlessly Tweetable from The Buzz Bin

Tracy interview

Whether you love it or love to hate it, the New York Times is the king of digital journalism for a simple reason: it’s always innovating. Beyond making “snowfall” a verb, the so-called Gray Lady has in recent months overhauled its website, introduced new revenue streams, produced a viral video based verbatim on a deposition, bought its own native ads, launched an explainer microsite, and built a suite of apps. And that’s all before last week’s release of the paper’s internal “innovation report,” which has been called “one of the key documents of this media age.”

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Noted: Patreon Offers Crowdfunding for Content Creators Like You from Small Biz Trends

Patreon Offers Crowdfunding for Content Creators Like You

Patreon

If you’re familiar with crowdfunding and sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, you know these are often intense projects that require a lot funding in a short amount of time. Traditional crowdfunding is a great avenue to quickly launch and market new products, but it might not be the best way to raise funds for people who create content on a regular basis: Like you, writers, bloggers, artists and musicians.

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New Media 101: Marketing Your New Media Projects from “New Media Question Time”

Part of the New Media 101/Blogging 101 series…

A quick clip from this 30 minute presentation — New Media Question Time for UCLA Voiceover Class.

Watch the entire presentation

 
Nm101 marketing
 

Transcript:

How would you grab and build your audience — marketing yourself — if you start blogging in a sea full of bloggers?

That is probably the most difficult question of any person who is starting out new, because, yes, it can be very hard to raise your head above, what we call, the noise level of what is already out there. And I am going to give you some probably counter-intuitive advice on this. Don’t worry about it. Each of us, as I said earlier in this video, each of us has and audience already. We have an audience that is looking for our expertise, our opinion, our information, our entertainment, whatever. In most cases, if you are out there doing the work, if you are putting the shows out, you’re sharing them on your social media, sharing them in your blogs, sharing them with your friends, your family, everything, people will find you. Those people will tell their friends, their contacts, and so on and so on and so forth.

It truly is very much, at the beginning, a word of mouth process. You, though, have to do the work of creating the product in order for people to discover it. The fact is, if you have great content — if you have something interesting to say — people will find you and they’ll tell people about you and that’s what you truly want. Seth Godin, a famous writer on marketing and sales and stuff says, “The best marketing you can have is to have some something worth talking about.” ‘Cause if you have something that’s cool, something thats neat, something that’s worth talking about, people will talk about it. You won’t have to market it. The product itself markets itself. It sells itself. The more you focus on what you’re producing and making it available to people, the more it’s going to grow — I think just by the very nature of the beast. People, if they enjoy it, will tell other people, will share it, and it will simply start to gather a momentum snowball — like a snowball rolling downhill. It’s going to grow in that regard.

 

Previously on New Media 101/Blogging 101:

More information on Douglas E. Welch and Careers in New Media:

Noted: Crunchyroll, MLS and Google+ Photos get Chromecast support. Next up Aereo? – GigaOm

Crunchyroll, MLS and Google+ Photos get Chromecast support. Next up Aereo? – GigaOm

Google’s Chromecast streaming stick didn’t just get love from ESPN this week: Chromecast users can now also cast from the iOS and Android apps as well as the website of the Anime video service Crunchyroll, Major League Soccer’s mobile apps, and Google+ iOS and Android apps. The latter can be used to cast photos and videos to the TV, which is especially useful if you auto-upload all your personal media to Google+. And we might even see Chromecast coming to Aereo as early as Wednesday.

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Noted: YouTube announces proposed new crowdfunding program – fans to get the chance to chip in to their favorite channels from Red Ferret

YouTube announces proposed new crowdfunding program – fans to get the chance to chip in to their favorite channels from Red Ferret

Youtube crowd

The YouTube phenomenon continues on and on, with no signs of stopping, with around 1 billion viewers now visiting the site every single month. That’s a lot of eyeballs, and it’s clearly exercising the attention of Google a lot nowadays, judging by the number of new initiatives which are arriving on the scene for the video makers and their fans.

One such set of proposals has just been announced by Google, which has the capacity to add an interesting twist to the whole synergy between fans and video makers. The company has just announced that it’s working on ways to add some form of crowdfunding feature to the service, so fans can elect to give cash to their favorite channels to encourage more of their most popular content to be produced.

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Noted: Whoa: Northern Shadow Is Skyrim Meets A City Builder from Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Northern Shadow Is Skyrim Meets A City Builder from Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Northern6

I do so love indie game development. One second I’m minding my own business, sipping coffee and wondering if trees dream, and the next I stumble across what may well be the next Skyrim, the next colossal, gorgeous first-person fantasy RPG bonanza. Northern Shadow, however, comes with a twist: it’s also a city builder ala Banished. You have a living world to both explore and build a kingdom in. My kingdom for this game. Trailer below. Watch it, because it’s crazy impressive.

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Noted: How to Edit Videos In Your Browser With YouTube’s Built-in App from Gizmodo

How to Edit Videos In Your Browser With YouTube’s Built-in App from Gizmodo

Youtube edit

YouTube’s online video editor has been around for several years, but it’s not heavily promoted on the site, and it often gets overlooked by people wanting a basic tool to spruce up their footage. It shouldn’t, though, because it’s surprisingly capable. Here’s how to get the most out of it.

The YouTube editor lets you cut up and stitch together clips, as well as drop in music, titles, and transitions, and because it runs in your browser you can use it from any computer with no extra software required.

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