Techization

I know it has been awhile everyone!  I have been super busy here at UW-Stout with classes and work.  Here is a nice in-depth entry I prepared for UW-Stout administrators on the use of Facebook in their crisis management plan.  Enjoy!

Facebook Overview

Facebook is the Internet’s phone book.  It is way to connect with friends, find old classmates and stay in touch with loved ones who live far away.  Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg at the age of 19 while attending Harvard University.  It was originally founded to be used at Harvard by students only. Facebook spread like wildfire on-campus and soon Zuckerberg and his co-founders distributed the service to forty-five schools and had hundreds of thousands of users within 6 months.   They were onto something.  It was at this point Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to pursue Facebook as a full-time venture in the summer of 2004.  Zuckerberg is still the CEO of Facebook to this day and has a net worth of over 2 billion.  Facebook has been estimated at a staggering $15 billion dollars by Microsoft Corp.  (Wikipedia, 2009)  In 2008, more than 93% of UW-Stout students had an active Facebook account.  (Kaskavitch, 2009)

Facebook User Count:  Over 310 million active users

Facebook Behavior during Crises

Virginia Tech, I35 bridge collapse, US Airways 1549 all have one thing in common.  Each event spurred dozens if not hundreds of Facebook groups often within an hour of the actual even occurring.  These groups on the network provided an open platform to share information at a very fast pace.  Facebook groups were setup during the Virginia Tech tragedy within 15 minutes of the news breaking on what was occurring.  News and information spreads faster than ever before.  So fast sometimes it can cause information overload.  A study published in New Scientist magazine in 2008 found that social network sites like Facebook, instant messengers, blogs and micro-blogging sites like Twitter spread warnings and information more efficiently than traditional communication channels.  (Catone, 2008)

How to utilize Facebook for crisis management

The big question:  How does UW-Stout utilize this tool in its campus crisis management planning?

The answer to this question is by creating “dark groups” on Facebook.  Dark groups are groups that are only visible to the creator and those whom the creator selects to invite, these are known as “secret” on Facebook.  These dark groups can then be pre-loaded with crisis plans and content that students, faculty and staff will need to know in the event of a campus crisis.

These groups will need to be altered and information about the actual incident will need to be added to the group description because of the fluidity of emergencies, but that should only be a paragraph or two.

Once a crisis occurs, you simply make the group public and invite the first ten or fifteen students.  With that small starting cluster of users, the group should grow exponentially will little administration effort.  It would also be worthwhile to put it on the UW-Stout home page to align it with other official channels of communication like news releases, blogs and messages from Chancellor Sorensen.  The power of viral spread via Facebook was demonstrated when students organized the Westboro Baptist Church counter-protest in under 36 hours.  All this organization and information exchange was done with a simple Facebook event.

You will need to consider a few things before considering yourself prepared to use Facebook as a platform in crisis management

• Will you include photos and videos in the group?  If so, will only administrators be allowed to upload media or will everyone be allowed to contribute?
• Do you want to enable the ‘wall’ to allow open conversation?
• Do you want the discussion board enabled?
• Who will manage it in the event of a crisis?

Organizations want very tight control on the messages being delivered and content being passed between users, especially during something as serious as a campus emergency.  Locking down the group and making it a billboard inside a walled-garden is not effective.  You have to be willing to open up and let information flow across the channel in an unfiltered manner.  The speed at which is can go back and forth across this medium could be incredibly useful during an emergency.  You want your message to get out, and you should want feedback from your receiving audience as well.

Creating dark groups on Facebook will not stop other groups from forming.  Having the official group will bolster much more credibility than groups created by students.  You will not be able to censor these groups and the information exchanged on them.  Having the official group and positioning/advertising it as an official channel of communication will make it more relevant and more likely ‘the place to be’ for your target audience to gather and exchange information.  You will be able to:

• Censor information (only if absolutely necessary)
• Direct message all members of your group instantly.
• Control the message and information presented within the group.

All these become possible only if you have administrator privileges in the group.  You would not be able to do the above points if you simply joined a student’s group and tried to calm the flames or correct information as a regular member.

There is one ‘issue’ with pre-creating these groups ahead of time.  You will need to name them right away and you cannot change them later on.  Therefore, you won’t be able to put actual situation specific information in the group name.  Some advocate practice setting up these groups, know the setting’s you want and have the information ready to paste into the group.  You would actually create the group once the emergency or crisis occurs allowing for a detailed group name.

New technologies and communication platforms like Twitter and Facebook connect large clusters of students like never before.  Information is exchanged at light speed and exchanged more efficiently than more traditional channels of communication.

UW-Stout has announced it has selected Microsoft’s Live@edu product to provide e-mail for students.  The choice will save hundreds of thousands of dollars for the University while providing the students a better e-mail system.  The aging campus-based e-mail server would have cost about $300,000 dollars to replace over a three year span.

The big draw for students will be increased storage capacity.  The top problem students encounter every single year is filling up their mailbox with messages.  So many of us today are use to unlimited storage of our data.  ‘Delete Message’, what’s that?  Services like G-mail offer the ability to keep a running archive of every electronic conversation you engage in.  The risk associated with that luxury is your e-mail is only stored in the cloud, not on your hard drive.  That is what makes so many nervous.  If the ‘cloud’ goes down, then what?  Oh my godddddd!!!!

Some administrators at other campuses cite the recent G-mail outage that occurred for one-half of a business day as a reason to stay away from cloud-based e-mail.  Really?  Do you think your universities IT department has the technology, hardware and abilities to that of Google?  Your out of your mind if you think your better off just because the server is on your campus.  Google maintains a 99.9% up-time, and that figured isn’t carefully crafted with formulas and exceptions to make it seem amazing.  It is real 99.9% up-time.  What service can even approach saying that truthfully?  Not many.

There is no question universities are afraid to ‘lose control’ over their e-mail system; a life blood of any university, especially UW-Stout.  Companies like Google and Microsoft can provide better solutions than any university IT department in the country.  Google has some of the best network infrastructure in the world.  Why not utilize the power of their technology for your students benefits?

These positives do come with risks like:

• Network outage possibilities
• Glitches in the network (See Brown University Google Glitch)
• Difficulties complying with ‘Open Record’ laws.

Microsoft Live@edu rolls out on-campus today.  I’m anxious to see the new product and all of its features.  I’ll post a follow up blog with how the transition is going here and my thoughts on using the Microsoft product first hand.

Securing wireless networks has been a headache for broadband users for years now.  I wanted to write a short blog on how the average home user or small business can secure their wireless network and keep moochers and even more malicious users at bay.

Your Not Secure Out Of The Gate

Most users think just having a router is an automatic shield after listening to various media stories praise routers for their firewall abilities.  This is not the case.  Most routers you purchase at your local electronics store (Best Buy, Wal-Mart etc.) is not secure when you first plug it in. Routers are normally pre-configured to be open wireless access points.  This means anyone within its range will be able to use your connection, no questions asked.  This is done to make setup easy and compatible with most operating systems.  The only problem is it leaves your network open to attack.

The very first thing you’ll want to is login to your router’s administration panel.  This is done by typing in a 192.168.x.x address into your browsers address bar.  The actual number varies by router manufacturer, look in your user guide or online to find the local IP address for your router.  Linksys for example is 192.168.1.1.  The manufacturer sets very easy non-secure passwords.  These are easily found online as well as in your user guide and if left unchanged will make your network exceptionally vulnerable.  You’ll want to change the password to your router right away.  Make sure it is a secure password of at least six characters and preferably with upper and lowercase letters and numbers.

Bad Advice From GeekSquad

Local sales associates at places like Best Buy are often clueless on network security and sometimes offer up misleading advice.  Here are some steps that aren’t harmful, but mostly just a waste of time because they don’t secure your network.

• Turning off your SSID broadcast. - The SSID (Service Set Identifier) is an identifier broadcast by a wireless router.  You might know this as your network name.  Most routers default SSID broadcast is the manufacturers name (linksys, netgear etc.)  Turning this off does nothing to protect your network.  With the proper software, a malicious user could easily spot your networks presence even with the SSID off.  It is a false sense of security.   Changing the network name won’t make you more secure either, though I would recommend doing it.  Just make sure you SSID isn’t identifiable making it easy for outside users to know where the network is located (i.e. last name, home address are all no no’s)
• Turning DHCP Off - This in theory is a good idea but really doesn’t make you more secure.  It is easy to detect the method in which ip addresses are being assigned and make a request matching that method.
• Filtering MAC Addresses – Filtering MAC addresses is a good practice to get into, but for most households and businesses it causes more headache than what it’s worth.  For homes with many devices on the network like game systems, multiple computers and cell phones, filtering MAC addresses simply isn’t practical.  That being said, a malicious user with easily attainable monitoring software can replicate a MAC address and still penetrate your network.  This method has some value for keeping the average user off the network but will crumble with ease against advanced computer users.

What You Should Do

The easiest thing you can do to secure your network is protect your wireless access point with encryption.  There are two different kinds of encryption you can use.  One is known as Wired Equivalent Privacy or WEP. This encryption is better than nothing but it does have a huge problem.

Beginning in 2001, several serious weaknesses were identified by cryptanalysts with the result that today a WEP connection can be cracked with readily available software found online within minutes. — Source:  Wikipedia

WEP can be easily cracked within minutes therefore it should not be your first choice, though it is better than having no encryption at all.  It will keep your pesky neighbors with no computer skills from using your bandwidth, but even the most novice 13 year-old could brute force their way into your network.  You want something with a little more ‘umph’.

You will want to use Wifi Protected Access, otherwise known as WPA,  for your wireless encryption.  WPA was designed after flaws were discovered in WEP that led to its demise.  Recently, researchers have found a way to crack WPA-TKIP connections, though it is still tougher than cracking WEP.  Since this has happened, you’ll want to make sure your using WPA-AES encryption to remain secure.  AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard and the encryption contains three block ciphers.  It has been adopted by the U.S. government as their standard for encrypting sensitive networks and has yet to be cracked.

WPA2 is an even newer advance in WiFi network security.  If you have an older router or a computer older than 3 years old you may have compatibility issues.  For less headaches and still secure network, stick with WPA-AES unless you have all ‘newer’ hardware.

Conclusion

The simplest thing you can do to protect your wireless network is still encrypting it.  There is no need to cause yourself more trouble by turning off DHCP or hiding the SSID identifier. It will only give you headaches and nightmares down the road.  Most need for securing your WiFi comes from nosey neighbors or passer-by’s looking to score free Internet.  They don’t want to steal your credit card info or read your e-mails bur just score free interwebs. However, there are individuals who go around looking for easy targets to steal sensitive information from.

I found this from my girl Julia Roy.  I love these videos because they are so mind provoking and really make you think on a macro level.

I found these particuarly interesting:

By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers.
This illustrates the shift occuring in our society right now in the U.S.  —  The older generations are falling out of power in business and society and Gen Y is taking over!

Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web.
Didn’t think I’d ever see this happen!

1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum.
I am included in this 1 in 6 students.  UW-Stout is a leader in online curriculum.  In fact, most classes I take in a year are online.

A 20 year-old Chicago hacker by the name Marcel Carter was arrested for hacking into the Chicago Transit Authority’s radio system repeatedly for more than a year.  Don’t get overly scared by mainstream media’s portrayl of this kid as a dangerous genius who spent hours nightly hacking into CTA ’super-servers’.

Carter either stole or found a CTA two-way radio that was already pre-programmed with the frequencies and codes that allowed him to harass transit employees for over a year.  This scenario however is much easier than you may want to imagine.

Many two-way radio systems in this country are built on old legacy technologies.  The security that is imposed on these radio systems is so easy to break a half skilled 14 year-old could execute the act of jamming the system.  Many of the systems in use today are still analog and use what’s known as CTCSS PL tones to keep unwanted jammers and others off the system.  The problem with this is PL (Private Line) tone systems is that they were not designed to keep systems secure.  PL tones rather lessen interference on large radio towers that are home to the high-powered radio systems.  With all that RF in such a small area, interference is commonplace.  PL Tones are a pre-defined set of tones that are encoded with a RF transmission to allow access to a repeater (radio system).  PL tone lists are by no means secret, there are only 42 CTCSS PL tones.  Today’s radio equipment can easily scan a transmission and find what PL tone is being used on that system in less than 60 seconds.  Once the PL tone is found on the system output frequency (the one you listen to). it’s just a matter finding the input frequency which again takes merely minutes to an hour at most.  Most of these radio system inputs & outputs are publicized on the Internet on scanner enthusiast websites.

The equipment needed to transmit on public safety frequencies or ones used by the CTA is relatively inexpensive and very easy to obtain.  Have $300-$400 burning  a hole in your pocket?  You could purchase perfectly legal amateur radio transceivers and do a simple modification or surf eBay for the proper equipment.  Either way you do it, it is very easy and quite cheap.

Once the radio system can be accessed, a person could begin to jam the frequencies hindering communications in an emergency and even impersonate public safety officers or dispatchers.

So why doesn’t jamming happen more often?  Well it does happen more than you think.  The city which I grew up in (Wausau, WI) is in the largest county in the state.  The radio systems here are large and span a very wide area.  Jamming is a nuisance that is a monthly problem for public safety dispatchers.  It is nearly 100% impossible to trace as long as the jammer/hacker isn’t stupid in his methods.  The main tool for tracing radio signals is often triangulation whether it’s from radio towers around the county to actually putting radio techs in the field moving around and honing in on the signal being transmitted from the jammer.

Police and fire systems are easy to break into and interfere with.  Most people don’t do it because it could endanger lives and would bring the attention of law enforcement quite quickly.  The story of Marcel Carter should be a wake-up call to our government.  It is time to drop old legacy analog systems and upgrade this countries network infrastructure.   The new digital systems aren’t 110% unbreakable but are incredibly tougher to get into.  A jammer/hacker would really really want to get in for a malicious reason to spend the time and money on equipment needed.  The Obama administration has dedicated billions of dollars to upgrading network infrastructure and I hope it is put to good use wiping out these old systems and old problems like Marcel can cause.

A huge hurdle has been jumped for e-textbooks and open source instructional resources.  California held an open ‘e-textbook compeition’ for any company to submit new instructional resources for the state.  The submissions were analyzed against California’s standards for their public education system and rated for their content.

A non-profit organization named CK-12 won the competition which is a recent upstart company with an incredibly small staff.  CK-12 wen’t up against major publishers looking to land a major contract with the state of California.  Of the 16 free digital textbooks for high school math and science reviewed, ten meet at least 90 percent of California’s standards. Four meet 100 percent of standards.’ Three of those recognized as 100% aligned to California standards were from CK-12 and one from H. Jerome Keisler.

What makes this hurdle so huge is that CK-12 is not a major publisher and focuses on open source information and sources.  Their texts are combined information for multiple sources and not a short list of authors.  Similar to ‘Wikipedia’ in a textbook format.  This showcases the power of open source information and California’s commitment to e-readers to deliver this content.

E-Textbooks Offer

• Fast content turn-around.  No need for new print editions which when shipped can contain content that is up to 2 years old. Content can be edited literally overnight and kept up-to-date.
• Content can be made more interactive and media rich via hyperlinks, high-resolution color graphics and other engaging content

This is a huge win for e-textbooks and open source content for instructional material.  It is my hope that universities will begin initialising similar programs for their students with the University of Wisconsin-Stout being a prime candidate test this new technology.

Watching what has been happening to AT&T has been like watching a mob beat a dead horse, only the horse never cared in the first place. Sporadic outages nationwide, voicemail being delayed weeks and no support for MMS or tethering…still!  AT&T’s brand is driven through the mud on Twitter on an hourly basis.  The disturbing part to me is they just don’t care.  Take 5 minutes and check out the hashtag #attfail on Twitter.  All the negative tweets, explicit blog posts and constant complaints really isn’t making a dent.   That begs the question, why not?

AT&T really isn’t too concerned because they are raking in cash by the truck loads off their exclusive contract with Apple.  Between increasing text message costs (that you must have on the iPhone) and those annoying voicemail instructions with an ever increasing customer base, they are sitting pretty.  How pretty?

AT&T said itself the exclusive contract won’t last forever.  Do they plan on doing damage control for their brand once people don’t care because they can get the iPhone elsewhere?  It doesn’t make sense!  Maybe they will just wave a shiny new toy in our face to keep us happy for awhile. $99 8gb iPhone 3GS anyone?

I guess AT&T is happy getting fat and rich for the time being and letting their brand be bashed into oblivion.  Here is a tip AT&T, making the upgrade  to the new 3GS after you ripped so many customers is not going to help you, your network still sucks and that is the real problem. Customers often will forget their mistreatment if you wave a new shiny toy in front of them and run a few commercials.  This customer however, will not!

A little off topic but very important!  David Pogue, a columnist for the NY Times has been leading a ground swell against wireless providers who put on those ridiculous voicemail instructions (To page this person, press 3.  Please leave your message and hang up when finished).  Those 15 seconds are earning wireless companies millions of dollars at their customers expense.  Please read his blog here and contact your provider!

You see an old high school friend while shopping for your next pair of underwear.  You stop briefly to catch-up on ‘old times’ only to find it’s almost like you never were apart.  Sherri had a baby and John just had a killer bachelor party, yadda yadda yadda.  This phenomenon is known as ‘ambient awareness’.  Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have made following your friends, families and co-workers daily lives effortless.

Many non-early adopters ask, why do I care that Matt ate toast this morning or thinks that AT&T is an epic failure as a wireless provider?  With occasional browsing the updates seem really boring, perhaps even absurd to even waste time reading.  Keep following those status updates and tweets, soon a digital picture begins to emerge in your head.  You begin to tune into the flow of your friends daily lives and know their day-to-day triumphs and tribulations.  This is known as digital intimacy.

Digital intimacy is increasing on a monthly basis with the evolution of ‘real-time’ platforms.  Thousands of users squawked when Facebook updated to their freshly designed home page with information popping up in their users feeds faster than ever before.  After a few months most adjusted to the new speed of information and the ground swell subsided.

So with this new ambient awareness of your network, you will find yourself feeling strangely close to your friends even though you rarely see them.  When you do stumble across them you pick up your conversation where it left off online.  This is not an unproven theory, I catch myself doing it all the time.  The more I scan my networks the closer I feel digitally to my friends.  But sometimes too much digital digestion can be a bit stressful.

This stress has led to many digital mavens to start adopting convergence tools like FriendFeed or simply skimming on the platforms they currently use when they have ample time.

Users who create more content are much more likely to have more digital visibility and are also more likely to have digital awareness of their network.  Content creates conversation and will foster more time spent digesting and engaging in the conversation.  This closeness drawn from conversation and interaction will foster more digital awareness of their network, especially those who engage with that users content.

That begs the question, are you in the conversation?

So many of us do it daily, but hardly anyone does it efficiently.  E-mail has rapidly become as important as checking your physical snail mail box outside your home.  Nothing annoys me more than having to wait more than 24-48 hours for an e-mail response unless they have auto-reply turned on notifying you otherwise.  My gripe to people I know who do that is, “would you check your physical mailbox every three or four days?”  They always reply with the common answer, no.

Here are some guidelines for effective e-mail

• Don’t Ramble! -  When people sit down to check their e-mail they often have lots of messages and little time.  Don’t tell your life story only to get to the point in the very last sentence.  KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) often works well for e-mail.  No more than five sentences, that’s it!
• Be Careful With E-Mail Directories and pre-defined mailing lists - I’ve seen people I know make this terrible mistake.  When loading up multiple recipients or using a pre-defined mailing list make sure you know who it’s going to!  Double check and re-check the recipients you’ve selected or know who the mailing list contains.  You could send information and have it seen by users who you definitely don’t want seeing it.
• Don’t E-Mail Angry - Sometimes you will receive a message that angers you or maybe your upset for outside reasons.  Never, ever send an e-mail while angry.  Just leave it sit till the next day and approach your e-mail with a calm and collected mood.
• Respect Privacy – I’m not terribly strong on this point, but some people are really hypersensitive about their e-mail address.  I am personally not one of these people.  When sending an e-mail to a group of people consider using the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) option.  This will mask everyone who receives the message so none of your recipients know who else received the message.
• Have A Good Signature - Signature are important and everyone should have one.  Often times they are over done and sometimes down right distracting.  Don’t use photos in your signature as it will increase the likelihood of being caught by a spam filter.  Don’t put any kind of quotes in your e-mail, they could end being offensive or confusing to your recipient.  Use eight lines to compose your signature, anything more is just too much.  Only include what you want recipients to know!  I know it is kind of obvious but if you don’t want business calls at home, don’t include your home phone number.  Lastly don’t get flashy and fancy, keep it simple.  Your not designing a poster, use easy to read fonts.
• Check It Often - As I described above, nothing gets under my skin more when someone does not check their e-mail daily or respond in a timely matter.  Check your e-mail at the bare minimum once a day, I recommend checking it twice a day.  Don’t just read, respond!   Techno geeks like myself have e-mail on constantly with push notifications to our mobile devices.  When you send me an e-mail I get it within a minute or two.  If it is critical i’ll respond within minutes, not days.  You wouldn’t let your physical mailbox outside your home go unchecked for days, would you?
• Don’t Use HTML - Don’t use HTML to link to your website or blog or anywhere else on the web.  (i.e. “My Website”)  Actually spell out the address. (i.e. http://www.techization.com)  You never know what kind of e-mail client the recipient is using and how it could display or not display your address.  This leads to a distraction within the message and could result in a lost opportunity if your link doesn’t work.

And for goodness sakes spell check before you send!

Did I forget one of your e-mail etiquette pet peeves?  Have another good point?  Leave a comment below!

Before I dived into the iPhone pool, I was a customer of Cellular One here in Wisconsin. I was a very happy customer.  Good coverage within the state, $49.99 got me unlimited everything and I never had any mishaps with my billing.  Cellular One was bought out by AT&T and then re-sold to Trilogy Partners.  During the time that AT&T owned Cellular One, I had to re-sign which then put me under an AT&T contract, not by choice.  In my area, AT&T has good overall geographic coverage.  Sprint is a joke here though Verizon may be a contender in coverage now.  My only gripe is CDMA, really Verizon?  CDMA is great for rural areas which we have plenty of, but GSM is the system of the future and CDMA is a dinosaur.

The list of why AT&T is the worst cellular provider in the history of telecommunications is long.  We won’t even begin to list the reasons.  However yet another failure has occurred this month that left many of their customers extremely upset.

If your an AT&T customer I suggest reading this article from TechCrunch and really consider jumping ship from AT&T as soon as you can.