CNET has published an excellent article on Web Safety when you’re out and about with your laptop or devices and using a public WiFi station. There are some pretty big risks that people might access and steal your data, your private logins and your identity information (including credit card numbers and passwords).
Check out their article at:
http://www.cnet.com/how-to/tips-to-stay-safe-on-public-wi-fi/
Hi guys. My entire website got hacked, so I’m recreating everything from the basics (at least, all the stuff that uses WordPress). This is a test of the app that lets my posts go to my Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Lesson is – if you use WordPress for anything (I use it for blogs only, right now), UPDATE often! Especially plugins!
Adobe Premiere Pro CC to include MorphCut – There’s something with the potential for greatness coming to the new Adobe Premiere Pro. In the right hands, this can be used for smoothing edits between different portions of a continuous clip, without having to cut over to a B roll, making (interviews in particular) edits cleaner and fixing a potential slew of problems.
My worry is what it’s going to do in the wrong hands. For example, the hands of politicians, news media, unscrupulous attorneys…
Take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6wPUtKg-Ac
At the NAB Conference from April 11th to April 16th, Adobe announced a new app, coming to Adobe Creative Cloud members.
Adobe Character Animator does just what it says it will do. You can use pre-created characters that appear to come with the app, or you can create your characters using Photoshop or Illustrator and animate them. I believe I’m initially most impressed with the facial recognition and animation activation, which takes prompts directly from your webcam.
Of course, version 1 of anything will have it’s issues – but this looks really promising!!!
http://www.rgbhq.com/nab-2015-adobe-character-animator-preview/
This past week, Adobe announced a new version of Acrobat Pro. It’s called DC (DC stands for “Document Cloud” and the interface is VERY different from what we’ve been used to (the upgrade to X from version 9 was very significant, but this one’s a whole different ballgame!)
With this version, Adobe puts a great deal of effort and emphasis on working with PDFs on computers and IOS and Android devices. It’s fully 64 bit, and it’s system requirements require newer Operating Systems, browsers, and more.
It’s available as a stand-alone subscription, or it’s included in the full Creative Cloud subscription. To see the version differences, please visit:
https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/pricing/pricing-compare-versions.html
One GIANT CAVEAT! The installation of DC will uninstall your previous versions of Adobe Acrobat Pro, including any customizations and plugins you’ve made. The only way to protect your customizations is to back them up, prior to installing DC. On Windows computers, there is NO way to run both version together (previous installations didn’t support it, but did allow it). On the Mac, several people have managed to successfully install DC and continue to run XI without problem – although those people are few and far between.
The app looks pretty cool – but do beware of the notes above. If you ever want to go back to XI, you’d have to uninstall DC and reinstall XI. From my personal experience so far, this is also the actual case for 99% of Mac users as well.
So, I’m testing Facebook Auto Publish to ensure my blog posts get to my Facebook page. Let’s see….
Up until today, I was under NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) to not reveal what’s coming up to MANY of my student’s favorite Adobe Apps – but today, with the announcement at NAB, all may be revealed. In fact, Adobe themselves revealed what’s to come to Adobe Premiere Pro (oh, my goodness, what they’re doing!), After Effects, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, Muse, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Audition!
You can check out the upcoming changes to the Video Editing apps here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/coming-next-to-adobe-pro-video-tools/
I’m sure there’re going to be many more blog posts at Adobe, to tell us the rest…
I was getting annoyed that EVERYTHING I looked up was getting tracked by FB. I followed this link: http://www.wired.com/2014/06/facebook-ad-tracking/,
which took me to this site: http://www.aboutads.info/choices/
I’d already had an ad blocker running on my computer, but the cookies this site found were… PROLIFIC! I can’t block all cookies, ’cause some of my sites NEED them (people I teach for and such), but now, about 1/2 hour later – my feed and my ad list is very, VERY different. So much cleaner! Nice!
Jeffrey Tranberry’s Adobe Blog has posted a VERY nice 214 page ebook about Photoshop Techniques. It specified “screen designers”, but the techniques and ideas can be applied to any media. You can find the download here: http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/2014/03/pixel-perfect-precision-useful-design-tips-photoshop-techniques-for-screen-designers.html?PID=2159997 There are also “Extras” that can be downloaded for the book, which can be downloaded here: PPP Extras (scripts, etc., 0.5MB) Don’t you just LOVE FREE!!!
Today, I received an email from a well-meaning friend asking if my email account had been hacked. He forwarded the original email to me, and it was immediately obvious that “Hacking” was not what was happening here. The appropriate word for what was done is “Spoofing”. My name was Spoofed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spoofing). To see the email I received, please see the bottom of this post.
What this means is that someone, somewhere got my name and used a bogus email address to send email to my friend – showing my name, but not from my address. This is a very important distinction. Had they used my email address, even with a DIFFERENT name, I would have been “Hacked”. I’d have to change my passwords and worry about my email account’s security. In this case, there’s nothing I can really do, but at least my information is safe.
I’m sure you’ve all seen emails like this. Emails that appear to be from friends, but are promoting something you KNOW your friend wouldn’t promote, or that has some wonky link in it.
If you’re wondering why this happens, there are several possible contributors to the cause:
1) Sending batch emails to dozens of people or strangers and CC’ing all the emails, exposing everyone’s names and addresses to everyone else. This is easily resolved by using BCC (for a tutorial on BCC, please visit my YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DunBSu6mL0)
2) Using BCC in your emails, but forgetting to remove the dozens of email addresses that had been forwarded to you by others who didn’t know BCC
3) (This seems to me to be the MOST prevalent) Keeping your Contacts (or Address Book) on a free email server – like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and others. It’s not too hard for a hacker to access your information from there :
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/r8AOu5cPpaU
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/34518/spam-that-comes-from-names-in-my-address-book-but-not-their-email-addresses
To support this idea, I can see that my friend received his email on his gmail account. My name is listed on his gmail account as a contact. The link and actual USED email address have something to do with cars. My friend is very connected with the car business and has likely been tracked as we all are, while doing some of his research.
Some articles blame social media, however I’m not among the people who believe that to be the culprit. My personal name is not listed in full, as used in this email on almost any social sites. In fact, the ONLY place this name is listed in this way is in Google+ (in which Google has endeavored to link everything Google to everything ELSE Google).
So, my suggestion is to stop using Free Email addresses on public sites. Now, I know that’s not going to happen, so here’s the next best thing. Check the email information – and look for the email ADDRESS from which the email was sent. If the listing is as it appears in the screenshot below – IMMEDIATELY delete the email. DO NOT CLICK ANY LINKS! Then, consider removing your friend’s name from a public listing on your free email account, and consider using BCC correctly in emails to protect the names and emails of your friends.
Look at the email address this was sent FROM