Category Archives: Technology

Text trapped in images no longer!

I got a link from @_adamhutch the other day, and it was a big deal.  Remember, how fundamental was the understanding to web/digital/marketing/SEO professionals that text-in-images can neither be indexed nor edited?  Well, there’s a new project in town, Project Naptha, which has solved that issue brilliantly.

Check out the website, which has a live demo right on the homepage: http://projectnaptha.com/

I expect to see this development cascade its impact to search engines, copying & pasting, and even storage…

Other blog-posts about Project Naptha:

Holiday Updates – WordPress

We have an important custom WordPress website implementation to do for early January 2013, so what better time than the holidays to catch up on Shak’s own WordPress deployment!

Shak.Biz is now running the slightly significant new release of WordPress, which was published earlier this month – version 3.5, up from 3.4.x – read about it on WordPress News: http://wordpress.org/news/2012/12/elvin/

Along with the latest version of WordPress, the default Twenty Eleven theme had an update – version 1.5 – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentyeleven.  It’s supposed to be more mobile-friendly…

The previously used Facebook plugins & widgets seem to be misbehaving if not broken, so they’re removed for now…  An overhaul of the social media is long overdue, but clients take priority 🙂

Did Lulzsec breach your account on Facebook, PayPal, Xbox Live, Twitter, or elsewhere?

The hacker Group Lulzsec Security hacked into 62,000 private Internet accounts including Facebook, PayPal, dating sites, Xbox Live and Twitter.

See the CBC article “Facebook, PayPal users urged to check logins after hacking“:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/06/17/pei-lulzsec-personal-internet-accounts-584.html

There is a link to a Dazzlepod page referenced in the above article, which lists email addresses of hacked accounts; check to see if your accounts are on the list!

Thanks to Jane E. for this news.

Updating Updates

We haven’t written any new Posts in almost five months. There have been too many updates, both personal and software. Today, Shak is beyond sick of seeing the “Facebook Is Down Today” Post, so here is some new content.

Even though we updated everything WordPress related a month or two ago, just signing into the WordPress Admin/Dashboard triggered update notices. WordPress version 3.0.5 is out. Of course, the WordPress anti-spam plug-in Akismet has been updated, now on version 2.5.3. Even the WordPress theme named Pixel, used here, has also been updated to version 2.0.2. Well, Shak upgraded everything using the automated facilities, and everything looks to be working well (as accustomed & expected).

Aside from all that website related stuff, we use the free virtualization software VirtualBox in daily business activity. It too has a new version released, 4.0.4, just four days ago. On top of an openSUSE 11.1 Linux host (KDE for Desktop/GUI), we run our accounting system (QuickBooks on Windows XP) in a virtual machine, and also an openSUSE 11.3 workstation environment (GNOME) communications (GNOME/Novell Evolution), web development (Quanta Plus), and other web-administrative activities (Firefox). Everything is up-to-date, of course 🙂

I hope everyone has had a great Family Day! Shak’s now going to go enjoy what’s left of his…

Plugging Twitter into WordPress

Shak’s Twitter use has been reluctant and moderate.  However, it’s convenient to connect it to Facebook and automate the updating of a status & tweet, simultaneously with a single effort.  Today seemed ripe for integration with Daniel.Shakhmundes.Net / Shak.Be / Shak.WS / Shak.TV / Shak.Biz (in order of acquisition), now that some time is being spent on Shak’s own web-presence.

From some brief Googling of WordPress Twitter Widget, we opted to read a couple best/top lists:

  1. 10 Best Twitter Tools, Plugins, Widgets for WordPress Blogs
  2. Top Twitter WordPress Widgets

From there and some further research of compatibility and rating on the WordPress Plugin Directory the following two plugins have been selected and implemented into the right sidebar:

  1. Twitter Widget Pro
  2. TwitterCounter by TwitterCounter[.com]

Sign into my TwitterRemote on http://twittercounter.com/DaShak?t=t so I know when you check my stats!

WordPress 2.8.5: Hardening Release

One of our clients raised concern with their WordPress version recently, so we are recommending to everyone (especially my clients) that they upgrade their WordPress websites, because there are some vulnerabilities that are becoming well known.

We have upgraded clients’ sites without issues. Now is a good time to do so, because the WordPress hardening release is for securing and stabilizing their version 2.8 branch. We strongly recommend doing so ASAP – it should be a smooth experience – contact us and we can take care of it if you wish.

More information on the latest stable version and why you should upgrade were posted on October 20, 2009 on WordPress’ own website under WordPress 2.8.5: Hardening Release.

Regards,
Daniel Shakhmundes, B.Sc.
Technology & Business Consultant
+ Phone: 1-905-321-9898
+ Email: d@shak.tv
+ HTTP://Shak.TV

D.Shak’s First AdSense Player

In celebration of our new domain, Shak.TV, we bring you our latest demonstration of Google product/service implementation – Google’s AdSense Player:

Google‘s YouTube integrated with Google’s AdSense are together called [Google/YouTube] AdSense Player. Non-intrusive advertising should be displayed. The content (videos and advertising) are automatically selected by Google’s system, but there are some means of influencing the process in your own custom/tailored implementation.

Track Locations of People!

Google Latitude in Google Chrome

Alongside some upgrades to Daniel Shakhmundes’ website (i.e. now running the latest stable versions of WordPress, Akismet, and Google Analytics for WordPress), we’re most excited to write about what we consider to be an upgrade to life.

Google now has a new product named Latitude.  Straight from their introductory page, it states:

See where your friends are in real time!

Enjoy Google Latitude on your phone, computer, or both.

Check out the official Google Latitude page for more information, including a video.

There can be a lot of benefits and convenience in having the ability to know where your friends/contacts/associates/whoever are, especially considering that many of us already use Google Maps on our computers & smart-phones.  Apparently integration for Facebook and Twitter is already available.  We’ll be looking into those before too long.  For now, D.Shak is going to enable Google Latitude and see who’s willing to experiment with him…  Now is a good time to figure out the privacy settings for Google Latitude, before many other people are using it.

Common misspellings for SEO: lattitude, latittude, lattittude, latutid, latatude