Victor Font Consulting Group, LLC

The DEX Intranet Specialists

Articles

Have You Been Pwned?

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Yes, “pwned” is spelled correctly. According to the Urban Dictionary, the word “pwned” is:

A corruption of the word “Owned.” This originated in an online game called Warcraft, where a map designer misspelled “owned.” When the computer beat a player, it was supposed to say, so-and-so “has been owned.” Instead, it said, so-and-so “has been pwned”.

Rivera, Daniel. Urban Dictionary. Retrieved August 3, 2018

Has your email account or password ever been compromised? Do you even know?

You have personal computers, smart phones, social network accounts, and family members with the same, maybe even more than you. All of these devices and accounts are up for grabs if you don’t protect yourself and your loved ones. You are probably at greater risk of having your personal systems compromised than your company’s. You are vulnerable. Your account may have already been compromised. In today's parlance, having your account compromised is called getting pwned. Why don’t you check to see if you’ve been pwned?

You can check whether you’ve been pwned and have an account that has been compromised in a data breach at https://haveibeenpwned.com/. At the time of this writing, Have I Been Pwned has details on 297 pwned websites, 5,369,804,192 pwned accounts, 75,653 pastes, and 82,644,754 paste accounts.

Let's explain pastes. According to the Have I Been Pwned FAQs:

Often when online services are compromised, the first signs of it appear on “paste” sites like Pastebin. Attackers frequently publish either samples or complete dumps of compromised data on these services.

A word to the wise—when you check if you have pwned accounts, try not to have anyone looking over your shoulder unless you are absolutely certain you won’t be embarrassed by the search results. The website displays a list of every breach where your email has been compromised.

Gutenberg—The BIG Change Coming to WordPress

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Last week, WordPress released version 4.9.8 to the general public. If you subscribe to one of our care plans, the update has been tested and applied for you. But this release is different, there's a BIG change coming to WordPress that all of you need to know about.

Gutenberg, the new WordPress content editor is set to be released as the default WordPress editor in version 5.0. That's coming right around the corner. When you log into the dashboard of the 4.9.8 release for the first time, you'll see a prominent banner at the top of the page introducing you to Gutenberg that asks you to choose to install Gutenberg or the Classic Editor. The Classic Editor is the one we use now and are accustomed to.

Gutenberg is a very different kind of editor. Some people love it (I do), and some hate it. Gutenberg introduces the concept of content blocks, affectionately called Guten-blocks. The WordPress developers say this about blocks:

Blocks are the unifying evolution of what is now covered, in different ways, by shortcodes, embeds, widgets, post formats, custom post types, theme options, meta-boxes, and other formatting elements. They embrace the breadth of functionality WordPress is capable of, with the clarity of a consistent user experience.

WordPress Development Team, Gutenberg Git. Retrieved August 5, 2018

As we say all the time, content is king. Relevant content marketing is one of the primary methods encouraged to drive traffic, and ultimately, new customers, to your online business. Like it or not, Gutenberg is here to stay. While the Classic Editor will remain available in WordPress for a little longer, at sometime in the future it will be removed. It's time to learn how to use Gutenberg.

To make the transition easier, WordPress has released a Gutenberg training page. Try Gutenberg today at https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/.

ScreenFlow 8: A Must Have Update

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ScreenFlow 8 upgrade image, CC0 license from pixabay.comThis year seems to be the prime time for must-have updates. First came the MacBook Pro 2018. Now, It's ScreenFlow 8 by Telestream for the Mac.

I've long been a fan of ScreenFlow. I started using it several versions back when I switched from a Windows PC to a MacBook Pro for my daily computing tasks, application development, and book publishing work. I've tried competing products like Camtasia and even Apple's own Final Cut Pro. But I keep coming back to ScreenFlow because not only is it the easiest to use for a prosumer like me, it's very intuitive and requires a very short learning curve. I still use Final Cut Pro once in a while, but mostly for creating my own motion graphics for intros or outtros. All the rest is handled superbly by ScreenFlow.

ScreenFlow is my go to tool for screen video capture, creating tutorials, promo videos, book trailers, and such. I've always liked its features and interface. But now, the ScreenFlow 8 upgrade, with its 25 new features and 41 improvements and fixes, is a product you can love!

ScreenFlow 8 Highlights

Create New Project From Template

ScreenFlow 8 new from template featureScreenFlow 8 supports creating new projects from templates. If you do a lot of similarly styled videos like a tutorial series, video course, etc., you can prebuild your projects with just a few placeholders and all of your content immediately gets dropped into that project when you're done recording. ScreenFlow's new template feature will save you ton's of time!

Stock Media Library

ScreenFlow 8 Stock media libraryOne of my favorite new features is the incorporation of a stock media library. Yes, that's right! We now have access to a stock media library built right into the ScreenFlow 8 interface. No more searching the web for stock videos, audio, images, transitions, and chroma key support.

The stock media library includes over 500,000 unique pieces. With a library this large the interface includes filters and search capabilities to make the job of finding the perfect media element a piece of cake. Using the stock library requires a minimal subscription fee of $60/year. Where else can you find so much for so little a cost?

Other New Features

  • Track Thumbnails—Now you can see a quick and easy visual representation of your content via thumbnails displayed over the duration of a media file. Easily identify scene changes and areas of interest. No need to scrub through content to find specific moments!
  • Styles—Always want your camera in a certain spot with specific filters and a drop shadow? Well, regardless of the edits you make to any assets in your projects, you can now save those settings as “Styles” to easily re-use over and over. A massive time saver. Combine with templates for a mostly automated workflow!
  • Quick Narration & Voice-Over Additions—Need to record a quick audio clip? Quick narrations allow you to add narrations or voice-overs without leaving the timeline or configuring a traditional recording.
  • Detachable Editing Timeline—The new detachable editing timeline allows for a more customizable editing experience and enables multi-monitor editing by separating the editing timeline and canvas on to different monitors.
  • Additional Timeline Frame Rates—Additional Timeline Frame Rates of 24, 25, and 50 have been added. These are in addition to the existing 30 and 60 options.
  • Export Animated PNG (APNG) Files—ScreenFlow now supports APNG export. Like GIF’s, APNG’s are single file moving pictures that support transparent backgrounds but allow for higher quality and smaller sizes!
  • Freehand Annotation—Custom shapes and lines can now be drawn directly onto the ScreenFlow canvas for highly customizable annotations.
  • Instagram Project and Export Presets—Uploading to Instagram? ScreenFlow has you covered with built in project dimensions and export settings specific to everyone’s favorite social image site!
  • Frame for Selected Monitor—When choosing your recording monitor, a red frame now indicates the current selection… no need to remember monitor model numbers!
  • H.265/HEVC Decoding—Previously, HEVC could only be exported in ScreenFlow 7. You can now import and edit files encoded with HEVC such as iPhone X 4k recordings.
  • Arrange Menu—Various new options such as alignment, scale, and distribute allow you to more quickly arrange your media within your project.
  • Auto-Scale Large Imports—ScreenFlow will now automatically scale imported media to fit the canvas if the dimensions of the media are larger than the canvas.
  • Burn in Captions on Export—You can now burn-in captions if you need captions in a player that does not support caption tracks. Simply check the box during export.
  • Content-Type Badge for Items in Media Libraries—Media within your library now has a badge overlay depicting the type of media for easier identification.
  • Keyboard Shortcuts for "Close Gap"—Users can now set a custom keyboard shortcut for the “close gaps” function. Multi-select gaps and close with one shortcut.
  • Media Library Filtering System & Metadata Panel—New filtering system for the media libraries with metadata display tab. Click the filter button in the library pane to display.
  • Preview Audio and Video in Libraries Without Adding them to the Timeline—Audio and video files in libraries can now be previewed without first adding them to the timeline.
  • Save Frame as JPEG—Quickly export the current content as a still JPEG image.
  • Select Which Audio Channels are Recorded with Audio Interface Devices—Users can now select specific channels to record of a multi-channel audio interface. You no longer need to record all available channels.
  • Support Decoding MOV PNG Files—You can now add and work with MOV PNG files in ScreenFlow.
  • Support for GoPro CineForm Codec—ScreenFlow now supports the GoPro CineForm codec for import and editing.
  • Specify the Thumbnail Image for a YouTube Published Export—Now when publishing directly to YouTube, you can use ScreenFlow to select the image to be used as the YouTube thumbnail.
  • Upload to YouTube on a Schedule—When publishing to YouTube, you can now select and schedule a time in which you would like the video to be published.

The Bottom Line

I don't recommend products lightly. And I only recommend products that I use. ScreenFlow 8 is an exceptional upgrade and well worth the price, especially with the stock media library subscription.

U.S. Federal Data Privacy Law is Coming…

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Over the past month, the U.S. Department of Commerce met with representatives from Facebook and Google, consumer advocates, and Internet providers like AT&T and Comcast to draft a proposal to protect web users’ privacy on a national level.

The meetings are focused on developing a data privacy framework at the Federal level that could serve as a blueprint for Congress to pass sweeping legislation similar to the European Union's General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR). In June, Governor Jerry Brown enacted The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which takes effect in 2020. California's law is modeled after the GDPR.
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According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 22 meetings with more than 80 companies have been held on this topic over the last month. A draft proposal from the Chamber of Commerce calls on Congress to adopt a law that preempts states so that local legislatures don’t try to pass their own more restrictive privacy laws as California has done.

“Through the White House National Economic Council, the Trump Administration aims to craft a consumer privacy protection policy that is the appropriate balance between privacy and prosperity,” Lindsay Walters, the President's Deputy Press Secretary, told the Washington Post. “We look forward to working with Congress on a legislative solution consistent with our overarching policy.”

What does this all mean for us? ​It means that every website that collects personally identifiable information of any kind from another human being will be subject to the fines and penalties imposed by these new laws. It also means that we'll be keeping business, intellectual property, and data privacy attorneys busy drafting new data privacy policies and procedures for data breach notifications for our online businesses, whether breaches occur or not.

And if the U.S. law is anything like the GDPR, we'll have to obtain consent before we can even send anyone an email and provide a way for consumers to control their own data and remove it from our sites, if they so desire.​​ It's only a matter of time until these new laws impact us. Start planning now to invest into the updates that will become necessary to protect your online business.

EU Referral Network Enrollment

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Requirements

There are two requirements for enrolling in the EU Referral Network:

  • You must have graduated from the WP Elevation Blueprint Course
  • Your business must have a physical presence in any of the 28 EU countries.

How The Network Works

The premise is simple. Because of the territorial requirements GDPR imposes on companies "envisioning to sell products or services in the "EU", hiring a data control officer with a physical EU presence is not an effective strategy for us at this time. It would substantially increase our customer acquisition costs.

Since we occasionally collect leads from the EU through the 5-Things and Cybersecurity eBook downloads, we'd rather refer these leads to our WP Elevation Colleagues in the EU rather than to just send them away. We hope that you would reciprocate and do the same for us with your leads based in the United States.

We have our eBook follow-up email sequence setup as an automation in Active Campaign. We have added logic at the end of the automation to test if the lead is Geo-based in the EU, and if so, we route them to the EU Referral Network directory rather than offering them a Digital Strategy Accelerator session via Skype.

If the automation reaches this final point in the process and the lead contacts your company, you'll be receiving a ready individual that you can further qualify for fit. A lot of the work will have already been done for you though.

We prefer not to store any of your PII in our system. All we need for the network directory is your business name, location, business contact details, and if you'd like to distinguish yourself with your UVP and/or logo, you're welcome to include those details as well.

To be included in the network, please sign-up with the form below.

We won't contact you directly unless it's to share a "hot" lead in your country that did not come through our eBook automation.

You can request to be removed from the directory at any time by emailing info@victorfont.com

EU Referral Network Enrollment Form

EU Referral Network
We won't contact you directly unless it's to share a "hot" lead in your country that did not come through our eBook automation.

Gutenberg and Web 3.0

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A Brief Look at Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0

Gutenberg Bible, free image courtesy of pixabay.comIf you've been around the internet for any length of time, you may remember Web 1.0. This was the beginning of the phenomenon known as the World Wide Web that brought us file and web servers, and websites built using static pages connected by hyperlinks. As Web 1.0 evolved, we added animated GIFs and had tools available to us like Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver to help us develop our sites more easily.

Web 1.0 was basically a "read-only" web, even though brick and mortar merchants scrambled to develop an online presence and the earliest forms of eCommerce solutions were introduced. Other technologies associated with Web 1.0 include search engines (AltaVista, Yahoo!), e-mail (Yahoo!, Hotmail), peer-to-peer file sharing (Napster, BitTorrent), and publish and subscribe technologies.

Then came Web 2.0. Nobody knows exactly when Web 2.0 was born, but some sources suggest 2004 as its birth year. At least, that's when the term "Web 2.o" was allegedly coined by O’Reilly Media. Web 2.0 introduced us to the social web where early social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook stormed into the world. Because of the many technological changes taking place such as broadband internet, Ajax and Javascript frameworks, better browsers, widgets, and plugins, the "read-write" interactive web dream became reality. For the first time, we were able to create our own content, which gave us the ability to influence others and elevate our online profiles. Concepts associated with Web 2.0 include Adobe Flex, enterprise Java, Microsoft .NET Framework, blogs, wikis, and instant messaging.

Speaking of blogs, by 2003, b2/cafelog, more commonly known as b2 or cafelog, had been installed on approximately 2000 blogs. That same year, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, in a joint effort, created a fork of b2. That fork is known today as WordPress. According to W3Techs, as of this writing, WordPress is used by 60.1% of all the websites whose content management system is known. This is 29.7% of all websites. With statistics like these, it's clear that WordPress has achieved the #1 position in Web 2.0 interactive content management technologies. No other Web 2.0 content management platform even comes close.

Web 3.0 is a term that's been tossed around for a few years already, so let's play a bit of catch. Early ideas on Web 3.0 suggest that its evolution will become a “read-write-execute” web. It is the Semantic Web, an extension of the World Wide Web through standards defined by the World Wide Web Consortium. The standards promote common data formats and exchange protocols on the Web, most fundamentally the Resource Description Framework, which promises to advance the web to where all information is categorized and stored in such a way that a computer can understand it as well as a human. Two key terms most commonly associated with Web 3.0 are semantic markup and web services.

Semantic mark up helps in describing an item apart from defining its appearance. A web service is a software system designed to support computer-to-computer interaction over the Internet. Neither of these concepts are new. Schema.org defines semantic markup for search engines and there are thousands of web services available that allow external systems to access their APIs. Modern eCommerce solutions often access web services provided by freight carriers to lookup shipping rates in real time. UPS, Fedex, and USPS are just a few examples. Other terms associated with Web 3.0 include semantic searching, knowledge bases, ontologies, and personal intelligent digital assistant.

Internet Connected Smart RefrigeratorBut truth be told, predicting how Web 3.0 will eventually evolve is like playing the lottery. It's a complete guessing game because there is no clear definition of what it means. If we distill what we know about the historical evolution of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, we can extrapolate that Web 3.0 is the next fundamental change both in how websites are created and more importantly, how people interact with them.

We are already seeing an explosion of smart devices and home appliances that comprise an "Internet of Things". Who could have ever thought a refrigerator could tell you what you need for your shopping list, or order groceries for you, or even let you know when your milk is running low? Only Siri and Alexa could have predicted that!

WordPress, Gutenberg, and Web 3.0?

Changing how websites are created and how people interact with them is already upon us. Throughout the Web 2.0 era, developers have created some highly imaginative products to help make web development easier, especially for the end user with no formal programming knowledge. With WordPress as our focus, think about how many theme frameworks, custom themes, page builders, custom themes with built-in page builders, CSS helper plugins, framework helper plugins, and etc., etc., etc. have been brought to market. The end goal of these products is to allow end users to focus on content and designers to focus on design. PHP, CSS, jQuery, Javascript, and SQL need not apply.

This is all changing soon and many of the products we have today, may face extinction tomorrow. This is especially true of the page builders and themes that embed shortcodes into content to produce a site's desired look and feel. Popular themes and plugins like Divi, X-Theme, and Visual Composer will have to adapt to the emerging paradigm or they may discover that they've become products without a home. The developers and designers that depend on them for their livelihoods may have to scramble to learn the newest technologies, if it's not too late, that is.

When WordPress 5.0 is released later this year, it will change the world of content management as we know it. Gutenberg, under development for the past couple of years, will initially replace TinyMCE as the WordPress editor, but this is only the start. If you listen to any of Matt Mullenweg's talks or those of others intimately involved with Gutenberg's development, it is not just an editor replacement. As WordPress continues its evolutionary progression, Gutenberg will become the core for all content created in WordPress. Think about how the WordPress customizer will work with a Gutenberg foundation. Gutenberg is not just one small step on the Web 3.0 evolutionary ladder, it is a giant leap! Only time will tell if it's capable of taking home the gold.

Gutenberg has come a log way since its first release as a plugin in 2017. It's been installed on my development server since it's first release. Even though it's not a finished product, it's worth taking a look at it and to start learning what content blocks are all about. Everything in future WordPress will be about content blocks. While there is support for shortcodes, I suspect that most shortcodes will end up in a heap at some archeological dig.

The best thing about content blocks is that you can make them reusable and available in other content. Change one instance of a block that has been used multiple times, and all the instances of that block reflect the change. Content blocks are not a new concept. It you use Facebook, you are using content blocks. Everything you post is an independent content block. You already know how they are used.

I didn't like Gutenberg at first. In fact, I hated it. But as it nears completion and the bugs are getting squashed, it is becoming a beautiful framework for content development. I like it a lot now and am looking forward to developing my own set of tools that will make life easier for our development work. Change is hard to take, and a giant change is often met with resistance. Gutenberg is coming and there's nothing we can do except offer our acceptance. Let's learn the new paradigm and do whatever we can to profit from it.