Your settings should look thus:

The specific things to note

• Username: Your full email address.
• POP Server: mymail.uscm.org
• Port: 995
• SSL: CHECK!

Make sure your check boxes look like mine, you can label them however you want.

Bam!

Today I want to throw a brief tip out there and give you something to download to help you use Firefox to find things on the internet quicker.

Smart Search Bookmarks are something that (as far as I can tell) are unique to Firefox at this point, Opera doesn’t have them (easily accessable), nope on Google Chrome and we all know that Internet Explorer would never have something that would make web browsing this easy. Did I just hear someone ask about Netscape, seriously? It’s dead; it has to be smellier than Lazarus was by the time Jesus got to him.

So, now that we’re past my lame attempt at humor…

These bookmarks allow you to search just about any search on the internet by typing it into your location bar (the place you type “www.CruTech.org” when you want to come here) with a short prefix to make it search the right page. For example, we’re going to set it up so that if you want to search Google all you have to do is type a “g” before your search term and hit enter, like this:

To do this, go to Google.com first. Right-click (Control-Click for Macs) in the search box and choose “Add a Keyword for this Search…”

When you do that a pop-up box will, well, pop up.

In the Name box, type “Google Search” (or whatever will help you remember what it is when you look at all of your bookmarks), put “g” in the Keyword box and I’d suggest putting it in a new folder named “Searches”; you can get to the folders by clicking the small button with just the triangle in it.

Click “Add” and you’re good to go.

Go up to your search bar and type “g CruTech” and hit enter.

Ta-da!

Remeber, you can use this for just about any search box out there. I use this a ton to search on Wikipedia and other sites, including the directory for all of the sites that are associated with Campus Crusade for Christ.

I’ve included a file that you can download and import into your bookmarks. It has all of these searches included:

Prefix – Search Site
acronym – Acronym Finder
amazon – Amazon.com
ebay – eBay
flickr – Flickr (images/pictures)
froogle – Froogle Quick Search
g – Google Quick Search
image – Google Image Search
lh – LifeHacker (Technology Blog)
quot – Stock Symbol Quicksearch
technorati – Technorati (Blog Index)
thes – Thesaurus
slang – Urban Dictionary (slang search)
w – Wikipedia
local – Yahoo Local Search
fb – Facebook
ccci – CCCI Search
bible – Bible Gateway (search reference or word to find)
weather – Weather Channel (search using zip code or city name, ex. “weather 22207″)
cc – Creative Commons (great for images, text, etc with light copyrighting)
imdb – Internet Movie Database
bs – YouVersion (bible study resources, search scripture references)
half – Half.com (cheap books, etc.)
wookie – Wookiepedia (Star Wars encyclopedia)
d – Dictionary
map – Google Maps
blue – Blue Letter Bible
yt – YouTube
ebible – eBible.com

You can download the file here, right click and choose “Save link as”. Remember where you save it so you can import it to Firefox:

Bookmarks.html

Enjoy!

For those of you who took my advice and are using Firefox (available on Windows, OSX and Linux) you may have noticed that there is a built-in password manager. It is even able to lock people out of your passwords if they don’t have the master password, but I’ve run into some glitches with it and it doesn’t help if you have to use InternetExplorer or Opera or the new browser that Google recently released.

KeePass

My suggestion, and the program that I use to manage all of my passwords is a program called KeePass. KeePass is available for just about anything you’re running – Windows, OSX, Linux, BlackBerry & PalmOS; you’re also able to put it on a USB thumb drive and take it with you to make sure you don’t run into a situation where you’re away from your computer and don’t have your bank password.

The creators describe the program this way:

KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known…

I’ll describe it this way – it can make passwords, it can keep passwords, it can fill in password forms for you, it can let you take your passwords with you and it makes them easy and secure to copy and paste from the program itself. Also, the program doesn’t get all grabby, it lets you export all of your passwords and usernames to a file if you want to use a different program instead and it will import them from Firefox.

There are a full list of features here.

Using It

After you download and install it using your normal processes, you can get right to it. Let’s start with setting up your database and then we’ll talk through the options and more powerful uses.

First click the New Database button, or go to File -> New (or hit Ctrl-N for you shortcut fiends).

You’ll get this awesome little box up, you start by creating your password for the database. You can use a relatively simple one, but remember this database will have all of your passwords in it. I’d suggest using the techniques we talked about last week.

As you start typing it in, you will notice that it blocks it out (so people can’t read your password over your sholder. You can click the button on the right and see your password characters.

Also, the colored bar indicates the quality of your password and how complex it is (and how hard it will be to hack/guess it).

Good. Great. Secure.

Crap. Garbage. Poo.

Also, you have the option of tying it to a second file on your system. The added security feature is based on the fact that you hide this file in a random spot so that someone can’t just easily steal  your database and make off with your “life”. I would reccomend using this if you use this portably. I don’t use this feature, but I can see why you would. You can also use by placing the Key file on a portable drive so that it only works when you have that specific drive connected to the computer.

This is what the side of your main screen will look like now. As you see they expect that the KeePass application will be useful in a number of settings and for different reasons. Currently, I only use it for my internet passwords, but I am starting to input passwords for FTP servers and my home b anking program.

Now to create your first password file, hit this button (or Ctrl-Y).

You’ll get this window:

You’ll get an image like this. I have inserted the information for the example Johnny.Crusade@gmail.com account. Click on it to see what the data will look like. Make sure you read the Help file for more info on how to do this! (Hit F1.)

When you get your info entered, your database will show some of the filled in info like this image above.

Also, it provides security so that when you are walking away from your computer you can lock your database at the press of a button. (Or two Ctrl-L.)

As you set up things more, make sure you look at the options (Tools-> Options or Ctrl-M).

You don’t need to change much of anything if you don’t have specific preferences for what you want your user experience to look like. The only one that I would say that you NEED to change is the “Security” tab, make sure you check the one that says “Lock workspace when locking Windows, switching user or sleeping.” The other security feature of locking it after a few seconds is nice too.

I would suggest you look at this image and check the highlighted boxes (leave the dull ones alone):

Let me just say before I sign off, keeping your passwords secure is essential for your safety and security online – get to know this program and make sure you (and no one else) knows your password.

I’d also suggest taking the advice I shared in April about how to learn any program – and by that I mean: read the tutorials in the help menu – you can get to it by hitting F1.

Now, remember stay secure and don’t just let anyone near your passwords.

When I was finally able to get back into my account I immediately changed all of my passwords on every online account I have. And, I changed them all to something different than every other one.

I know what you’re thinking – perhaps the water tanks were for a giant hot tub. You may be right, I’ve thought of that too, but that’s not what is important here. The question you should be asking is, “How do you remember a different password for every site?”

Creating a Password

Following the tips that I found at another tech-blog Lifehacker, I was able to create a password that is different from each other, but I can remember based on the site that I’m using it for.

I’d suggest reading Lifehacker’s full article, but here are the two basic tips:

1. Don’t use the same password for everything.
2. Remember hundreds of passwords by using 1 rule-set.
3. Use a base password and add onto it.

I used all of these tips to create my new password – obviously I had learned the danger of having one password for all of my sites. An example of using these rules can look like this:

Say your old password is “password” or “1234″ (always the worst passwords), first let’s improve it by putting the letters together with some numbers (or the other way around). You could use the digits in your phone number, your childhood address, your dad’s belt size, whatever. In our case we end up with:

password1234

You could improve it from here and scramble it creating something like this:

p1a2s3s4word

You’re still using your favorite number and your old password and you can remember it pretty easily. But, this would still leave you with using the same password on every site. The simple way to fix this is by somehow incorporating the name for the site into your password. You can add just the first letter, or the last few letters or whatever you choose (I had thought about using the first word on the page, but that can change far too easily).

So, if our imaginary password was going to be used at eBay, it could turn into any one of the following:

p1a2s3s4worde
ep1a2s3s4word
p1a2s3s4wordbay
ayp1a2s3s4word
ebp1a2s3s4worday

You could even scramble the word with the password and get the easy-to-remember monstrosity of:

p1a2s3s4weobrady

Variables

Some sites, like our email system, require you to also scramble in capital letters (which I just learned can also be called majuscules) while others may enforce adding special characters:

!@#$%^&*?><:”;’[],.+=_-♠♣♥™↑‡

All you need to do is make a rule for what you’re going to do when that’s the case and turn it into something like:

P1a2s3s4wordE!

Now, the only thing you need to remember is which site requires which… though you could use the special characters for all of your sites as well.

Password Managers

No, I will not suggest that you hire someone just to remember your passwords for you. These are programs that will keep them secure (behind a password of its own). Some of them can even auto-type the username and password in when you tell them to. Next week I’ll talk about one of those programs and I’ll show how useful (and secure) they can be.

I have found that listening to sermons and podcasts from different pastors, ministries and speakers has been one of the biggest encouragements to my ministry and my personal walk with Christ.

Like is says in the defenition podcasts are delivered via RSS which Rob Williams taught us about last spring in a 3 article series (1, 2, 3) which means they come to you when there are new ones, you don’t have to go out and get them – convenient!

So, the question now: How do you get them?

First you’ll need an audio player that is set up for to receive and deal with podcasts. If you are new to podcasts, I’ll reccomend Apple iTunes (don’t worry, it works with a Windows computer; you already have it if you have a Mac). You can get it from iTunes.com.

At the iTunes.com page, click the Download Now button at the top right of the page. On the next page, you don’t need to give your email address (so don’t) just pick your current operating system and download away. Don’t forget to install it.

After you download it and install it, open up iTunes and click on the “iTunes Store” link.

After the page loads you’ll have a lot of options in front of you, let’s start by searching for Cru’s podcast on reaching out to your friends, called the “Overflow Show”. To do that, go to the top right and type in “Campus Crusade for Christ” in the Search iTunes Store box and hit Enter.

It should bring up a page with a number of different options, including “Campus Crusade Today” as well as the “Overflow Show”, click the subscribe button next to the Overflow Show (or you can click on the logo for more information).

When you click the button it may or may not take you to your “Podcast” screen, if it does not click on Podcasts on the main menu underneath Music. It should now look something like this:

If it’s just showing the title Overflow Show click the gray arrow next to it to show all of the episodes. If you want to download all of them, click the Get All button. Notice the orange circling arrow, that means that it’s already downloading the newest episode! It should be ready listen to pretty soon (depending on your internet connection speed)! If you notice, there’s now also something on the menu to the right that says Downloads and has a similar spinning arrow from now on when you start iTunes up it will check to see if there are new episodes of your podcast and try to download them, this will let you know how many new episodes of podcasts it is currently downloading.

Now, if you want to try other podcasts that are listed in the iTunes program click on the iTunes Store button again and it will take you back to the last page you were at. You have a few options…

You can click the See All button and see other podcasts that were found under the “Campus Crusade for Christ” category (or you could look at the list on the bottom – for those of you in Central PA area, there are even some of the talks from Penn State’s Cru movement).

You could go back to the main page and browse through the podcasts and look for other ones you might like.

Sometimes you might run across a link for a podcast on a webpage, often when you click on it your iTunes will start up automatically and it will subscribe you to the podcast. Such was the case with the talks from RADIATE07, I took the audio from the talks and uploaded them as a podcast. With that site down and RADIATE08 just around the corner, let me suggest checking out RADIATE08.com in January for those!

If you have an iPod or another MP3 player you can now load them onto it (follow the instructions that came with your MP3 player) and listen to them wherever you go. You can also listen to them on your computer or burn them onto CDs to take with you in the car. Have fun with your new podcasts, and let me suggest some of the ones that encourage me (just for the record, I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the podcasts, but I find myself encouraged to seek God’s face because of them often); search for them in iTunes:

Campus Crusade Today
Desiring God Sermon Audio
Grove City Alliance Church
Mars Hill Church: Mark Driscoll Audio
McLane Church – Edinboro
National Community Church Audio Podcast
Overflow Show
SermonIndex.net Classics Podcast
Veritas Media

One note: another great site for Podcasts is Odeo.com, search by topic or speaker to find some great stuff there. Search for “Resonate Audio” and listen to anything from Mike Frost!

Another note, some seminaries (most notably Reformed Theological Seminary) have started offering audio recordings of some of their courses complete and completely free as podcasts. Last summer my wife and I listened to much of the “History of Philosophy and Christian Thought” class on the drive back from CSU.

Effective immediately, I CruTech will be offering both hosting and basic website design specifically targeted at movements and ministries connected to Cru. This covers metro teams, single-campus missional teams, summer projects and basically anything else that is directly connected to your ministry (anything that would be reimbursable).

As I have wrestled with my costs to provide the hosting as well as costs that I will probably continue to incurr as I investigate tech options related to ministry I have come up with what I see as a fair cost for hosting and design.

Costs

Hosting/year:
$30 (one year minimum)

One-Time Design and Basic Training for Self-Updating:
$30 ($5 for set up, $25 for basic design – see examples below)

Domain Name Registration
$9.95 (This is the exact cost of registering the domain name. You can register it yourself and take care of it yourself if you can find a cheaper place to do it, but I will not be able to manage it for you any cheaper than this.)

I am not available to update your website regularly, if this is absolutely necessary we might be able to work out a payment plan for this.

All costs are per site set up, design and hosting, here are some real-life examples:

• http://www.WesternPACru.com & http://www.PghCru.com would only be charged $30 for hosting per year because the PghCru.com domain merely redirects to WesternPACru.com and does not require extra hosting space or bandwidth.
• http://pitt.WesternPACru.com (no longer exists) is a subdomain of the site and would not incur another Hosting fee, but would require another $5 set up fee (and $25 if it required another design).
• If you have two different websites one for your local movement and one for a summer project, they will require two separate “accounts” and will require separate setup and hosting fees. For example the same local leader who owns http://www.WesternPACru.com leads the Ocean City, MD summer project and owns http://www.OCSummerProject.com and would pay $60 total for the separate websites.

I reserve the right to make exceptions to these rules as necessary, but to be fair to all of the movements that would be interested I will make these very rare and for either very good reason or basic design reasons.

Payment Methods

The only way that I will be able to accept payment is through a staff account transfer. I am not set up for PayPal, check, credit card or any other payment method. I may look into these, but I am not planning on using them any time in the near future.

Design

All designs will be done using WordPress which is an flexible and expandable platform for website creation. I can also do straight HTML design, but make no promises about expandability or ease of updates if we go that way.

Some examples of sites that I have built and currently host:

• CruTech.org (obviously)
• DCCru.com
• WesternPACru.com (& PghCru.com)
• Whelpley.org
• OCSummerProject.com

Signing Up

If you are at all interested in this web-hosting option, please email me at jayson@crutech.org to set it up.

First, make sure you’ve read/watched the previous posts regarding Gmail:

• The Advantages of Gmail
• Getting Started with Gmail

After you’ve gotten trough the basics of gettings started with it, let’s get you going on importing your other accounts. Because, despite the advantages that Gmail has, your workplace/ministry/school will not probably forward all of your mail to your Gmail account from now on – and the reality is that they will expect you to be reading those emails as well.

First, obviously, sign into Gmail.

At this point you will be at your inbox that you’ve already set up. Click the “Settings” link at the top right of your window.

This will bring you to the options/settings menu. Click the “Accounts” link.

So far, so good. Now click the “Add another mail account” link which will bring up a pop-up window.

In the pop-up window enter your full email address into the box and click “Next Step.”

Here’s where details matter, a lot. If your settings here aren’t set up right your email will not get pulled into your Gmail account. So, for your username put what you’d put in at the http://mail.uscm.org page. Same with your password.

POP Server: mail.uscm.org
Port: 110

The only box that must not be checked is the Always use a secure (SSL)… option.

The others are all optional, but I would suggest my set up of pulling all of your mail off the server (that way it will never fill up at the Crusade server. Also, let’s talk about labeling your messages…

Labeling is like putting stuff in folders, but without needing to pull it out of the inbox first. It adds a “label” or a “tag” to it and whether you leave it in your inbox or archive it it will maintain the tag that it has.

First check the Label incoming messages box and pull down the menu to where it says “New Label…”

This pop-up window will come up and you can label it anything you want – shorter is better. I’d suggest UCSM, or Cru or something similar. Hit OK.

There you go. Click Add Account.

Beautiful, now lets make sure you can send mail from your Gmail account and still have people receiving it see it coming from your @uscm.org account.

Obviously, I’m going to have you choose the Yes choice and click Next Step.

You’ll need to verify that you actually own this email address…

When you click Send Verification the Gmail system will send an email to your USCM account that will read something like this:

You have requested to add johnny.crusade@uscm.orgto your Gmail account.
Confirmation code: ########

Before you can send mail from johnny.crusade@uscm.org using your Gmail
account, please click the link below to confirm your
request:

http://mail.google.com/mail/#-##########-johnny.crusde%40uscm.org-###############

If you click the link and it appears to be broken, please copy and paste it
into a new browser window. If you aren’t able to access the link, please log in
to your Gmail account, and click ‘Settings’ at the top of any page.
Open the ‘Accounts’ tab, and locate the email address you’d like to add in the
‘Send mail as:’ section. Then, click ‘Verify,’ and enter your confirmation
code: #######

Thanks for using Gmail!

Sincerely,

The Gmail Team

The awesome part about it is that it will probably be in your own inbox now. If it is not, go to your Accounts tab (in Settings) and look for the Check Mail Now link.

When you click the link it should just verify the account and you can now send through your @gmail.com or @uscm.org addresses.

If you go the route of entering the Verification code (given at the beginning and end of the email). The box that popped up when you hit the Verify Now link will look like this:

So, yeah, put the code in there and hit Verify.

What you’ll get is an Accounts tab that looks something like this:

Except that it will have “verified” instead of “unverified” and won’t have a “verify” link and will probably not have the fake @uscm.org address.

Now you can use your Gmail for all* of your email needs. If you need to add other accounts you should be able to get the necessary settings from your email provider.

This past week I got an email from a staff friend that contained a forward warning about a “new” computer virus. While it is a real virus and really can do significant damage to your system and stored information, there was a bit of panic-inducing misinformation:

>>This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been
>> classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever.
> This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is
>> no repair yet for this kind of virus…

While this virus is not “the worst” or “most destructive” virus, all viruses can be a pain in the neck and it is important to have an antivirus in place to guart your computer and your information against these destructive little programs that (sometimes) really are able to erase whole hard drives.

For antivirus options you can go a number of different ways, from proprietary (and costly) programs like McAfee and Norton to free (and effective) ones such as Avast! or AVG.

I have installed Avast! on all of my machines and on a number of ones for family and friends and have had and heard nothing but good things from it.

To install the free Avast!4 Home Edition all you have to do is download it and register it for free every 18 months. You it will be updated as often as new virus defenitions come out and you won’t have to worry about viruses any longer.

Also, it seems that Avast! has an inexpensive Mac version (less than $40) for 3 years of virus protection and coverage.

I am not sure whether or not I would suggest getting rid of a proprietary antivirus software, but I have never had any virus get to any machine that I’ve put Avast! on (keep in mind, I probably browse websites and download programs more often than most users).

Beyond reccomending an specific antivirus, I must stress this, make sure you have some sort of antivirus software! You never know when you’re going visit a reputable site that has been hacked, like CNN.com was just this spring.

If you’d like to check out other free antivirus software options (AVG, Nod32, Avira and Kapersky antivirus programs) I’d suggest the list on this post at LifeHacker.com.

I came across a list at Lifehacker (one of my favorite tech-blogs) of that seems to have a number of useful things that Macs are inherently are able to do. Here’s the list:

1. Say anything.
2. Show off Stacks and Expose in slow motion.
3. Activate screen corners.
4. Display custom hard drive icons.
5. Look up words in the dictionary with a keystroke.
6. Launch applications from Spotlight.
7. Tab between all controls.
8. Zoom WAY in on a page.
9. Show the date on the menubar.
10. Double as an external drive.

To see what all of these mean, head over to the post at Lifehacker (it would be rude/illegal for me to copy the entire content of their post).

To be honest some of these things don’t make any sense to me (what is Stacks and Expose?), some are just for “pretty” (the custom hard drive icons), but others seem way useful – looking things up, launching applications, tabbing between controls and doubling up a drive.

Here is my challenge to my Mac-lovers out there – tell me what you love about your Mac. Three things that I will not accept as good reasons are: they’re prettier (I agree), they run better (not always true), they don’t get viruses (neither does my Windows/Linux machine).