Governments included.

Here is a quick article on my religious blog about a secure e-mail service (ProtonMail) I recommend you check out, sign up for, and donate to:

“Privacy Isn’t Just for Criminals”

P.S. A couple of other posts of interest about ProtonMail:

“A group of MIT and Harvard students is creating the most secure email system ever”

“An Inside Look at ProtonMail: End-to-End Encrypted Email”

“Does It Really Matter if You Eject Disks Properly?”

So…don’t forget to eject…

“Is Mars Edit stripping quote marks?”

Short story…some providers have an old libxml2 with PHP. If they are not willing to upgrade it, then this command (with the most recent version of MarsEdit) will get around it:

defaults write com.red-sweater.marsedit RSUseNumericXMLEntityEncodings -bool YES

And, this is how you would remove it once all is well:

defaults delete com.red-sweater.marsedit RSUseNumericXMLEntityEncodings

Kudos to MarsEdit for creating a work around (since often we are too small of a fish to get a large ISP to upgrade a library.)

P.S. I highly recommend MarsEdit…

I've been a fan of Nick Searcy ever since the short-lived television series, American Gothic (it ran in 1995 & 1996). More recently, I was impressed by his off-the-wall Herman Cain "He Carried Yellow Flowers" YouTube advertisement during last yea's Republican primary season. The purpose of the ad was to endorse Mr. Cain, but it also introduced an implicitly self-ridiculing persona of an egotistical Hollywood star. (Go figure, who would ever think those would exist?!)

Searcy has taken that initial character, put it on steroids, and re-released it to the wild as the star of Acting School with Nick Searcy. Sometimes he plays the part so effectively (and convincingly) it's painful. However, most of the time I can't stop smiling and chuckling at the surreal advice he provides. For instance, digest this from the second episode, "Family Time":

You know, being a successful working actor like me requires a tremendous amount of focus and attention. And all of that focus and attention has to be on myself, because an actor is like a musician, except that his instrument is himself. And that means at all times I have to make sure that my instrument is polished, prepared, warmed up, and ready to go. And anything that distracts me from focusing on my instrument can be a problem.

Now an actor like me, who is married with children, already has built into his life one of the greatest distractions that any actor can face. And how you manage this distraction can be the key to success or failure. And I’m talking about the distraction of family time.

At that point his son comes running out of the door, full basketball gear on, and says, "Come on dad, let's go!" Then, very seriously, Searcy continues:

See what I mean? He wants me to shoot some baskets with him. And I know that every moment I spend with my son is a moment I am not spending focused on my career. And I know that I’ll never get those precious moments back.

Followed by a long, pensive look.

It kills me every time.

I have multiple blogs, and one could argue this write-up might be more appropriate elsewhere than on this, my business one. So, why did I post it here?

Because hidden within the humor is some real commentary on Hollywood, society, politics, and so on…and some not-so-obviously "real" advice…for instance, Nick's guidance to "always stay in character."

Watch the video…it is both hilarious and disturbing to see him arguing over a handicapped parking space and then wrestling with a veteran missing both legs. I can assure you from following Searcy's Twitter feed (@yesnicksearcy) that he is a man who both supports and respects our military and the principles they fight for. So, it must have been very tempting for Searcy to get out of character during the call and sound like Robert Redford discussing his tradecraft (talk about a way to ruin Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid!)…but Nick never did…even when the decorated veteran joined the call. Not for even a second did either stop playing their parts.

As businessmen and women, we have a persona, both as individuals and as an organization, that we should keep for our clients and our customers (although I would suggest it would be best not to have one quite as…err…disquieting as Searcy's Acting School identity).

And, not matter what the temptation, if it is the right persona you should stick with it. If you are known to provide good customer service, always provide good customer service—even if the client is a jerk and you've got a massive headache. If you pride yourself on high quality, don't ever cut corners because you want to save a few bucks.

A single moment out of character can completely damage your brand or your reputation.

Visit the web site for Nick's Acting School (or its Facebook Page) and follow him on Twitter…and have a good laugh…if you have any sense of humor at all…

But don't lose track of the important lesson.

Always stay in character.

P.S. As a warning, there is some foul language in Acting School episodes and if you are of the liberal persuasion, you'll likely find his Twitter feed problematic. With the latter I can't say I am entirely comfortable with some of his interpersonal approaches, but I appreciate his genuine willingness to interact with his fans.

P.P.S. How could I forget to mention this?! Nick is also a star on the FX television series, Jusitified, which just began its fourth season.

Please take time to visit their site…and order some walnuts…you will not be disappointed!

…while PCs will continue to be much-used devices, they’re no longer at the leading edge of computing. They’re going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs.

(I assume the last item just means that Congress will outlaw them in the future :-))

Dean “was one of a dozen IBM engineers who designed the first machine and was fortunate to have lead subsequent IBM PC designs through the 1980s”…so his words have some weight. I think they are hyperbolic…but non-PCs will be more-and-more a factor…what is your business doing to stay ahead of the curve?

Finally, before you take that question and run out and create interfaces for Android, iOS, and whatever other new toy that comes out, please also consider this:

PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device—though there’s plenty of excitement about smart phones and tablets—but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress. These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact. It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people’s lives.

Thoughts?

(Credit to ThreatPost and BBC News for the link. This article is cross-posted at our ticketing technology blog, TixxTech.)

“Disclosure, Destruction, and Denial”

Even if you don’t consider yourself a security techie, it’s worth taking the time to read. It’ll help you see vulnerabilities from the eyes of your “enemy” and it makes a couple great points about how not properly categorizing security requirements you risk everything. For instance:

Disclosure is the opposite of Confidentiality. Organizations need to do assessements and categorize their data. This rarely happens; employees need to be aware so they can protect corporate assets. For instance the Department of Defense (DoD) classifies data as:

• Top Security – disclosure would cause grave harm to country
• Secret – disclosure would cause significant harm to country
• Confidential – disclosure would cause embarrassment to country
• Unclassified – public dissemination

Companies usually wrap everything up into corporate “confidential” which leads to problems. Again, if you try to protect everything with the same level of security, you will fail. Corporations need to tier the confidentiality of their data in the same way the Government does:

• Confidential Level 3 – disclosure would cause grave harm to company (company closure)
• Confidential Level 2 – disclosure would cause significant harm to company (stock tanking, layoffs)
• Confidential Level 1 – disclosure would cause embarrassment to company (bad press)
• Public – public dissemination

(Emphasis mine.)

Give it a read.  It’s not that long, and afterward you may start choosing the DDD triad over the CIA one.

(This is cross-posted on our TixxTech blog.)

• Krebs’s Number One Rule for Staying Safe Online: “If you didn’t go looking for it, don’t install it!”
• Krebs’s Rule #2 for Staying Safe Online: “If you installed it, update it.”
• Krebs’s Rule #3 for Staying Safe Online: “If you no longer need it, remove it.”

And he did add one more in a later piece, “Software Cracks: A Great Way to Infect Your PC” (again directly quoted):

• It is almost never safe to download executable programs from peer-to-peer file sharing networks because they are a major source of malware infections.

I’m hoping all four of them are common sense enough you don’t personally need to be reminded of them…but chances are plenty of your family, friends, and coworkers can use the advice…

P.S. This has been cross-posted (with a slight modifications) on our TixxTech blog.

We (well…”I” since TheSolver.us is just one person now…but it feels weird to say “I” on a company blog)…

We were offered a contract writing a mobile ticketing interface for the iPad.  It required leveraging and interacting with technologies we hadn’t used before…and within (given the unfamiliarity) a very short period of time (with plenty of other time-consuming obligations worked in).  Focusing on the job at hand led to the blog entry silence…but in the future we’ll keep some items coming even during push periods.

And there definitely was plenty to write about the last month…

We also hope to pen some entries based on what was learned during that contract, but just in case we don’t, to summarize:

• Web services are the way to go for rapid development and flexibility
• jQuery is great
• jQuery Mobile is also great, but does live up to its alpha status now-and-then (although it’s alpha is better than a lot of betas)
• Program from the get-go with internationalization, language support, and future functionality in mind (which we did)
• Don’t give up on working past issues, even when they seem out of your control (e.g. did you know that iOS puts a 300ms delay in the normal click event)

And so on

It was a great experience that will hopefully lead to more work. We wish we could point you to a demo of our work…but…the one who paid for it owns it.

(This article, slightly edited, was cross-posted on our TixxTech blog.)