This just arrived in my in-box. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. The Link goes to www.adobe-pdf-download.org and the name of the company in item 1. is misspelled.

Subject: Download Adobe PDF Reader For Windows

Dear valued customers,
Adobe PDF is pleased to announce new version for PDF Reader which enable you to view, create, edit  and print PDF documents. The PDF format as a global exchange document format is created by Adobe and is the most efficient way to exchange information.

You can simply follow the following instructions to make your PDF Reader/Writer most updated.

1. Visit Abode PDF website.

2. Download new version of Adobe PDF and get your application updated.

Thank you for choosing us, the worldwide leader PDF Reader.

Adobe PDF

Copyright Adobe PDF

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Even if you are not a FOSS aficionado, this event might well make a good introduction to the genre and its a rare enough opportunity to make the connections as an Aussie event comes to NZ. linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au is a conference about Open Source Software, including Linux that brings together the world's community of Linux enthusiasts who contribute to the Linux operating system and the associated universe of free and open source software fro around the world.

Hosted each year in one of Australasia's major centres, in 2010 linux.conf.au will be hosted by Wellington from Monday 18 January to Saturday 23 January. There's a 3-hour newcomer's session on Sunday the 17th as well.

According to their site, linux.conf.au is a technical conference which attracts some of the brightest minds in the world. It is run by the community, for the community.

Even if you are not a techie, the associated minoconf series that runs on the Monday and Tuesday looks very interesting, each Miniconf running for 1 full day.

Miniconfs are miniature conferences, within the main LCA2010 conference, which are targeted towards specific communities of interest and offer delegates an opportunity to network with other enthusiasts while immersing themselves in a specific topic or project.

The LCA2010 Wiki has dedicated Miniconf pages, where the Miniconf Organisers have been uploading information about their Miniconf. For more information, please see: Miniconfs Wiki page

Four that might find some ready participation among NFPs would be:

• Data Storage and Retrieval Peter Lieverdink
• Education Tabitha Roder
• Multimedia Conrad Parker
• Open and the Public Sector Daniel Spector

If you decide to go, let me know and please feel free to report back on how it came out for you.

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Most of us open and read PDF attachments or downloads (our banks and government departments produce many documents for download this way) despite the fact that the security of the Adobe Acrobat reader has long been suspect. But now the company has confirmed that it is positively unsafe. Ryan Narain at ZDNet has the full story. Adobe confirms PDF zero-day attacks. Disable JavaScript now

Malicious hackers are exploiting a zero-day (unpatched) vulnerability in Adobe’s ever-present PDF Reader/Acrobat software to hijack data from compromised computers.

According to an advisory from Adobe, the critical vulnerability exists in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.2 and earlier versions. It is being exploited in the wild.

The company has activated its security response process but declined to offer any more details until an investigation is complete.

Unfortunately, the company did not provide any mitigation guidance for customers.

The folks at ShadowServer describe the situation as “very bad.”

We did not discover this vulnerability but have received multiple reports of this issue and have examined multiple different copies of malicious PDFs that exploit this issue. This is legit and is very bad.

Here’s what we know so far:

We can tell you that this exploit is in the wild and is actively being used by attackers and has been in the wild since at least December 11, 2009. However, the number of attacks are limited and most likely targeted in nature. Expect the exploit to become more wide spread in the next few weeks and unfortunately potentially become fully public within the same timeframe. We are fully aware of all the details related to the exploit but do not plan to publish them for a few reasons:

1. There currently is no patch or update available that completely protects against this exploit.
2. There is little to no detection of these malicious PDF files from most of the major Antivirus vendors.

With that said we can tell you that this vulnerability is actually in a JavaScript function within Adobe Acrobat [Reader] itself. Furthermore the vulnerable JavaScript is obfuscated inside a zlib stream making universal detection and intrusion detection signatures much more difficult.

In the interim, Adobe PDF Reader/Acrobat users are urged to immediately disable JavaScript [as follows]:

Open Acrobat and Click: Edit -> Preferences -> JavaScript and uncheck Enable Acrobat JavaScript

Or, better yet, use an alternative PDF Reader software program.

I use one called Foxit that works perfectly well, it also has a paid version called Foxit Pro that enables me to edit most PDF files except those locked with password protection. Although there's a learning curve, its very handy.

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Rob Paterson's blog has a fascinating post about a St Louis public TV station apparently getting to grips with the role of old media in the world of new media. KETC’s H1N1 Blog - FluPortal.org

When the mortgage crisis began, KETC experimented with blogging as “a way to get information out to the community” during critical situations, Berenc said. The station’s mortgage-crisis blog (which is still up and running) “proved highly successful,” she told me. It generated lots of audience comments and drove traffic to KETC’s site.

So when swine flu emerged, Berenc said it was a no-brainer to create another blog “as part of an overall strategy to connect people to information on-air, online, and in the community.” To get started, KETC “convened a group of community organizations that have a stake in H1N1,” she explained, to solicit advice on “how to connect people to trusted resources.” The group included people from the city and county health departments, regional school districts, the United Way of Greater St. Louis, and the American Red Cross, St. Louis Area Chapter. Using their input, the station created a Wordpress site and started a group blog. KETC’s web coordinator vets posts written by staff, interns, and the Red Cross.

Although KETC doesn’t have stats yet on the success of the H1N1 blog, Berenc assured me that the station will continue it until H1N1 is no longer an issue. She believes the H1N1 page as a whole is “a prime example of what happens when public media organizations collaborate with trusted partners — the community wins.”

At the EYC conference in Wellington last month we had a couple of questions about how expert or authentic organisations working in specific social areas could be sure that the community is getting good information rather that being hijacked through Twitter or Facebook into donating to either outright scams or well-meaning, but inappropriate or ineffective actions.

This might be the answer. Of course, it will mean that your local media people wake up to their role online, which may take a while yet.

How effective are your local media in

1. using online technologies to improve the quality of information they publish and
2. using your expoert and informed resources to do that?

Comments open.

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TED is always worth checking out for great thinkers and presenters on a huge range of topics. This is one for those of use who get tired of being tied to our devices and who, while reading the newspaper or a book or magazine, look for the links and get frustrated at not being able to find them. Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop." In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

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In its December newsletter (pdf file), Internet NZ is alarmed by media  stories  indicating a  change  in direction  in  the  latest  round  of  Anti-Counterfeiting  Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations.

The ACTA negotiating round was held in Korea in early November, and  has  reportedly  shifted  focus  to  deal  with  non-commercial infringement of copyright material by ordinary citizens, and arguing for termination of people's Internet accounts.

"Because  the  ACTA  process  is  secret,  none  of  us  can  know  the precise details of what is being discussed.

If you would like to know more about this issue, a  group  of  people  representing  InternetNZ,  the  New  Zealand Open  Source  Society,  ISPANZ,  the Creative  Freedom  Foundation NZ,  and  Tech  Liberty  NZ  have  banded  together  to  provide information about ACTA and its potential impacts in New Zealand, and have created a website at www.acta.net.nz.

The Group’s intent is to call for transparency in ACTA negotiations, and  to ensure New Zealand makes clear and considered decisions, as  entering  into  this  treaty without  due  public  consultation  could damage  New  Zealand's  economic  prospects,  the  civil  rights  of citizens, and businesses that support and rely on the Internet.

The most unsettling part of this prcess is that, a significant part of the future of most open, transparent medium in history is being decided behind closed doors. While leaks are never the best way to deal with these issues, when they are all that we are offered, we have to treat them seriously.

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As the Chair of 2020 Communications Trust its my job to manage our governance bodies, including the full meetings of trustees and the monthly Admin committee.

Naturally we try to use the tools we promote, starting in the old days with emails and attachments. That soon gets totally unwieldy as participants add their comments, want to edit or amend documents and add or amend agenda items. The secretarial load soon becomes impossible. Time to webify the process.Earlier this year we tried to use a tool called MyCommittee.com which wasn't bad, it certainly helped walk you through the required sequence of events and had useful extra resources for how to manage organisations and keep within the rules. But we soon realised that it was too restricted; its rellay only a meeting management tool and we needed something broader.

So in May we began using PBWorks which is a Wiki with bells. Useful bells that are mostly easy to use.

When you login, you get the home page.

On the left is a column with the latest updates to the home page, including new documents or discussions we have started and new features we have added to the Wiki such as the new calendar or a file notes category and template etc. In the top left corner is the content update information.

Here you can find when the page was updated and by whom and on the right is the very handy page history in case some dreadful mistake happens such as someone accidentally deleting the whole lot, or doing an edit that corrupts or otherwise damages the page. Just select the previous version and restore the old one before continuing.

The top right of the page gives your account details and, right under that, some self-explanatory fundamental tools for working with the site in the blue area and in the white area under that, some tools for working with the page you have open.

They enable you to send a link directly from the page you are working on to someone who might need to know. It also allows you to give access to that page to someone who might not be entitled to access to the whole site. For example, we edited our annual report on the Wiki so our editor, who is not a trustee, could see and work with only the page that contained the draft. Further down the page there are more site tools for working with the users.

I can share the site with others directly from the sidebar and there's a tally of recent activity so I don't have to look through everything to find what has been done since I last checked in.

Another useful feature is the "Ajax" nature of the site. It means that I can click on those little green bars and close, open or move the modules that they control around to suit me.

As we create new content we assign each file to a "folder" for the various aspects of the work such as the AGM, Admin committee, projects etc. Those folders then automatically populate the navigation module

This is a great advance over many older style Wikis where you have to manually link the content and if you forget the pages can get littered all over the place. The only minor drawback is that you can't assign the same file to more than one folder so that I can't upload an expense claim for example to an expenses folder and also put it in the Admin committee folder where it is dealt with. Nor can you nest one folder inside another so you do need to exercise some discipline in naming folders and assigning information to them.

Click on any of the folders and you get the list of contents of that folder.

There are also "plugins" that are small programmes written by other people that can be used inside the Wiki. Like a polling tool to make decisions about venues and dates for meetings etc, and a calendar.

As well you can set up your account so that the system sends you an email when the content is updated, a copy of that content and a link to the page. You can get the updates on a daily basis or as they happen.

One Trustee told me last month that, because we edit the agenda into the minutes of the meeting as we go, and because the page automatically saves once every minute, he could watch the meeting as it happend, or at least as the discussions and motions were recorded. Almost real-time and worth considering. It also means that the minutes are available to all trustees within minutes of the meeting ending so any corrections can be made while the discussion is fresh in the mind.

The critical point is that every board member needs to have "editor" rights to the site so that they can make changes to documents that are open for discussion (such as drafting a resolution) as well as making comments on the page in a form attached to each one.

The next step should probably be to open Skype on my desktop and broadcast the meeting to trustees so that any of them can add to the discussion under way.

Final step should probably be that I run the meeting remotely from my home office and save us all the hassle and expense of travelling to meetings. Although I think that is a way off, we are still pretty much dependent on personal contact and face-to-face encounters to maintain relationships and support the trust that any organisation needs to function.

How about your organisation? Do you use tools like this? How is it working out? reports, reviews and war stories from the front lines always welcome.

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As one who has recently made the transition to online accounting system from having the software based on a third party's PC; one who charged us every time data was entered and even for fixing any data entry errors, I'm sold on the idea, especially for small organisations.

But the accounting profession is about as conservative as you can get - its what we pay them for and when they get "creative" or "innovative" we ALL get into deep trouble - so you might expect some resistance when you rush in with the idea to your CFO, accoutnay, auditor or treasurer. AccountingWEB.co.uk has the lowdown Accountants bring Cloud summit down to earth

The Cloud accounting industry faces a long campaign to convince the accounting profession to adopt web-based applications according to a small group of practitioners who shared their views with developers at the Business Cloud Summit on Wednesday 2 December.

Whatever other commentators say, accounting software functionality is still important to practitioners. If they are going to shift themselves and clients from tried and tested programs, they will demand mature applications that match up on features and functionality right down to mundane things such as data entry.

“Accountants don’t feel comfortable pushing Cloud applications,” said Net.Accounting’s Tom Bristow. “If someone’s going to change, it’s got to be to something better than Sage or QuickBooks. If you’re inputting 300 transactions, you don’t want to have to click return after every single one.”

Having learned a particular accounting system - often recommended to them by their accountant - clients are reluctant to consider newer alternatives. Cloud accounting developers would grow more quickly by concentrating on start-up accountancy firms and new businesses than by trying to convert existing desktop software users from their current systems, the accountants advised.

To a man, none of the four accountants who participated in AccountingWEB’s fringe meeting at the Business Cloud Summit reported that clients were pushing for “Cloud” functionality.

[...] “Some clients would like a more collaborative approach, or to see live reports online,” said sole practitioner Nigel Simmons. Small businesses don’t like accounting and so Simmons created a firm based around a hosted QuickBooks environment to take the pain out of accounting for them. “We set up as a bureau so we do everything for them. That means we can avoid having to unravel all the knitting at the end of the period,” he said.

For those following the Business Cloud Summit on Twitter, the hash tag is #BCS09. More detailed coverage of AccountingWEB’s “fringe” meeting will be published in our Cloud accounting discussion group.

• Now that we have stopped paying a bookkeeper every time we want an invoice or payment entered or a report producing, let alone something correcting,
• now that we can login to our bank via our online accounting package and do the reconciliation with a few clicks,
• now that our staff can enter the invoices and payments and all the Trustees can see what is happening any time, from anywhere (and we are spread around the country),

there is no way i would go back without serious kicking and screaming.
What about you? Tell us the tale in the comments.

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One of the great benefits of a web page is that its size is, essentially, infinite. As long as you keep adding content, the page will keep getting bigger. At some point that makes the loading time in your browser too long for comfort, but what it also means is that there is no need to cram into the smallest space possible. You can afford to leave room between items, and it makes sense. via 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines.

Most designers know the value of white space, which is the empty space between paragraphs, pictures, buttons and other items on the page.

White space de-clutters a page by giving items room to breathe. We can also group items together by decreasing the space between them and increasing the space between them and other items on the page.

This is important for showing relationships between items (e.g. showing that this button applies to this set of items) and building a hierarchy of elements on the page.

Notice the big content margin, padding and paragraph spacing on The Netsetter. All that space makes the content easy and comfortable to read.

White space also makes content more readable. A study (Lin, 2004) found that good use of white space between paragraphs and in the left and right margins increases comprehension by almost 20%. Readers find it easier to focus on and process generously spaced content.

In fact, according to Chaperro, Shaikh and Baker, the layout on a Web page (including white space, headers, indentation and figures) may not measurably influence performance but does influence user satisfaction and experience.

The web allows anyone to become a publisher but graphic design does make a difference in how well people can use your site.

Rule number one is never to hand your site over to a graphic designer until you are very clear about what the site is supposed to do and how you want it to function, only then should you start worrying about how it looks.

If you start with the look you will spend all your resources on that and functionality and purpose will get left behind, but don't forget the role that the look has in making your site workable.

Unless, of course, you are the ugliest website in the world, Craigslist.com which is still one of the most udeful, and heavily used sites anywhere.

How do you make those crucial design decisions? And who does it in your organisation? Comments pelase.

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I've done plenty of presentations to various sizes of audience but the same problem always comes up, apart from the fact that the projector doesn't work about half the time. The other problem is that once you have finished, that's it, end of all that work. Sure, you can hand out slides but if you are using your presentation tool correctly, most of the content is missing from the slides, its in what you say and how you say it.

Enter Slideshare, a free service for rescuing all that hard work and making it available to others, those who were at the conference but have forgotten just what you said, or fell asleep during it, and especialyl those who didn't get to the event.I use a tool called Jing to create online presentations straight from the desk top. Here's the one on getting started with Slideshare.

The one thing you do need, in addition to your presentation software is a way to record the audio. For that I use another freebie called Audacity and it works well, but the best way would be to record the actual presentation, import the file into Audacity to edit the flubs and heckling and then use that as the voice track for the Slideshow.

Is this kind of thing useful? If so, who would you share your presentations with and what tools do you use?

If not, why not?

Comments open as usual.

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This morning my colleague Simon Riley sent me a link to this story. Here's what you need to learn to be computer literate

Recently, I helped a very smart friend with a computer problem. She was having an issue with the program she uses most and asked me for some assistance.

The solution to her issue turned out to be simple and involved copying a file into a folder.

“How do I do that?” she asked.

At first I was a little surprised. As I said, this is a smart person, but she did not know how to perform a task that's Basic Computing 101. Like a lot of people — some of whom have used computers for years — she only knows what she thinks she needs to know and isn't interested in stepping outside that box.

That's fine until a user hits an issue that's easily fixed but can't fix it because of lack of basic knowledge.

Simon followed it up with this comment.

"An excellent summary here. I can't help but feel there is a huge gap the market -how do we create digital citizens?"

This is an American story but its the same everywhere, here's a survey done by ConnectUp Australia about the kinds of problems people have with ICT in non-profits there.

And here's the presentation I used at the recent e-engage Your Community conference in Wellington to introduce a forum on the topic, its full of actual  examples of computer illiteracy that I've run into over the last 6 months or so; you might recognise some of them. (it has the audio and runs 15 minutes)

I completely agree with Simon about the gaps in the average user's knowledge, but the real issue is not that there is a gap but rather that there is no market. These tools are being implemented to increase productivity but at a very fundamental level I suspect they are being used by organisations the same way as they use the latest star consultant's 6-sigma best practise for glorious profits and huge bonuses, in other words, as a magic bullet that you buy once and leave to work its magic forever.

• There is far too little money for training at sufficient levels,
• there is no commitment from organisations to use the tools they have invested in to the best advantage,
• there is no time for people to learn stuff; that includes management and governance as well as operational staff
• there is fear that if people are constantly asking for help they will be seen as unqualified or as complainers who will be first up when the next round of redundancies comes in
• there is too much fear that they will break stuff if they do anything but the smallest amount they are familiar with and
• there certainly is no sense that the information is no longer trapped inside a document and that its location, to most intents and purposes doesn't matter.

The commetns on the original story above confirm that this knowledge gap is across countries, economies and even across demographics, the digital natives are as ignorant of their IT tools as I am of how my car works.

So come on, we know the problem, how are we going to fix it? Plenty of room in comments, go for it.

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Connecting Up Australia has created a capacity benchmarking tool for organisations wanting to know how they measure up in IT capability alongside comparable other organisations in the sector

"Are We There Yet?" lets you benchmark your technology capacity against almost 1,000 nonprofits who completed their detailed survey in October 2008. As more and more nonprofit organisations use the AWTY benchmark tool online, the richer the benchmark data will become.

They are about to add a section that also allows you to benchmark your efforts to be 'green' and environmentally responsible.

The real point of 'Are We There Yet?' is that it helps you answer the question of 'What Now?' Once you complete the survey they direct you to resources that will help you get to the next stage.

So how does this work?

1. Click the 'Are We There Yet?' button at the bottom of this page.

2. Complete the benchmark survey and click Submit. The Organisation and Email fields are optional but we'll need your email address if you want your report emailed to you.

3. After you hit the Submit button, your detailed benchmark report will be displayed, showing how your nonprofit organisation compares to other nonprofits of a similar type and size. You can print this report or email it to yourself by clicking the relevant button.

4. Click Next Steps at the bottom of the page and read some cases studies about how donations obtained through the Donortec program have assisted nonprofits.

5. Click Directory at the bottom of the Page and see the service providers and products that other nonprofits in your category are using. (The top grouping are those most commonly used but they are not in set order because these change over time.)

There are so many efforts under way to help NFPs gain more from their investments in IT, many of them little more than harangues about how others are doing this or that, often with the implication that you should to.  "Are We There Yet" at least has a go at helping you figure out where your start line is.

If you give it a whirl, leave your evaluation of it in the comments for the rest of us.

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As a dedicated keyboard short-cutter, I look for those items almost as soon as I load up on some new software, I especially like software that lets me decide for myself what shortcut I will use. That way I can use combinations of keystrokes that are easy for me to remember.

Browsers are actually full of all kinds of capabilities that can help us find our way around the web, especially to sites that we visit often. One of the shortcuts I use most often is the address bar shortcut.

The video on how to set it up is here

Do you have any favourites? Drop them into the comments please.

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This potential problem for those of us thinking about storing our data "in the cloud" of the internet is more about contractual obligations and corporate attitude than actual technical issues which can occur any time and in odd ways.

But it IS worth thinking about. Mozy glitch fogs the reliability of storage clouds

Imagine if your cloud storage provider experienced a technical error that caused your bandwidth bill to balloon into the thousands of dollars.That's a scenario feared by Dan Frith, a storage and virtualisation engineer and former employee of S Central - and now an unhappy customer of the EMC-owned Mozy online backup storage service.

[...] When his Mozy service is working correctly, the storage cloud connects to his machine once a day to check which files on his system were updated or modified and transfers only these incremental changes to the replica of his hard drive stored in Mozy's US data centre.On November 14, Frith noted the system connect to his machine and request to start the usual daily transfer of changed files. Strangely, Mozy was requesting a data transfer of 32 Gigabytes of data - not just the incremental changes but the entire contents of Frith's hard drive.

[...] Frith has since been in regular contact with Mozy's support staff for answers, posting the discussions on his blog, but the company is yet to provide a fix.[...] Frith said that he is fortunate to have negotiated a contract with his ISP under which uploads are not calculated as part of his monthly bill.

"But I have friends that use the Mozy service that have 110GB up there, and some of them do pay for uploads," he said. "Do the maths on what he would pay if this happened to them."

[...] But his problem has gained the attention of cloud watchers around the globe as concerns rise around the reliability of the next generation of IT services.

"I think this technology is still very immature," Frith said. "We get given this sense of protection from a service like this. You put your data up there, but the question is whether these operators value your data as much as you do. It's just blocks and files to them."

At 2020 communications Trust we are looking at shifting our storage to the "cloud" with contracts as little as $4 a month able to give our workers access to their data whenever and wherever they are connected, using their own hard drives and the office file server as alternative backups.

For small, but often mobile organisations, this looks like a good option. But we would not be happy with this kind of problem, mostly because the cloud service provider has no contract with, nor responsibility to, the bandwidth provider, that is our contract and our problem.

Have you looked at services like this? Answers in the comments please.

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Although this is a bit of a plug for their company, it contains some useful tips on from Darrell Benatar, Founder and CEO of UserTesting.com

Even a great web designer or optimization consultant quickly loses their “fresh eyes” when working on a project.  Something that seems obvious to those working on a project can be very frustrating to a new user. Ideally, you could sit down with new users and have them try out a working version of your project and watch them to find out where they get confused. This is the idea behind traditional usability testing.

Users who match the website’s target audience are recruited and brought into a lab setting where a moderator can watch them use the site and ask them questions. The problem is that this costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time.

Fortunately, some new online services, such as my company, UserTesting, make it faster and cheaper to get similar feedback. UserTesting.com costs $29 per test, and we offer up our own panel of users.

3 ways UserTesting.com customers use our site:
- Competitive tests
- Test static pages and partially completed designs
- Improving SEO and PPC

Compare your site vs. your main competitor
Clients have asked our user testers to compare their site with their chief competitor. This has given them insight into:

• What works--and what doesn't work--on their competitor's site
• Which site users prefer, and why.

When setting up this type of competitive testing, don't giveaway which site is yours! The first two fields on our test request form are "Website address" and "Task." I would recommend putting the competitor's URL in the "Website address" field.

How to write the "Task" for this competitive test

Example: Assume you manage the RedEnvelope gift site, and you want usability testing done on your site versus your toughest competitor, Gifts.com. Here's how you could write the user tester's task:

Scenario: You need to buy a gift for a friend. You search Google for gifts and find two websites that look promising: www.gifts.com and www.redenvelope.com.

Task: Use both of these sites to find an appropriate gift for your friend.

Once you have found a good gift on both sites, please answer these two questions:

1) Which site did you prefer?
2) Why? (please explain with examples)

This type of usability testing has probably helped me improve my site as much as anything else I've done.

Test static pages or partially completed designs

Some of our clients run user testing on static pages or pages with limited functionality. By conducting user testing earlier in the process - you are able to adjust your page early in the development cycle before it is too costly to make major changes. It's easy to do. When doing user testing on static pages or pages with missing functionality, just let the user testers know which parts don't work and which parts to focus on.

For example:

• oDesk.com put up a version of their site where only the top-level navigation was functional. They wanted to get this part right before completing the rest of their design.
• A well known travel site put up different versions of a landing page and asked users to say which ones they preferred and why. The different versions were just JPEG image files.

"Test early, test often."
One of our clients, Steve Krug (author of the bestseller "Don't Make Me Think"), says that if you wait too long to test your designs, you may become resistant to doing any testing at all because it becomes too hard to make changes - you run out of time or you're just too mentally invested in what you've designed.

[Earl says, this is hugely important, not only can you lose those "fresh eyes", you can get too attached to your design and it becomes impossible to consider tossing out the "best" parts, test before you reach that point. Remember, its not your site, its their site, they have to use it, not you]

Have testers start from a Google results page

You can write your tasks so that your testers begin on a Google results page where your site has a paid ad or is in the natural search results. To do this, type "www.google.com" in "the website to be tested" field on the UserTesting.com sign-up form. Then ask:

• Where would you click first in these results?
• Look at the XYZ ad. What would you expect to see on the site that ad links to?
• Now click on the XYZ ad and then look at the resulting site for 5 seconds.
• How did your expectations based on the ad compare to what you saw on the site in those first 5 seconds?

When did you last test your site? How did you do it? What did you change and why? Comments are open any time.

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Tucows has been around the net a lot longer than I have so when they come up with something new, I'm always open to trying it out. The latest is Butterscotch which claims to be a "fresh, friendly, smart and sticky portal into the world of technology".

We help you do more with the tech you already own and turn you on to the latest and greatest in language everyone can understand. We promise not to talk down to you and to only talk up the most interesting and impactful software, trends, news, gadgets and gear if you promise to come back often. Have a look around and see what sticks!

I had a look round and they cover a good range of tech stuff for us bunnies, a lot of basic knowledge like what is a dual processor or how does a VPN (virtual private network) work and series on working with Twitter, Google Chrome and other specific tools.

They also have a "Breaking news" series that provide tutorials on new tools that become available such as:

• Post LinkedIn updates to Twitter and vice-versa.
• Free Kindle software for your PC
• Google Dashboard gives you control over your privacy and data
• Twitter Lists let you follow groups
• Google Sync upgraded to provide push email
  Facebook launches lite version

I've tried a few and they aren't bad, still uses too much tech language for some, its surprising how much techies take for granted as stuff that everyone knows, but the practical stuff is step by step video and worth trying.

If you give it a go, let me know in the comments how it works out and how you rate it.

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Thanks to the folks at eRider for this reminder on the role that IT plays in governance and financial accountability. Auditors watching how organisations manage IT risks.

As It systems become critical to daily operations, they also become critical to the survivability of any organisation that comes to depend on them, not just on a daily basis, but on much broader time scales.

Computer systems will increasingly be the subject attention during an organisation's annual audit . Changes in the way auditors do their work means all systems with[in] an organisation are subject to some level of scrutiny. Lindsay, our roving IT professional, heard from a few organisations he visited recently that auditors had been asking about back-up and data security.

An approach to the Institute of Chartered Accountants helped to explain this trend. Kerry Price, Grant Thornton Audit Partner, and member of the Not for Profit Sector Advisory Committee set things straight:

An auditor has always had the obligation under professional standards to at least document the clients systems and processes and this includes IT systems. Data integrity is crucial to most organisations where total loss could possibly result in the failure of the organisation to continue altogether.

An auditor is asserting confidence to the public that an organisation is a going concern beyond the date of the audit report so anything placing that assertion at risk is of concern to the auditor.

This scope of enquiry and level of understanding of a clients systems, processes and internal controls has significantly increased in the last 1-2 years as the auditors professional standards (previously a NZ set of standards) are being phased into International Auditing Standards. You can expect these sorts of enquiries to only increase in future.

The Wellington e-rider IT service is available to give you advice on the robustness of your systems, and recommend options to address any shortcomings.

At 2020 trust we are going through an exercise right now in shifting and updating our IT systems and we are going right back to our chart of accounts to make sure that it is properly accounted for and is reporting what we need to make good decisions.

Among the changes are updating our file server for file backups but also considering a "Cloud" based service for automatic backup from staff machines to have the data in at least 3 places at any one time.

We are also interested to see if we can extend the eRider tech support to NFP's around the country. I'd be interested to hear more from you on how you manage that for your organisation.

How is you IT handled by your auditors and, more to the point, how do you handle the data security and reporting issues? Comments open as usual.

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Its very easy to get enthused about new technologies and start new things all over the internet. But when they don't work out as well as you hope or you lose interest or the enthusiast leaves the organisation, the litter of your work can have downsides.

First, you may be represented by information that is out of date or just wrong, and second, those social networking tools may be open to abuse by others. Facebook Hijacking Points To Social-Networking Holes

The takeover of administration rights to a large number of Facebook groups by an organization that calls itself Control Your Info is just one example of the many security Relevant Products/Services issues facing social-networking sites in general and Facebook in particular, according to experts.

... "Control Your Info" hijacked almost 300 groups by simply taking over unadministered groups. Dave Amsler, the cofounder and CIO of Foreground Security, said the illegitimate administrators have access to profile information, e-mail addresses and other data Relevant Products/Services that members have provided. He pointed out that credit-card numbers aren't involved.

Control Your Info posted this message at those groups: "Hello, we hereby announce that we have officially hijacked your Facebook group.

"This means we control a certain part of the information about you on Facebook. If we wanted we could make you appear in a bad way which could damage your image severly [sic]."

[...] Facebook's press-relations department e-mailed a statement which read in part that "there has been no hacking and there is no confidential information at risk. The groups in question have been abandoned by their previous owners, which means any group member has the option to make themselves an administrator in order to continue communication to the group. Group administrators have no access to private user information and group members can leave a group at any time."

On a personal level, having others with unauthorised access to your memebrships in various groups may be a nuisance or potentially embarrassing, but having your organisation's facebook page being run by someone else is a potential disaster. If that person or group has it in for you, they could make life very unpleasant both for your supporters and your organisation by posting inappropriate or incorrect information about what you are about and what you do.

Do you know where all your representations of your organisation are on the net? Who runs them? Have they been updated lately? Do you know how to delete them when they are not needed any more?

Horror, or success, stories in the comments please.

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At last week's E-engage Your community event in Wellington, former Yahoo! and TradeMe user advocate Natasha Lampard talked about user testing of your website and how to do it well. One of the key steps is actually to have people outside your organisation actually test your actual website.

Then the question arises of how many users should you get to test? The good news is that Effective User Testing Doesn’t Have To Be Extensive

Jakob Nielsen’s study on the ideal number of test subjects in usability tests found that tests with just five users would reveal about 85% of all problems with your website, whereas 15 users would find pretty much all problems.

The biggest issues are usually discovered by the first one or two users, and the following testers confirm these issues and discover the remaining minor issues. Only two test users would likely find half the problems on your website. This means that testing doesn’t have to be extensive or expensive to yield good results. The biggest gains are achieved when going from 0 test users to 1, so don’t be afraid of doing too little: any testing is better than none.

A key point that both Natasha and Jakob make is that wa website is not so much a pu8blishing mediaum 9and therefore subject to the rules of news media etc) as it is a tool for getting t5asks done. So the logical thing to test is how long it takes and how easy it feels fro0r your users to compelte the tasks they come to your website for.

For those of us trying to run effective websites, the big questions are then, "what are those tasks?" If tyour organsiation has a website, could you, or any of your colleagues, write down in less than a minute the 5 main tasks that people come to your website to perform?

If not, that is where your next site review needs to start. Then test it.

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Pressure to reduce travel costs and the carbon footprint associated with flying to meetings led scientists from the Australasian Conversation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG) to trial running a conservation planning process using free web tools.

Focused on saving the endangered mala, which inhabits Australia's dry centre, an online workshop process unrolled over a two month period from early August 2009.

The online workshop mimics a similar process typically run using face-to-face meetings. Just as important as the technology (which included Google Sites, Vyew web conferencing and Skype) is adapting processes and activities from the face-to-face world, and mentoring around technology uptake for the participants.

Caroline Lees, co-convenor of CBSG Australasia, has generously agreed to talk about the workshop process, including sharing some early lessons and reflections. Although this case study is about a conservation project the lessons have very broad applicability to any organisation wanting to trial online collaboration at low or no cost.

If you’d like to find out how to make effective use of online tools, come along to an online seminar. Find out more about webinar.

Webinar details:

2pm Monday 23 November
RSVP required. Use the contact form or email me and I will send you login information.

About the format:

This will presentation be done via an interactive website using a webinar format (ie web plus seminar). You can participate from the comfort of you seat - yes, there’ll be lots of chances for you to ask questions. The webinar is free and offered as part of a course in Facilitating Online Communities I am enrolled in offered through Otago Polytechnic.

What you need to join in:

• computer connected to the internet
• headphones or speakers to listen to the presentation
• a microphone to ask questions (optional - you can ask questions using text based chat).

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