Open WiFi = alarms beeping

Apparently, yesterday I skipped this very important topic when focusing more on social networking and less on WiFI security - which is also worthy of mention and which slipped my mind. As well as the dangers of open profiles on social networks, open WiFi networks presents a threat as well. There are people very skilled out there in the vast world that can and will access your devices if you connect to an open WiFi, and the worst thing is that we think that it's just a myth, that nobody is capable of that and that no one in their right mind would ever do such a thing. Truth is, it happens. Whenever you connect to one of those so-called free WiFi, two things may happen: either it is a reliable one, or you're about to be tracked. If it's the first one, everything's okay and there's nothing to worry about. But if it's the latter, everything you own, everything you keep, every single word you have ever said on your open profiles of any social network, every single text, everything, will suddenly belong to someone else. Someone you don't know that now will know you. That's the main reason you should never connect to an open WiFi you aren't 100% sure it's safe. But this problem doesn't just apply to free connections. If we are not careful and don't use our resources to shield our home WiFi, it is perfectly hackable, and then it is the same loop again. It may seem stupid and impossible, but at the end of the day, someone could hack your WiFi to commit a cibernetic crime, and at the end of the day, when the police force accesses your computer to investigate, the main accused will be you .. not the ones that broke the law, just you. Because it will be your computer's IP that gives you away. And nobody is going to take the blame for it.

Net security

I'm not very knowledgeable in this particular topic, but I'm going to risk it.

Like I said on previous posts, the information we share on social networks is not always as private as we think, whether it be because of the lack of protections on our profile pages or because someone has hacked it secretly, which isn't very popular but can definitely happen.

Advices on this are everywhere, and they're usually ignored out of the boredom they cause by hearing them over and over again, but they are very correct, I must say.

They're not very difficult to follow if one tries to:

• DO NOT share any sort of personal data that may cause any trouble to you in the long term, aka, phone number, address, email accounts, passwords, and (this is not obligatory, just advisable) try not to let on more than you'd like strangers to remember you by.
• LEARN how to deactivate your account in case it's necessary (e.g.: abusive relationships, your being tracked ...)
• ALWAYS make your profiles private, if possible, so that only you can access to them and see them. Of course, you can also allow your closest friends and relatives to see it too, but make sure you don't click the very well-known button saying: "my friends' friends" 
• DO NOT share very personal opinions that may entitle others to accuse you of any sort of thing related to that. (e.g.: opinions on politics, offenses to others, public declarations, etc...), nor compromising photographs.
• PLEASE keep insults as far as you can from your profiles, if you want to insult someone, insult them in your mind, it's equally satisfying and no one gets hurt.
• REMEMBER that everything we post online is indelible, and therefore, it will be there whether we like it or not.

If we have these in mind, I think it's not hard to become responsible users that are less likely to suffer from unpleasant surprises related to the lack of net security.

Social Networks

What are they? What are they used for? Have we become dependent on those that spread communication among people? Do we truly know that whatever few secrets we let loose on them can be seen by others with not as good or innocent an intention as ours?

It is pretty clear, I think, that the term social network immediately brings to mind a very nitid image of one of those websites we're hooked to on which we exchange informations about ourselves and our private lives, and, in fact, that's what they are, it just isn't the only type of social network there is.

Twitter, Facebook, Tuenti, MySpace, etc ... they are all alike, with some characteristics that make them different and easier to identify, and the four of them serve a similar purpose, the unceasing, rapid, sometimes overwhelming flow of data. That's the constant that unites these networks: the data.

These last four I mentioned share personal data, things we normally don't say or make public outdoors but that we don't hesitate in publishing there because it's considered normal, because we would be considered to be weirdos if we didn't.

Nevertheless, there are kinds and kinds of social networks. The ones flowing around the writing-reading, author-fan topic. The ones circling around art and artists. The ones mainly about blogging platforms. The work-related ones. And the criminal ones. I could go on and go investigating to edit this post and add more, but as my will-power isn't that strong, I may as well drop the issue, keep the useful information I've learned about it and try to spread it by any means possible so everybody else can hear about it too. Just a little advice, though: use them well. (Harry Potter pun totally intended)

Prezi

First of all, I feel I must apologize for the long absence, but to be honest, there are not many reliable WiFi connections around when you're in the middle of a storm. Anyhow, here I am again, now to write about Prezi, the more advanced, non-linear alternative to Power Point and SlideShare that has undoubtedly rocked my "softwared" world.

I'm a bit ashamed to admit that at first I could not get the hang of it – so many different layouts, frames, typographies, so many uncommon ways to compose (so to speak) an interactive presentation that can change directions, colors, do some insight approaches, loops and a total amount of effects and things you'll be surprised. How was I supposed to master such a complex software in just one or two days? Was it impossible?

Yes, it was. Because, even though I tried my best to turn that mess into something halfway decent, Prezi isn't for amateurs with nearly no motivation and patience (definition of me, by the way). Once you delve into its many parts, you realize how professional it all looks and how hard it must be to learn to use everything.

So, lastly, here goes my slapdash Prezi about Social Networks, a topic I will very soon be writing about.

http://prezi.com/qqlaiqjljief/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

GIMP III

For the last gimp-related project of this term, the main task consisted of blending all the recently adquired skills together to form a new picture which was supposed to look enhancingly better than the previous ones. The desired outcome was to manage to insert successfully a face into the lemon's picture.

As always, we began with a basic photograph of a lemon. It was possible to choose among the immense varieties that the Internet provides, regardless of color, size or format. My choice, rather simple if you think about it, was to merge the lemon with John Lennon's face. At first, it began as a joke, because I intended to call the project "John Lemon", but then everything got a bit more serious when I started working on the photos and met my first and main obstacles: cutting and deleting completely parts of one layer without it looking too unrealistic. Of course, I am no professional, but I'm quite pleased with the final outcome of every layer.

To add a little extra interest, I duplicated one of the layers so that the whole face of the lemon looked better in contrast with the lemon skin, and by doing so I found myself knee-deep in mistakes. I had, then, to spend an awful lot of time adjusting John's skin to the double layer, manually blurring some parts.

When this came to an end, I thought about whether the project could be considered as finished or not. The final result was more or less splendid, except for the lack of a mane of hair, which I had deleted prior to merging the layers. So I searched for a fitting picture, then came to face the same problem again -- it's very difficult for an amateur to cut parts of the photograph and have it look mildly decent. Nevertheless, some sessions of hard work later, I finished pasting the hair into the lemon, and then proceeded to work a bit more with the layers' appearance.

And here is the result:

GIMP II

As a second project in our GIMP lessons, I was asked to produce an advertisement based on a photograph of my high-school about a play that will be represented as part of our extracurricular program so that my classmates and I could explore the tools GIMP provides and hone our recently acquired skills.

For me, it has not been an easy task because of the layers and the perspectives that I had to work with in order to make the picture look fitting. There were several layers to the photograph, one of them consisting of the background (that is, the original one), then some figures as the main characters of the play (which I decided to place in front of the high-school building), text to advertise the play and a framed picture of the author of this latter to make a bit more funny and pleasant at sight.

Nevertheless, I will most likely not be sharing the picture itself because of privacy reasons.



GIMP I

Photoshop is the main software people use when they wish to touch up a photograph, yet very few know of GIMP, which is incredibly similar as to its functions and luckily cheaper, because it is for free and you can download it from its web page: http://www.gimp.org/windows/

The very first project we started in our Computing lessons was about getting used to work with layers, and the main objective was to successfully insert a picture, not at all related with the one to be used as background, into another  and the result being somewhat decent. Of course, not many of us had used this software before, so it's taken more patience that we had expected, but the results are indeed satisfying.

Working with pictures is something very fashionable these days, making them look better or simply eliminating parts of it that we don't like very much. And whereas it could seem devastatingly impossible to do so without the experience it takes to master Photoshop, GIMP provides simpler, much handier tools to help you.

I am quite delighted with how my project has turned out, even though I'm well aware I could have done much better, but it's a first for me, so I'm really happy about the results.