Online Volunteering Technology, Tools, and Tips by Randy Tyler

Free, Easy-to-Use Program Provides a Secure Way to Email Confidential Information

Using AES 256 Bit Encryption, LockNote Keeps Your Sensitive Information Secure

Whether you have passwords or serial numbers to store or need to e-mail sensitive information to your non-profit board members or your online volunteers, LockNote provides a quick, easy and secure method to hide your information from prying eyes. LockNote, by Steganos, is a free (open-source) PC application that stores your sensitive information within an AES 256 bit encrypted password-protected exe file. LockNote, as shown in the Screen capture above, is similar to Notepad but with the added ability to create secure documents.

As LockNote is open-source, the source code is available for anyone to review. Recently, security expert Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation (GRC.com) did an analysis of LockNote's source code. In his February 11, 2010  "Security Now" podcast (Episode 235) he revealed his glowing findings about LockNote:

"So they did everything. It is bulletproof. These guys clearly know their crypto, which is great news. And having looked at this, I can tell our listeners that this is as secure as it gets. I mean, everything was done right. Use it without fear."

How to Use LockNote

• Download LockNote (requires Windows 2000, Windows XP+), which is contained within a Zip archive, to your desktop, from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/LockNote/
• Using the Windows built-in unpacker (or an application such as WinZip or 7-Zip), extract the files from the Zip archive (LockNote-1.0.4-src+binary.zip). There will be a folder called "src" (source code) and the "LockNote.exe" application
• Drag the LockNote.exe file to your desktop and delete the rest of the files and folders

LockNote works with text only either via copying/pasting text (or typing) into a LockNote window or by dragging and dropping text files (files with a .txt extension) over the icon of the LockNote.exe file. I will explain the two methods below:

1. Pasting or Typing Text in a LockNote Window

• When you have entered all text, left click on the "File" menu item and select "Save As" (see the screen capture above).
• Then provide a file name (e.g., "Private") which will allow you to easily identify your file's contents (you can leave "Save as Type" blank as the file will be automatically saved with an .exe extension).
• Next you will be prompted for a password.
• Create a secure password or use the free password generator, both of which I addressed in my previous post (even though LockNote uses AES 256 bit encryption, the security of your information is contingent upon the strength of your password).
• Now your text will be encrypted within a LockNote.exe file (that is, the LockNote application and encrypted text are now contained within the password-protected .exe file).
• To open the encrypted LockNote file, just click on the Private.exe file (or whatever name you gave to the .exe file) and enter your password.

2. Dragging and Dropping .txt Files LockNote.exe's Icon

• If you have a text file (.txt) you want to encrypt, just drag the file over the icon of the LockNote.exe application.
• You will then be asked if you want to convert this file, and if you agree, will be prompted to provide a new secure password to encrypt the document. (and the encrypted file will be automatically saved as an exe file preceded by the name of your original .txt file).
• If you have more than one .txt file and you want to combine the contents into just one Locknote.exe file, you will first have to merge all of your text files into one (combined) .txt file. You can copy and paste the contents of each of your text files into a master file or use a free application such as TXTcollector to easily combine an entire folder (and optionally, subfolders) of .txt files into one .txt file (with a separator and the file name between each file, if you so choose). TXTcollector, which runs on Windows 95 to Vista, can be downloaded from: http://bluefive.pair.com

Solutions for Changing a Text File's Encoding

If you have encrypted a .txt file to an .exe file and after providing the password to open the .exe file you find the text unreadable, you can either copy/paste the text (from your .txt file) into a LockNote window or encode your .txt file in Windows ANSI (Windows 1252) using an Open-Source (freeware) text editor such as Notepad++, which is available for download at:

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

E-mailing an Encrypted LockNote File

As explained above, all encrypted text contained with a LockNote file will have an exe extension by default. In order to prevent your (LockNote) exe file from being blocked by certain servers (due to exe files carrying viruses), I recommend that you do the following:

• Compress/pack your password-protected LockNote.exe within a Zip archive (or whatever archive format your Windows recipient desires) using a freeware program such as 7-Zip.
• If you are using Gmail, for example, to send (and/or your recipient will be using Gmail to receive your LockNote attachment), an executable (exe) file will be blocked even if contained within a Zip (or similar) archive. As a work around, you can rename the .exe by right clicking the LockNote .exe file, select rename and change the file's extension from .exe to .jpg (with your cursor over the file, pressing F2 will also allow you to easily rename the file).
• Once you have successfully e-mailed the LockNote attachment, provide (e.g., via phone, fax or Skype but not through e-mail) your intended recipient with the password to open the encrypted file and of course advise the recipient to change the file extension back to exe from jpg if you re-named the exe file to e-mail (before attempting to open the encrypted LockNote file with the provided password).

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

Free Program Checks the Strength of Your Current Passwords or Creates Secure Passwords

   

Click here to download:

Free_Program_Checks_the_Streng.zip (74 KB)

Do You use the Same Password in Different Places?

If you use the same password for your e-mail account, Twitter and your online banking, cracking your Twitter account, for example, makes your other accounts vulnerable to cyber criminals. A recent study by Trusteer (which I cited in an earlier post) based on a sample of more than four million users, many of whom are customers of leading North American and European banks, of the Rapport browser security service found that passwords were being re-used in surprising numbers (73 percent).

Although creating a number of different, strong passwords for each of your accounts may at first seem cumbersome, Trusteer's findings suggest that many online users are leaving themselves more vulnerable if they do not. Thus, the first question seems apparent: How does one create a strong password?

How to Create a Strong Password

• Create a password that is easy to remember but difficult to guess
• Your password should not contain words found in a dictionary or other personal information that prying eyes may guess, know about you or can easily find (such as your birth date, address, telephone number)
• Your password should contain a minimum of 14 random characters combining upper (A-Z) and lower case (a-z) letters, numbers (0-9) and special characters (@#$%^!)
• Your password should be different for each place (whether your e-mail, your Facebook account or computer log-in) requiring a password .
• To test the strength of one of your current passwords (or to create one to secure 100 passwords at one time), please read about the free Secure Password Generator below.

PC Tools, the developer of Registry Mechanic and Spyware Doctor offers a free PC desktop-based Secure Password Generator (see the screen capture above) and a password strength tester to test your current or created passwords (see the screen capture above). The 392 KB application, which does not require installation, can be downloaded from the following URL:

http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/

PC Tools also offers a Web-based Secure Password Generator if you do not want to download the aforementioned desktop application. Use the SSL connection (which provides an encrypted connection between your computer and PC Tools' Web server) when if you decide to create a secure password via their Web site so your password is not created in the clear. Their online password generator, using a secure (https) connection is located the following URL:

https://secure.pctools.com/guides/password/

Whether using the online or desktop version, the password generator can create up to a 64 character password with an accompanying Phonetic Pronunciation (to possibly assist with recall). Using the online password generator, you can create one to 50 passwords at one time and one to100 passwords with the desktop program.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

Study Finds 73 percent of Bank Customers Use their Online Account Password to Access Other Web Sites

• 73 percent of bank customers use their online account password to access other websites and
• 47 percent use both their online banking user ID and password to login elsewhere on the Internet.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

Monitor Your Web Site Visitors in Real-Time as They Click Through Your Site, for Free

Who is Visiting Your Web Site Right Now? Non-Profits, You Can Quickly and Easily Know

Billed as providing what Google Analytics does not, Footprint allows you to view your visitors as they click through your Web site in real-time. Any visitor's click path history through your site can also be viewed along with referrer, search engine terms used to arrive at your site and visitor profile (including city, country, company, IP address and first and last visit).

 How to Track Your Site Visitors Using Footprint

After you provide a working e-mail address, account password, the domain you want to track and preferred timezone, you will receive an e-mail message containing the JavaScript-based tracking code. The tracking code must be placed just before the closing body tag on each static html page that you want to monitor (if your site has dynamically generated pages, paste the JavaScript in your dynamically generated footer for quick site-wide placement). Footprint can also be used with any content management system (CMS) such as Wordpress, Joomla, Blogger or Drupal as well as secure (https) pages. After you have added the tracking code, log-in to your Footprint account to review extensive information about your site visitors, including any live traffic on your site.

Visit the following URL to create your free (currently) Footprint tracking account:
http://www.footprintlive.com/live/sign-up--one-step-signup.html

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

Only Google's Web-Based E-mail Service, Gmail, Retains a Secure Connection After Log-in

Of the three major free Web-based e-mail services (Yahoo, Windows Live/Hotmail and Gmail), only Gmail retains an encrypted (secure) connection after log-in. Each mail service's secure Web site connection is identified by https (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) and verified by a Certificate Authority: VeriSign (Windows Live), Thawte (Gmail) and Equifax (Yahoo).

Yahoo mail provides an SSL (secure) connection by default but reverts back to a unencrypted http (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) connection after log-in. Windows Live, by default, is not an encrypted connection.Windows Live Mail requires a user to click on the "Enhanced Security" link (before logging-in) to connect via an https connection. After log-in, Windows Live reverts back to an unencrypted (http) connection. Gmail (Google Mail) has now enabled an encrypted (https) connection by default and remains secure while the user is logged in.

Do you use one of these free Web-based e-mail services? Do you use a public, unencrypted wireless network? If you sign in to a Web-based e-mail service via a non-secure (http) Internet connection, such as a public wireless or a non-encrypted network, you are more vulnerable to unauthorized people viewing your account information.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

Free, Until Feb 24, Program Easily Removes Your Forgotten Owner PDF Passwords

Have you created a password-protected PDF that prevents your content (for example, a funding proposal or an Online Volunteering Position Description) from being copied or printed but have now lost the password? PDF (Portable Document Format) files have two common passwords: Owner (the password which restricts such functions as printing or copying of a PDF file) and User (the password required to open a PDF file).

PDF Password Remover is one such easy-to-use application that will remove the encrypted Owner password to allow the copying, modifying or printing of a PDF file. As well as being easy to use application, PDF Password Remover also:

• removes the Owner password from a single file or a group of Files (see Screen capture above)
• supports Adobe PDF 1.0 to 1.7 (which is version 8)
• does not require Acrobat or Adobe Reader to be installed
• supports English, Turkish, Thai, Latin, Korean, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese
• allows PDFs to be imported or dragged and dropped to remove Owner password
• works with Windows XP, Vista and 7 (32 bit)
• does not remove the User password required to open a PDF
• does not remove other protections, such as DRM or third party plug-ins

http://www.anypdftools.com/pdf-password-remover.html

If you do not receive your activation key (via e-mail) with a reasonable time period, contact support through their Web site. For what appeared to be a technical glitch, I had to contact support; I received an e-mail reply within a day with an accompanying activation key.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

How to Easily Backup Your Photos from Google's Picasa Web Albums

As a non-profit organization, there are a number of effective, easy and free ways to promote, reflect, demonstrate or illustrate your mission, whether it be, for example, your events, the contributions of your online volunteers or how you are making an impact. One such method is to use Google's (free) Web Albums. However, at minimum, you must ensure that your precious memories and stories sitting on Google's servers are regularly backed up to a local computer. One quick and easy way to backup your photos from Google's photo sharing site (without requiring other applications to be installed) is to use the free Picasa Webalbums Assistant, as I will briefly explain below.

How to download photos from Google's photo sharing site using Picasa Webalbums Assistant:

• download the zipped file (PWA0_3_1.zip) to your desktop
• extract the files from the zip archive (with WinZip, 7Zip or similar program)
• double click on the 53 KB file called "PWA3.jar"
• agree to the terms of use (if you so choose)
• if you agree to the terms of use, as shown in the screen capture above, you will now have the option to select whether you want to download a public album (where you will be prompted for the UserID of the Album owner) or an album from an invitation URL (where you will be required to copy/paste the invitation URL e-mailed to you)
• once you provide either the UserID or invitation URL, Picasa Webalbums Assistant will display thumbnails of all the photos within the specific album you haveselected
• check the photos you would like to download and then click the "Download Selected" button.
• You will then be prompted to choose a location to save your photos (I suggest you save the photos to a folder where you will be able to easily locate them, such as your desktop).

Picasa Webalbums Assistant Requirements:

• requires Java 5 or later to be installed on your Windows or Mac computer (check your version of Java)
• if you have Java 5 or later installed and doubleclicking on the PWA3.jar file fails to launch the Picasa Webalbums Assistant application, you may lost the file type/application association.
• If you are using Windows XP or Vista, you can download Jarfix 1.1. (39 KB) to restore the .jar file association to the Java Runtime Environment
• the Webalbums Assistant application (PWA3.jar) can also be launched from the command line as in the following example (the PAW3.jar file and the lib folder, which also contains nine jar files, in this example are on my desktop): C:\Documents and Settings\Randy Tyler\Desktop>java -jar PWA3.jar

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

Easily Edit a YouTube Video with a Free FLV Editor

As a non-profit, you may want to edit your special event video you posted on YouTube but do not have the original. Over the last 20 years of working with non-profit organizations, I have experienced those occasions where a source file, whether it be the original photo, newsletter, brochure or video, was not readily available.

Specifically, you may have an FLV file (which is a compressed, Flash video file) that an online volunteer produced for you but do not have access to the uncompressed source video to edit and encode again as a compressed FLV video. You may wonder: I don't have the source video file, so how can I edit the FLV file I do have? When your non-profit organization does not have the original video to edit and then encode again as an FLV, in a pinch, you can use Moyea's Free FLV Editor Lite to edit your FLV flash-based video.

Where can you use this free Flash Editor? Some Suggestions:

        1. Trim an FLV video (cut off a date, remove an old logo; reducing the duration of an FLV video when the source video is not available to edit and encode again to an FLV video)
        2. Join two or more FLV videos, whether the FLV Video has been encoded with h263 [Flash 7], On2's VP6 codec [Flash 8] or H264 encoded video [which is Flash Player 9, Update 3 and newer]. Please note: up to five 5 files can be imported in the Free FLV Editor Lite application).
        3. Replace an audio track with an mp3 of your choosing by Unlinking the audio and video tracks, delete the audio track and import a different mp3 file.
        4. Extract the audio track of an FLV file: say you wanted to use the audio portion of your FLV video PSA as an audio ONLY PSA, then FLV Editor will allow you to export the audio as an MP3 file (Note: Only FLV container files with encoded with mp3 audio can be exported as an mp3 with FLV Lite Editor. Thus, for example, using the Free FLV Editor, the mp3 audio can not be exported from an H264 encoded video with AAC encoded audio (viewable with Adobe Flash Player 9, Update 3 (or newer); update 3 is specifically version 9,0,115,0.
        5. To add additional FLV Metadata, which is information about the video embedded in the video: For example, you could add the author or title of the video (on the tab where you click Metadata, you will note that the free FLV Editor application does not list current metadata embedded in the FLV). However, when an FLV file is imported, some metadata is shown, as follows:

• video: codec used (for example, an h263 encoded video would require at least Flash 7 to view in your browser), resolution (eg, 640x480), video duration and frames per second
• audio: codec used, bit rate, sampling and number of channels

So, when you do not have access to your original video to edit, the Free FLV Editor Lite may serve your purposes to re-work your FLV video file.

You can download the Free FLV Editor Lite application via the following URL:

http://RandyTyler.org/u/flv

After installing, bypass the pitch to upgrade to their paid version by clicking continue; also, as of late, Moyea seems to automatically launch your e-mail application with a prepared message, suggesting you pass on the news about their FLV editor.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

Microsoft Still Holds a Whopping 92.21 Percent of the Total OS Market; Mac OS Only 5.11 Percent

Based on current trends, it appears that Microsoft's dominant Operating System (OS) will be around for some time. According to a December 2009 report by Net Applications, Microsoft still commands a whopping 92.21 percent of the total OS market (see the table above). Interestingly, despite all the hype, the Mac OS only accounts for 5.11 percent of the total. Moreover, at 5.71 percent of the total, Microsoft's recently released Windows 7 alone edges out the Mac OS share. And even though Windows 7 launched with rave reviews, Windows XP still holds 67.77 percent of the total OS share.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

How to Easily Reveal Your Login Passwords with a Firefox Addon

Passwords used on Web-based log-ins are usually masked. Hence, when one can not see the actual characters, typing the correct password may require many attempts. However, the Firefox Addon "Show My Password" enables the user to quickly and easily reveal their passwords as shown in the screen capture above.

The Show My Password Firefox Addon is installed as follows:

• Visit: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8016
• Click the Green button "Add to Firefox"
• After installation is complete, restart Firefox
• After restart, Go to Tools, then Addons and Select "Show My Password"
• Click on options and select "enabled" and choose how you would like your passwords to be revealed (for example, on right click menu or after your  mouse hovers the password field) and hidden
• Works with Firefox 1.5 to 3.6.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of appropriate technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.