Category: @work

Posted on

Slack | Drupal.org

Slack brings all your communication together in one place. It’s real-time messaging, archiving and search for modern teams, and it has cool system integrations features. This module allows you to send messages from Drupal website to Slack. It has Rules module integration. Also you can use our module API in your modules.

Source: Slack | Drupal.org

Posted on

FBI Warns of ISIL Defacement Attacks on WordPress Sites

The FBI issued a public service announcement today [April 7, 2015], warning concerning WordPress website attacks being carried out by individuals sympathetic to the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL) a.k.a. Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS). The perpetrators of these attacks are defacing sites across various platforms such as news organizations, businesses, government sites, and religious institutions.

via FBI Warns of ISIL Defacement Attacks on WordPress Sites.

Everyone running WordPress out there needs to make sure they’re patched up and security is tight on your WP sites. CALI’s Classcaster and other WordPress sites are up to date and secure.

Posted on

Facebook releases Augmented Traffic Control, an open source tool for simulating network conditions

Augmented Traffic Control (ATC) is a tool to simulate network conditions. It allows controlling the connection that a device has to the internet. Aspects of the connection that can be controlled include:

bandwidth, latency, packet loss, corrupted packets, packets ordering

In order to be able to shape the network traffic, ATC must be running on a device that routes the traffic and sees the real IP address of the device, like your network gateway for instance.

https://github.com/facebook/augmented-traffic-control

This tool should be useful to anyone building an app on the network. CALI could use this to test behavior of Lessons on a bad connection, something we’ve been thinking about recently.

Posted on

Use Personas to Make Websites Better

The purpose of personas is to create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments for reference. These representations should be based on qualitative and some quantitative user research and web analytics. Remember, your personas are only as good as the research behind them. Effective personas:

  • Represent a major user group for your website

  • Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups

  • Give a clear picture of the user’s expectations and how they’re likely to use the site

  • Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality

  • Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values

via Personas | Usability.gov.

Posted on

Some love for Slack, our favorite group communication tool

VentureBeat: 10 things I love about Slack. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwiLS77SA

CALI has been using Slack for about a year and we love it. It has replaced our group mailing list as the primary way we communicate. We use it not just to talk to one another but we have it wired into things like Github and Nagios to help us keep track of things we’re doing and to alert ids to trouble with our systems. Very soon we’re going to invite more folks we talk to regularly to join us on Slack as a way to increase our communication with our members.

All in all I’d recommend Slack for any group as a great way to get folks telling till each other.