I recently migrated this site to Media Temple’s managed WordPress hosting plan. For a number of years I had been running a dedicated server through CoreNetworks, which I have been extremely happy with. More recently however I have come to realize I no longer have the need for dedicated server and began researching cheaper managed hosting alternatives, which brought me to Media Temple. Over...
For a while now I have been using WAMP as my daily driver for Drupal development on my Windows 8 machine. For anyone who is a Drupal developer and uses WAMP (or a variation LAMP stack on Windows) has probably felt the pain it brings in terms of sluggishness, incompatibility with native Linux applications (Drush anyone?), and a headache administer PHP modules. I won’t even get into the problems...
I am often interested in hearing about how people within the software development community keep up with the latest changes in tools, technologies and programming languages. It seems that every few months there is a new framework or better way of doing something in an entirely new tool-set or language. For me personally, I don’t have much time during the day to spend reading the latest...
WordPress CMS has been prone to many online threats ever since Matt Mullenweg and the team officially launched it. The content management system is impressive, but you can’t stop hackers from attacking websites powered by WP. Attacks can be prevented by installing a WordPress security plugin. If the internet is the only source of your income, you shouldn’t risk your site. There are a...
Establishing and enforcing policies that limit employee access to sensitive data and IT systems are one of the most effective mitigation strategies against a malicious insider (Brancik, 2008). There are a number of strategies that organizations can implement in order to better secure their digital assets.
Security breaches caused by internal employees, consultants, business partners and any other individual or group of individuals that have privileged access to certain parts of the network remain one of the highest threats to digital assets. In an article about the employee life cycle and identification of internal organizational threats, Conrad et al (2009) asserts that within an...
Honeypots are sometimes used as an active defense mechanism for network security and provide a means for targeting attackers and recovering forensic evidence. A typical honeypot traps attacks, records intrusion information about tools and activities of the hacking process, and prevents attacks outbound the compromised system.
Intrusion Detection is the process of monitoring an information system in order to determine if any action is being performed with malicious or otherwise cause that may negatively affect its availability, confidentiality or integrity of data contained within. In order to get started with intrusion detection, it is important to first of all gain an understanding of what an intrusion might...
Have you ever had a need to test email functionality on an application within your local development setup? I have found this process to be both time consuming and confusing in the past, especially when working within firewall restrictions. Of course we can always test with real dummy email addresses, but what if we accidently send a mass email out to real users? It is much...
Heather also experienced some workflow issues with the application where she was unable to locate various areas of the system. She commented that the excessive scrolling contributed to her confusion with this. In addition to this she noted concern with the various grid updates and format of the STA grid for editing and updating.
Meg had some difficulty working with the various grids, however once she learned the process, she was able to easily complete the remaining tasks. She also had some initial trouble with the ‘Big Ideas’ drop-down selection.
Michael was able to complete all tasks without many concerns. He observer and pointed out a few potential enhancements with the system, however the only issue he ran into was the recurring problem with the ‘Final Product’ text area box.
Romey completed most tasks with ease, however on a few occasions she came across recurring issues. She had trouble working with the ‘Big Ideas’ control, updating the various expedition and case study grids, and not correctly saving each form.
Recently Microsoft started offering a $100 per month credit to all MSDN subscribers for using their Azure cloud based services. A lot of developers here at ICF have MSDN subscriptions so I definitely recommend checking this out if you haven’t already done so. I never really considered using Azure for anything as I had assumed it was mostly used as a cloud based hosting service...
Curriculum Mapping is the process of documenting lessons, activities and assessment methods used within different grade levels and classes in an educational institution. Expeditionary Learning (EL) is a style of teaching that involves the students in experiences and problem-solving activities. This paper explores the intersection of these two educational theories and addresses how pedagogical...
Jeff ran into some problems when he did not save the form page he was on and lost changes. He had trouble remembering to press the update button on the various grids. In addition to this, he also came across problems with the ‘Big Ideas’ control and text area bug for ‘Final Product’ that others faced.
Megan was able to complete most tasks with ease. The only issue she seemed to have was related to workflow and finding specific sections or areas of the application. The confusion stemmed from differentiating between the case study and expedition screens.
Backwards design is a methodology used to develop curriculum, which promotes the identification of learning results at the start of the design process. Wiggins and McTighe defined this term as part of their Understanding by Design (UbD) framework. Backwards design is not a new concept, it has been around for a long time and this paper explores some of the underlying research behind Wiggins and...
This usability testing session revealed some issues with the using the Big Ideas drop-down selectors for adding new records. In addition to this, the process for adding standards, targets and assessments appeared confusing to the user. There were some issues with workflow where the user was confused about which screen she was on. Recommendations were made for allowing file uploads.
I am a software developer and online educator who likes to keep up with all the latest in technology. I also manage cloud infrastructure, continuous monitoring, DevOps processes, security, and continuous integration and deployment.