The weakest link in security is the human, and criminals are getting a lot better at the kind of phishing emails they send. They don’t have to crack systems, they can crack you by getting you to give up your credentials. Crooks have figured out that if they spend a little extra time proofreading emails and putting an official logo on them, it’s often enough get even intelligent users to click through to a fake page and give up passwords. Though not widely disclosed, the “hacks” of prominent news organizations websites and social media feeds by the Syrian Electronic Army were simply well-crafted phishing emails. The malware filters on your email don’t always catch them.

This one got through and someone actually took the time to make it look nice and proofread it. It could easily have come from your bank or other financial institution. I annotated it just to show what to look for.

If any of your web services have 2 factor auth, you should set them up. Google and Yahoo! accounts (i.e. Gmail, Docs, Yahoo Mail), social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) have it. Sadly, your bank does not even though it would make it extremely difficult for a remote attacker to access your account.

It’s been a busy summer (we had another kid!), and I’ve been delinquent in posting decks from my latest talks.

SXSW

Alex Howard and I have been speaking a lot about the coming deluge of sensor data. Privacy concerns dominated our News Foo session, well before the Snowden NSA disclosures accelerated the conversation around data privacy.

At this year’s SXSW, we lead a Core Conversation: “What Do Sensors Mean for News, Society, and Science“. The first audience question came from a Fast Company reporter who referenced an ACLU report on data privacy in commercial mobile apps. We momentarily wondered if the conversation would take off. Then, a gentleman in the back raised his hand and said: “I’m an attorney at the ACLU. I can answer that question…”

• Alex wrote an exceptional follow-up piece for the O’Reilly Radar.
• We were also referenced by Harvard’s Nieman Lab.

Columbia University Journalism School

I hadn’t given a lightning talk in over a year and gave two in June. Columbia’s Tow Center is extremely innovative and forward-thinking. I was delighted to participate in their sensor journalism workshop and gave a short talk on getting started.

Privacy was one of the main themes I stressed. The two biggest sensor journalism stories of the last six months were unintentional and had negative consequences for journalists and their sources. Vice magazine gave away John McAfee’s location, and the Tesla logs challenged a NY Times reporter’s memory. Before we wade into sensors, journalists need to have a conversation about privacy and ethics. What will be able to be subpoenaed? How do we avoid unintentionally hurting the people we’re trying to protect?

American Society of News Editors (ASNE)

Finally, I participated in a panel on digital innovation at the ASNE 2013 alongside my NPR colleague Brian Boyer.

The Reynolds Journalism Institute mentioned our panel here and here.

Videos: my talk on innovation outside the newsroom. Brian gave an phenomenal talk on the importance of building for mobile.

This weekend at ORD camp I led a session on map and compass orienteering.  Even in the age of GPS, it’s an indispensable outdoor skill. Electronics break, fall in a creek, batteries die, or clouds blot out your satellite uplink.

It’s also a ton of fun for participants of all ages, and it really connects you to hundreds of years of pathfinding. My toddler knows that the red needle on a compass points North, which is where Santa lives.

The best way to learn is by doing. Map and compass fundamentals are the basis of the sport of orienteering — think: outdoor scavenger hunt — and Chicago even has it’s own orienteering club.

For my session, I used the Silva Starter orienteering compass and a few USGS 7.5 minute quadrangle topographic maps. USGS quads are the basis of many commercial topo hiking maps and are available free of charge at USGS.gov.

I owe a big thanks to Dennis McClendon of Chicago Cartographics for attending the session. As a professional cartographer, Dennis was able to provide all sorts of details on how maps are actually created.

Maps

We primarily used maps of the ruggedly beautiful Blackbird Knob area of West Virginia, which includes portions of the Monongahela National Forest and Dolly Sods Wilderness.

US Topo, 2011 (25 MB) –  This was the primary map we used. The U.S. Topo map series is rendered digitally and includes many layer overlays and aerial photography that can be turned on/off when viewed in Acrobat Reader.

1995 Topo Map (13 MB) – The older maps are analog. While they may not be up to date, there’s something beautiful about them. They also contain detail on forested and cleared areas, trails, peak names, human-made structures and double track that the U.S. Topo maps lack. Of course, they’re also over 10 years old, so you may be looking for a clearing or a trail that no longer exists.

Chicago Loop 1997 Topo – We didn’t get into the Chicago loop map, but I printed it in case we headed outside. You can practice biangulation (finding where you are by shooting bearings to known landmarks) from nearby Erie Park. While standing in the circle at the corner of Erie and Larrabee, I could biangulate using Willis Tower (Sears Tower as I and the map remember it) and Aon Tower (formerly Standard Oil). Or, if standing by the sculpture at the east end of the park, I could see the Hancock building and Merchandise Mart.

Session Handout and Reading

map-compass-techniques: The session handout covered map contours and common navigation techniques.

If you missed the session, this was the best free navigation tutorial I found.

And here are a few of the books I’ve read over the years:

The Essential Wilderness Navigator – a great primer

Be Expert With Map and Compass – a classic, by the man who founded Silva

Orienteering – geared more towards the sport of orienteering than general navigation.

Advanced Outdoor Navigation – has some terrific information, but since the author was a former SERE instructor, he spends a lot of time on wilderness survival. Hopefully your navigation skill is sufficient that you won’t need this ;-)

Photo by Margaret Stewart

Session outline

Topo Maps:

• Quandrangle info
• Scale (i.e. 1:24,000)
• Declination (Magnetic/True/Grid North)
• Road/Trail information
• Contour Interval

 Reading contours:

• Peak
• Saddle
• Ridgeline
• Drainage/gulley
• Valley
• Steep cliff vs. shallow elevation change
• Depressions

Tips:

• Always know where you are
• Orient your map (“thumb arrow” points in direction of travel)
• Take roads/trails when permissible

Errors:

• 180 degree errors (north/south error) – check compass orientation direction
• 90 degrees  – compass check cardinal direction
• Parallel errors – are you where you think you are?
• Following others – don’t do it!

Techniques:

• Aiming off
• Attack points
• Biangulation/Triangulation
• Catch points
• Handrails
• Bracketing
• Contouring (altimeter?)

Last month, I was on a panel entitled “The API Economy” with Sam Ramji of Apigee and Dan Jacobson of Netflix, moderated by Programmable Web founder John Musser.

Listen to our keynote

A few months ago, I published some ideas about what the Internet of Things and inexpensive sensors might mean for journalism. It turned out to the most widely shared and cited piece I’ve ever written.

Last week I attended the TechRaking journalism conference at Google headquarters in Mountain View. I gave a 7 minute Ignite-style talk (a “lightning talk”) expanding on what sensors might mean for news and for engaging public media communities. The deck is below, I’ll add the video once the post it. Meghann Farnsworth recapped the event in detail.

Photo by Patrick Cooper

This month’s ONA DC meetup was hosted by NPR.  Apparently not having learned my lesson that lightning talks take a ton of time — or perhaps because Elise is so charming — I did another one. Also giving talks were Claire O’Neill, Clay Johnson, Michael Maness, Jon Bruner, who was down from New York. Patrick Cooper did a great writeup of the event.

(Or more properly stated: how do you deliver a killer 5 minute Ignite Talk when David Carr, Steven Levy, Tim O’Reilly, and a bunch of other folks you’ve respected for years are your audience.)

So… I survived my first Ignite Talk at News Foo 2011. I really had no idea what I was getting into when I signed up to speak. I read Scott Berkun’s excellent post, which gave me the idea to “hack the format” and use the same slide back-to-back for a 30 second effect while I played audio with my iPhone.

The subject of my talk was reinventing audio for digital devices. Broadcast listening is a linear, time-boxed experience. What might radio sound like if we invented it today? I drew on two projects I’ve worked on at NPR. The first was “You Are Here”, a location-based mobile audio project: what does radio sound like if we know where you’re standing? I got to work with NPR’s Robert Smith, an exceptionally talented storyteller. While “You Are Here” never saw the light of day, some of the lessons and some of the code made it into the second project.

The second project I discuss is the Infinite Player, a personalized, continuous listening experience. This one has gained media attention and our team at NPR believes it holds great promise.

I will do another Ignite Talk, but I can’t emphasize the amount of work it takes to even do a mediocre talk. I can prep a one hour presentation in 30 minutes. A five minute Ignite requires 30-40 hours worth of prep and practice.

A few takeaways:

• You can never rehearse too much.
• It’s better to practice all the way through than to keep stopping, as improvisation is key.
• Edit yourself. You only have time for two points per slide, tops.
• Sleep is key. I didn’t sleep at all heading into News Foo, and had such a good time I didn’t sleep there either.

How’d I do?