What is RSS?

This is going to be another two-parter. In the first part I’ll explain what RSS is and why it makes your life easier.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. Don’t worry if that doesn’t mean anything to you. It’s basically a way for a website to deliver content straight to its readers instead of making them come to the site to check for something new. Kind of like an email newsletter, except you read it in your web browser or another piece of software, called a news reader or feed aggregator.

Here’s an excellent video summary:

Why do I want to use this?

This means you can keep up with changes and new content on your favorite websites and blogs without actually visiting the page to check if something new has been posted. This is good for quickly skimming new headlines from sites that update frequently, and usually they include a short summary so you can tell whether you are interested in the full article before you open it.

It’s also useful for following sites that don’t update frequently without wasting time visiting the page. Just subscribe and forget about it until your feed reader tells you there’s something new. It’s a good way to keep track of those sites you might forget about otherwise.

Some blogs include the full content of their posts in their feeds, which means that unless you want to comment, you don’t even have to visit the site to see the new content. And speaking of comments, some blogs offer RSS feeds for those too, so you can keep tabs on a discussion without visiting the page a dozen times just to see nothing new has been added.

Cool. How do I get it?

You need two things. The first is the address of an RSS feed, the second is software to read the feed in.

To get the address of an RSS feed, you need to visit a site that has one. Most of them do. (We’ll use the Writech blog as an example, and you can test it out.) Look for an icon like this:

That’s the universal RSS symbol. You’ll probably see it somewhere on the page, usually on the sidebar, header, or footer. You may also see it in the address bar, to the right of the URL. Most of the time, it’s as simple as clicking on the icon and letting your browser do the rest. Go ahead, try clicking on that icon. (It’s the feed for this blog.)

If your browser doesn’t know what to do, you can get the address in a few different ways.

If the icon appears on the page, you can click on it and then copy the contents of the address bar. You can also right click on it and choose the option that will let you copy the link address or location.

Sometimes you’ll see the RSS icon in the address bar, but you don’t see a link on the page. This means your browser found a feed for the site, even though they don’t announce it on the page. This is pretty common with some blog services. Just click on the RSS icon and it should take you to the feed page, where you can copy the URL in the address bar.

It’s better to use the address from icons that appear on the page, rather than the address bar, if you have both options. This is because many sites will use a third party service like Feedburner to produce their feeds. If they change their web address, they can also change Feedburner to reflect that and you will continue to receive updates without having to find the new address and subscribe again.

Next you need something to read your feeds in. Most browsers have an RSS reader built in these days, which makes it easy to subscribe to feeds. (And they even automatically detect if a feed is present.)

In my browser, Opera, whenever I click on an RSS icon, it takes me to a page that has a subscribe button. After I subscribe, I can check the site from the “Feeds” menu of my toolbar.

For Firefox users, your browser also has RSS functionality built in, but they call it “Live Bookmarks”. Mozilla has an excellent guide to using Live Bookmarks and if you need something with more features, there are lots of Firefox plugins to choose from.

Google has a web-based news reader called Google Reader. If you already have a Gmail or Google account, you can use that to sign in and get started. Andy Wibbles has a great introductory video on using Google Reader.

Now you can read the new content from all the sites you visit regularly in one place. Next time, I’ll explain why you should have RSS feeds for your website and some tools to help you manage them.

More Information

• What Is RSS? RSS Explained
• How to explain RSS the Oprah way
• HOW TO: Getting started with RSS
• Wikipedia comparison of feed aggregators

Password Managers

As promised in this post, tools you can use to manage your passwords.

Important: Always keep a current backup of your password database file somewhere safe.

(Just in case your hard drive fails, your computer is lost or stolen, or the file gets corrupted.)

For Everybody (cross-platform)

1. PC Tools Secure Password Generator – This website will let you generate random passwords from your browser. Select the length of the password and requirements (numbers, special characters, and so on). (free)
2. Nic’s Password Generator – this site lets you generate passwords by entering a master password and an easy-to-remember identifier. You can use the web form or download it to run from your computer. (free)
3. pwgen plug-in for Firefox – This plug-in adds a password generating utility to your Firefox toolbar. (free)
4. SplashID – cross-platform password manager and generator. Desktop software for both Mac and Windows, plus a variety of mobile platforms include iPhone and BlackBerry. Can synchronize between devices. (30 day trial, full version: $19.95)

For Windows

1. PC Tools Password Utilities – Windows users can download a version of the generator linked earlier, along with a utility for checking how strong passwords are. (free)
2. Password Safe – generates and securely stores passwords. (free)
3. KeePass – another program to generate and store passwords. It can also be run on Linux and OS X using Mono. (free)

For Mac

1. Keychain – This is Apple’s password management system. You can use it to generate and store passwords. To learn more about using Keychain, check out these articles: The Mac OS X Keychain Service, The Keychain’s Hidden Powers, and Manage Mac OS X Keychain. (included in OS X)
2. Pastor – software to generate and securely store passwords. (donationware)

For Linux

1. MyPasswordSafe – generates and securely stores passwords. For Ubuntu users, the package is already in the repositories, just $ sudo apt-get install mypasswordsafe. (free)
2. pwgen and gpg – for the somewhat nerdier, use pwgen to generate passwords, and save them in a text file encrypted with gpg.

Safety Tips: Password Management

My sister did a really stupid thing a couple days ago. She signed up for a photo-sharing site because she was sent an invite by someone she knew, and she gave the site her email address and password as part of the sign-up process.

Never, ever, do this.

I cannot stress that enough.

Do not give web sites your password to other web sites, email, or instant messenger accounts.

The less nefarious ones are just going to use the information that they harvest to spam your friends list or address book with invitations to their site, from you. That’s relatively harmless. (Though are you really sure you want to invite all your co-workers to look at the pictures of your best friend’s bachelor party in Tijuana? Yeah, I didn’t think so.) You also don’t know how long they are going to retain your login information or how secure the database storing it is.

The more nefarious? Who knows. It wouldn’t be the first time someone ran a scam to get login credentials by setting up a phony web site.

I’m taking this opportunity to write up a list of basic password safety tips. Then I’m going to email the link to my sister.

Five Rules to Keep Your Passwords Safe

1. Use a strong password. A strong password is one that is nearly impossible to guess. It should be at least eight characters long, and consist of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and some special characters. It shouldn’t have words or names in it, that makes it easier for a computer to break it using a dictionary file.
    
   Examples of good passwords: oh1V-emi uco!Dp5j Mor5-Xei
   Examples of bad passwords: Jeremy09 RedSox69 fatcat72
   Examples of really bad passwords: jeremy cat redsox
2. Use a different password for every account. Most people use the same password for all their accounts. Most sites also allow you to log in using either your username or your email address. What this means is that for most people, giving out their email address and password (like my sister did) isn’t just giving away access to an email account. That email address and password can also be used to log into Facebook, MySpace, Amazon, Twitter, and a bunch of other sites. Maybe even into their bank accounts.
3. Change your passwords regularly. Most people only ever change their passwords when something funny happens, like their MySpace page gets vandalized or people start complaining about getting weird emails from them that they didn’t send. Often their password was stolen days or even weeks before something like that happens and the problems would have been prevented. Every month is good, but you should, at the minimum, change your passwords a couple times a year.
4. Don’t log into password protected accounts from public computers. I know it’s tempting, but logging in to check your email from a shared computer in the airport or computer lab or a demo in an electronics store is a really bad idea. Some public places have good security policies and check their machines regularly for malicious software. Others don’t. You never know for sure; it’s safer to use your own computer.
5. Do not give out your password. The absolute easiest way to steal passwords is just to ask for them. The whole point of a password is it’s supposed to be secret. You wouldn’t give a copy of the key to your front door away to everyone that asked. Don’t do it with your password.
    
   More and more sites are asking for passwords to your other accounts during registration. If you look carefully, there is usually a tiny text link that says something like “skip this step.” If you can’t find a link that will let you skip the step, just close the page. Usually the actual registration is already completed. If you can’t find a way to ignore the request, don’t use the site or service.

   It’s really that simple. If your friend actually posted anything, and didn’t just fall for giving the site their password because they got an invite, they’re going to post the same pictures to their Facebook account and their MySpace account and their Flickr album anyway. You aren’t going to miss anything.

   The only time you should ever follow a link from an email to change your password is when you specifically requested a password reset from a site. It’s very, very easy to set up a fake website that looks just like the real thing and fake an email address. (This is called phishing.) Lots of these emails say scary things about deleting or deactivating your account if you don’t change your password. The best thing to do is go to the real web site (don’t click a link in an email to get there) and log in. If you really do need to change your password, it will prompt you to do it. Companies know how easy it is to fake these emails, so they don’t rely on scary email messages to communicate changes.

   And in the same vein, web sites already have your password. It’s in their database. And they have backups of their databases, so they are never, ever going to tell you their database was lost and they need your password. If you get emails (or phone calls!) asking for your password, go to the company’s web site (from your browser, don’t click links in the email) and find their contact information. Report the attempt to solicit your password so that they can alert their other users to the scam.

I bet by this point you’re going, “I’m supposed to have passwords that look like someone threw up their Alfabits, I’m supposed to have a different one for every account, and I’m supposed to change it every month?! How am I ever supposed to log into anything?!”

Enter password managers.

Domain Expiration and Cybersquatting

I just saw a post on a message board where the poster lost her domain name to a cybersquatter because she didn’t get the notifications from her reseller about the upcoming expiration of her domain name. The cybersquatter (NEOASIA CO. LTD.) is going to sit on that domain name for at least a year, unless she ransoms it back from them or can afford to pursue legal action and try to regain her domain name that way.

Yuck.

But why?

“I’m just Joe Schmoe, not Dan Brown or anyone famous. Who would want my name as a domain?”

Cybersquatters, in almost every case. Once in a while, it might be someone that shares the same name and has been waiting for the domain to free up, but that’s a pretty rare occurrence. You can verify that it’s a squatter pretty easily.

Use whois to look up the new owner of your domain name. In the case of the domain name that spawned this post, whois.domaintools.com tells me:

Registrant Search: “NEOASIA CO. LTD.” owns about 1,417 other domains
Email Search: nameopen@gmail.com is associated with about 712 domains

Pay attention to the sheer number of domain names they’re sitting on. Further, in the contact information, they’ve gone so far as to advertise “DOMAIN MAY BE FOR SALE”. Definitely a squatter.

“But it just expired! How do they know so fast?”

Domain squatters use sites like JustDropped.com to find out what’s available–they can either search for specific keywords they want or just go through the list and grab anything that looks likely, either to cash in on the traffic or hoping the original owner will ransom it. Often they’ll pick domain names they want before they’ve actually expired and use a service that will let them back order currently registered domains.

“But why would they want my domain name?”

Basically, it’s because for ten bucks (or maybe less) they can buy all the established credibility your site has on the internet. They buy all the traffic from places that have linked to your site, all the reputation associated with your site, your placement in search results, everything. Think of all the comments you’ve ever left on blogs where you entered the URL of your website, all the friends who’ve linked you in their sidebars, every guest blogging appearance or short story in an e-zine or book review that’s got a link back to your site attached. That’s all the stuff that’s worth something to them.

After a few months of their link farm sitting on your URL, the traffic and search rankings will drop. Then they’ll be willing to cash out by allowing you to buy back your domain from them at an exorbitant price.

What to do if this happens to you

Get yourself a new domain name. Check to see if alternative TLDs are available. If the name you lost was example.com, try to get example.net.

If your email uses your domain name change it immediately. If your email address is something like me@example.com, you need to to set up a new email address and then log in to all your accounts everywhere–Amazon, Paypal, your bank, eBay, etc.–and update them with your new address right away. Many sites will send password reset instructions to your registered email address as a way of verifying your identity. If someone has picked up your domain name, they can also get any mail intended for you just by setting up a “me@example.com” mailbox. You can set up an email address at Gmail.com.

Note: If you later set up an email address using your new domain name, you can either set a gmail account to forward mail or to use multiple addresses. You won’t have to log in to all these sites and change your address again. More on this in another post.

Make sure you get the word out about your domain change. You want to prevent, as much as possible, the people squatting on your domain from benefiting from traffic intended for you. Make sure you update your profiles on sites like Twitter, RedRoom, MySpace, Facebook and anywhere else you’ve listed your website. Use Google to help find sites linking to yours and notify them of the domain name change. (Replace “example.com” with your domain name.) Unfortunately there’s nothing you can do about business cards or fliers you’ve handed out.

Note: if you regain your domain name, you won’t have to do all this again. You can just set up a simple redirect via your registrar’s control panel.

Sign up for an alert so you’re notified if the squatters let the registration on your domain lapse. You can use the alert service from Network Solutions to be notified when your domain name is available again. The good news is, if they don’t get much traffic and can’t get anyone interested in the domain name, the squatters will probably drop the domain in a year or two–it’s not worth paying the registration fees on a name nobody visits or seems to care about.

Consider legal action. Under U.S. law 15 USC 1129, “any person who registers a domain name that consists of the name of another living person, or a name substantially and confusingly similar thereto, without that person’s consent, with the specific intent to profit from such name by selling the domain name for financial gain to that person or any third party, shall be liable in a civil action by such person.”

Also check out this site for more information on internet law, cybersquatting and domain name disputes.

Legal action may be prohibitively expensive, but it’s worth noting that if the squatters don’t bother responding to a complaint, you may be able to get a default judgement. Consult a lawyer with expertise in internet law.

How to prevent this from happening to you

Turn on auto-renewal. Back when I was using Aplus.net they automatically enabled an auto-renew option. If you use an auto-renew feature you need to be aware that it will require saving your payment information on the site, and that you need to keep that information up to date. (They can’t auto-renew using an expired credit card.)

Make sure you opt-in to any alerts and notifications, if necessary. I’ve never had to opt in to notification for expiration warnings, but double check in your control panel to make sure.

Make sure your contact information is up-to-date with your registrar. My host/registrar (ICDsoft) sends regular warnings when one of my domain names is about to expire. They also hold the domain name for a few days past expiration so you can still renew even if the registration has expired. But none of that would matter if my email address wasn’t up-to-date and I didn’t get the notices.

Be redundant. Schedule reminders, starting at least a week before expiration in Google Calendar or Outlook or whatever time management software you use.

Register for multiple years. Not only do you not have to renew every year, but many resellers offer a discount that makes cheaper in the long run than renewing on a yearly basis. The maximum renewal period allowed is ten years.

Make sure you know your registrar’s renewal and deletion policies. When a domain name expires it gets auto-renewed at the registry and your registrar is charged the renewal fee. The registrar can cancel the domain within 45 days for a refund. Reputable domain registrars will offer a grace period after expiration, since the domain has already been renewed to them.

Some registrars will take the opportunity to charge vastly increased renewal fees or auction the domain names. (The widely popular registrar GoDaddy does both of these things, along with some domain squatting of its own.)

Creative Writing Software

After a bit of a hiatus, I’m back, and I promise more regular updates.

I’m always looking for a better word processor, something with less distractions, or alternatively, more features. In a twisted way, it’s just another tool in my procrastination arsenal. What I want is software that will just pluck the story from my brain and actually write it for me. I haven’t found it yet, but as soon as I do, I’ll be sure to post about it here.

In the meantime, this is a list of various software packages for writers. Some are minimalist and promise to reduce distractions. Others are loaded with features that promise to help organize plotlines and timelines and chapters and so forth. I’ve only used Celtx and JDarkRoom; inclusion in this list is based on reviews and recommendations I’ve read.

The descriptions come from the product site and I’ve limited the list to products that offer a free trial. Nobody wants to spend a hundred bucks (or even twenty) on software someone else really liked just to find out they hate it. I’ve included links to donation or wish list information because I think it’s nice of people to make their software available for free and they deserve a little acknowledgement if someone uses it and enjoys it.

I’ve left out general purpose word processors, though I may write up a comparison of those later. If there’s another creative writing program you use, or you’ve written one, go ahead and leave a comment with a link.

For the Mac

Scrivener “Scrivener is a word processor and project management tool created specifically for writers of long texts such as novels and research papers. It won’t try to tell you how to write – it just makes all the tools you have scattered around your desk available in one application.”	30-day Trial	Cost:$39.95
CopyWrite “CopyWrite is a project manager for writers of all kinds. Rather than focus on formatting and layout, CopyWrite stands apart in its project-oriented approach. Word processors and page layout tools are good at what they do – formatting and layout – but they offer no help at all to a writer during the creative process. In fact, the ‘gee-whiz’ features crammed into these tools do more to hinder writers, getting in the way of their work flow. Put simply, these tools constipate writers; CopyWrite is like a tasty bran muffin … with extra bran.”	Limited Trial	Cost: $24.99
StoryMill “StoryMill enables you to manage the creative process like never before. You can track, tag and filter characters, scenes, locations, research and more with the unique dynamic outline. For fiction writers, StoryMill provides features like word frequency counting, a cliche meter, and a progress meter to help you meet your daily writing goal.”	30-day Trial	Cost:$44.95
Jer’s Novel Writer “Jer’s Novel Writer is a relatively simple word processor with extra features to support large creative writing projects.This program is all about momentum, and reducing the number of things that break the flow when I am writing. Jer’s Novel Writer is designed to help me keep writing when the creative juices are flowing, and then find all the things I need to go over again when I am more in a nitty-gritty mood.”	Free Trial	Cost: $30.00
Ulysses “Ulysses was developed mainly for writers who work creatively with text and want or need to realize large amounts of text. Ulysses also wants to enable the writer to fully concentrate on the story he wishes to tell, without hobbling his creativity by means of unnecessary burden and distraction.”	30-day Trial	Cost: $122.00
WriteRoom “WriteRoom is not Microsoft Word. It won’t generate a table of contents, it won’t place borders around your documents, and it doesn’t have an animated paper-clip looking over your shoulder. Instead WriteRoom just provides the essential features required to get words on the page. Stay focused with WriteRoom’s distraction free environment. Stay on track with word count. Stay safe with autosave. You just type, and WriteRoom will do its best to stay out of your way.”	Free Or you can buy a license, but it’s not required	Cost: $0 License: $24.95

For Windows

This is just a small selection of what’s available for Windows. If you don’t see anything you like, just Google for more.

yWriter “A scene is a pleasant chunk to work on – small and well-defined, you can slot them into your novel, dragging and dropping them from one chapter to another as you interleave strands from different viewpoint characters and work out the overall flow of your book. You can also drop a scene completely if you’ve written yourself into a dead end, without feeling you’ve ground to a complete halt. Of course, you can’t just write a bunch of unrelated scenes. You need an overall design goal … your plot. yWriter will generate a number of different reports from your scene and chapter summaries, from a brief scene list to a comprehensive synopsis. If you update the ‘readiness’ setting for each scene it will even generate a work schedule showing what you have to do to meet your deadline for the outline, first draft, first edit and second edit.”	Free	Cost: $0 Donate
RoughDraft “RoughDraft is a freeware word processor for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP. Although suitable for general use, it has features specifically designed for creative writing: novels, short stories, articles, plays and screenplays. It’s designed to be as practical as possible, offering all the features you need, but without being complicated or awkward to use.”	Free	Cost: $0
PageFour “PageFour is a simple and easy to use piece of software. It was designed creatively for creative writers. PageFour is a tabbed word processor and outliner for writers. It has a simple structure based around Notebooks. Each Notebook contains as many Folders and Pages as you wish, and is structured in whichever manner best suits YOU. Every writer works differently, and PageFour recognizes this.”	Limited Trial	Cost: $34.95
Liquid Story Binder XE “Liquid Story Binder XE is a uniquely designed word processor for professional and aspiring authors, poets, and novelists. Writing software for those who require the editing ability of a commercial text editor as well as a document tracking system. It is for those who want the freedom to create, outline and revise but are tired of losing track of their work.”	30-day Trial	Cost: $49.95
DarkRoom “Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.”	Free	Cost: $0 Donate via paypal button
Q10 “Q10 is a simple but powerful text editor designed and built with writers in mind. Q10 will clean your kitchen, walk your dog and make excellent coffee. Well, not really. But it’s really good as a full-screen text editor.”	Free	Cost: $0 Wish List
WriteMonkey “Zenware for full screen distraction free creative writing. No whistles and bells, just empty screen, you and your words. WriteMonkey is light, fast, and perfectly handy for those who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter but live in modern times.”	Free	Cost: $0 Donate via paypal button

Cross-Platform

(For Linux, Mac, and Windows)

Writer’s Café “Writer’s Café is a software toolkit for all fiction writers, whether experienced or just starting out. The heart of Writer’s Café is StoryLines, a powerful but simple to use story development tool that dramatically accelerates the creation and structuring of your novel or screenplay.”	Limited Trial	Cost: $45.00 CD: $50.00 Mac: $0
Celtx (I use this one.) Celtx is geared toward screenwriting, but it includes a plain text editor and many of the features are equally useful for writing fiction.”Celtx is the world’s first fully integrated solution for media pre-production and collaboration. It replaces old fashioned ‘paper, pen & binder’ media creation with a digital approach to writing and organizing that’s more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share.”	Free	Cost: $0
JDarkRoom (I use this one, too.) “JDarkRoom is a popular, simple full-screen text file editor with none of the usual bells and whistles that might distract you from the job in hand. If you are writing a novel, essay, thesis or just need to be able to concentrate on your writing, then JDarkRoom may help you.”	Free	Cost: $0 Donate
Writer Writer is a web-based full-screen text editor.  It allows you to save your files in text format.	Free	Cost: $0 Donate