• 4channers don’t all like electro-pop. Apparently they’re 50/50 split heavy metal and indie.
• 4chan got their site’s founder voted Time magazine’s most influential person.
• On a related note, Time thinks 4chan invented LOLCats. There’s published books of cat pictures with funny captions from the 1960s, at least.
• There’s a website called ‘refreshthing’ that automates Google-bombing. Or at least (if you’re reading this a few days from now), there was.
• 4channers can’t hack for a damn.

This is a good time to look at web culture. It’s the street we do business in; being streewise is a good thing. It’s important because we’ve seen this scary glimpse into Internet mob mentality, and what basically amounts to Internet street gangs, and that tells us things about the future. It tells us that even greater control of the web frontier is in the future. As always happens, the hooligans of today will age into the uptight, conservative nannies of tomorrow. Coupled together with the moral panic over Internet bullying, we’re going to see a future where the overkill of the cure is worse than the disease.

We’re also fantastically misguided. Everyone reading this right now should consider Reddit.com, and not 4chan, as the source of the threat. Reddit is just as anonymous as 4chan – it won’t challenge the name you enter, not even to demand an email – and most of 4chan and Reddit membership has an overlap. But Reddit is actually where the campaigns start, and since, unlike 4chan, posts on Reddit stay there indefinitely, one can trace the mob’s path through Reddit before it comes to 4chan. Furthermore, you’ll discover than many of the acts of petty web vandalism are actually financially motivated in the first place. Viral marketing – fighting dirty!

But really, the whole web mob is a moving target. Their name, after all, is Anonymous.

While the point isn’t to police the web for copy-pasta, we loved this clever little trap set by Graywolf’s SEO blog. By inserting a sentence containing the word ‘?constagagulation’ repeatedly, he was able to wait a couple weeks and then find out where it went.

Similar methods are used by map designers, who insert deliberate errors in order to catch copy-cats. We aren’t saying you should do anything but what Graywolf recommends – insert some links to yourself in the content and let ‘em have it! But it’s always nice to know where it’s popping up.

The examples link to demonstrations of Wordpress in use for everything from a Twitter page to a Wiki to an e-commerce store. And while we’re on the subject of WordPress, here’s some trivia about the software:

• Version names come from famous jazz musicians.
• It was forked from an original project called ‘b2.’ The original b2 team also continued with a new project called ‘b2evolution.’ Though it is said to be in active development, its usage is a tiny niche and development seems stalled.
• In 2008, they released a WordPress app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
• Some controversy surrounded the themes directory in 2007. WordPress ditched themes that use sponsored links, and have since stressed that all themes have to be GPL licensed (the way Wordpress is itself).

Worth the price of admission alone was the link to Headset Hotties, a blog dedicated to cataloging all the stock-photos of models with wires growing out of their heads that appear to be mandatory on every e-commerce website.

Now, if we can get the image of that picture of the stock-photo five beaming serenely at the monitor out of our heads…

• McDonalds – True, we all have our gross fast-food stands, but they started it.
• Walmart – Biggest retailer in the country, richest family in the world, cheapest, tackiest China-import junk you ever saw.
• Velveeta – No one had better ever criticize Vegemite again. At least Vegemite is organic.
• FOX News – Gah! The US government just came out denouncing FOX News as a wing of their Republican party, and everybody’s reaction is “Yeah, so?”
• Disneyland – Fake, cloying, saccharine, brutally capitalistic, and dumped in the middle of a slum.
• “Football” – At least that’s what they call it.
• NASCAR racing – When football is too intellectually demanding.
• Las Vegas – This, to them, is decadent and hedonistic.

We could go on, but let’s just say we stopped there. Know your market! And of course other countries have their downsides too, but Americans are number-one in tacky with a capital plastic lawn flamingo.

1. Stumble Upon – StumbleUpon is a popular social bookmarking site, with hand-picked links sorted by subject. Their search turns up limited results, but those results are always the “best of show”!
2. Cuil – Not many seemed to notice this ambitious search start-up when it launched in July 2008. It has ex-Google engineers behind the scenes, trying to re-think the concept of a search engine in order to be the next-generation Google.
3. Yandex – The number one search engine in Russia is not Google, but Yandex! Even though this site has Russian writing on the landing page, you can still type in English queries and get back English results.
4. DMOZ – Never heard of it? Well, if you’ve pursued the webmaster’s help sections on MSN, Yahoo, and other search engines, you have; it’s the database that many search engines crawl to build up a starting point.
5. Fact Monster – Did Wikipedia discredit your subject as not being of general interest? Fact Monster is a strong competitor to Wikipedia, aimed more at student research. Its results are much more concise and easy to read.
6. TV Tropes – Don’t be fooled by the name – this site is the ultimate Wiki and Google combined for every kind of media, from comic books to stage opera to novels to albums, along with TV shows. It’s a niche, but a fantastic and rich one, with an enthusiastic young teen user base. Getting a link from here means you’re in with the in-crowd for life.

Peter Brittain

Then goes on to observe how in the business world today, there are definitely those who have progressed… and those who haven’t. He concludes: “There are those organizations holding on to the past, but they will be made irrelevant as we move further into the future and the divide grows. Being afraid is not an option.”

But sometimes you have to wonder! We have our web-savvy, micro-blogging, smartphone-toting people here, and then we have… people who still own a VCR – and still can’t program it! We have tech-support calls with people who don’t know you need a computer to use the Internet, can’t tell when their computer is plugged in, use the CD-ROM tray for a drink-holder, and so on. Each of us can think of one relative who leans on us for tech support at home, re-formatting and re-installing Windows when it gets too clogged with viruses and malware. If we tell them to get a Mac or offer to install Linux, they just look at us with a blank stare. We’re talking in that crazy “computerese” again.

Maybe it will just go on like this down through the generations. As the author notes, some of the people the same age and younger seem to struggle to adapt to technology as much as the older folks do. That’s not a sign of robust progress.

Peter Brittain

So here’s a little link list for getting your WordPress blog in shape. At least if you put all of this information to use, you’ll be as secure as anybody who uses WordPress.

First, here’s the official WordPress Security Whitepaper. This is as recent as April of 2008, and it’s also translated into Chinese, Italian, German, and Spanish, as well as English. You’ll probably find it dense reading, but at least it’s good to have on hand for a reference.

This plug-in hosted at WordPress.org is a WP security scanner. It can automatically check for common problems.

A list of quick WordPress security tips. These are all easy and quick to implement.

Finally, the WordPress development blog. If any news about security vulnerabilities and updates comes up, it will come up here first.

Remember, when you secure your site, you make the Internet safer for all of us as well.

Peter Brittain

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If you are adding movie or animation you can synchronize equivalent alternatives like caption or auditory description of those visual tracks. The use of the markup is also important. By misusing markup for presentation effect like table for layout or header to change font size makes the page difficult to navigate with specialized software. It also makes it difficult to render a page if you construct what looks like a table of data with an HTML PRE element. Content developers should be aware that using these cause accessibility problems and must ensure formatting effects taking into consideration accessibility to all users.

However they should ensure that they do not sacrifice appropriate markup if a certain browser does not support it correctly. Using CSS helps control layout and presentation.

It is necessary to ensure that the pages with new technologies transform gracefully. So design the page such that it can be read without style sheets. Even if style sheets are turned off or not supported ensure that you organize content logically that helps render it in a meaningful order. Dynamic content equivalents should be changed when dynamic content changes. Ensure that pages do not become useless when scripts, applets etc are not supported. If this is not possible provide equivalent alternatives. It is very important to remember that some people with cognitive or visual disabilities may not be able to read moving text or blinking text, ensure that you provide auto updating objects that may be paused or stopped. Provide device independent access. It means that the user may interact with user agent or document with a preferred input and output device like mouse, keyboard, voice, head wand etc. You can provide client side image maps instead of server side image maps. For scripts too provide logical event handlers rather than device dependent event handler.

Keep in mind to make use of the interim solutions so that assistive technologies and old browsers also operate correctly. There are several W3C guidelines and technologies that you can make use of to make your site accessible which results in graceful transformation of your page to an alternative version.

Peter Brittain
Slinky Digital

Peter Brittain
Perth Digital Agency