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Strategy, Innovation, Leadership and Security

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What is a Progressive Web App

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

Over the last 18 months, I have seen more and more sites prompting me to "Add to Home Screen" from websites I have been browsing. Then you add this site, it installs itself in the background and is now accessible like a native app from your smartphone.

What I have just described is the wondrous workings of a fairly new technology called Progressive Web Apps. This technology (called PWA) works even when you are offline and behaves like a "normal" smartphone app.

What are progressive web apps?

PWAs were created by Alex Russell and Frances Berriman. The technology driving Progressive Web Apps isn’t new. What was required was a new recipe to make Progressive Web Apps behave like native apps. This means that a progressive web app will work (as long as the platform supports it) on an iphone or Androis smartphone, a chromebook or ipad, on Windows or Mac.

True cross platform applications without needed to join an app store with super restrictive controls (I’m looking at you Apple).

Why Progressive Web apps

Like many of you, I live in a world with abundantly fast internet. This simply isn’t the reality everywhere. Even in my own backyard of Ontario (Canada), there are communities where internet is delivered via very slow ADSL,

PWAs, once installed, cache the content locally which means they will respond quickly even for those on slow internet connections.

Statistics show that users still prefer native apps to web pages. There are a tone of reasons for this from convenience (single click from your home screen), ability to get push notifications, etc. The web simply doesn’t offer the same bells and whistles.

PWAs offer most (if not all) native functions. They startup with a single click from the home screen and can hook into most native features. PWAs can even offer notifications (like a native app) and therefore remind the user to open and engage with the app.

What is required to build a progressive web app?

This is not a technical instructional article but you need 4 elements to build a Progressive Web App:

Google Firebase Web App Manifest Generator

  1. Web App Manifest - It is a JSON file with meta data about the web app, It contains information such as the icon, background color, app name, etc.

  2. Service Workers - Even driven agents that work in the background. They perform tasks like updating the web app or its content.

  3. Icon - You need an icon to represent the Progressive Web App on the home screen

  4. HTTPS - The app and its content must be securely delivered over a TLS session.

Progressive Web app examples

You will find new PWAs every day but here are a couple of cool ones to get you started:

Security Researcher claims to have downloaded 13M accounts from MAC Scamware apps

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

If you visit shady internet sites from an Apple Macintosh computer, you may have already seen an add from a product called MacKeeper. The researcher in question said:

"I have recently downloaded over 13 million sensitive account details related to MacKeeper, Zeobit, and/or Cromlech." Reddit

He said the information collected includes "names, email addresses, usernames, password hashes, computer name, ip address, software license and activation codes, type of hardware (ex: "macbook pro"), and type of subscriptions."

And he provides this screenshot as proof of his claim :

The sites used encryption but used it badly... The researcher says:

"MD5 with no salt… so very weak hashing"

The moral of the story is be careful what you believe on the internet and where you buy your software from.

Are you being used to attack sites online?

technologyEdward Kiledjian

We hear about online attacks almost on a daily basis and the targets are usually (in the media at least) large sites like CNN, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.

Did you know that your machine could be an attacker without you even knowing it? How could this happen? Because you most likely have lax security hygiene:

  • easy to guess passwords
  • visit on shady websites
  • load "weird" attachment 
  • or more

This means your home machine could already be part of a botnet used by bad actors to target companies or organizations with whose view they don't agree with. 

What can you do?

  1. If you even suspect your home PC may be infected, restore it to the original factory default and start from scratch
  2. All modern PCs come with a firewall built in and turned on by default but make sure it is turned on
  3. Install a "good enough" antivirus program (such as the free Microsoft Security Essentials or Avast). Then make sure it updates daily and scan's your PC completely weekly
  4. Once a month, use one of the free online antivirus scanners to perform a check with another software. Good free online options include;
    1. http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/
    2. http://www.f-secure.com/en/web/home_global/online-scanner
    3. http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx
  5. Uninstall any app you don't use as these may have vulnerabilities that can be used to exploit your PC
  6. Only install software from trusted sources (file-sharing, grey sites or ad-ware supported sites are a bad idea)
  7. Don't open attachments from people you don't know. Don't click on links from emails.
  8. Buy a real router and don't rely on the one provided by your Internet Service Provider

Going Paperless Part 5 - Backing up your data

OrganizationEdward Kiledjian
Image by Martinluf under creative commons license

Image by Martinluf under creative commons license

First go here and read my article on the 3-2-1 backup rule.

There are 2 types of backups:

  • Offline backups
  • Online backups
sad_mac_retro_THUMB_clipped_rev_1.png

 

An Offline backup is simple, it is an external hard disk or USB key you use to periodically keep an extra copy of your data. As an example you plug it in once a week to copy the information over then unplug it. The problem with this model is that you may forget to backup your data or the data loss may happen just before you back it up therefore you may lose all the data you created since your last backup.

An Online backup comes in 2 forms:

  • Hot online backup 
  • Cold online backup

For Mac users, a hot online backup is like Time Machine or Dropbox (for everyone). This is a drive that is mapped to your computer where the information stored therein is replicated out to the cloud.

CryptoLocker+Ransomware+demands+$300+to+decrypt+your+files_clipped_rev_1.png

With the recent rash of Cryptolocker, we learned about the risks associated with hot online backups. This is certainly a better option than no backup but Cryptolocker discovered these backups (because they have mapped drives) and proceeded to encrypt your information unless you paid their ransom. 

Cold Online backups are services like (Carbonite, Backblaze or Crashplan) that backup your data using a local agent (and not by mapping a drive letter on your computer). These types of backups provide the benefit of a second or third copy of your data and they protect you from malware like Cryptolocker because these nasties can't directly access your backed up info to harm them. Plus since these backups are automated and near-time after a file is changed or added, there is no risk of forgetting to backup.

My recommendation is to follow the 3-2-1 rule mentioned in my other article. My setting is something like this.

  1. My main data is on my computers SSD.
  2. I replicate that document management structure in Evernote as a second copy
  3. I backup my information to an always connected external hard drive (third copy)
  4. I backup my information to Backblaze (fourth cold online backup)

Cryptolocker  is charging around $300 to recover you files but you could have bought 1 year of online cold backup (from any of the 3 listed above) for about $50 per year. Unfortunately once disaster strikes, your options are more limited and typically everything costs more (paying the ransom, sending your drive to a data recovery lab, etc). So backup first and backup often.

Going Paperless Part 4 - What to do with that PDF

OrganizationEdward Kiledjian
4048968087_b4e32f2687_o.jpg

So far we have:

  • Reduced the paper clutter by throwing out needless items and switching from paper to digital where possible
  • Bought a scanner and installed the scanning software
  • Started scanning some of the paper and converting it to PDF
  • Most scanners have an OCR option and that option should be enabled.

On the Mac

If you use a Windows PC, jump to the next section.

I recently switched my main everyday laptop from a Windows machine to a Macbook Pro. My Brother MFD was compatible and even had Mac software but I started using another app from the Apple Mac App Store called PDFScanner (link). 

screen1.jpg

The reason I like the app is that it is fast and the workflow is quick. 

There are many applications for Mac OS X that allow scanning of images or text. Most of them are however complex, slow or not really suited for scanning documents or letters. some of the features I like:

  • Has built in multi-lingual OCR which works pretty well (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish)
  • Really simple interface to edit pages, move pages or delete pages.
  • It automatically straightens pages and deskews the image
  • The app is multithreaded which means it can scan, straighten, deskew and OCR all at the same time
  • My MFD is a simplex scanner but the app allows me to perform fake duplex scanning. I scan all of one side, switch the papers and rescan. The app then intelligently resorts them into the appropriate order.
  • Of course it supports my ADF
  • I can import previously scanned PDFs and perform OCR on them

Naming Convention

Naming and standardization is something companies spend a lot of time thinking about because once you start it is difficult to switch mid-way to a new strategy. The easiest way to standardize your file naming is something like this:

YYYY-MM-DD-Category-Specific

As an example, I could do this for my internet bill

2014-02-06-Home_Internet-ElectronicBox.pdf

This way my naming is consistent. Finding items is easier. Sorting is easier. If tomorrow I switch my internet from ElectronicBox to Bell (as an example), I could simply rename the new Bell invoice

2014-03-06-Home_Internet-Bell.pdf

Same thing with Pay stubs. Most companies now provide electronic pay stubs (or you can scan them in). You can name them

2014-01-01-PayStub-CompanyName.PDF

But How do I store my scanned documents?

The simplest system is to mimic a physical folder structure on your computer (Windows or Mac).

You can create simple main folders (larger category groups) and then have more specific sub-folders for more granular control.

  • Bills
    • Home
    • Car
    • Purchases
  • Taxes
    • Tax Returns
    • Invoices
    • Pay Stubs
  • Children
    • School Stuff
    • Arts and Crafts
    • Special Memories

You get the idea. It is simple, functional and works on Windows, a Mac or Linux. I decided long ago to use Evernote as my central store and Evernote supports tagging of Notes. Each scanned document is a separate not with  the appropriate file name. I add the file name as the Note name then tag the note with the appropriate tags. So a 2014 invoice for a home repair can be under a Bill-2014 tag and a House tag at the same time. Since multiple tags can be assigned to a single note in Evernote, this makes sorting documents even easier.

Article on how to tag information (link)

Google-ification of your document management system

Before Google's GMAIL email system, most of use were constantly trying to sort our emails using some sort of folder structure. How else were we going to find important emails in the future?

Then came the sultan of search and shows us the power of Google search for emails. This means you no longer needed to sort your emails because you could always use their powerful search to find whatever it is you need.

We can now apply this same concept to our document management system (kind of). You should still organize your scanned documents in some kind of folder structure but because we are OCRing all of the documents, we can also use the search function of the operating system (aka Spotlight on a Mac) or another dekstop search app to find the information we are looking for.

Since all my internet invoice is OCRed, Mac OS' spotlight search feature has indexed all of that wonderfully useful OCR information. So if I want my January Internet invoice from Electronic box, I could go through the folder structure and find it or I could search for ElectronicBox and January and 2014.

Resist the urge to spend

The internet is littered with apps or ebooks selling expensive Document Management systems. These may be worth it for a company or self employed professional but individual home users don't need it. Keep your system simple and your workflow clean.

Some apps (like PDF scanner in my case) are affordable and will really positively impact your system, others (like $150 software) may be cool but won't improve your system that much.

I do love evernote and do recommend it. If you are not afraid of cloud storage then take a look.