The HRS Technology Committee Page

Making a Word file available for download to your readers is really quite simple in Wordpress 2.5+.

First, prepare to write a post. Then, click on the Add media button as shown in the image below:

Then, just upload your file as you would with an image or a graphic file.

Next, wait for the file to finish uploading, then Save. Select the Gallery tab, select the file you want to insert and click Insert.

Here’s an example of a Word file that I uploaded to this blog and is now ready for download:

example

And you’re done! 

Since we revamped the school website and started counting in May 2006, we’re approaching half a million pages served!

Wired Magazine is reporting that some Internet Service Providers (ISP) such as Earthlink, Comcast, and Qwest may be opening up your computer systems to a security vulnerability in their land grab for more revenue.

In a nutshell, the ISPs have taken upon themselves to insert ads when you mistype the name of a website you want to go to. For instance, if you typed “male.google.com” instead of “mail.google.com”, the normal behavior would be that you will get an error page telling you that this page does not exist. Now, they have taken upon themselves to insert ad pages without telling you about the error! However, researches have demonstrated that this practice can be subverted by black hat hackers who can insert Trojans that could compromise the security of your computer.

The workaround is a bit technical and entails changing the domain name server (DNS) settings that the ISPs have given you with an independent one such as OpenDNS.

Security expert Bruce Schneir has more on this at http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/hacking_isp_err.html.

Here are the DNS Settings I have on my Mac using OpenDNS’s domain name servers (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220). This can easily be done in Windows computers as well (look for your Network settings in your Control Panel):

You could also use these DNS numbers for your router.

With greed sometimes overtaking caution as companies look for ways to squeeze revenue in the Internet, it always pays to be cautious rather than give such companies our blind trust!