Encrypt Gmail

introEncrypt your Gmail Email!

If you want to be sure that your email can be read by no one but you, then it needs to be encrypted. You'd be surprised to find out who might want to read your email. I was.

One of the best encryption systems is called GPG encryption which is an open-source version of PGP encryption. PGP stand for Pretty Good Privacy and is actually an understatement made by a programmer who didn't want to be too optimistic about how secure it is. However, as it turns out, PGP is has actually proven itself to be extremely good. It's been around for many years, being maintained by the best coders in the world and it hasn't been cracked.

In this Instructable, I'll walk you through the simple process of setting up GPG and then installing a Firefox plugin that will make it easy to encrypt your Gmail.

step 1How it works

The principle behind GPG encryption is easy. Anyone who wants to play creates a public key and a private key. Your public key is the part of the encryption that you make public. Your private key is the part of the encryption that you never share with anyone under any circumstance.

The two keys work together so that you need both to decrypt anything. To send an encrypted message to someone you lock the message with their public key and when they get it, they can unlock it with their private key. If they want to respond, then they encode the message with your public key and you can read it with your private key.

Of course, this only works so long as you can trust that you have been given the right public key and that you know who you are talking to. One of doing this is by having a key signing party with your close friends. You all show up at a given location at a given time and exchange public keys. Then you have a list of trusted public keys with which you can communicate. This is often referred to as a web of trust.

step 2Install GPG on your Operating System

Like I said before, getting your email protected is a two-step process. First, we have to get GPG installed on our operating system. Getting Gmail set up is on the next step.

I got GPG working on Mac OS X without too much trouble. I used the instructions and downloads at http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/ and summarized the process below. If you're on OS X, open that link in another window and get ready. For other operating systems, you can check the links on http://www.gnupg.org/download/.

Now, start downloading and installing! I've adapted the information from the Mac GPG FAQ, so you can also go there for more details. Here are the things I downloaded (you should got to the downloads page and get the latest):

• GNU Privacy Guard 1.4.8
• GPG Preferences 1.2.2
• GPG Keychain Access 0.7.0

First, open the DMG for GPG that you downloaded and run the installer. I just used all the defaults. This is the actual encryption engine that everything else runs on.

Once the installation is complete, open a Terminal window and type gpg, then hit Return. My installation gave me a "Go ahead and type your message ..." which I think means that GPG was up and running, so I ctrl-C'd out of that and closed the Terminal window.

Next, I installed GPG Preferences. That put a GPG icon in my System Preferences pane; I didn't change anything.

Finally, I installed GPG Keychain Access. This was easy: just unzip the ZIP file and drag the application into your Applications folder.

By the way, you can also do all of this from the command line. Here's a great tutorial for that.

Next up: Set up Gmail and start sending seeekrit messages!

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Not a Mac, but you could still install GPG on it.

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step 3Generate Some Keys

Then, I ran the app and it had me generate my two keys (one public, one private). I typed in my secret passphrases which, of course, I will never tell anyone.

The last step with my keys was to select my public key and export it to a text file. Once you do this, you can attach it or copy and paste the contents into an e-mail to send to you PGP/GPG wielding friends.

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This will make your new public/private key pair

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step 4Open an anonymous Gmail account

Before you can encrypt anything, you need to make sure that you open a Gmail account that by no means can be traced back to you. This means that you have to be liberal about giving them your real name and address when you sign up. You should also always use a TOR server.

step 5Install FireGPG in Firefox

Once you have done all that you need to install FireGPG into Firefox. Go to this link and click the link to download it to your computer. From here it should coach you through the process.

Restart Firefox, and now you have new buttons in your compose view for encrypting and signing messages. Now you can discuss your nefarious plans in private!

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step 6Encrypt Anything!

Encrypting your Gmail is just an example. Now that you have GPG installed, there are a whole bunch of programs you can use to encrypt and sign stuff. For example:

GPGDropThing - This is a simple program which lets you encrypt text to people whose public keys are on your keyring, and also allows you to decrypt messages that they have written. GPGDropThing is especially useful when writing encrypted mail to your friends as some clients don't have GPG support built in. So far only Apple Mail and Mulberry have GPG support. Your can encrypt text on your hard drive, this way, or even paste encrypted snippets into your IMs.

GPGMail - For encrypting your email going through Apple's Mail.app.

Bring Vista Features to XP

Get Vista's Best Features in XP

Despite the fact that most of you prefer XP to Vista and would rather Microsoft extended XP's shelf-life, several new and improved features available in Vista would be great to have in XP. This new functionality may not be enough to get you to switch to Vista, but that doesn't mean you're out of luck. Let's take a look at a few ways you can incorporate Windows Vista's best features into your current XP PC for free.

We're going to focus on Vista's small and large features that are missing from XP, separated into three categories: applications, functional, and aesthetic (e.g., transparency is aesthetic, the new start menu search is functional). This list is not exhaustive, but it does cover the features readers feel make Vista worth it.

Bring Vista's Best New and Improved Apps to XP

First, aside from some of the small operating system improvements we'll go into below, Vista also bundles up a few new and improved applications worth mentioning.

A Better Explorer: Windows Explorer is one of the most improved applications in Vista, thanks to added features like breadcrumb navigation, better file previews, and more. There are a few add-ons that add some of these better functional adjustments to Explorer, but in general XP users might want to consider replacing XP's Explorer altogether with something like Xplorer2 (original post) or significantly beefing it up with a tool like QT TabBar (original post). You can also get that saucy breadcrumb navigation alone with Explorer Breadcrumbs (original post).

Encrypt Your Hard Drive: Some versions of Vista—toward the Ultimate end of the scale—come with a new drive encryption software called BitLocker built in. If you're keen on security and encryption but you want to stick with XP, check out the free, open source TrueCrypt (original post). If you need a little help getting started, check out our guide to encrypting data with TrueCrypt.

Take Quick and Easy Screenshots: PrtScrn has been around forever, but it's never been the most user-friendly way to get a screenshot. In Vista, Microsoft threw in a screenshot utility called the Snipping Tool. Fact is, if better screenshots are important to you, there are gobs of excellent free screenshot apps available for XP like Screenshot Captor (original post), Clip2Net (original post), and Jing (original post), among many others.

Bring Vista's Best Functional Features to XP

Task-Switching à la Flip 3D: Vista's Flip 3D is like Alt-Tab on steroids, displaying full previews of each window as you move through it. To a large extent it's eye candy, but it can also be really useful in finding the right window when you're switching from your keyboard. Freeware applications like Shock Aero 3D (original post) and WinFlip bring the same 3D shuffling (and then some, in the case of WinFlip) to to your XP desktop.

Integrated Start Menu Search and Launch: Dubbed Instant Search by Microsoft, this new feature adds a search box to the Windows Start menu for quick searching and launching of documents and applications. If you want to port this same functionality to XP, you can do so with apps like ViStart (original post) or Vista Start Menu (original post)—an extraordinarily beefed up version of the Windows Start menu. Then again, if you're not stuck on the notion of a search-and-launch box built directly into the Start menu, you can't go wrong with Launchy or Google Desktop Search.

Replace the Windows Sidebar: Third-party tools similar to Windows Sidebar and Gadgets pre-dated Vista, so you can trade in desktop real estate for the same functionality with SideSlide (original post) or the Google Desktop Sidebar.

Live Thumbnail Previews of Files: Vista does a nice job of providing thumbnail previews to most image files and even text files, and while XP does have similar functionality, it's not as advanced as Vista's. Freeware application Xentient Thumbnails (original post) creates live thumbnails for virtually all images, and if you want a more intimate look at the innards of text and other files without opening them, check out InfoTag Magic (original post).

Speed Up Your System with a Thumb Drive: Windows ReadyBoost speeds up your performance by using a USB thumb drive as system memory, and while nothing beats an actual RAM upgrade, XP users can check out eBoostr (original post) to bring the same functionality to XP.

Streamline Your File Renaming: Microsoft got smart in Vista and changed the behavior when you hit F2 to rename a file, selecting only the name of the file and leaving the extension alone. For a very simple integration of this feature into XP, check out the Better Rename utility. Alternately, if you feel like adding this feature and beefing up Windows Explorer on top of that, you can get the same renaming behavior in Xplorer2 (original post) or QT TabBar (original post).

Taskbar Window Previews: If you like how Vista offers handy little thumbnail previews of windows when you hover over their taskbar item, freeware application Visual Tooltip (original post) brings the same goods to XP.

Give XP that Vista Look

Ultimately, despite all the little feature improvements Vista can throw your way, a new operating system's biggest selling point is often the eye candy—in Vista's case, Aero. There are a lot of tools available that can help you theme XP to look more like Vista, though often users of such applications see mixed results, so proceed at your own risk.

Probably the most comprehensive XP-to-Vista tweaker is the Vista Transformation Pack, which transforms everything from the Start menu and Control Panel to icons.

For a less full-on approach, you could try out skinning utility Uxtheme Patcher with one of several themes from art web site deviantART (like this one or this one) to make XP look and feel more like Vista.

Falling House Prices

Home Price Forecasts: What Your Home Will Be Worth Next Year

Published May 12, 2008 | RSS Feed | Text Size

Home prices are expected to decline in 75 of the top 100 U.S. markets over the next 12 months. Some estimates predict prices will fall by an average of 10 percent. Check out this forecast to see how much your home will be worth next year.

BY BAILEY HARRIS

There are a lot of different predictions out there about how far home prices will fall. The U.S. Treasury estimates that prices will fall another 10 to 15 percent before hitting bottom. Optimists, such as the National Association or Realtors, are predicting single-digit declines.

The Money Magazine Forecast

Money Magazine recently put out a city-by-city home price forecast as well. Using data from Fiserv Lending Solutions, First American CoreLogic, city and county assessors, and realtors, the magazine determined that U.S. home prices will fall an average of 9.7 percent.

Miami is expected to see the most lost equity. Money Magazine is predicting a 24.9 percent drop. Cities in Texas and New York are expected to fare the best.

Metro Area	Median Home Price	Forecast May 09 (% chg)
Albuquerque, NM	$174,000	-10.5%
Atlanta, GA	$205,000	-2.3%
Baltimore, MD	$264,000	-12.5%
Boston, MA	$363,000	-10.5%
Chicago, IL	$279,000	-6.8%
Cleveland, OH	$145,000	-4.3%
Denver, CO	$254,000	-10.8%
Detroit, MI	$120,000	8.6%
Edison, NJ	$358,000	-15.8%
Fort Lauderdale, FL	$309,000	-22.2%
Honolulu, HI	$625,000	-16.2%
Houston, TX	$150,000	1.2%
Jacksonville, FL	$197,000	-9.6%
Kansas City, KS	$148,000	-0.6%
Las Vegas, NV	$277,000	-18.3%
Los Angeles, CA	$528,000	-16.8%
McAllen, Texas	$109,000	4.0%
Miami, FL	$329,000	-24.9%
New Orleans, LA	$158,000	2.2%
New York City, NY	$471,000	-13.2%
Philadelphia, PA	$200,000	-11.1%
Phoenix, AZ	$237,000	-18.3%
Portland, OR	$306,000	-14.7%
Riverside, CA	$340,000	-16.9%
Rochester, NY	$121,000	2.7%
Sacramento, CA	$330,000	-8.9%
Salt Lake City, UT	$229,000	-9.8%
San Diego, CA	$522,000	-9.7%
San Francisco, CA	$840,000	-10.1%
San Jose, CA	$750,000	-12.5%
Seattle, WA	$430,000	-9.0%
Springfield, MA	$195,000	-9.5%
Stamford, CT	$562,000	-13.9%
Stockton, CA	$341,000	-16.8%
Syracuse, NY	$126,000	2.6%
Washington D.C.	$408,000	-13.2%
Wilmington, DE	$259,000	-10.3%

Source: Money Magazine

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10 IT Trends and/or Needs

Wanted: 10 IT skills employers need today

Technologies such as wireless and Web 2.0 demand new skills, while network and security know-how never seem to go out of style

By Denise Dubie , Network World , 04/17/2008

Sponsored by:

Technology pros looking to find new work or secure their current jobs should get schooled on wireless, Web 2.0 and virtualization while also boning up on business basics.

"IT professionals with the right technical skill set plus a foundational understanding of the business they work in will stand a much better chance in today's market," says Neill Hopkins, vice president of skills development at the Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).

Business initiatives such as enterprise mobility, data center consolidation and unified communications are driving demand for expertise in new technology areas and reinforcing the importance of mastering the fundamentals such as networking and security, industry watchers say.

Read about the IT skills that are no longer in demand here.

Click to see: Chart of talent trends

"Web 2.0, .Net, Java, wireless -- skills in technologies that enable end users to engage and communicate with each other -- are hot," says Rich Milgram, CEO of online job portal Beyond.com. "At the same time network and security skills are becoming more and more important, especially as companies expose more and more of their networks and data to the world."

Here we examine (in no particular order) the current most-sought-after skills and those destined to be in demand going forward.

1. Wireless

Because end users expect to be able to work from anywhere anytime, skills in wireless and mobility are being pushed to the top of many hiring managers' must-have lists.

"Now you need to be able to plan and troubleshoot radio interference and access point placement. Everyone wants to work from anywhere," says Bruce Meyer, director of network services at ProMedica Healthcare in Toledo, Ohio. "Standards will continue to evolve rapidly as everyone chases the Holy Grail of a wirelike experience. I'm not just looking for wireless skills; I'm looking for the ability to rapidly learn new things."

According to CompTIA, wireless skills in many areas -- 802.11, WiMAX and broadband -- will only become more appealing to companies in the next five years.

John Estes, vice president of strategic alliances at Robert Half Technology, adds that mobility goes beyond knowing wireless technologies. It also requires knowing about each device end users might start using to tap the network. "End users have mini multimedia computers in their hands now. Someone is going to have to be involved in decisions around which devices best suit the environment and application needs," Estes says.

2. Virtualization

No longer just a tool for systems administrators to tinker with in testing environments, virtualization technology is the main component behind data center consolidation and disaster recovery initiatives.

"Virtualization is a hot technology area, which means managers are looking for people with some savvy there," says Steve Clifford, field recruiting director at staffing agency TAC Worldwide. "Many companies have a lot of redundant servers, and they are trying to maximize resources and utilization on every server on every site."

And while server virtualization is the current hot technology, industry watchers expect storage, network and desktop virtualization to continue to drive demand for expertise in this technology area. EMA Research Director Andi Mann says desktop virtualization will show the strongest growth of any virtualization technology during the next one to two years.

3. Security

Security as a must-have skill is a no-brainer.

A CompTIA skills survey released in February had security listed as the No. 1 skill among three-quarters of the 3,578 IT hiring managers polled. Foote Partners reports that security skills accounted for 17% of base pay in the fourth quarter of 2007, and pay for network security management skills increased by more than 27% in 2007.

But going forward, IT professionals will need to be able to incorporate their security savvy into network, wireless, application, operating system and other IT areas to best compete.

"Firewall, data leak, compliance -- you name it and it's in demand for security," says CompTIA's Hopkins. "In the networking field, you need to also be an expert at security, but going forward skills around how to train staff and employees to be security-aware will have to be developed."

4. Networking

Networking expertise, which fell out of favor after the dot-com bust, is now back in demand and second only to security in terms of needed skills among the IT managers surveyed by CompTIA.

"Networking and infrastructure skills are back. Companies are not getting rid of data and they are doing more transactions online. With the growth and complexity of networks, there is a push for skills to design and manage such large-scale environments," says Beyond.com's Milgram.

Martin Webb, manager of data network operations for the Ministry of Labour and Citizens' Services in the province of British Columbia, says he is looking for people with practical experience in large enterprise IP-based networks, "both in terms of implementing services as well as operational support."

"Experience in wide-area networking is hard to come by, particularly as it applies to traditional carrier networking technologies such as T-1, frame relay, ISDN and multiplexing," Webb explains. "Today's technical staff also need to have basic business analysis skills with an understanding of financial management."

Brian Jones, manager of network engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's Tech's Communications Network Services unit in Blacksburg, says he is always on the lookout for "field personnel who are well-organized. This means people who are experienced in installing networks, including everything from assembling racks to installing fiber panels, cross connect fields, cable management, and various network chassis and equipment." Other networking skills he says are must-haves include proficiency in cable and fiber termination and splicing as well as experience installing and configuring edge switches.

"These skills are hard to find and keep," Jones says.

For John Tuman, director of network services at WakeMed Health & Hospitals in Raleigh, N.C., finding VoIP skills is a challenge. "There is a lot of talent available with the traditional PBX, far less that have practical VoIP experience," he says.

Virginia Tech's Jones agrees. He says expertise in VoIP will only be more in demand as time goes on.

"VoIP, IPv6, and other emerging technologies will be driven by new applications and user requirements. IT staffers as always will have to learn these new things while maintaining the older technologies and services," Jones says.

5. Application delivery

Often as networks become more complex and sophisticated, they also get distributed over various remote locations and branch offices -- which Gartner says is driving the need for expertise in the area of application delivery.

Application delivery networks, according to Gartner, are required if companies want to deploy modern browser-based applications and emerging Web services applications. This network overlay responsible for application delivery will demand skills that cross storage, security, network and application development disciplines. Knowledge of application optimization techniques such as protocol offload, caching, application firewalls and others would be required of application delivery experts on staff.

"IT departments that add these positions will see smoother application development and deployment, increased user satisfaction and lower costs," says Joe Skorupa, research vice president at Gartner.

6. Web 2.0

Companies looking to implement Web 2.0 technologies want to see IT professionals with skills in areas such as AJAX, .Net and XML. These technologies require updated application development skills because they provide a more interactive experience, which could cause bandwidth or performance issues if not executed properly.

"For application development tools, AJAX, .Net, WebSphere and others have replaced and are replacing all the early-generation stuff like CGI, Visual Interdev and HTML/DHTML," says David Foote, CEO and chief research officer at Foote Partners.

7. IT business analysis

Being able to gauge the business relevance of technology decisions is critical for all high-tech hires, industry watchers and IT managers agree.

Arun DeSouza, a director of strategic planning and security at Inergy Automotive Systems in Troy, Mich., says skills around managing IT with finance in mind are in demand at his company.

"Ultimately, all technology investments and operational expenditures are about enabling the business and adding to the bottom line," he says. "IT managers need to be able to help align with the business, manage the financial portfolio and articulate the benefits in a language that the business can understand."

IT managers expect their employees not only to have a comprehensive understanding of the business they support but also to keep that knowledge current.

"The more senior a technical staffer gets, the more business aware they need to be," says John Turner, director of networks and systems at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

8. Database management

Database management skills are growing in importance, according to several industry sources.

Robert Half Technology found database management to be considered an in-demand skill among 66% of 1,400 CIOs it polled. Foote Partners reported that median pay for database skills increased by 10% over the last two years, with Oracle database skills specifically seeing a 24% spike in pay over the previous 12 months.

"Simply speaking, it is cheaper now to store data so more companies are keeping more data on large-scale disk drives, because in the online world content is king," Beyond.com's Milgram says. "The more content you have the bigger you are, and back-end SQL, MySQL and Oracle skills are in demand to ensure companies are successful at such large-scale data management."

9. Business intelligence/data mining

In a similar vein as data management, business intelligence and data mining skills are growing in importance to enterprise companies as analyzing the data stored can directly impact a business' bottom line.

"Customers have spent so much money on gathering their data and putting it in data warehouses that they are now looking for ways to generate revenue from the data or from the knowledge contained within it," says TAC Worldwide's Clifford. "It's important that IT professionals have these skills -- one part business intelligence and one part data mining -- but also that they can apply them in such a way that is suitable to their business.

According to Foote Partners, pay for business intelligence grew by more than 22% in 2007.

10. The X factor

The trend is for IT professionals to emerge from being specialists in one technology area to being team members with broad knowledge of the environment. As networks and systems grow more sophisticated and intertwined with each other and the business, IT staff is expected to be well-versed in many areas and able to apply that know-how to the business at hand.

"I am seeing a need for IT staff to have a more holistic view when designing, integrating and troubleshooting. In the past, skill sets could be quite focused because there were better-defined lines of demarcation between systems; the trend continues to move to more interdependent and intertwined systems," says WakeMed Health & Hospitals' Tuman. "Now we need folks to understand how multiple systems interoperate, and when troubleshooting, have the ability to associate symptoms that surface in other areas back to the source."