Happy New Year from Stormy Shores

Dear Friends, Partners and Customers and yes, oh my dear extended social network,

as we’re reaching the end of 2011 I wanted to thank you all for your business and your inspiration.

2011 was a busy year for me – more coaching and training gigs than in past years, and a constant stream of consulting projects. I am still focused on helping companies (and the people inside them) grapple with the implications and challenges of Enterprise 2.0. Now, Social business means challenges and tasks in helping with the integration of technologies and platforms, but also – and dare I say more importantly – social business needs efficient implementation work to reach its goals. Things like widespread adoption, continuous business process- integrated and day-to-day use don’t come as naturally as we might have expected in the past. So this has taken much focus in 2011 and I am excited to continue this journey in the new year.

So as I’m grateful for all the projects underway and finished, lessons learned and wonderful stuff experienced I thank you for all the past year. I look forward to working with you in 2012 and wish you, your teams and your families a very happy and healthy new year.

Martin _ frogpond

CC Image by Joe Kovacs, who has much nicer images of Basel than mine – the sky’s pretty much the same anyway ;)

Hacked (but recovering)

Well, I got hacked by not so nice people robots, informed about it by nice people (whose sites were hacked as well and who found me in their spammed link bait).

Yes, cleared the mess by now – and slowly recovering. Will see how this works out.

ps. I did have backups, nice long passwords, and a pretty current WordPress install. Will elaborate on this as soon as possible.

[Update: it's been a nasty Spam Injection - ie. while normal users of this site didn't see the spam links, but the Google bot did. With the help of the Googlebot Spoofer I was able to see the actual mischief, ie. links to all sorts of warez et al.

The actual spam wasn’t embedded in the posts (or the database) but was deposited in extra files on my server, hidden from plain first sight and referenced via an hacked .htaccess file.

The compromising access to the files was achieved via an outdated WordPress plugin – not one that I missed to update but one that seems to have degraded over time and development from WordPress 2.x to 3.2.x.

My fixes included a) kicking that stupid plugin b) fixing the .htaccess c) removing the spam repository files d) changing passwords everywhere (WP users, database, ftp access and e) some hidden sauce that I won’t blog about.

So hopefully this write-up helps others, namely those webmasters that I informed via Email about their compromised sites.

Observations

Is it ironic that while I am blogging less in here (due to heaps of non-observable or -bloggable client work) I am also installing visitor-observing software? All-friendly open-source Piwik of course, and only because I am such a nosy inquiring type ;)

Be different …

… that’s what they say one needs for succeeding in the new business environment:

Right, so for a change I was really quiet here (a bit more action on Twitter, buzz and bmid as usual). This will change in the coming days as I am now packing my bags for Lotusphere 11 (one always needs to leave some extra room in them bags for all the gadgets and books one buys in the U.S. – stuff like this, this and yes, this one are on my list this year).

After my bags are done I will get down to some real Lotusphere information, thoughts and links.

Seasons greetings II ;)

This was this year’s beginner’s tinkering with comic strip generation and storytelling (just see how the frog is cheered up by the wikisan …). A very small number of signed prints have been made, yes.