My Profile: I was unaware until Forrest pointed it out that the most important page on the entire site was inaccessible to non-admins for over a month since I introduced it!

My Profile is the page that begins to show what "Empower Yourself" really means. Everything you create and do comes together here as you empower yourself. It's not the final polished interface, but it puts it all together in one place for the first time.

Next step is to make a user's profile visible to other users just as nicely and unify it with Account Info / Interests / Etc.

Tag Cloud: Tags now have a nice icon link that goes to a tag cloud where you can see which tags are most popular and click any tag to see every node tagged with it.

Mac-like list view colors: I made table lists use alternating blue and white table row colors with just a thin line at the top to make exploring pages like My Profile on the site easier on the eyes. This gives me perverse pleasure. Why this isn't Drupal's default I don't know. I would love to have an influence on future Drupal defaults once the site gets more refined, especially with our Icons module which should become Drupal core.

Missions: I've rebranded tasks/doable actions as MISSIONS because it is a whole lot cooler and more exciting to take an important mission assignment than it is to have some petty tasks "to-do". The icon for Missions is a checkbox to represent the "as good as doneness" of a mission assigned to an empowered doer.

Ideapedia.org, Skillpedia.org, Toolpedia.org, Mediapedia.org: I've rebranded the content sections of EmpowerThyself with a consistent "-pedia" suffix naming convention. This is in keeping with our connection to the Encyclopedist tradition begun by the late Denis Diderot and the more recent Wikipedia in the question to make all human knowledge freely available. Domains are still being redirected but you can reach them all through empowerthyself.com for now. Giving each section an identity will appeal to users who come looking for specific content like how-to skill guides, tool reviews and ideological discussions. They will feel at home within the section they begin, but they will be introduced to the larger scope in which their entry point fits. I will work on adding more distinctive "branding" to each section in the layout.

New "Groups" icon: Groups is now a cool trio of empowered doers showing that the two extra doers have got the first doers' back.

New "Empowerment.tv Podcast" Icon: The generic feed icon now has waves emanating from the empowered symbol with a .TV next to it.

What's New now includes Popular Content: See what has been getting clicked the most.

I'm releasing the new and improved version 7 of the Empower Thyself desktop picture and poster and an overhaul of the way the header cityscape version looks on the site so that it will stretch to monitors as big as 1600 pixels wide. Bonus gold stars if you can spot the easter eggs in a comment.

Empowerment now has an official headquarters! I am signing rental agreement papers on a new 3 bedroom 2 story newly built house in downtown Santa Barbara with spacious gardens, garage and yard. Details and pictures coming soon. Those who want to come out to live and work on Empowerment, contact me at lxpk@empowerthyself.com.

There's some new content types in town. Create Personal Ideas and Personal Skills to figure out what you believe in and what you can do about it.

Your Personal Ideas are for defining for yourself what ideas you believe in.

For example, I saw someone posted the North American Union idea group. I not only wanted to subscribe, I posted my personal idea about this I call "Stop the North American Union". It shows up in the North American Union idea group's feed and it is a way of defining for myself what I believe about this idea.

You can already post your personal tech as inventory.

This is not just for a list of your stuff. All of these things can be added both as things you have and things you want or thing you oppose. For example, you might add an idea you disagree with to make your statement against it, you might add a skill you want someone to teach you, and you might add a piece of tech that is on your wishlist.

This will get much better. Right now the user experience to create and manage these things is clunky but the functionality is at least being define before the planned optimal experience is developed by our Drupal Dev Team. P

Personal Ideas, Personal Skills and Inventory will eventually be combined with the "subscribe to this group" button. There will be a button at the top right of every idea, skill and tech group that makes thinking, learning and equipping it as push-button easy as digging social news.

You will be able to click any idea to create your belief in it. You will be able to do likewise with Skill Groups to click to add your personal skill to your profile along with notes about your capabilities and eventually tracking of skill data like learning experiences and training.

Even since I've joined there have been NUMEROUS user nodes added. How many of us are networked? How many of us share geographical regions? These are questions we can answer if we choose. I, personally, would enjoy meeting and hearing about some new users and how they found out about the empowerment and what they stand for. I'll go first.

I'm from the prairies, smack dab in the middle of the United State of Canada. Winter is approaching fast so I anticipate more time near my humming metal box below me. I found out about this gateway to power on Sean Kennedy's NewsReal a few weeks back and have since enjoyed exploring and contributing ideas when I can. I'm particularly interested in cyberpunk notions, and also the idea of Thoughts as Technology. Thoughts are one of the only free things available to me these days. (I could add more to that but I'll spare you the deep). I'm currently an uneducated fool (aside from high school), enjoying the folly of every day life working in a retail store (we sell work clothes).

I see the empowerment as a place for the most useful of viral ideas to be spread for the good of those involved and for people to get recognition from their peers for good deeds that are perhaps not understood by popular culture. Collaboration potential is GREAT here. I anticipate hearing about the outcomes of our directional chaos down the line.

-adnauseam, forever on into the future.

Oh, let's not forget to check out user profiles. Here's mine

Apple's Mac OS 10.5 Leopard loginwindow process phones home to lcs.mac.com on port 443 which is only revealed by running the new Little Snitch 2 security monitoring tool.

UPDATE: It appears from Digg comments that verbose booting shows this is Back To My Mac communications and that machines without any .Mac preferences don't send anything. Mystery mostly solved, although we still don't know for sure what's in the HTTPS packets. Additionally: Chris Holland points out there's a chance this might be NAT-PMP traffic. The moral of the story is guard your COMSEC well with tools like Little Snitch.

You can reproduce and deny the suspicious unauthorized outgoing packets by installing Little Snitch 2 beta 10 and rebooting. You can tell it to deny once or forever when it tries this until we discover a legitimate purpose for this transmission.

I googled the strings and Russian hackers are the only ones I could find who have noticed so far in this LiveJournal post which I translated into English. Here's a not entirely innapropriate picture they posted in the thread:

What is going on exactly? Why is Apple contacting itself? Can anyone with more expertise in traffic analysis tell us what is being sent through HTTPS?

Little Snitch 2 For The Win

This is a potentially suspicious behavior but it does bring to our attention the importance of independent security tools like Little Snitch that are not designed by the operating system manufacturer. Without Snitch, there is no easy way for users to audit and control their computer's security independent of the manufacturer's whims.

It also highlights the excellence of Little Snitch 2, which is packed with new visual network monitoring features and a new Star Trek-esque configuration interface.

I recommend 10.5 users download Little Snitch 2 and get control over this kind of suspicious network activity. If Apple is doing it, the rest of your software could be doing worse behind your back. Buy yourself a license for Little Snitch 2 for $25 and support the indy developer because without him we would be at Apple's mercy.

Little Snitch Secures Leopard's Area

Leopard almost copies Little Snitch 1's preference pane and Allow/Deny dialogs with a new Application Firewall under System Preferences Security but they only monitor incoming connections, ignoring outgoing spyware like Leopard's loginwindow. Leopard imitates Little Snitch just in time to be dusted by Little Snitch 2 and caught in the act of apparently breaching user privacy.

Apple Must Explain: Bug or Feature?

I hope someone from Apple responds to this to show either that there is a good reason to justify it or that it will be removed in 10.5.1. Apple's overall security record is impressive compared to Microsoft but we must be ever vigilant to keep them on their toes. The obviousness of this phoning home and the inevitability of all such transmissions being exposed makes it unlikely that this is something really nefarious but even an oversight can breach privacy and great care must be taken by companies like Apple whose software is running on an increasing percentage of our computers worldwide.

The Inventory and Actions lists are two new collaborative Drupal systems online now for registered users to use.

Inventory allows you to list the things you have, the wishlist of things you want, requests for things you need help getting, and offers for things you can give.

Actions allows you to post tasks, feature requests, bug reports and support requests into a big to-do list. Have an idea for the site? Post it. Want to help develop the site? Choose an unassigned task and assign it to yourself to work on.

Both of these listings are searchable and both are somewhat clunky to use still but they will gain much more sophisticated interfaces soon. There is already an action underway to improve the way these work!

Actions is already being used with Nihi and Doobius tackling the first Drupal tasks ever to be delegated and loads of site ideas are going up for future consideration.

Inventory is already being used to request equipment from AgentSubversion.

In researching some things on my own wishlist, I discovered a new cause I believe strongly about: Plastic bags. We waste a TRILLION plastic bags every year, a million every second. In a world at war over oil, this is completely insane and costs American and Iraqi lives.

Anyone who uses free plastic bags is LETTING THE TERRORISTS WIN!

I'm going to become a reusable bags activist. I'm going to order a 4 pack of Workhorse black bags and buy a whole bunch of cheap $1 bags to give away to people to get them to buy in.

This issue is so fundamentally black and white that it is easy to see how it will become an excellent example of starter issues we can show people how to pursue that can appeal to everyone without alienating anyone. If you can supply everyone you know with reusable bags Facebook checklist style, you will have gained immense skill and confidence in your abilities as an activist and advocate for good things. Imagine what people will be able to do next once they accomplish this.

I've added my wishlisted bags to my inventory. If you want some bags, add them to your wishlist too!

Now it is definitely time to get working on our Facebook application.

Facebook Founder Announces 10 Million Dollar Grant Fund

Mark Zuckerberg has announced today, at the Tech Crunch 40, that the investors at Facebook have created a 10 million dollar fund to support companies that develop on the FaceBook platform.

The fund is open for application to existing developers as well as start ups. They are looking for ideas that are innovative and disruptive. No formal web site exists; however, you can pitch your idea directly at platform@facebook.com.

They do not require re-payment; however, they want first right of refusal upon obtainment of VC capital. The will fund between 25K and 250K.

I have temporarily reduced the list of active icons to just the main menu. Though it pains me greatly to not see those beautiful 16x16 bundles of joy, it is only temporary. The next implementation of my Icons module will inject icons server-side to reduce javascript loading time.

Comment to let me know if this improves your page loading performance.

We have a Facebook Causes group now: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/16533

Check it out and feel free to join. Right now donations go to Africa Aid, a charity that some friends of mine from Barcamp San Diego run. I need to register Empowerment as a 501c3 for-progress organization before we can be listed as a beneficiary. Yet another reason I need to get that done. The cool thing is that once we become a beneficiary, anyone will be able to create their own Facebook causes to promote what they believe in while designating us as a beneficiary. That would be totally awesome.

Facebook API Developer Help Needed

Very soon we are going to develop an Empowerment Facebook Application to extend all the work we do here into the Facebook stream and to allow us to pull our Facebook friends network into Empowerment.

If you have any knowledge or interest in Facebook app development, contact us. There is an LA Facebook Developer Group that I will attend soon to learn more.