Scott LaPlant Swell Chap that loves Linux

The average Lifehacker reader is rarely taken by a simple phishing scam—you’re a techno-literate bunch—but a little refresher never hurts. Besides, this flowchart is perfect for showing to relatives who have no idea when to raise the phishing red flag.

The above image is a companion image to the guide at LoginHelper on how to identify phishing attacks, but for a quick and easy refresher and way to explain to less than techno-savvy relatives what to look for to defend against a phishing attack it’s a great stand alone aide.

If you’re in educate-the-relatives mode make sure to check out our previous article: The Complete Guide to Avoiding Online Scams (for Your Less Savvy Friends and Relatives). It’s a great starting point for opening the eyes of friends and family that give the sincerity of foreign princes a little too much stock.

Have a great visual aide or guide to help people become more security conscious? Share a link in the comments below.

The Phishing Flow Chart Highlights Red Flags in Dangerous Emails from Lifehacker: top

We’ve always liked Weather Underground for its no-nonsense, real-time weather info. Today they’ve released a new service called Full Screen Weather that mashes up Google Maps with weather data for nothing but maps and up-to-the-minute weather info.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

Just point your browser to fullscreenweather.com, enter your ZIP code, and get browsing. By default the map displays temperatures as measured from stations across Weather Underground’s extensive reporting areas, but you can also switch to Precipitation and Cloud views (you can even play back cloud or precipitation movement over time). In the bottom-left of the window you get an overview of current conditions and a four-day forecast, with links to more extensive forecasts on Weather Underground proper.

The site is clean, simple, lightweight, and ad-free—which is to say, pretty great.

Full Screen Weather Is a Giant, No-Frills Weather Map from Lifehacker: top

Netbooks—the low-power and lightweight mini-notebooks that have surged in popularity—practically beg for some tweaking and customization to increase the functionality of their diminutive screens and relatively wimpy processors. Find yourself the perfect netbook operating system from this fine selection.

Photo by nDevilTV.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite operating system for giving your diminutive mobile-computing companion a boost. You shared your favorite netbook OS, and now we’re back to highlight the five most popular options.

Jolicloud (Linux-based, Free)

Jolicloud is the most distinctly netbook-oriented operating system in this Hive Five. It’s not just pretty good on a netbook—it was actually designed from the ground up to be a netbook operating system, so it’s a great fit. (For the curious, it’s a combination of Debian and Fedora Linux with WINE mixed in to support Windows-only apps.) Jolicloud has been tweaked and tuned to make it shine even on systems with low resources and small displays. The emphasis is not on a traditional computing experience but on harnessing web-based applications and storage services so that much of the heavy lifting and deep-storage of the netbook is transferred from the netbook to more powerful and larger servers. The application launcher—see in the screenshot here—makes it easy to organize and select your applications. The launcher emphasizes easy to read and identify text and logos, and all applications launch in full-screen mode by default. In addition to the default applications, you can browse the app directory to find new applications—the Jolicloud team curates the list to ensure compatibility. Jolicloud can be installed over any other operating system, but it has a handy express installation tool for installing from Windows.

Windows 7 (Windows, $165 for Home Premium)

Although it would seem counterintuitive given the history of Windows—new edition comes out, everyone grabs bigger and better hardware, etc.—the newest offering from Microsoft, Windows 7, runs amazingly well on netbooks with just a little more oomph in their processor. The biggest concern among netbook users is usually battery life, and despite having truckloads of features and improvements over Windows XP—the other most popular version of Windows installed on netbooks—battery life doesn’t suffer thanks to improved power management. The most obvious benefit of running Windows 7 on a netbook is how easily the netbook then integrates with the rest of your—most likely—Windows-based life.

Ubuntu (Linux, Free)

Ubuntu received votes not only for the “stock” edition of Ubuntu, but also for the netbook-centric edition—seen in the screenshot here—Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Both the regular Ubuntu and the netbook remix benefit from how smoothly Linux runs even on very low-spec netbooks. Running regular Ubuntu gives you the benefits of taking one of the most popular versions of Linux with you in full desktop form, while running the netbook remix alters the menu structure for higher visibility and adjusts the user experience for comfort.

OS X (Mac, $24)

Although it’s not the most straightforward installation—compared to installing Windows or Linux on a netbook that is—many Mac fans go out of their way to install OS X on their netbook. How far out of your way do you have to go? Unlike Windows and Linux, you can’t simply install OS X wherever and expect full compatibility. Apple doesn’t acknowledge or support the installation of OS X on non-Apple hardware, so they couldn’t care less if the Wi-Fi chip and the webcam on your netbook don’t work under OS X on your netbook setup. That said, if you’re willing to do some research ahead of time and select your netbook based on OS X/Hackintosh compatibility, then you can have the experience of OS X on your netbook and not worry about which components won’t make the transition.

Linux Mint (Linux, Free)

Linux Mint is a Linux distribution with a very strong emphasis on accessibility and out-of-the-box ease of use for new users. It’s lightweight, snappy, and should you need more than Mint offers with the initial installation, it provides access to the vast Ubuntu repositories of packages and software. The focus on immediate functionality is great for netbooks—the Linux Mint community has worked to ensure compatibility with a wide range of standard hardware found in netbooks.

Which Netbook Operating System is Best?(polling)

Honorable mentions this week go out to three solid netbook operating systems that just barely missed the cut: Moblin, Crunchbang, and Chromium OS.

If you’ve got netbooks on the brain, don’t forget to check out our previous Hive Five Best Netbooks, our guide to getting the most out of your netbook, and my tips for turning your netbook into an e-book reader.

Five Best Netbook Operating Systems from Lifehacker: top

If your workplace or school’s extra-restrictive internet filter has you pulling your hair out during the occasional browsing break, there’s hope! Here’s a quick look at how to get around heavy-handed browser restrictions with the open-source PHProxy.

Back in January we pointed you toward PHProxy, along with some instructions for setting it up on a web server; fact is, most people don’t actually have access to a web server to run something like PHProxy. The solution: Install a local web server on your home computer, then run PHProxy from there. Setting one up is actually a lot easier than you may think.

A quick crash course on proxy servers: Let’s say your dastardly workplace blocks you from reading Lifehacker. Many web filters block web sites based on URLs, so if Lifehacker were blocked, the filter would recognize the URL http://lifehacker.com and automatically block any connection. A proxy acts as a go-between for your browser and the web site you want to access, and as far as the web filter can tell, the proxy-employing user isn’t visiting Lifehacker—she’s visiting whatever the URL is for the proxy. And since we’re setting PHProxy on your home computer, chances are slim that the web filter will block your home IP address (or URL, which we’ll talk about more below).

When you’re done here, you should be able to access restricted sites from anywhere by routing your requests through your home computer. First I’ll explain how to install a local web server on your computer (for Windows and then Mac users), then explain how to install and use PHProxy from there, and finally I’ll walk you through how to access your newly minted local proxy server easily from any other computer.

Download and Unzip PHProxy

Regardless of your OS of choice, the first step is easy: Head over to SourceForge and download PHProxy, then unzip your download to a folder and name that folder phproxy. Put it in a safe place, and we’ll get back to it later.

Install a Local Web Server on Your Windows PC

In order to run PHProxy on your home computer, you’ll need to install a local web server. You’ve got lots of options for doing this, but probably none easier than just downloading and installing WAMP—which stands for Windows (your operating system), Apache (the web server), MySQL (a database, which PHProxy won’t actually use), and PHP (the popular programming language, which PHProxy is named for and written in).

Once you’ve downloaded WAMP, go ahead and run through the installer. It’s a pretty basic install, and when you’re done, launch the WAMP system tray application. After you do, you’ll notice a new icon in your system tray (it’s the one that looks like a speedometer). WAMP’s running, but it’s still not turned on. To put WAMP online, left-click the system tray icon and click Put Online.

Now, to verify that everything’s working, left-click the WAMP icon in the system tray again and click Localhost—or just point your browser to http://localhost/. If all’s well, your browser should load a page that looks like the one below.

Good work—you now officially have a web server up and running on your PC. You can skip the Mac section and head straight to the section on installing PHProxy to your server.

Install a Local Web Server on Your Mac

Above, Windows users installed a web server bundle called WAMP—in which the ‘W’ stood for Windows. Mac users, appropriately, have MAMP—Mac, Apache (the web server), MySQL (a database that you won’t actually be using), and PHP (a popular web programming language after which PHProxy is named). So go download MAMP (it’s a hefty 156MB download) and install it to your Applications folder (make sure you install the free version and not the Pro version).

Now it’s time to fire up MAMP. Open the MAMP folder you dragged to your Applications folder, then double-click MAMP.app to launch it. On this first run, click the Preferences button in MAMP, click Ports, and then click the Set to default Apache and MySQL ports button. Hit OK (enter your password to confirm), then point your browser to http://localhost/ (or http://localhost/MAMP/ if you want to see the MAMP landing page). If everything’s working as it should you should see a page called “Index of /” at localhost, or the page below if you go to the MAMP URL.

Good work, you’re officially running a local web server on your Mac. Now to PHProxy.

Install PHProxy on Your Server

Now we want to install PHProxy on your server. I’m using “install” pretty loosely here; assuming you’ve already downloaded and unzipped PHProxy to a folder named phproxy, all you really need to do is copy that folder to the root directory of your local web server.

To find your server’s root directory on Windows, just click the WAMP system tray icon and click www directory (which, on my Windows 7 installation, is located at C:\wamp\www\. Inside this folder you should see a file called index.php—that’s the page that loaded when you pointed your browser to http://localhost/ above. Now simply take the phproxy folder you unzipped PHProxy to above and drag it directly inside the www folder.

Mac users, the MAMP root directory is located inside the MAMP folder at /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/. Likewise, just open that folder and copy the phproxy folder to it.

And… there you have it-you’ve officially installed PHProxy. To make sure it worked, point your browser to http://localhost/phproxy/. You should see the page below.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

To test it further, all you have to do is type or paste the URL you want to visit into the web address input box and hit Enter. Below you can see me visiting Lifehacker through my PHProxy installation.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

Depending on what your web filter is blocking, you can tweak the way PHProxy works—you can show or block images, allow or reject cookies and scripts, encode the URL you’re visiting into a string that’s complete gibberish, and more. Handy, huh?

Set Up Port Forwarding and a Friendly URL

At this point PHProxy should be working fine from your home computer, which is all well and good, but now we need to make it easy for you to access your local PHProxy installation from outside your home. To do so, we’re going to have to set up port forwarding, then optionally we’ll give your PHProxy server a friendly URL.

Set Up Port Forwarding on Your Router: When you try to communicate with your home computer from outside your local network, the request first has to go through your router—which then identifies which computer the request is intended for and sends it on its merry way. When you’re running a web server on your home computer, other computers looking to communicate with that server will try communicating with it on port 80 (you don’t really need to know what any of that means; web servers generally communicate on port 80, and that’s what browsers try to access by default). So when your router receives a request on port 80, you need to tell it that those requests should be forwarded to your local PHProxy server.

Rather than detail the entire process, I’ll point you toward our previous guide to accessing a home server behind a router/firewall. All routers are a little different, and that’s a general guide, so if you want more specifics, try visiting PortForward.com, selecting your specific router model, and finding the instructions for setting up port forwarding with Apache (the web server).

If you’ve successfully set up port forwarding, you should now be able to access your home server by visiting your network’s external IP address (this is the single address that identifies your home to all the other computers on the internet). Quickly point your browser to What Is My IP and copy the series of numbers following “Your IP Address Is:”, paste that into your browser’s address box, and hit Enter. If everything went according to plan above, your browser should now load up your local server. Add /phproxy/ to the end of your IP address and you should see the PHProxy homepage. Smooth.

Now that your web server is accessible to the outside world, you don’t want to let just anyone access it, so at this point it’s a good idea to password protect your server. We’ve already been down this road before, too, so rather than explain it all here, head to step three in our guide to setting up a personal home web server. (For a little extra help generating the necessary password files, I also like web site Htaccess Tools.)

Set Up a Friendly URL: You could stop at that point, but that series of numbers that makes up your IP address isn’t all that friendly, and in fact, if your ISP assigns you a dynamic IP, it could change regularly. Luckily you can assign a friendly domain name to your home proxy server for free using DynDNS.com, a process that we’ve detailed in the past.

By assigning a domain name to your home server, you can create an easy-to-remember URL like mycrazyproxy.selfip.com, rather than typing in 76.189.XX.XXX every time you want to access your home server.

A Few PHProxy Pointers

PHProxy is an excellent tool, but you should also be aware of the concessions you’re making when using it. For example, you should expect your browsing experience to slow down considerably when you’re browsing through your home proxy. Remember, your requests are being routed through your home proxy server every step of the way, which puts a rather slow middleman (your home network) between you and the web sites you want to access.

Also, while PHProxy works like a charm for most plain old browsing, it can be tricky when it comes time to log into some web sites. For example, I could log into Twitter without any issues, and I was able to get to the static HTML version of my Gmail account and Facebook, but—though I was able to log in—I had trouble viewing either until I told PHProxy to remove scripts. In fact, I found that removing scripts was a good step whenever I had trouble with sites I wanted to log into.

Last, a Note on Responsibility

Setting up your own proxy is a fun project, but a few things to keep in mind if you’re actually planning to use it in your workplace:

• Even if you’re using a proxy, your employer can still see everything you’re doing on the internet (and your computer), whether they’re watching the data as it comes to your computer or they’re literally watching your screen.
• Some employers actually forbid the use of proxies in their employee agreements, so if you get caught, you could face some very serious consequences (like, you know, getting fired), so use at your own risk.

Got your own tried and true method for accessing blocked web sites? Have a web filter that just won’t be defeated? Prefer not to mess with the establishment? Share your thoughts and experience in the comments.

Bypass Heavy-Handed Web Filters with Your Own Proxy Server from Lifehacker: top

If you’re envious of the MagSafe connectors on MacBooks—the magnetic break-away safety connection that keeps tripping on your laptop cord from sending your laptop to its death—this polished DIY hack will put a MagSafe connector on any laptop.

We want to emphasis the “polished” part of this hack. Unlike some other DIY MagSafe hacks—including one we’ve shared with you—this hack doesn’t look like you cobbled it together with electronics and glue as part of your training for guerilla warfare. In fact if you took the hack as it is now and just added a small length of black shrink tubing to cover the actual magnets—although we think they look cool!—nobody would ever even notice that you’d hacked your power cord.

The mod isn’t very complicated but it does take a bit of patience as you search for just the right size magnets and nail for your particular laptop. Once you’ve found the right pieces however, the build itself is quick and makes your laptop safe from the computer-slaying feet of clumsy coffee shop patrons. Check out the link below for the detailed build guide along with plenty of tips.

Have a hardware hack of your own to share? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Add a DIY MagSafe Connector to Protect Your Laptop from Lifehacker: top