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We recently picked up a few new Apple TV’s for the OpenView Labs & Studios offices’. We love the idea of rotating photos, informational slides and videos on TV screens around the office, so we decided to set up a PowerPoint template to make it very easy for writers and event planners to publish content to our TVs.

Transferring a PowerPoint (.PPT) to Apple TV wasn’t a difficult process, but it certainly wasn’t as straight forward as I would have expected and it was surprisingly undocumented. Thankfully, Macworld has a great article on displaying presentations via Apple TV that helped. For this reason I’ve decided to share my process here to hopefully make it easier for you to display a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation on an Apple TV.

Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes you have:

• PowerPoint 2011 or later
• iPhoto ’11 or later
• iTunes ’10 or later
• 2nd & 3rd generation Apple TV or later

Step by Step Guidelines

After you have created a PowerPoint presentation, you can follow this process to get it set up as a slideshow on the Apple TV(s):

1. Go to File > Save As, and select PNG from the Format drop down. This will export each slide as an image.
2. Open up iTunes, go to the iTunes Store and log in with the same account you currently use on your Apple TV.
3. Open up iPhoto, create a new album, and import the photos.
4. Go to File > Export, choose Slideshow, and click the Apple TV column to optimize the images for display on the Apple TV. Be sure the Automatically send slideshow to iTunes box is checked.
5. To view your “presentation” on the Apple TV, select the synced album from the Apple TV’s Photos menu. Note: If you want to navigate through the slides with your Apple TV clicker, rather than automatically transitioning to the next, immediately press the Play/Pause button to pause playback; you can then use the Back and Forward buttons to navigate your slides.
6. That’s it, all done!

Hopefully this makes it nice and easy to create Apple TV presentations for your school, office, or home! We’re very excited to begin using these at our upcoming workshops, forums, and events.

Website security is an often overlooked necessity. Whether it’s budget, time, or lack of understanding, many companies that rely on a public website don’t take the necessary precautions to secure their infrastructure. A security breach can not only compromise your data, or potentially your clients’, it can lead to a detrimentally negative stream of PR.

Finding and eliminating security holes in your website is often looked at as a time consuming, costly, and ongoing initiative. Fortunately there is a simpler way to avoid the embarrassment of a website security breach — it’s called CloudFlare.

What Is CloudFlare?

CloudFlare is a DNS management tool that makes it ridiculously easy to automate your website security. It provides protection from a wide range of threats to keep your website safe, including:

1. Browser integrity
2. Visitor reputation
3. Block list / trust list
4. Saved bandwidth and server resources
5. Protect SSH / Telnet / FTP ports
6. Collaborative security
7. Breaking the cycle of malware

What Is an “Attack” on a Website?

Online threats range from nuisances like comment spam and excessive bot crawling, to malicious attacks like SQL injection and denial of service (DOS) attacks. The threats that exist are constantly changing — and growing. It’s a very difficult thing to keep up with, and as a web developer I know first hand how exhausting it can be.

Setup Is Easy

Ridiculously easy. Follow these simple steps:

1. Create an account
2. Transfer the DNS for the domain you want to protect
3. Configure the options and save

That’s it, really.

How Does It Work?

CloudFlare acts as an internet-wide neighborhood watch program. It automatically detects new attacks that arise against any website on its network. Once CloudFlare identifies that there is a new type of attack out there, it starts to block the attack for the specific website and the entire community. This means the longer you are on CloudFlare, and the larger it gets, the better the protection becomes. It’s a truly ingenious way to combat website attacks.

Speed & Performance Benefits

Beyond security monitoring, CloudFlare also provides a number of speed optimization tools. On average, a website on CloudFlare:

1. Loads twice as fast for its visitors
2. Sees 65% fewer requests
3. Saves 60% of bandwidth

This will most definitely vary from site to site, but overall those are pretty staggering statistics. You can calculate your specific speed benefits and savings using the CloudFlare analytics report within your account.

Built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CloudFlare’s CDN reduces hops and lowers latency. On average, a request is fewer than 10 hops and takes less than 30ms. The result? Your website gains a global presence on an affordable budget.

Asynchronous Script Loading & Caching

The rocket loader service will automatically optimize your site to minimize the number of network connections to reduce the overhead of third party resources. This will speed up page rendering.

JavaScript Bundles

The JavaScript bundling service will combine multiple JavaScript files into a single request to avoid the overhead of multiple network requests.

Automatic Minifcations

The AutoMinify service will remove unnecessary characters and white space from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This can save 20% of a file’s size, and works without caching so it can support fully dynamic pages.

Browser Optimization

All web browsers work slightly different than one another, whether it is Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari for iOS. Browser optimization automatically adjusts the way content is delivered based on the particular device accessing the site to maximize speed without affecting the site’s look or features.

GZIP Compression

GZIP is a compression process that reduces the size of a request by shrinking file sizes, similar to the way a ZIP archive does. Hardware optimized lossless compression reduces the size of all your resources and delivers them compressed, even through lazy firewalls that incorrectly claim browsers don’t support GZIP.

Local Storage Caching

Modern web browsers and mobile devices have the ability to intelligently cache the objects needed to render your site. CloudFlare automatically detects the users browser and enables these features to reduce website load time.

Cache Header Optimization

When you develop a website, there are certain instructions you can give to a web browser, telling it how long to store its temporary files. These settings are rarely used, but can have a large impact on the time it takes for a page to load.

This feature will automatically adjust the cache header instructions to allow browsers to correctly cache the resources of a site, and minimize the need for new requests.

Saved Bandwidth and Server Resources

Since CloudFlare acts at the domain level, before malicious requests hit the server, it effectively stops threats before they get to your website. This saves bandwidth and server resources. Your server is also freed up to serve your legitimate traffic optimally.

In Conclusion

CloudFlare is a simple, effective way to protect your website or application from attacks and threats that exist today. It will also ensure that your website is well protected in the future.

Beyond security there are also significant performance and speed improvements.

This article is in no way sponsored, endorsed or promoted by CloudFlare. We’ve used this software on our website, and are truly and sincerely impressed with the results.

From an individualistic stand point, Twitter provides everyday people a way to communicate with otherwise inaccessible experts, brands, or celebrities. As a web designer / developer, I use it to follow web design “web-celebrities”. I find that it keeps me up to date with the latest trends, technologies, and best practices. It’s also really nice to connect with some of the people in your industry who have achieved the things that you aspire to accomplish.

The Top Web Design Experts on Twitter

Jeffrey Zeldman @zeldman

This guy is a huge name in the web design industry. He’s credited as the grandfather of the web standards movement, and is the owner and founder of top notch, award winning, design agency Happy Cog.

• Following: 1,535
• Followers: 272,439
• Website: http://www.zeldman.com/

Jason Santa Maria @jasonsantamaria

Jason is the founder and principal of the design studio Mighty, creative director for Typekit, a faculty member in the MFA Interaction Design program at SVA, co-founder of A Book Apart, former vice president of AIGA/NY, founder of Typedia, a shared encyclopedia of typefaces online, and creative director for A List Apart, a magazine for people who make websites.

He works with big name clients like AIGA, The Chicago Tribune, Housing Works, Miramax Films, The New York Stock Exchange, PBS, The United Nations, and WordPress focusing on designing websites that maintain a balance of beauty and usability.

• Following: 291
• Followers: 289,629
• Website: http://jasonsantamaria.com/

Dan Cederholm @simplebits

A recognized expert in the field of standards-based web design, Dan has worked with YouTube, Microsoft, Google, MTV, ESPN, Electronic Arts, Blogger, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, and others. He also received a TechFellow award for Product Design & Marketing in early 2012.

Dan is co-founder and designer of Dribbble, a vibrant community for sharing screenshots of your work.

• Following: 359
• Followers: 47,042
• Website: http://simplebits.com/

Doug Bowman @stop

Doug is currently the Creative Director at Twitter and runs a small consulting firm called Stopdesign. Under Stopdesign, he designed sites and applications for Google, Capgemini, Blogger, Cathay Pacific Airways, Adaptive Path, and Mighty Goods.

In 2006, he put work for Stopdesign on hold to join Google as Visual Design Lead. In 2009, Bowman left Google to join Twitter as its Creative Director.

• Following: 487
• Followers: 219,706
• Website: http://stopdesign.com

Veerle Pieters @vpieters

Veerle is a belgian graphic & web designer with a unique artistic style. She authors a top industry blog, Veerle’s blog, and is also founder of Duoh! and design lead at Fab.

• Following: 269
• Followers: 193,122
• Website: http://veerle.duoh.com/

Cameron Moll @cameronmoll

Cameron is the founder of Authentic Jobs and a well renowned freelance web designer, author, and speaker. His work has been featured in HOW, Print, Communication Arts, Forrester Research publications, National Public Radio (NPR), and .net magazine.

• Following: 642
• Followers: 35,232
• Website: http://www.cameronmoll.com/

John Gruber @daringfireball

John Gruber is a Apple commentator and tech blogger. I’ve been reading his site for years. He’s been a pioneer in the web design world, and always provides interesting, bleeding edge tech articles.

• Following: 0
• Followers: 43,827
• Website: http://daringfireball.net/

Ethan Marcotte @beep

Ethan is a popular and experienced speaker, having been featured at An Event Apart, Carsonified Workshop, and SXSW. He co-hosts the Handcrafted CSS seminar series with Dan Cederholm.

• Following: 394
• Followers: 26,943
• Website: http://ethanmarcotte.com/

Brian Hoff @behoff

Brian is a graphic designer from Philadelphia who pumps out beautiful web design and brand identity work. He’s a well known blogger, and his blog The Design Cubicle has been recognized as one of the best in the web design industry.

• Following: 489
• Followers: 29,501
• Website: http://www.thedesigncubicle.com/

Dave Shea @mezzoblue

Dave is a well known designer, speaker, and influencer in the web design world. He operates a one-man studio called Bright Creative and has created designs for Joyent, Apple, and New York University.

• Following: 294
• Followers: 150,681
• Website: http://www.mezzoblue.com/

Wilson Miner @wilsonminer

Wilson is currently working on Rdio, a digital music service. He’s the original designer of EveryBlock and was previously an interactive designer for Apple.

• Following: 237
• Followers: 8,465
• Website: http://wilsonminer.com/

If you’re looking for web design inspiration, or to connect with some top dogs in the industry, this list should be a good start.

There are many more out there, and I may extend this list in the future.

Did I miss anyone?

Let me know if there’s someone I missed who deserves a spot on this list.

Image provided by screenshot

You may have noticed it already, top influencers now have an image of themselves appearing in search engine results.

How can you add your image to Google SERP’s?

Image provided by screenshot

1. Setup a Google Plus profile with the photo you want to appear.

It helps to already have an established Google+ profile. As Google mentions in their webmaster article, “Google doesn’t guarantee to show author information in Google Web Search or Google News results.”

It’s also important to use a good, recognizable headshot as your profile photo. Try to avoid using photos with multiple people. A nice headshot of you, and you only, will work best.

2. Verify authorship of your content by associating it with your profile.

There are a few ways to do this. First, make sure that your content has your first and last name present in a prominent area on the page.

Next, add a link to every page you author in the following format:
<a href="[profile_url]?rel=author">Google</a>.

Be sure to replace [profile_url] with your profile link. For example, a link to my profile looks like this:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/111749382468611843918/posts?rel=author">Kevin Leary on Google+</a>.

Your link must contain the ?rel=author parameter. If it’s missing, Google won’t be able to associate your content with your Google+ profile.

If you have a web developer on staff, or a web development team that you work with, I would suggest setting this up dynamically. It’s not hard to automate these links, and you want to make sure they appear on each and every page you write.

3. Add a reciprocal link back from your profile to the site(s) you just updated.

To link your website to a Google+ profile you need to add a link to it on Google+.

1. Edit the Contributor To section.
2. In the dialog that appears, click Add custom link, and then enter the website URL.
3. If you want, click the drop-down list to specify who can see the link.
4. Click Save.

4. Sit back and wait for Google to work it’s magic.

After you complete the steps above the process turns into a waiting game. When I originally tested this method for “boston wordpress” it took 9 days before the change was accepted by Google and the SERP cache was cleared. It may be longer or shorter for you depending on various circumstances.

If you would like to test whether or not you have a rich snippet on Google you can use the rich snippets testing tool that they provide.

To do this easily across all websites in the network I created a plugin that will turn the normal Biographical Info profile field into the WordPress visual editor, capable of everything you can add to a page or post.

I’ve released this as a free and public plugin on the official WordPress plugin repository as The Visual Biography Editor plugin.

Multisite Compatible

The Visual Editor Biography plugin is compatibly with WordPress Multisite, just use the Network Activate feature to enable a visual editor on every site. If you only want a visual editor for a specific site then activate the plugin for that site only.

Why Should You Add Author Biographies to Your Blog?

If you’re managing a multiple author blog with WordPress you may want to consider adding author biographies using this plugin and Gravatar author images. This can help build your organizations brand online while also providing an added level of personality to your website.

The New York Times showcases their editorial board in a similar fashion.