Buffer review: Time your social media posts to a tee

Buffer Buffer is a neatly organized service that makes it easy to keep multiple social media accounts up to date. I'm not convinced that it knows better than you about when you should post your content, but I'm...

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Buffer automates the timing of your social media posts. It sports a sophisticated interface, and options for including several social networks, notably Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Its free service works well for personal feed, and its $10-per-month Awesome level service adds the features a business needs.

From the first post you queue up, Buffer's friendly interface tries to make you feel welcome.

To use Buffer, you sign in using a Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn account, or you can create a dedicated Buffer account if you choose. Once you're signed in, you can add the social networks you didn't use to sign in, as well as an App.net account and any Facebook pages and LinkedIn Groups that you manage.

Buffer lets you compose tweets and status updates—which can be posted across multiple networks at once—and helps you decide when to post them. You can post them immediately, or choose the "Add to Buffer" option, which lets Buffer decide when to post it.

Scheduling a tweet on Buffer isn't much more complicated than just posting to Twitter.

You can create multiple posts—enough to populate your social media for a week, or more—and add them to your Buffer queue, and the app will post them for you when it deems appropriate. It selects a time based on when it believes most retweets and clicks happen. Buffer analyzes overall usage of Twitter as a whole, not just your account. Buffer has partnership with a service called Tweriod, which looks specifically at your account and suggests times for you to post.

Buffer couldn't tell whether my posts were time-sensitive or not, and so it often suggested waiting several hours to post items that needed more immediate attention. It suggested reasonable times for less timely items, though. If you're not happy with Buffer's time suggestions, you can easily override it. Buffer offers an easy-to-use, timezone-specific scheduler that lets you determine when to publish your posts.

If you like to post at a certain time every day, Buffer's Schedule tab can make that easier.

Buffer also offers a browser extension for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari that lets you share content from any Web page. It adds a small (maybe too small—it took a while to identify it) icon to your browser that allows you to share a link via Buffer, directly from the Web page itself. It even suggests text to go along with the link (which you can change) and gives you the option of posting it now or adding it to your Buffer.

The Awesome level of service ($10 per month) includes unlimited posts, support for up to 12 social profiles, and the ability to have more than one person use the account.

Buffer's analytics can be useful, but they're not instantaneous. Checking them too soon might make you feel really unpopular.

Buffer's analytics can help determine whether its decisions on when to post your content are working. And its analytics strike a nice balance between home and small business users, offering enough information to be helpful—such as how many clicks, retweets, and mentions you get, as well as the potential reach of your posts—without overwhelming you.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can sign up for this Web-based service.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Hacker Holds Symantec Source Code For Ransom, Then Posts it to Web

Extortion turns into sting

“We will pay you $50,000.00 USD total,” Thomas told YamaTough on Feb. 1. “However, we need assurances that you are not going to release the code after payment. We will pay you $2,500 a month for the first three months. Payments start next week. After the first three months you have to convince us you have destroyed the code before we pay the balance. We are trusting you to keep your end of the bargain.”

Thomas, despite the Symantec email address that he began the conversation with (he later switched to a Gmail account), was not a Symantec employee, and the $50,000 was bait to reel in YamaTough and any accomplices, according to a Symantec spokesman.

“The email string posted by Anonymous was actually between them and a fake e-mail address set up by law enforcement,” Cris Paden, Symantec’s senior corporate communications manager, told SecurityNewsDaily.

(Paden consistently refers to YamaTough as “Anonymous.” While the hacker has been getting encouragement on Twitter from prominent Anonymous members, there is no independent evidence that he has been actively working with them.)

“Anonymous actually reached out to us first, saying that if we provided them with money, they would not post any more source code,” Paden said. “At that point, given that it was a clear-cut case of extortion, we contacted law enforcement and turned the investigation over to them.”

“All subsequent communications were actually between Anonymous and law enforcement agents — not Symantec,” Paden added.

YamaTough gets frustrated

Those heated emails show YamaTough, using a Venezuelan email address, becoming increasingly frustrated with Symantec’s excuses for why the company couldn’t immediately honor his deadlines.

“If we don’t hear from you in 30m we make an official announcement and put your code on sale at auction terms,” YamaTough wrote on Jan. 25. “We have many people who are willing to get your code. Don’t [mess] with us.”

On Jan. 30, Thomas asked YamaTough to “be patient” and said, “We are really trying to work with you but we can’t meet all the deadlines that you keep throwing at us.” YamaTough replied, “You have 24 hours for a definite answer.”

Late last night (Feb. 6), the law-enforcement sting ran into a wall. YamaTough wrote, “There is no time, yes or no, pcAnywhere is ready to be distributed, 10 min.”

Shortly afterwards, a link to the pcAnywhere source code appeared on the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. Paden confirmed that it is, in fact, the actual code.

Source code hits the Web, Symantec is ready

“We can confirm that the source code is legitimate,” Paden said. “It is part of the original cache of code for 2006 versions of the products that Anonymous has claimed to have been in possession during the last few weeks.”

Symantec, Paden added, had a contingency plan ready.

“Symantec was prepared for the code to be posted at some point, and has developed and distributed a series of patches since Jan. 23rd to protect our users against attacks that might transpire as a result of the anti-virus code being made public,” Paden told SecurityNewsDaily.

He said Symantec has reached out to its customers in the past few weeks, urging them to install version 12.5 of pcAnywhere to reduce the risk of their systems becoming compromised in the wake of the leak.

The pcAnywhere leak may just be the first drop in a coming flood, Paden said.

“We also anticipate Anonymous to post the rest of the code they have claimed [they] have in their possession,” he said. “So far, they have posted code for the 2006 version of Norton Internet Security and pcAnywhere. We also anticipate that at some point, they will post the code for Norton AntivirusCorporate Edition and Norton Systemworks. Both products no longer exist.”

Article provided by SecurityNewsDaily, a sister site to Laptopmag.com.

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