Pushing your boundaries and learning

The authors inner sprit animal when it comes to warm calling people…

So that was it – a week at Cyrise cyber boot camp for entrepreneurs of Australian cyber security. In a nut shell it was mind blowing! If your an Australian and you think you might have a great cyber security based idea, then this is a gig you must get in on.

Be prepared as your going to learn stuff, real important stuff, like being sat down in front of an excel spread sheet. Asked to crank on some initial financial projections by an experienced accountant (who has put some of his own money into startups).

Your going to have to get up in front of people and be able to talk about your product. Explain what it does and why it’s valuable, your going to learn to pitch and why it’s bloody important!

Calling industry people you don’t know on the phone to talk about your product (this really pushed my inner introvert I can tell you). I probably stunk like an old goat at the end of it (I could feel the sweat dripping off me) but hay that’s pushing your boundaries and learning.

If you have a great idea and have been thinking about it. Get into the next round you won’t regret it.

In closing I’d like to offer a big heart felt thanks to all the people who participated and contributed to our boot camp. But especially those on the coal front…

KIRSTIN MCINTOSH – Multitasker and social networker supreme (also the person who had faith in my idea).

CHLOÉ DUTSCHKE – Creative, marketing and brand guru who also kept us all very well fed (She also does a mean pod cast).

SCOTT HANDSAKER – The quiet guy at the back doing all the email stuff.

ALLEN JONES – (Not the bad one) Mr cool calm and collected who taught us all how to stand like gun slingers!


More crawling skin!

I’ve been following the company that says “Don’t be evil” on he issue of project Dragonfly – Googles “China” friendly search engine. The intercept has the lowdown on this project hear.

I have a belief that as companies get bigger they get more stupid and less focused. I think that this is indeed the case for Google. After reading the article I have to ask what sort of flavour of BS are these so called managers trying to stuff down the throats of humanity?

I’m starting to think it’s time to remove all my content from there platform.

Dec 1 post script 1
The register also has an article about the appalling behaviour of Googles’s senior management and it rightly points out that this is a company that is at a very serious fork in the road.

Dec 1 Post script 2
To expand on my thesis that “as companies get bigger they get more stupid” I also found this disturbing story…

My skin is crawling right now.

Currently reading thru this from bloomberg it’s mind numbing stuff and if true, is just disgusting. Humanity builds these incredible and amazing machines & then what do we do? What do we do@!!
We snitch on each other like disgruntled school children.

IT Security what a brain Fu(K.

Ah Facebook you’ve done it again!

Very interesting reading over the last few days from Gizmondo

https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your-shadow-co-1828476051?IR=T

In a nut shell it’s not a good idea to give FB your phone number. I’ve never felt right about FB wanting my phone number and I’m darn glad I’ve honoured that feeling.

From the article…
“They found that when a user gives Facebook a phone number for two-factor authentication or in order to receive alerts about new log-ins to a user’s account, that phone number became targetable by an advertiser within a couple of weeks.”

Also there is some confusion about how private address book data is, and what FB does with that information.

Again from the article…
“People own their address books,” a Facebook spokesperson said by email. “We understand that in some cases this may mean that another person may not be able to control the contact information someone else uploads about them.”

In addition, the use of the phone number for advertising, is something that destroys peoples trusting of 2 stage authentication. After this sort of abuse of data by one of the biggest brands in the world who would want to trust any one else with this degree of security?

They want more and more!

I also thought I’d mention this – a while back FB were trying to sucker people into giving them more data – email address info friend data… in return for more content… Don’t do it… FB wants you to rat on your friends. Also each user is worth up to about $158 to FB. So lets say you have 30 email address’s in your contacts, that’s $4,740.00 worth of data for more “Free” content – mainly generated by me and you.

But wait there’s more! Just at the time of writing this Zuk messes up again. From the NYT
Facebook Is Breached by Hackers, Putting 50 Million Users’ Data at Risk