Category Archives: Podcasting

Hacking like it was 1998

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Time for a little trek down memory lane, and a move to starting striking out on next trail!

Back in the late 90′s I was only getting started in my life as a “hacker”, and quickly became amazed at the work L0pht was putting out, such as netcat and L0phtCrack. I remember reading about their appearance at the US Congress when it happened, and seeing a small clip of it on MTV’s True Life “I’m a Hacker” later that year.

Over the years I have had an amazing journey, launching a security group in Fortis US, and then joining Foundstone around 2000. I got to be part of an AMAZING group over there. At the time it turned into a collection of the most insane talent and to this day some of the smartest people I run into all herald from that period at Foundstone.

I have had privilege of getting to know and becoming friends with a few of the guys from those videos, and continue to enjoy meeting these guys and learning from them, and hopefully teaching them a few thing ;)

These days, while running NTO Im having the fun of finding and hiring some of the guys that I think will be the next generation trail blazers, and building tools to aid in today and tomorrows hurdles. Its a blast and I have been thinking that the products to aid in the progress of security are just starting to hit their stride, and the next few years will enter us into another boom for our industry.

However, over the last few months as I have been doing most of the primary research into this whole Cenzic Patent mess, and putting together piles of prior art and having to dig around the community for who was doing what, and when… and remembering and researching the challenges of the day. I watch videos like L0pht at US Congress and the MTV True Life, and read papers and posts from the late 90′s… and I just continue to realize how little progress we have all made. A decade has brought us so much and so little progress.

There is nothing to do but to continue the fight, and continue trying to think about this differently. Maybe the next decade will prove better than the last. To that end, I am re-starting my podcast. I had abandoned my post on this site for too long. We all need to be trying to educate the next generation as much as possible, but to to just show them the current state of affairs, but to hopefully challenge them and instill in them the fun of it all.

So Im dusting off the Mightyseek sound files and mic and gonna get to it.

Talk to you all soon!

WordCamp Experience

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I had a pretty interesting day yesterday.
After being up till close to 2am I woke up at 5:30am, showered and drove to the airport to do my 10am talk at WordCamp 2007.
My flight landed at 8:30am and I was picked up by my old buddy Joe Engo. After a couple wrong turns we finally got to the event location at 9:30 in time to get setup.

mightyseek_at_wordcamp.jpg I finally had a chance to meet Matt Mullenweg, and was thoroughly impressed, this is one young man to watch. To think that at 23, hes at the head of a project thats impacted so many people, and has gained so much interest and respect, and has managed to build a business model around an open sourced app… no easy feat.

So then it sets in. I’m the opening presenter to this conference… I’ve really been too busy to have thought much about my talk at WordCamp the preceding couple of weeks because work has been crazy busy. But standing there getting setup to open the conference I got a bit nervous. Its also been a couple years since doing one of these types of things, so I really started feeling completely unprepared.

Matt introduces me and I ask the audience a few questions about whos familiar with podcasting (everyone) and how many podcasters are out there (a few). Well, this kind of took some thunder out of my slides intended to be used to help explain podcasting basics. I had to think quick to adjust my talk and explain my views of how I feel podcasting to be a little more personal and blah blah. Was a bit of a slow start.

So I figured I could launch into the stuff about podPress and show of the features and talk some praise of WordPress, which I started… and then the Internet connection went dead. Just as I was starting to feel a little comfortable…
With some quick action by the Automattic team I got back online and was quickly followed by the audience and was able to start cracking some lame jokes and getting into a groove about podPress, podcasting and WordPress.

Even with the slow start, I felt like I was finally able to connect and coherently discuss some of the things I am passionate about, and hopefully show how easy it is to get into podcasting, the cool features of podPress and the amazing platform WordPress provided that enabled me to create the feature set. The talk was video taped, so as soon as I get a copy of the video I will be adding the media to this post so it will end up in my feed as a video podcast.

As soon as my talk was over, I chatted with a few people in the lobby for about half and hour, and then headed to the airport to get back home. Next year, as a speaker or not, I’m going to make sure to plan better so I can stay for the entire weekend.

Update: The video is now available.

Stranger Things Podcast – Wow

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As a long time podcasting fan and supporter of the community I have been a fan of many shows, and impressed by a bunch of them. Some of my favorites (and I know I’ll end up forgetting some) have been Slice of Sci/Fi, Escape Pod, Filmspotting, The Signal, The Bitterest Pill, Verge of the Fringe, zeFrank, TikiBarTV and numerous Podiobooks (Sigler, Selznick, JC Hutchins, etc), along with many many more.

So when I say I was blown away by the efforts of Stranger Things (http://www.strangerthings.tv), its not from a lack of experience with the brillance and creativity in this community. Its because its quite an impressive accomplishment. Audio is one thing, and it takes skill and hard work to do it well. Short video clips like those from zeFrank andTikiBarTV are also quite a bit of work and take great talent. But to produce a 30 minute long episode with decent acting, a cool story (from self-pimping Sigler) and very nice special effects… and to make it a free podcast. Wow.

I have a hell of a time just trying to get my show out once a month, and even that is wayyy behind on getting some episodes out (one is coming soon btw).

Anyways, my props to the Stranger Things team, and I hope you are able to continue gaining an audience and some sponsorship/donations to help keep your show going.

Dan on Slice of SciFi

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While at the PPME I met up with the legendary Evo Terra and got to sit in on a recording of the great Slice of SciFi podcast, which was quite alot of fun. It was recorded in Evo’s hotel room with a bunch of us hanging out in there. Amoung the live audience Mattew Wayne Selznick (author of Brave Men Run), podcasting “good guy” Paul Puri (founder of the Podcasters Guild), podcasting “mean guy” Steve Eley (Escape Pod), and fellow security podcasters Michael Santarcangelo (Security Catalyst) and Martin McKeay (Network Security Podcast).

I was pretty silent thru most of it, but toward the end Evo went around the room introducing each of us and asking a few questions. I hassled them a little (all in good fun) and got quite a laugh/boo out of it. It was a great time and it alone was worth getting to the PPME for me.

Questions for podcast with Dan (PodPress developer)

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James Woodcock will be interviewing me in the coming days, and so posted this on the forums.

Click here to get to the forum topic

Dan (Mighty Seek) developer of the PodPress plugin for WordPress, will be interviewed in one of my future blogcasts on my website.

If you have any questions you would like him to answer about either his PodPress plugin or security, please ring my automated (non-premium) voicemail on UK: 0207 193 3092 or Worldwide: +44 207 193 3092 or for free on skype id: glidem

The best questions will be included in the show…..
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>> Hear more about PodPress, in my audio interview with Dan Kuykendall <<

http://www.jameswoodcock.co.uk – My personal online diary covering the internet that I find of interest including audio interviews, music, gaming, technology, gadgets, websites, free downloads and general articles.