Diversions | Branden R. Williams, Business Security Specialist

Product and Service Innovation standard

Some of you know I’ve been diving into strategy and innovation lately, and I’ve published the first of many blogs on different kinds of innovation. Check out the first one here at the Metroplex Technology Business Council’s website! Possibly Related Posts: When Man Pages Go Weird Aviation Apps I Use Sellers Buying 5-Star Amazon Reviews Introducing Where To Now Brando’s Rules for Success

Lizard Brain and Surprise Reactions standard

Have you ever had a moment in your life where you made what you thought was an innocent comment or asked a simple question, but was met with a verbally violent response? This happened multiple times in my career, going back to the PCI DSS assessment days, to living in management, to even personal interactions with individuals. Admittedly, my brain to mouth filter has been maturing over the years—so in some respects that may have been to blame. But recently, I started analyzing these responses and situations when they happened. Kind of a, “how did I get here and what should I do now” analysis. Let’s explore what I have learned. Let’s discuss the concept of Lizard Brain. This is ...

Bitcoin and Virtual Currencies standard

There has been a ton of noise around Bitcoin recently for two big reasons. The first is that the Bitcoin-USD forex climbed above $1,000 (currently just under $900, and the second is a heist that moved around $100 million worth of the currency, all able to be watched online through the public clearing houses. So if you are a business, what should you do with this and other currencies? One of the main attractions to Bitcoin is that it is not regulated by a sovereign government. Some might say that it works in the purest form of capitalism, completely separating the buyer from the seller through an anonymous exchange. Well, somewhat anonymous. The contents and value of the wallet is ...

Hosed by Codeshares AGAIN standard

Yep, a little bit off topic, but that’s why I have a Diversions file! Some of you may remember a post I did for all of your frequent fliers a couple of years ago about some travel trouble I was having with airline tickets purchased as codeshares. In all fairness, this isn’t just an issue with one particular airline (although I did discuss my experience with AA/BA). Here’s what happened today. I was finishing up my tour of Ireland a bit early and wanted to stand by on an earlier flight. With BA, you can do this if you have any status at all including honoring OneWorld levels. BUT! Only if you have a BA marketed & operated ticket. So ...

Have a free month of SlideZip Unlimited! standard

Yep, we just pushed some fun new features to SlideZip, so I figured that we could create an offer to celebrate! Right now, the first 20 people to upgrade to an Unlimited account can get a free month with this coupon code: FreeMonthOct2013. Free is great! Also, we now have support for conferences (with multiple logins which could be for separate tracks or satellite locations)! Possibly Related Posts: When Man Pages Go Weird Aviation Apps I Use Sellers Buying 5-Star Amazon Reviews Introducing Where To Now Brando’s Rules for Success

Introducing SlideZip! standard

Hello Internet! I had an idea for a product last summer to help with my presentations. I wanted to find a way to allow people to easily and quickly get access to the presentation materials (and other stuff) while keeping the conversation going after I left the stage. Gene Kim and I discussed a number of options, and within a few hours I had something crude cobbled together. Folks at my talks could get the slides by sending a quick text message to an address, and BAM! Slides in their inbox! It worked great for me, but required too much customization to be actually useful. In February after I left RSA, I decided that it was time to re-learn Ruby ...

No such file or directory, RVM and Rubies! standard

This is quite a diversion, but it’s something that I want documented and indexed by the G00gles of the world in case someone else has a problem like me. If you are not interested in Ruby, or Rails, or RVM, skip this and will see you later on in the week! I recently had an issue that stumped me (as well as the great folks in the #rvm channel on Freenode). In the process of setting up RVM, I initially made the mistake of doing it as root on a Debian (Squeeze) machine. Cautionary word, you are good playing with the system rubies provided by APT, but if you want to get to the bleeding edge, do all of your ...

Garmin’s Missed Opportunity standard

Businesses are moving faster than ever in this digital economy, and entrepreneurs build and showcase new innovative products or business models every day. The term that is thrown around to describe this phenomenon is called ‘disruption’. As an example, the iPod and iTunes Store disrupted the music industry in a way that forced companies to re-invent their businesses. Remember back in the 1990s when you could find an actual record store? Sure, most of us bought CDs, but it was still a store dedicated to the sale of music. I have fond memories of visiting Blockbuster Music and trying out CDs before I bought them. But Apple changed all of that. They disrupted an established market where prices were fairly ...

The Gotchas of EMV for the US Consumer standard

Update Nov 4, 2013: I was in the UK last week and it looks like the Underground has fixed their terminals to allow the use of the chip at a UPT! This is great news. My guess is there is some upper limit to what can be accepted without signature and it is now implemented. Some of you may know that I spent a little over a week on vacation with my wife traipsing through Europe this month. And even though I was constantly yelled at for walking too fast or running to check out some grey squirrel (they are tan here in the US), we had a fabulous time. We had a few hitches in our travels as any ...

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