Gawker: valleywag, rsa

Citizen journalism fails Al Gore

Paul Boutin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:20:00 EDT

Climate change superstar Al Gore banned the press from his appearance Friday at the tail end of the RSA Conference on information security in San Francisco. The move seemed like a joke: Surely, Valleywag's editors reasoned, the roomful of high-IQ IT professionals carrying wireless communications devices into Gore's presentation would blog, tweet and shoot the whole thing. Gore would be streamed live to Qik via multiple videophones. No need for a pro journalist to sneak into Gore's talk and liveblog it, as I used to do with Steve Jobs keynotes. Web 2.0 had it covered. So what really happened? The only on-time account of the event came from CNET reporter Robert Vamosi, who used his conference speaker badge to get past security. Vamosi posted a thorough report less than an hour after Gore began. Hey Robert, didn't you get the memo? You're supposed to be out of work by now.

Press banned from Al Gore's RSA keynote

Jackson West — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:20:00 EDT

In the Moscone Center, former vice president and current Valley privateer Al Gore will be speaking at the RSA Conference 2008 today at 2:15 p.m. — but there's no press allowed. There will, however, be hundreds of people with top-of-the-line technology and at least a passing familiarity with cryptography and the like. Hacks in the press room have been overheard discussing plans to sneak in. Valleywag encourages anyone with Wi-Fi, EVDO, a Twitter account with SMS enabled or, better yet, a videophone that can live stream to Qik or another service to let us know where you're posting smuggled coverage of the speech. (Photo by Dan Spisak)

ConFonz at RSA

Chris Mohney — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 09:00:18 EST

Hold on to your hats — we hear Bill Gates was boring as the keynote speaker for the info-security RSA Conference, ongoing at Moscone Center. Fortunately, Conference Fonzerelli is on hand, much to his personal regret. The ConFonz quoth:

The fabulous and sexy Conference Fonzerelli has trouble avoiding parties. Even when he stopped to retch up the last of his peyote buttons into an alley off second street, he found himself standing outside of the PingIdentity party.

Read on for partially redemptive Microsoft pull quote.

Elsewhere, Microsoft held a press gathering at the Cartoon Art Museum, irony unimagined. Just another indication of the Mickey Mouse attitude Microsoft has towards security.
So, remember, application security scanning is a 30 million dollar a year industry, max. And yet, Veracode is the bell of the ball at this year's RSA Conference. Lets all hope those shiny new employees and pr people help to get the company acquired before CA's seed money runs out.

Still, best quote of the day goes to Microsoft: "I love RSA, you can assume everyone here is not a complete retard."

[Photo: Getty]

Morning news: Larry Ellison feels secure

Nick Douglas — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 10:00:00 EDT

Oracle chief Larry Ellison will preach the security gospel to the choir at next year's RSA Conference. While some doubt Oracle's security expertise, everyone knows that Larry knows how to stay safe. [Silicon.com]
The New York Times, um, "breaks" the story of Google CEO Eric Schmidt joining Apple's board of directors. [NYT]
AnnaLee names the Argonauts who travel the world with the golden sheepskin, hunting for jobs anywhere but home. [CNET]
Silicon Valley execs are more likely to talk up the future than other Bay Areans. Who knew? [Mercury News]

Remainders: It's New Year's in July

Nick Douglas — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 21:11:35 EDT

Batting .000 on his New Year's predictions, Firefox developer Blake Ross rushes out a second batch:
Citizen journalism will finally topple Old Media, ushering in a remarkable new age of incisive journalism—"That Dude Across the Street Walks His Dog;" "Local Mail Arrives Ten Minutes Past 4." Illegal immigrants will protest the discriminatory name, forcing the blogosphere to rechristen the new model "Asscasting," short for "Broadcasting while sitting on my ass, which will never leave this chair."

[Blake Ross]
The new site Relishio does a cannonball into the news-aggregation-site pool that's already full with Digg, Netscape, Newsvine, TailRank, and TechMeme. Its founders are either clueless, arrogant, or — oh, the founder is 14-year-old Jake Jarvis, son of blogger and entertainment pundit Jeff Jarvis. We're not going to make fun of an eighth-grader, are we? [Relishio]
Why is it hilarious that IT titan EMC bought security titan RSA? Because I know at least one RSA employee who quit the company months ago and joined a startup that RSA bought. Life wants some people to work in huge corporations. [EMC]
Is the Internet down? [Internet Status]