Gearheads: The Sterling Communications Blog

The ‘Chinese Wall’ of Today’s Security News

Jay, Sam and I visited RSA’s show floor last week. Despite being the security industry’s biggest event, attendance did seem lighter than in years past, with many exhibitors having time to check out their competitors’ booths.

That being said, media and analysts were out in full force. Great to reconnect with many of them (even if I I'm now 0-for-4 in getting a training run in with Paul Roberts), and it was exciting to meet and mingle with many of the bloggers I read daily. One booth that was popular with the media covering the show wasn’t launching a product, it was actually a haven for them… a “bloghaus” if you will… that news portal Threatpost hosted in its booth’s debut. With desk space for typing away, as well as drinks and snacks to help navigate deadlines, the walled-in booth provided a mini escape from trade show craziness.

What’s intriguing about Threatpost is that it’s being advertised as an “independent news and community network for the broader IT security community” yet it’s sponsored by one of the main vendors in the biz, Kaspersky Lab. As background, it was launched in March by the company to “create awareness… through public dialogue and education” and hired two well-known editors in the security space—Ryan Naraine (previously of ZDNet’s Zero Day blog and eWEEK magazine) and Dennis Fisher (previously of TechTarget )—to do two things: on one hand, they’re populating a news portal, aggregating breaking security news from around the Internet, and on the other, they’re complementing the news with their own analysis. But just how independent is the site? And what does it mean to the greater community when a vendor steps in to fill some of the gaps that have been hurting traditional news outlets?

California's New Low Carbon Fuel Standard

Last week, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) adopted a low carbon fuel standard in attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  It’s well received by environmental groups and activists, yet a bit frustrating for the oil industry and biofuel companies with having to adhere to stricter policies. Some even suggest it could cripple the ethanol industry.  Either way you look at it, it’s a new enforcement that is much needed to help protect the environment.

According to the ARB’s official announcement, this new standard intends to assist with the progression and positive change in California’s fight against global warming by helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions, encouraging the use of alternative fuels, boosting technology innovation, creating new jobs and more, which is perhaps why the new rule won in a landslide 9-1 victory, reports Earth2Tech.

Because 300 million minds are better than one

It's no secret that President Obama's new federal CIO plans to shake things up a bit in the technology department. Vivek Kundra is a Google-loving, Web 2.0-embracing, open source-championing kind of guy, which should be a really great thing given that, as we've all read, technology at the White House was stuck in the dark ages.

Of all of the changes Kundra plans to make during his tenure, one of the most interesting to me is his plan to create more transparency in government by making government data publicly available through sites like Recovery.gov (already populated) and Data.gov, which, according to Computerworld's Patrick Thibodeau, should be up and running as early as next month. And while the thought of publicly available government data might at first seem far-fetched and semi-dangerous (what about the terrorists?!?), it actually has the potential to do a world of good.

Everything I know about Social Media I learned from Easter

Well, that’s not true, but I started thinking about idioms that contained festive terms for Easter, such as egg, rabbit and chicken. And I realized, hey, they apply quite nicely in trying to educate peers and clients on the social media landscape.

You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs
Okay, social media can be a bit unnerving. It goes against the traditional professional grain on formal communication. Social media is a freeing agent designed to combine personality, reality and work all into one. Some still struggle, some ignore it and some embrace it. If you or your company decide to engage, don’t be afraid to jump in and practice and do some educated experiments on some of your tactics. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. The worst thing you can do is walk on egg shells. As they say, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs!

No fooling?

Technology companies have a long history of playing April Fool’s jokes. This year was no exception (Consider YouTube turning its videos upside-down, Gmail’s Autopilot e-mail response service, or even PSS’ latest call center software, the aptly named SMART Assured Self Service).

However, the best (and most troubling) April Fool’s joke I saw this year was from the Guardian. The headline was bold and announced yet another huge change in the media industry: “Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink." The article then went on to lament the end of the print edition but also offered optimism for their pithy new medium—140-character Twitter stories. (@BreakingNewsOn, anyone?)

The Gray Lady’s Storytelling Purview is Embracing Web 2.0

In March, PRSA Silicon Valley hosted 3 local gurus from the New York Times to catch up on all things tech. The trio—editor Damon Darlin and reporters Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone —brought insight to the Times’ impact, its footprint on the Web and thoughts on social media. The following shares some of my takeaways from the session.

The NYT has become much more than a newspaper. Granted, it’s the nation’s third largest print paper, but its digital footprint is HUGE… Damon claims it’s three times bigger than the next largest paper. Looking at news sites, the NYT is only behind Yahoo! News, MSNBC and CNN. As far as destinations go within NYT site, the tech section is very well read… only behind politics and health in popularity. As an indication of how much the paper embraces Silicon Valley’s impact on the rest of the world… outside of Washington, D.C., SF is the paper’s largest bureau.

Damon stated that news organizations are not going to go away, but the question the industry should be asking is how are we going to fund news organizations when there are no advertisements for print editions. The NYT is “obsessed” with making this work. As Damon noted, “we’ll always consume news. It’s just that we now have a different appetite for news.”