Pingsta Blog

Pingsta Announces Virtual Private ICE™

2010-02-03T12:29:00.000-08:00

Recent research identifies private cloud computing as a method of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to internal customers using Internet technologies. Through 2012, analysts predict that IT organizations will make greater private cloud computing investments than on offerings from public cloud providers.

Pingsta is excited to present businesses across the globe with a revolutionary solution to realize the operational and economic benefits of private cloud computing.

Pingsta Virtual Private ICE™ (VPI) enables IT Service Providers, Government agencies and Fortune 500 corporations to create a global and profitable workforce-in-the-cloud that serves as a powerful web-based intellectual collaborative platform for all of their interdepartmental functions. Pingsta VPI™ clients enjoy enhanced workforce collaboration, seamless knowledge-capture and reuse, an easy exchange of intellectual and social communication via a private and secure cloud-based platform and an unprecedented capability to monetize excess intellectual capacity to generate new green revenue streams.

Benefits of Pingsta VPI™ include:

Enhanced collaboration throughout entire an organizational structure
Intelligent knowledge capture, storage and reuse
Simplified workforce management
Consolidate network assets by 75% and administration and travel costs by 80%
Excess capacity monetization - harness and monetize the untapped intellectual capacity of your workforce that otherwise goes to waste
Create a new, green revenue stream that could amount to US$1000 per employee per day and further differentiates your firm.

To learn more about Pingsta VPI™ visit http://pingsta.com/products/vpi

To get started, make sure to sign up today for a free 90-day Pingsta VPI™ trial and begin enjoying the efficiencies of creating your own Workforce-in-the-Cloud™.

Pingsta Launches Pingsta Perks™

2009-08-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

Thinking about planning your next getaway? Have you got your mind set on that Ballon Bleu de Cartier watch? Are you treating yourself to a Ferrari California or upgrading to a Bugatti Veyron 16.4?

Pingsta is proud to introduce its Pingsta Perks™ Program. Through this program, all Pingsta members (and their immediate family members) will enjoy privileged access to exclusive discounted offers and promotions from leading luxury lifestyle brands across the globe. Industries such as select airlines and private jets, boutique restaurants, hotels and resorts, along with luxury car and lifestyle brands are joining Pingsta in acknowledging and celebrating the world’s internet rock stars - you!

So make sure to first stop by the Perks tab if you’re contemplating on doing some well merited self-indulgence. Pingsta Perks™ can enhance your “treat-yourself” experience that much more.

About Pingsta Perks™

Pingsta Perks™ is a free service that provides Pingsta members (and their immediate family members only) with exclusive offers and promotions from the world's leading luxury lifestyle brands.

Luxury brands interested in participating in the Pingsta Perks™ program should contact the Perks Administrator via Pingsta feedback.

Cloud Computing Benefits

2009-07-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

Cloud computing- a ‘trendy’ term that to many, may still sound a bit vague, but once it’s value is understood in its entirety, it is really not so ambiguous.

A recent article from EurActiv, simply defines cloud computing as a term based on the principle that users do not usually own the physical infrastructure which hosts applications and software. Keeping that in mind, cloud computing comes into focus when thinking about what IT always needs: a way to augment capacity or add capabilities on demand without investing in new infrastructure, personnel, or software. Cloud computing includes any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that can expand IT's existing capabilities in real time, over the Internet.

Viviane Reding, EU Information Society Commissioner advised SMBs that cloud computing services are the cure needed for the current economic downturn. She strongly believes that cloud computing services can increase business productivity by changing from fixed costs (i.e. hiring staff or buying PCs) to variable costs (i.e. you only pay for what you use).

During her speech, Reding highlighted some very valuable points. In Europe, there are 23 million SMBs, making up to 99% of all of their firms. However, SMBs continue to fall behind in the use of ICT tools that can enhance overall productivity. It was estimated that a million new jobs could be created simply by relocating office activities to the cloud. This can potentially add up to 0.2% to Europe’s annual GDP within the next five years.

With cloud computing uncertainty to the side, SMBs worldwide are clearly encouraged to leverage web-based services to begin to overcome the global recession.

So what are you waiting for?

Enjoy immediate cost savings and the complete benefits that cloud computing can bring to your business through Pingsta ICE™.

New Feature: Pingsta Collaborative Asset Manager (Pingsta CAM™)

2009-07-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

A recent report from the Gartner Group states that effective asset management is one of the best means for businesses to achieve immediate IT cost savings: it can yield savings of up to 30% per asset within the first year. However, only about 25% of companies have a decent asset management plan. Unfortunately, many organizations continue to use outdated and extensive excel sheets to record and manage assets, email attachments to share asset data.

To solve this problem, Pingsta just launched a new Pingsta ICE™ service feature called Pingsta Collaborative Asset Manager™ (Pingsta CAM™). Pingsta CAM™ provides businesses of all sizes as well as Government agencies with organization-wide asset management capabilities.

Pingsta CAM™ Benefits Include:

Enhanced asset management by enabling the collaborative upload, update, and management of all IT assets across multiple locations worldwide in real time.
Organization-wide visibility to all IT assets such as routers, switches, firewalls, data center servers and storage networking via an intelligent world map mashup.
Reduced costs and pay-per-asset while dramatically improving efficiencies because Pingsta CAM™ requires no software to download, setup nor maintain.
Enhanced global cross-functional collaboration organization-wide.
End-to-end real-time visibility and global accessibility to accurate corporate asset data.
Improved service delivery, employee productivity and the balance sheet.

How does it work?
Pretty simple.

Sign up for free to a Pingsta ICE™ edition (e.g. Service Provider, Enterprise, or Pro), from your Pingsta ICE™ dashboard, click on the "Assets" tab, and begin adding your IT assets.

As the default account administrator, you can also add other corporate users within your organization that are involved in asset acquisition, implementation and management such as procurement, engineering, finance etc. to the same asset map so that it can be collaboratively updated.

To learn more, watch the Pingsta CAM™ video or contact Pingsta and an account manager will be glad to help you further.

To get started, make sure to sign up today for a free 90-day trial and begin leveraging Pingsta CAM™ to unify and simplify your entire asset inventory through Pingsta's collaborative web 2.0 platform.

Pingsta ICE- 101

2009-04-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

Pingsta ICE Lead (PIL)

2009-04-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

New Feature - Pingsta ICE Lead (PIL)

2009-03-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

Whether you are an independent network consultant with several private customers faced with the headaches of client management e.g. providing customer references, filling out various W-9s (tax paperwork), chasing payments long after projects are completed or you are a network engineer who is tired of dishing out expert advice on various forums for free, Pingsta has the solution you need.

Based on the feedback from the Pingsta community, we've developed a new feature called Pingsta ICE Lead (PIL) that simplifies task and payment management for consulting network engineers through Pingsta ICE. PIL allows consultants to migrate existing or potential customers to the Pingsta ICE platform so they can seamlessly deliver their services and simplify all accounts management tasks.

Benefits:
With PIL, independent network consultants enjoy:

Simplified task and project management - You manage all customer support and consulting tasks via Pingsta's integrated web 2.0 platform.
Simplified accounts receivable - You no longer have to chase multiple customers for payments or fill out multiple W-9s and other paperwork. Pingsta pays you directly for all work done.
Robust backup expertise - You can rest easy from knowing that the rest of the Pingsta ICE experts will back you up on tasks that fall outside your area of expertise.

How does it work?
Pretty simple.

Have your client subscribe to Pingsta ICE Pro for only $60/company/month. (You receive a 10% commission of their first years' subscription.)
Once logged into their Pingsta dashboard, they can go to "Account Settings"-->"PIL" and add you as their PIL using only your Pingsta member number. They should also set the hold-time - the amount of time the task should be sent only to you - ranging from 30 minutes to 24 hours.

You now have the first-right-of refusal for all new tasks your client creates. Tasks you don't accept within the hold-time period will be intelligently routed as normal to other ICE engineers with the appropriate expertise so one of them can resolve it. You will be able to track all your PIL clients within "My PIL Accounts" under your "My ICE" tab.

Not yet a Pingsta member but looking to participate in the PIL program? No problem, request a Pingsta membership and an invitation will be sent to you once we validate your expertise.

Enjoy,

Erika

Pingsta Hall of Fame Inducts 50 Extraordinary Internet Engineers

2008-12-27T13:32:00.000-08:00

Redwood City, California - December 23, 2008 - Pingsta - a collaborative intellectual platform for the world’s Internet experts – today announced the launch of its Hall of Fame and the inaugural 2008 inductees.

The Pingsta Hall of Fame was created to recognize, honor and pay tribute to all the truly outstanding engineers, scientists and individuals that have helped to create and continue to sustain the Internet. “The Hall of Fame program is Pingsta’s humble way of celebrating and appreciating the exceptional individuals that have given the world the gift of the Internet”, said Peter Alfred-Adekeye, CEO and founder of Pingsta.

The inaugural 2008 inductees are:

1. Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (1915 - 1990)
2. Ivan Edward Sutherland
3. Donald Watts Davies (1924 - 2000)
4. Paul Baran
5. Leonard Kleinrock
6. Robert W. Taylor
7. Lawrence G. Roberts
8. Charley Klein
9. Jon Postel (1943 - 1998)
10. Vinton Gray Cerf
11. Robert Elliot Khan
12. Dave Walden
13. Douglas C. Engelbart
14. Dan Murphy
15. George O. Strawn
16. Doug Gale
17. John Connolly
18. Gordon Gallup
19. Eric M. Aupperle
20. Hans-Werner Braun
21. Stephen Wolff
22. Ira Richer
23. Jane Caviness
24. Karen Sandberg
25. William Yeager
26. Andy Bechtolsheim
27. Tom Rindfleisch
28. Les Earnest
29. Len Bosack
30. Sandra Lerner
31. Kirk Lougheed
32. Jeff Mogul
33. Bill Nowicki
34. Benjy Levy
35. Philip Almquist
36. Greg Satz
37. Noel Chiappa
38. Robert Metcalfe
39. David Reeves Boggs
40. Chuck Thacker
41. Butler Lampson
42. Tim Berners-Lee
43. Robert Cailliau
44. Marc Andreessen
45. Eric Bina
46. Larry Smarr
47. Paul Mockapetris
48. Bill Joy
49. Ken Thompson
50. Dennis Ritchie

The Pingsta Hall of Fame award ceremony will take place in Silicon Valley during the PingstaWorld 2009 Conference.

Pingsta Launches ICE Pro™

2008-10-13T17:14:00.000-07:00

Lately, it’s impossible to escape the bombarding news about the growing crisis that is crippling the world's economy. Today’s headline in New York Times read “Nations Weigh Global Action to Crisis” another read, “Stock Plunge Again, Dow under 8,600.” The bottom line is that now more than ever before, doing more with less is a business imperative.

In the midst of this turmoil, Pingsta is proud to offer some relief to this situation by launching ICE Pro™ - a service that provides small and medium businesses (SMBs) with an on-demand access to Pingsta's vast IP network engineering expertise as-a-service. This way, SMBs no longer have to carry the additional financial burden of hiring network engineers in-house but instead leverage network expertise on a pay-as-you-go basis and save over 75% of their IT OpEx.

For just $60 per company per month, SMBs can now sign up and subscribe to Pingsta ICE Pro™ and purchase break-fix support tasks and consulting hours as needed.

The Pingsta team invites businesses worldwide to explore and utilize the vast array of beneficial features Pingsta ICE Pro™ has to offer.

Erika

Pingsta's Inaugural Hall of Fame Members

2008-09-02T16:13:00.000-07:00

The National Science Foundation recently launched a decade-by-decade documentary flash video titled NSF and the Birth of the Internet - which details the incremental growth of the Internet from its humble beginnings of early Univac 9200 computers with only 8KB of memory to today’s supercomputers, fully narrated by the front line engineers themselves.

Below are the major milestones that led to the birth of the Internet;

1. Concept of networked computers began in the early 1960s at MIT

2. DoD Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA now known as DARPA) took over networking research in 1962.

3. In 1969, ARPANET launched a 4-node INTERNETwork connecting SRI (Palo Alto), UCLA, UCSB & University of Utah

4. At 10:30pm on October 29, 1969 Charlie Klein (at UCLA) and Bill Duval (at SRI in Palo Alto) sent the first Internet computer-to-computer message – The intention was to type “L-O-G" but only "LO" made it across before the remote device crashed.

5. 1972 - The first email was sent.

6. July 1987 - The modern Internet is born from NSFNet

7. July 1, 1988 – The T1 backbone went live, IBM with the Nodes, MCI with the links and Merit made it all work - growth rate was about 20% per month.

8. Aug 6, 1991 - Tim Berners-Lee of CERN launches the first website.

9. 1997 - NSFNet is decommissioned and Network Solutions was contracted to manage domain name registration.

10. Today, 2008 - Over 2 billion people are online with excess of 500 million devices - not including laptops, servers and PDAs which probably add another 1+ billion devices.

One of Pingsta’s core objectives is to celebrate all those that have helped to create (and continue to sustain) the Internet. As such, It is with great pleasure that Pingsta hereby honors the following fifty extraordinary engineers by bestowing upon them the inaugural Pingsta Hall of Fame membership for their various contributions to the development of the Internet;

1. Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (1915 - 1990)
2. Ivan Edward Sutherland
3. Donald Watts Davies (1924 - 2000)
4. Paul Baran
5. Leonard Kleinrock
6. Robert W. Taylor
7. Lawrence G. Roberts
8. Charley Klein
9. Jon Postel (1943 - 1998)
10. Vint Cerf
11. Robert Elliot Khan
12. Dave Walden
13. Douglas C. Engelbart
14. Dan Murphy
15. George O. Strawn
16. Doug Gale
17. John Connolly
18. Gordon Gallup
19. Eric M. Aupperle
20. Hans-Werner Braun
21. Stephen Wolff
22. Ira Richer
23. Jane Caviness
24. Karen Sandberg
25. William Yeager
26. Andy Bechtolsheim
27. Tom Rindfleisch
28. Les Earnest
29. Len Bosack
30. Sandra Lerner
31. Kirk Lougheed
32. Jeff Mogul
33. Bill Nowicki
34. Benjy Levy
35. Philip Almquist
36. Greg Satz
37. Noel Chiappa
38. Robert Metcalfe
39. David Reeves Boggs
40. Chuck Thacker
41. Butler Lampson
42. Tim Berners-Lee
43. Robert Cailliau
44. Marc Andreessen
45. Eric Bina
46. Larry Smarr
47. Paul Mockapetris
48. Bill Joy
49. Ken Thompson
50. Dennis Ritchie

Please join Pingsta in saluting these exceptional individuals for their contribution to the development of mankind.

Sincerely
Peter Alfred-Adekeye
CEO, Pingsta

The Glue

2008-08-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

People who have kept the internet up and running have always had different names for themselves; internetwork engineers, web pros, router jocks, the list goes on and on. But recently, a new term has been coined to describe the hardworking people behind the scenes who keep our essential Internet infrastructure up and running: The Glue. When you think about it, this term makes the most sense, and truly describes what we do in the shadows.

Today, the world expects everything to be on the Internet –not only their music and movies but also essentials like medical records, bank accounts and vital personal data. People want to access all their data at any time, through any media from anywhere. As the Glue, network engineers are responsible for keeping people unfamiliar with technology meshed with the complicated system on which they depend. So good job Pingsta Members, you are the essential, and more importantly, top of the line Glue of the world.

-Will

The Pingsta Fun Fact

2008-08-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

Many members may have breezed right over the login screen while accessing their Pingsta account, totally missing the Pingsta ICE™ fun fact of the week. This week’s fun fact describes one particular member, who has earned over fifteen thousand dollars in the last few weeks by using Pingsta ICE™. This engineer has made enough to surpass the monthly income of an engineer at any major telecommunications company, just by leisurely sitting at their computer, wherever they wanted, at their own convenience.

This simple fact solidifies the message and technology that Pingsta ICE™ brings to the world. The future is here, and Pingsta members can now truly work from anywhere on the planet, and more importantly on their own time, to monetize their knowledge. The opportunity is now, and the possibilities for personal gain are limitless.

-Will

Pingsta ICE is Out of Beta

2008-08-07T13:09:00.000-07:00

Pingsta ICE is finally out of Beta status, fully ready for the enterprise! The entire Pingsta team have been working ferociously over the past few months, dotting the Is and crossing the Ts and finally, the wait is over. The time to truly empower the world is here.

Pingsta members can now expect a full array of break-fix, consulting and R&D tasks from some of the largest and most prestigious service providers and enterprises across the globe.

So Pingsta members: you worked hard to become industry-experts, get out there and start monetizing your knowledge by Pingsta ICE-ing from anywhere in the world through any media.

-Will

Pingsta From Around the World

2008-05-05T16:08:00.000-07:00

Over the past year, Pingsta has attracted members from around the world, and has become a truly global community of technology professionals. Here at Pingsta we firmly believe in bringing the best problem solvers and the highest quality networking solutions to the market, no matter where the talent is located.

Pingsta has members walking on 5 continents around the world, spreading the technology footprint. From New York to Paris, Kenya to San Francisco and everywhere in between, the Pingsta Team has sought out the best and brightest to solve the worlds more complex networking problems. So congratulations, Pingsta members, and welcome to this unique circle of global talent.

Pingsta unveils Pingsta ICE™- Intellectual Commerce Ecosystem.

2008-04-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

Wouldn’t it be great if you could work from anywhere in the world, at anytime? From a café in Paris, from a waterfront bungalow overlooking the sea in the Polynesian Islands, or from the comfort of your very own living room. With the launch of Pingsta ICE™, members can do just that. Pingsta members can monetize their knowledge, expand their intellectual legacy and earn a living.

Pingsta ICE™ allows participating members to select tasks to be resolved based on their own expertise. Tasks to be resolved include break-fix, consulting, and R&D challenges. At Pingsta ICE™, participating engineers bring their own know-how and together as a community, Pingsta offers a surge of engineering capacity. So, what are you waiting for? Join Pingsta ICE™. And continue to share and expand your expertise and empower the world.

New Feature - Pingsta User Groups

2008-04-09T15:40:00.000-07:00

Do you run after a stressful day at work, just to unwind a little? Do you find playing with a pet makes all your woes disappear? Maybe it’s a movie and a nap that helps you relax. Whatever it is, Pingsta’s technology based social network proudly introduces the group function, where members can join together and discuss their favorite activities and things they love.

Pingsta has always prided itself on a high level of professionalism and the ability to solve problems, but everyone needs a little time to unwind. The group function will allow Internetwork professionals to find a commonality with other members around things like relaxation, common interests or anything else. From pet preference to the best sports teams, get on and connect with people who feel the same way you do about the world around you.

-Will

pingBox 0.1 is launched

2008-01-07T17:01:00.000-08:00

FYI... Pingsta recently launched pingBox 0.1 to facilitate intra-Pingsta communication.

What is the "Ping Me" feature?
The Ping Me feature is an intra-pingsta communication tool that allows you to "Ping" other Pingsta members and send them short messages.

How does it work?
Click on the Ping Me button from the people page, enter your message in the displayed form and send. Your message will be sent to the user's Pingsta pingBox and a copy will also be forwarded to their regular email inbox.

How do I track my Pings?
All your sent and received pings are stored in your pingBox.

For more information on pingBox and other Pingsta features, go to http://pingsta.com/help.

Happy pinging!

Deka

Pingsta Mailserver Malicious Attack - Update

2008-01-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

Our investigation has revealed that the cause of yesterday's mailblast incident was a malicious attack on our mailserver sourced (or spoofed) from 202.71.201.178 which resolves to en201178.uac63.hknet.com. Our engineers are currently taking all necessary steps to ensure that this never happens again.

Once again, we apologize profusely to all those that were impacted by this incident and we are most grateful for the relentless support we've received from our members and ecosystem.

We've learnt a few lessons from this incident that will no doubt make us stronger and improve the Pingsta experience for all.

Sincerely,
Peter and the Pingsta team.

PS. What a way to start the new year! :-)

Pingsta mailserver bug

2008-01-01T21:09:00.000-08:00

All,

Within the last hour, we have been experiencing a bug in our mail-servers that is causing multiple copies of unwarranted Pingsta invitations to be sent out. We ask that you please bear with us as we investigate the root cause of this issue.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Happy new year
Peter :-(

mySolvr is live!

2007-11-20T13:05:00.000-08:00

In case you’re wondering why we’ve been so quiet over the past couple of months, it's because we’ve been working tirelessly to launch mySolvr – Pingsta's open repository of internetwork intelligence.

As you may know, the lack of an openly available repository of internetwork intelligence that is comprehensive, organized and validated is the key driver for this core Pingsta objective.

Thus, we invite network engineers and enthusiasts alike from all corners of the world to sign up to mySolvr - it's free and open to all - and start submitting entries today so that the world can benefit from our collective intellectual capital.

See mySolvr FAQ for more information.

Enjoy,
Peter :-)

Weekly Weigh-In #6 - The "Self-Healing" Internet

2007-08-09T15:53:00.000-07:00

Any business that relies heavily on web apps and services needs to have a safety net. This was made abundantly clear this week when we saw cisco.com of all sites offline for a little under three hours during U.S. business hours.

Cisco’s PR team posted the following message:

"We have traced the cause of the issue to an accident during maintenance of a San Jose data center that resulted in a power outage in that facility."

Now, irrespective of the amount of money that they, their partners and their clients lost while the site was down (which after doing a little research could potentially be quite a lot) this begs the question: what happened to redundancy, traffic engineering, distributed networking, the self-healing network, etc?

Cisco as the giant networking company must surely have failovers in place to prevent this kind of scenario and they of all people should know that a well designed network infrastructure will not have the failover backup data center in the same locale, state or even country.

Regardless of the reason(s)-for-outage, we have to seriously start considering how to make the Internet openly self-healing. My rudimentary thoughts on this include a possible scenario where web servers from across the world serve as "peer-to-peer cache-servers" for other websites, such that when a user requests a page from pingsta.com for example and that particular page is temporarily unavailable for whatever reason, any other non-pingsta web server closest to the user geographically can present the most recently cached copy of that page seamlesly.

Thoughts?

Owen

Weekly Weigh-in #5: Google vs. Verizon, AT&T, etc...

2007-07-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

The FCC is getting prepared to auction off the 700MHz spectrum, and as all the likely bidders (AT&T, Verizon, etc...) are reaching into their deep pockets, happy with the lack of governmental restrictions, Google is asking that certain conditions be set ahead of time in exchange for a substantially high minimum bid.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently sent a letter to FCC chairman Kevin Martin explaining that if the FCC wants their $4.6 billion minimum bid to be considered for a part of the UHF TV spectrum they “should extend all CRMS-type spectrum licensees clearly delineated, explicitly enforceable, and unwavering obligations to provide (1) open applications, (2) open devices, (3) open wholesale services, and (4) open network access.”
Google's most vocal opponent has been Verizon (who has recently said they are willing to consider some, but not all of the obligations) throughout this whole debate.

This begs the question: What's in it for Google? If the FCC accepts their obligations, is this the first step towards a free-for-all Google VoIP phone?

Update: As it stands now, it appears that the FCC will take its chances and not accept all of Google's conditions.

Weekly Weigh-In #4: iPhone + AT&T = poor service???

2007-07-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

The hype surrounding the recently released Apple iPhone has created quite a stir around the office. Of course, some of us (hmm,hmm Dieter) can’t wait to get one, while others (who are undeniably envious of new toys) believe it to be overrated.

But rather than join this perennial debate, we would like to draw your attention to the network outages that AT&T customers experienced shortly after the release of the iPhone.

While some people have speculated that AT&T's network issues were due to the pressure of thousands of people activating their new Apple iPhones at the same time, AT&T representatives had this to say about the wireless data outage on their network: "Don't blame the iPhone"... There was a technical issue in the network, but it had nothing to do with the iPhone." It turns out that AT&T's euphemistic phrase "EDGE is down" was in fact "AT&T data routing system is down"!

I'm of the opinion that AT&T should have anticipated the strain that this surge was going to put on its network, and should have dedicated the necessary resources (AT&T is not exactly penny-pinching when it comes to buying other companies) to ensure a stable network. Instead, they played this "Let's-wait-and-see-what-happens" game and it seems when the network crashed they at least had their PR crisis management in gear.

So I invite you all to:

1. Join me in venting against the poor services we, The Consumers, have to put up with (especially when we pay a premium price for those services)
2. Offer any opposing view that will make iPhones users feel warm & safe
3. (wait... there is NO third option! Sorry "third-option-people")

/deka

Weekly Weigh-In #3: Software vulnerability auctions vs. ethical disclosures

2007-07-11T22:25:00.000-07:00

A week ago, a Swiss company by the name of Wabi Sabi Labi (gotta love the name) launched an Ebay-style marketplace for software vulnerabilities. They allow anyone with a verified security flaw to auction it off on their site. Wow!

While I find this very discomforting because of the potential for exploitation of such defects by unscrupulous 'buyers', I believe researchers should be compensated adequately by software manufacturers for "ethical disclosures" that end up improving software quality.

Fact: 99% of all bugs are customer-found.

Software is imperfect because we are imperfect, thus, defects are here to stay. Therefore, anyone that helps to "dev test" a software to the point of identifying a flaw should be compensated (and possibly offered a job) for their hard work.

Although I do not condone the WSL marketplace, I do understand why it came about. It is a logical reaction to the lack of fair recognition that is currently given to members of the public that point out software flaws to manufacturers.

The fair thing to do would be for WSL to offer software OEMs the chance to "buy" vulnerabilities offline before resorting to publicly offerings. On the flip side of this, I guess researchers can now add WSL to their list of leverage points when negotiating software OEMs.

Thoughts?
/Peter

Pingsta Globetrotter

2007-07-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

Over the past year I've had the opportunity to travel quite a bit (ahh, the luxury of studying abroad while in college). During my free weekends I traveled around Europe, even spending my spring break in sunny Malta. Loving travel as much as I do, I can't help but remark how great it is that in our day and age I don't have to be confined to a desk at all times to get my work done.

Most recently I spent a week in the Big Apple, both touring and working in the city. I find it is an amazing feeling to always have the capability to be connected with the people we want or need to reach. I can easily email someone with an idea as I am waiting for the light to turn green in Times Square, how much better can life get for an aspiring globetrotter? Granted not everyone has the luxury of being able to work away from the physical office, but with the latest and greatest online tools becoming ubiquitous we no longer have to stay chained to a desk or locked away in a corner office.

Fortunately for me, Pingsta embodies and embraces new forms of collaboration. We - the Pingsta team - are spread out throughout the continent, some of us have never even met in person, yet we are able to collaborate as conveniently as if we were all in the same room. Call me an optimist or even an idealist, but I think it's fantastic to be experiencing this virtualization revolution firsthand!

Cheers,
Owen