Conrad Egusa is not a VB writer. He contributed a couple guest posts in recent years, and he may have done some other writing for us, but it was more than 3 years ago.
Look, if you REALLY want to get featured on VB (or any other site), connections are almost beside the point, anyhow. It all comes down to your product (is it important? does it work?) and your story (is it interesting? are you available to talk about yourself and your company?). There's no special trick to getting press other than being press-worthy, press-ready, and respectful.
This is awesome. I appreciate that it's not just another checkin/dating/blathering-with-existing-friends app, but that if used correctly, it might make one smarter. Goon on ya for that.
What other titles might you add in the future? (I'm [email protected] if you'd like to discuss further btw.)
That the FBI gets data about supposed criminals from mobile carriers? That they usually have something like a warrant or probable cause to do so?
I'm all about carrying a torch & pitchfork when it's necessary, but I find other government-sponsored BS (SOPA, for example) a bit more compelling & troublesome at the moment. From everything I've seen in corporate spy guides, it seems unlikely that the government is watching your every move if you're not doing something wrong or at least suspicious. It's not a perfect system, but it's not something to put Carrier IQ out of business for, either.
I've been in touch with CIQ and have written about both sides of the story.
CIQ told me that if the FBI got CIQ's data, they got it from carriers, not from CIQ. It kinda makes sense, since law enforcement work with carriers all the freakin time anyhow.
As someone who spends her entire day writing and reading blog posts and has developed a love/hate relationship with blogging, I think "shut the blog up" is pretty satisfying and appropriate for Internet usage.
RMS is a delightful man (I've had the pleasure of interviewing him at length in person), and his demands are completely in line with his philosophies. His dedication to free and open-source ideals, if impractical, is also inspiring and rare.
Saying he has "a retarded way of dealing with people" is perhaps too general. I myself found him enchanting and enlightening in our interactions. Maybe you just didn't like the way he treated you.
In other words, I tried to make it interesting to a technical audience but still comprehensible to the average reader. I'm working on a more technical "how to get started with Node" post with code samples; that should be up in a couple weeks.
Why are we assuming that a tech conference should be anyone's sexual playground, be they male or female? Also, what's up with all the boy-girl, girl-boy heteronormative assumptions?
At the end of the day, all this site did was show me 2 sexist coders (gasp!) who will likely never have enough respect for women to be able to work with any real women in a collaborative or professional setting.
I had a parallel life -- childhood abuse, fundamentalist upbringing, suicide attempt at 27. I was so angry when I woke up from that attempt in a hospital three days later, but after reading this letter, I know (at least in part) why: I have a responsibility to share that part of my story, too.
The hopelessness in this letter is something I've felt acutely in my life. Heck, MY last letter said roughly the same things.
I came so close to ending up like Bill. I'm sure lots of others out there are thinking about doing the same thing.
We have to figure out a better way to help one another.
It's one thing to say that the magazine has gender parity issues in its coverage, but c'mon - a huge pair of boobs on the cover isn't exactly a step in the right direction.
As someone who reads scores of pitches a week from tech startups, I can't say how much I agree with this.
Most of the pitches I get these days force me to wade through swamps of buzzwords that have become absolutely meaningless. It's enough of a turn-off that I pretty much ignore those pitches -- I figure that if the company had something really exciting to tell me, they'd figure out a way to tell me so within a couple sentences without using endless strings of empty jargon.
In pitching (to journalists, or users, or potential employees), keep in mind the most basic rule of poetry: The fewer the words, the more powerful the statement. I.e., less is more.
Look, if you REALLY want to get featured on VB (or any other site), connections are almost beside the point, anyhow. It all comes down to your product (is it important? does it work?) and your story (is it interesting? are you available to talk about yourself and your company?). There's no special trick to getting press other than being press-worthy, press-ready, and respectful.