Episode 71: Magic Book, Lift57, Social Media Coop Detroit

IT in the D, Episode 71 Our next to last show of the year, and we had a lot of fun with our guests tonight talking about the latest things that caught our eye and what they’ve got going on around the area.  Thanks to our guests Marjorie Knepp, Christina York, Sean Yalda, Seth Archambault and Billy Strawter for joining us… As always, our opening segment was a little bit of everything that’s gotten our attention over the past week.  Conspiracy theories surrounding the Sony hack, North Korea getting knocked off the internet, NASA and the emailed wrench, the dust up with the owner of Detroit BBQ and social media, and all sorts of other fun. Next up, we dove in with the folks behind Magic Book, recent winners of Startup Weekend who are trying to do something definitely worthwhile.  MagicBook engages children with books by bringing stories to life via your smartphone or tablet. The idea is that a child can pick a book off their shelf, point a smartphone camera at it and when they do, something magical happens – the book comes alive! Animation, sound, and actual interaction with the characters can take place.  Give it a look at http://www.getmagicbook.co/ Then we shifted gears a little bit to talk about Lift57.  Their consulting services can help you with change management, operational planning, roadmap development, and a whole host of other services.  You can check it out at http://www.lift57.com/ In our last segment, we chatted with regular guest Billy Strawter of Social Coop Media to talk about…well, he couldn’t actually talk about what he’s got in the works right now, so we just had some fun general chatter with him about all sorts of things.  Catch his company at http://socialcoopmedia.com/ [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/182824213″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] As always, we can be found: On the web: http://www.ITinTheD.com On Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/ITintheD/  On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/IT-in-D-Read-Meet-91763  On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ITintheD  On Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ITintheD  On Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/itinthed/  The stories we discussed tonight…and some we didn’t have time for: Sony: Interesting theory swirling. Feb: Sony announces massive layoffs…including a number of SysAdmins: http://www.10news.com/news/sony-electronics-announces-layoffs-400-affected-in-san-diego-office-022614 Then: People are dumb, passwords aren’t changed, access isn’t revoked Now: Sony is hacked, apparently through the compromise of SysAdmin IDs Theory: Disgruntled, laid off employees sold access to the hackers, which worked because of lax security policies Also, N Korea loses internet access today Also, Anonymous says they’ll just release The Interview for Sony: http://uproxx.com/movies/2014/12/anonymous-north-korea-plan-release-the-interview/ New beer called “Problem Solver” tells you when you’re at your peak problem solving capability (.075 BAC) http://www.medicaldaily.com/beer-creativity-problem-solver-comes-scale-measure-when-youre-your-creative-peak-315154 Beyond firearms, of course, TSA officers encounter an extremely wide variety of other prohibited items at airport checkpoints, including machetes, hatchets, swords, giant scissors, brass knuckles, cannonballs, bear repellant and, this past October, an unloaded cannon: http://www.runwaygirlnetwork.com/2014/12/18/guns-cannons-swords-tsa-record-breaking-haul-2014/ Snowden’s leaks seriously screwed up law enforcement in the UK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11300936/GCHQ-warns-serious-criminals-have-been-lost-in-wake-of-Edward-Snowden-leaks.html Before Google, there were librarians: http://www.npr.org/blogs/theprotojournalist/2014/12/20/371851621/before-google-who-knew Dude in Taiwan is 3d printing a 26 foot boat using 30 3d printers to kick out over 100,000 pieces: http://3dprint.com/32185/3d-printed-boat-peng/ NASA emailed specs for a wrench to the space station, 3d printed, works: http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/19/tech/feat-3d-wrench-nasa/ That was easy: Staples breached, 1.16 million credit cards swiped: http://fortune.com/2014/12/19/staples-cards-affected-breach/ ICANN root servers compromised in November: http://threatpost.com/attackers-compromise-icann-access-zone-files-system/109941 So you paid $45 to Verizon for complete end to end encryption, eh? Still has a backdoor: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-12-15/verizons-new-encrypted-calling-app-plays-nice-with-the-nsa Detroit BBQ owner, Facebook, comments, Yelp flameout and more: http://detroit.eater.com/2014/12/22/7434233/detroit-bbq-company-owner-in-hot-water-over-social-media-comments and http://www.metrotimes.com/Blogs/archives/2014/12/22/why-detroit-bbq-company-is-being-unfairly-targeted Pirate Bay coming back online: http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-domain-back-online-waving-a-pirate-flag-141221/ …and you can run your own Pirate Bay! http://openbay.isohunt.to/ TekDry: http://www.tekdry.com/detroit-mi.html Little town in China produces 60% of all Christmas decorations, most workers have no idea what they are: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2014/dec/19/santas-real-workshop-the-town-in-china-that-makes-the-worlds-christmas-decorations Instagram purges fake accounts, Facebook next? http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/technology/social/bieber-instagram/index.html Amazon launches 1 hour delivery in NYC: http://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-com-launches-superfast-delivery-in-nyc-1418903192 How Activision spawned from Atari; http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision#History