Author Archive for Peter Flynn

DDoS Attacks 101

If you have been following the news around WikiLeaks this past week you may have heard a bit about Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. We experienced a DDoS attack firsthand this week on ProfessionL, one of our products, so we thought we’d write a post about what DDoS is, and expand a bit on the back story…

Back Story: The WikiLeaks Fandango

The WikiLeaks founder, Australian born Julian Assange (See NY Times full story on his background) turned himself in to UK officials on the 7^th of December after a international warrant for his arrest warrant was issued by Sweden for rape and molestation charges (more here). This will, in all likelihood, kick off a potentially long protracted battle where Assange will be fighting extradition to Sweden to face the charges. This comes about a week after WikiLeaks released 250,000 diplomatic cables (referred to as “Cablegate”) amidst much controversy which has embarrassed many governments and strained international relations. A lot of media attention has been focused specifically on the cables between the US and Iraq. Shortly before and then again after WikiLeaks went live with Cablegate, it experienced a DDoS attack and went down for some time.

December 10, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

GeekRetreat Stanford – My Personal Experience and Highlights

To summarize – GeekRetreat Stanford completely exceeded my expectations and the organizers ( Heather Ford, Justin Spratt and Eve Dmochowska) deserve special recognition for their vision and approach which achieved such a superb result from such a motley crew of delegates. To expand, read the the rest of this post…

So I left late on Friday and only managed to get to (the very awesome) Stanford Valley Lodge in time to make the end of the first session on Friday evening. I was immediately struck by the amount of stuff that had already been written down on the weekend planning wall and the quality of the discussion which was being being facilitated by Heather. The sessions were arranged into three kinds (I may not have the names exactly right): “Talking Heads” where we randomly where assigned to 3 of 10 possible groups facilitated by a volunteer to discuss a topic of their choosing; “Hot Spot” where 10 people each had 5 minutes to present (one way) an idea/topic/concept of their own choosing; and then finally longer slots (I think they were called “Skills Share”) where topical presentations were given in 1 hour slots. Apart from these more formal sessions, there were also plenty of informal times (including a fantastic visit to The Birkenhead Brewery) – and these are perhaps were the most valuable discussions took place – the discussions arising from the other more formal sessions.

January 18, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

SA consumers ready for eCommerce

The number of Web users in South Africa is growing at a steady pace and, quite significantly, the number of users who have been online for five years or longer is growing too, making a solid case for businesses in this country to begin seriously considering an eCommerce strategy to remain current in a changing market.

So says Pete Flynn, MD of White Wall Web, who says that the growth in the number of users who understand and trust the Internet equates to a target market that is happy to transact online.

December 8, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post

At last we can breathe the word “Twitsumé”

We have really been looking forward to announcing the launch of our new online résumé/CV product called Twitsumé and it has been tough to not say too much. But at last the launch date has arrived and we can tell you all about it. First things first – it’s found at twitsume.com

In a nutshell, Twitsumé.com allows anyone with a Twitter account to connect and create an online résumé/CV (or “Twitsumé”) for all registered Twitsumé.com users to see. They can also see who of their friends and followers have Twitsumés and invite those who do not. Their are public/private settings enabling users to decide which aspects of their Twitsumé can be seen by all registered users and which are hidden.

August 19, 2009 | 1 comment | View Post

Twitter and Facebook down

Yup – it’s true. Twitter has experienced one of the longest outages in years, while Facebook has been experiencing intermittent disruptions for a number of minutes (becoming hours) already today.

The reason for Twitter’s down time is a “denial of service” (DoS) attack according to their status blog.

The reason’s for Facebook being down/disrupted are less clear, but there is some speculation that it is because of the flood of Twitter “refugees” who suddenly went onto Facebook because they could not access Twitter.

At WWW we do wonder if this is in any way related to a substantial Twitter API change made yesterday, although it is unlikely to be directly connected? And the question – “what would the motive be to attack Twitter with a DoS?” The best answer we could come up with is “a hacker who wants to brag to his friends that he was able to bring Twitter to it’s knees.”

We also had to chuckle imagining the Social Media crowd and “Twits” rushing to Facebook and then probably to RSS readers to get their regular information “fix.” Will be interesting to study the traffic flow patterns when things return to normal…

August 6, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post

Software as a Service a good investment in tough times

Software as a Service (SaaS) could well be a favourable business investment to explore in recessionary times and has been driven by the need to find cost-effective, beneficial ways to run businesses.

July 20, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post

NetProphet a great success

When the team at the RAMP Group came up with concept of NetProphet about 8 months ago, we thought it was going to be a big risk, but the potential was just too hard to resist. We decided that White Wall Web and RSAWEB would be willing to commit to sponsoring if we could find other sponsors to make up the difference (between the costs and the sponsorship – a task that proved harder to achieve than we initially presumed). We felt that, if we get 200 delegates to attend, we would have done very, very well…

Then fast foward to today…

400 delegates arrived and queued to get access to the Old Mutual Business School (amazing venue). Some nice touches faciliated an incredibly interactive vibe – a Twitter fountain on the big screen was one, a decent number of breaks was another, a one hour lunch was another and QA sessions when time allowed was another.

A great mix of speakers, some well known, others less known, but all “experts” (or at least passionate and researched) about particular subjects. See the full agenda and speakers on the NetProphet site. Marlon Parker wrote a succint personal account of the days procedings, naming it a “wake up call.”

All the Twitter activity got us top 10 trended on Twitter for about 5-6 hours (we hit 2nd at one point and were 4th overall for the day on #NetProphet).

As a sponsor and organizer, this was incredibly satisfying, especially since the community expressed so much appreciation for our efforts (I trust that we won’t have to lobby so hard next time to get the sponsorship required to run this event).

At RAMP HQ tomorrow I’m sure there will be loads of discussion and post event analysis and we’ll be deciding how to take this event (and brand) from strength to strength. I hope to convince Tim Price (who heads up RAMP Marketing) to blog the story of how NetProphet came about, and how we managed to make it succeed as it did, as a kind of marketing case study.

Mike Stopforth blogged a great endorsement for NetProphet which seems to sum up the sentiment (which is also immensely satisfying).

Right now, I’m about to hit the sack feeling very pleased with our first NetProphet and proud of the amazing team of people I get to spend my working days with.

All presentations, videos, post talk interviews (video) and pics will be up on www.netprophet.org.za shortly.

May 14, 2009 | 11 comments | View Post

White Wall Web sponsors NetProphet

White Wall Web is proud to be sponsoring an exciting new initiative called NetProphet, which aims to educate, inspire creativity and promote the flow of ideas amongst South Africans operating within or investigating the Internet business/technology space.

NetProphet brings together a host of industry experts who will help delegates get a handle on where they see the industry being headed, the technologies and companies investors are interested in, new trends to follow and practical ways to extract maximum business value from the Internet.

NetProphets speaking at the event include Herman Heunis, CEO of Mixit, Arthur Goldstuck, owner of World Wide Worx, social media specialist, Mike Stopforth, Hannes van Rensburg, founding member of Fundamo, Dave Duarte of Huddlemind and Peter Flynn, MD of White Wall Web to name but a few.

Topics to be discussed include:

Why the Digital Going is Good in Bad Times
Harnessing the Social Web for Brands
Successfully Integrating Web and Mobile into Your Media Mix
Software as a Service
The Entrepreneur’s Perspective on Vulture Capital
The Art of Making the Transition to Transacting Online
Opportunities for Entrepreneurs Looking to the Mobile Web

The conference is hosted by the non-profit RAMP Foundation and is FREE to attend (delegates must register at www.netprophet.org.za in order to attend). To find out more, or register for this event, visit www.netprophet.org.za.

April 17, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post