Cobia Community Blog

It's time for your 15 minutes of fame!

You've heard the saying, that old Andy Warhol phrase everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. More commonly we hear about peoples' fifteen minutes of fame.

So, you might be asking; "When do I get my fifteen minutes of fame?" Well, this is your lucky day. You could be the winner of our new Cobia contest Real World Cobia!

Our crack marketing team (and your's truly) were locked away for months in our StillSecure think tank coming up with this next great promotion. We tried every kind of idea: Where in the world is Cobia?, I want my Cobia TV module, Cobia for the masses, Yellow Cobia Submarine, iCobia, Lucy in the Sky with Cobia, and my personal favorite You Can Tune A Cobia but you Can't Tuna Fish. But as always, the best ideas won out and Real World Cobia was selected.

How do you win? Well, send us your Cobia story. How you use Cobia at home, work or school. Where you use Cobia, such as in a lab, at customers sites, in the classroom, or in your own business network. Tell us about your experience. What happened when you downloaded? Did Cobia install as easily as we said it would? What's your favorite thing about Cobia? What else would you like Cobia to do? Have you checked out the source code or even begun developing enhancements, or better yet, your own module.? Tell us whatever you like, and what new capabilities you'd like to see in Cobia. Most importantly, tell us how Cobia is changing your network, your personal work, and your world!

You can send us your Real World Cobia entry in a variety of forms; a simple email or text write up, a web site or blog entry, your podcast, a music video, an article, video blog, essay or white paper. Make it a project for one of your assignments in college and kill two birds with one stone. Tell your boss it's the new network architecture you've been secretly working on in the lab that saves the company a TON of money. Hey, get some fame and be a company hero all at the same time! As long as we get your story before the deadline, and we can share your Cobia experience with others, that's what we are looking for.

What can you win? Most importantly, all the fame and notoriety that comes with winning a prestigious StillSecure contest like Real World Cobia. Plus we'll be telling everyone that you are a winner and you rock because you use Cobia! We are also giving away some great prizes; the choice of a digital camera, Apple TV, or a digital MP3 watch. The prizes are cool stuff.

Read the web site for more contest information, rules and deadlines.

Thanks for joining in on all the fun. All us here are looking forward to reading and watching your Real World Cobia entries. I personally have a lot riding on this promotion, because next time I'm really pulling hard for the You Can Tune A Cobia but you Can't Tuna Fish contest idea. Wish me luck! And best of luck to all of you who enter.

Cobia partner VMware IPOs today - Virtualization is Real

VMware came out with their IPO today. With an initial strike price of $29 it soared up to $55. We'll have to see what the closing price is at the end of the day and they are off to a great start.

First, congratulations to VMware. They are a partner of StillSecure's through our Cobia VMware certification and Strata Guard VMware versions. VMware's IPO is important for several reasons. In addition to serving as a funding and investment event for VMware, it also validates the market for virtualization and promises for a strong future.

I truly believe that virtualization will not only fundamentally change the IT server market but also networking and security. Thinking of a particular hardware appliance only having a fixed set of features is something we won't miss in the not too distant future. In large part those days are here with Cobia, both as a hardware appliance and as a software option. It also sets the stage for many future innovations in virtualization - we've only seen the beginning in many respects.

Congratulations to Vmware on their IPO.

Note: I have a few more thoughts on this on my personal blog if you're interested.

LinuxWorld and Black Hat - two big successes

Last week StillSecure had our first presence at LinuxWorld in San Francisco. This, right on the heels of our week at Black Hat in Las Vegas, the week prior. Overall both events were hugely successful for us and getting the word out about Cobia.

LinuxWorld has a much different feel (not different - bad, just different) than Black Hat. Networking and security are subtopics at LW, as you can imagine, but still very topical all the same. BH of course is intensely about security, so on the whole both conferences were very good venues to discuss Cobia and StillSecure's security products, Safe Access, Strata Guard and VAM.

We were joined by Cobia user advocates, such as Glenn Kelly from Vine Hosting (www.vinehosting.com), who brought a unique viewpoint of someone who is deploying and running Cobia every day in his customers' networks. We had lots of opportunities to talk with many who have already downloaded Cobia and are using it or testing it in their networks. Leslie, a StillSecure UI designer from our user interface design team, also met with several attendees to do product testing on UI screens for current and future Cobia modules. FYI - If this is something you would like to participate in (many people are surprised at how much of their feedback makes it into our UI designs), we'd love to include you in our product design process. Product testing is something we do constantly, but I digress... And of course the StillSecure marketing team did a bang up job for both events, including our highly popular "Cisco hates my network" and "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas... unless you catch a virus" t-shirts. I think every Cisco competitor, and a few current Cisco employees, dropped by to ask for a t-shirt. (If you want one, drop me an email with shirt size and mailing address.)

Overall, two great conferences for StillSecure's Cobia. Most importantly, we had lots of opportunities to meet and interact with current and future Cobia users. Thanks to our customers and partners who dropped by to say hello, and thanks to everyone for stopping by!