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What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, July 29, 2019)

Every week, I compile a list of events for developers, technologists, tech entrepreneurs, and nerds in and around the Tampa Bay area. We’ve got a lot of events going on this week, and here they are!

This weekly list is posted as a voluntary service to the Tampa tech community. With the notable exceptions of Tampa iOS Meetup and Coders, Creatives and Craft Beer — both of which I run — most of this information comes from Meetup.com, EventBrite, and other local event announcement sites. I can’t guarantee the accuracy of the dates and times listed here; if you want to be absolutely sure that the event you’re interested in is actually taking place, please contact the organizers!

Monday, July 29

Tuesday, July 30

Wednesday, July 31

Thursday, August 1

Friday, August 2

Saturday, August 3

Sunday, August 4

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Don’t ask us, ask these security experts: the security principles behind Hyve

In case you hadn’t yet heard, I’m on a Startup Bus team, Hyve. We built an anti-email abuse system that uses virtual disposable email addresses (DEAs) — in three days, and on a bus.

Hyve is based on a long-standing email security principle: use different email addresses that are dedicated to single uses. The reason that most of us don’t do this is because it’s a cumbersome, painful process. Hyve automates the creation of virtual email intermediaries that you use to connect to or sign into services, and you can mute them if you need a little silence or delete them if you need to cut off spam, annoyances, or other email abuse.

You might be asking: “Does Hyve’s underlying principle actually work?” Don’t ask us — ask the security experts below.

Spoiler: YES.

Huffington Post: The Simple Email Trick that Identity Thieves Hate

Email is personally identifiable information — why are you using it as the way to identify yourself to parties who are likely to sell it? Don’t use your primary email address to log into services — create a secret one solely for that purpose.

Wallethacks: Why I Have a Secret “Classified” Email Address

The author’s use of different email addresses for different kinds of services is borrowed from a U.S. government security principle: use classified and unclassified systems, and keep them separate. This means creating separate email addresses for secure and sensitive purposes such as banking, and never using these addresses for anything other than their designated purpose.

Lifehacker: Use a Unique, Secure Email Address Solely for Password Recovery

When you click “I forgot my password” on a login screen, you’re often sent a password recovery link via email. With the prevalence — and profitability — of social engineering attacks, it makes sense to use an email address that nobody else knows.

Securosis blog: Consumer Security Tip – Use Multiple Email Accounts To Reduce Fraud And Spam

Lots of interesting ideas in this article. The main idea behind this article is to use different email addresses for different purposes, such as:

  • An address for buying online when you don’t trust the store: Another Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail address you use for risky online purchases, and nothing else. That way, if a site you use is compromised you can easily change addresses without too much difficulty. These are the smaller online retailers you don’t really know or trust as much as Amazon and Ebay.
  • An address for trusted retailers: This is your Amazon, Ebay, and Apple address- one you use to buy things from major retailers. This can be the same as your permanent address. Let’s be realistic, I use a few major retail sites and have never had any problems with spam or fraud by letting them use my main address. Yes, it’s a risk if they get breached, but it’s one I’m willing to take for a small group of stores I use more frequently. If you do this, make sure you opt out of any of their marketing emails. This is in your account preferences when you log in.
  • An address for email subscriptions: This is for newsletters, fora, and other sites where your email might not be private.

Sign up for Hyve today!

Despite the fact that Hyve came into being over a three-day trip on a bus taking a zig-zag route through the southeast U.S., we have a working product that we’d love to have you try out! Come to our site, Hyve.email, and sign up for the cure to spam and other email bad actors.

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Our Startup Bus 2019 competition entry: Hyve!

Sometimes the best apps simply take a tried-and-true manual process, automate it, and make it easy to use. That’s the general idea behind Hyve, the project that I’m working with my team at Startup Bus 2019.

The general principle behind Hyve: disposable email addresses

Hyve is based on a tried-and-true technique known as disposable email addresses. It’s a pretty simple idea — instead of connecting to everyone using just one email address, you use a different email address for each contact or purpose. For example, you’d use one email address for Amazon, a different one for your bank, a different one for your friends, a different one for the newsletter you subscribe to, and so on.

The power of disposable email addresses is that if a contact gets too spammy, all you have to do is simply close or stop using the email account associated with them.

Some people create disposable email addresses by creating a whole new Gmail or Hotmail email account for each purpose, but that means managing a number of email logins and inboxes. This approach gets pretty unwieldy very quickly.

The better approach is to create virtual disposable email addresses. These are things that behave like email addresses, but forward email sent to them to your real email address. If you have access to your mail server and some technical skill, you can configure your own. For the rest of us, there are virtual disposable email address services, but most are difficult to use and pay almost no attention to user-friendliness.

Hyve makes it easy

Click the diagram to see it at full size.

Hyve gives you the power of disposable email addresses, but without the tedious mail server configuration work or user-unfriendly interfaces. With Hyve, you can create a new virtual email address in seconds, and then use it to connect to whatever you want: an online store, a subscription service, or even a person.

Any email sent to one of your Hyve email addresses gets sent to your real email address. Hyve is a true double-blind system, which means that you can also use a Hyve email address to send mail that appears to come from your virtual email address.

If you want to keep communicating with someone via Hyve, you don’t have to do anything. If you need a temporary break from someone who’s linked to you via Hyve, you can mute them. And if you need to never, ever again hear from someone connected to you via Hyve, just delete the virtual email address. You’ll never hear from them again, and they’ll won’t be able to reach you.

Sign up for Hyve today!

Despite the fact that Hyve came into being over a three-day trip on a bus taking a zig-zag route through the southeast U.S., we have a working product that we’d love to have you try out! Come to our site, Hyve.email, and sign up for the cure to spam and other email bad actors.

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Notes for Startup Bus 2019: The lesson from my last hackathon, should non-coders join, and how to brainstorm

This is one of a series of articles leading up to the 10th annual Startup Busevent, which takes place from Wednesday, July 24 though Sunday, July 28th. I’ll be on the Florida Startup Bus, where I’ll be a hustler with a group that will spend three days on a bus, building a software, a business model, and a pitch, all of which we’ll present before a panel of judges in New Orleans! I hope these articles convince people to join Startup Bus, inspire the “Buspreneurs” who will be participating, and get the rest of you to find out more.

I’m on the Startup Bus! Tampa to New Orleans - Wednesday, July 24 - Sunday, July 28.

The Startup Buses depart tomorrow! I’m going to be on the Florida bus, which departs from Tampa and after taking a not-very-direct route, arrives in New Orleans on Friday, with the judging happening on Saturday. Here are the last of my pre-event notes on Startup Bus — watch this space as I post from the road!

The lesson from my last hackathon

Click the photo to see the original article.

My big lesson from my win at “Makers Hustle Harder” hackathon in March 2017: Simple and working beats complex and non-functional.

In 2017, GM (yes, the auto manufacturer) held “Makers Hustle Harder” hackathons in a handful of cities to see what people could build on their NGI in-car console systems. They held one of them in Tampa, and I offered to help a friend work on his app idea. I did that for most of the day, and with a couple of hours left, I came up with a goofy idea that I could whip up in very little time.

The app I put together was simple: it was a timer for the game classically known as the “Chinese Fire Drill”:

  • Four people get in the car, close the doors, and someone starts the app.
  • When everyone’s ready, someone in the front presses the app’s start button on the console touch screen.
  • If any of the doors are open when the start button is pressed, the players will be told to close all the doors first (the game makes use of the car’s door sensors).
  • If all the doors are closed when the start button is pressed, the game begins.
  • Players exit the car, run around it once, return to their original seat, and close their doors.
  • The game ends when all four doors are closed, at which point the time it took them to complete the drill is displayed.

The app wasn’t pretty, but that’s not what hackathons are about — they’re about working code in the time allotted. If you’d like to see the code, I’ve put it in a repo on my GitHub account.

An hour later, I had working code, an available vehicle, three other people to playtest the game with me, and two camera operators to record video of a test runs. We played the game twice, and we were giggling all the time. In the end, I won the “Judges’ Fetish” prize!

That lesson again: simple and working beats complex and non-functional.

Should non-coders join Startup Bus?

Yes, and if you don’t believe me, these links might help convince you:

How to brainstorm

A key part of hackathons is brainstorming. You may find these links helpful.

 

 

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If debugging with print statements is good enough for Linus, Guido, and “Uncle Bob”, it’s good enough for me

Click the image to see it at full size.

Citations:

Found in a tweet by Katerina Borodina, found via Bernie Marger.

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Notes for Startup Bus 2019: Con’s video series on Startup Bus 2013

This is one of a series of articles leading up to the 10th annual Startup Busevent, which takes place from Wednesday, July 24 though Sunday, July 28th. I’ll be on the Florida Startup Bus, where I’ll be a hustler with a group that will spend three days on a bus, building a software, a business model, and a pitch, all of which we’ll present before a panel of judges in New Orleans! I hope these articles convince people to join Startup Bus, inspire the “Buspreneurs” who will be participating, and get the rest of you to find out more.

I’m on the Startup Bus! Tampa to New Orleans - Wednesday, July 24 - Sunday, July 28.

On Saturday, I pointed you to the StartUp podcast’s episodes on Startup Bus 2017 (and if you haven’t heard them yet, go listen now!). Today, I’m pointing you to another documentary on the bus — Coin’s series on Startup Bus 2013. There’s a lot to watch, what with about three hours of main content recorded during the event and an hour of follow-up interviews with the organizers.

Here’s episode 1:

Here’s a bonus episode, featuring the complete set of intro pitches:

Episode 2:

Episode 3:

Episode 4:

Episode 5:

Episode 6:

If those six episodes weren’t enough for you, there’s more: three episodes of the “round table”, where the Startup Bus conductors share their observations and opinions. For those of you who are from Tampa Bay, this features a couple of local heroes: Mitch Neff and Greg Ross-Munro (CEO of Sourcetoad):

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Notes for Startup Bus 2019: Coming up with your Startup Bus idea

This is one of a series of articles leading up to the 10th annual Startup Busevent, which takes place from Wednesday, July 24 though Sunday, July 28th. I’ll be on the Florida Startup Bus, where I’ll be a hustler with a group that will spend three days on a bus, building a software, a business model, and a pitch, all of which we’ll present before a panel of judges in New Orleans! I hope these articles convince people to join Startup Bus, inspire the “Buspreneurs” who will be participating, and get these rest of you to find out more.

I’m on the Startup Bus! Tampa to New Orleans - Wednesday, July 24 - Sunday, July 28.

In the previous post in this series, I pointed to the StartUp podcast’s series of podcasts covering the New York bus from Startup Bus 2017. The idea for the winner — Daisy, the app that helps people manage a funeral and all the attendant tasks involved — came up with the idea on the first morning, because she was thinking of her father who had cancer (he’s since gotten better). This brings up an important question for buspreneurs: How will you come up with your startup idea?

To assist my fellow buspreneurs, I’ve compiled a list of sources for ideas. I’m not making any promises or guarantees about the quality, practicality, or viability of the ideas from these sources, but they may serve as an excellent starting point for your brainstorming.

Here’s a list of articles on app ideas for 2019:

If that list doesn’t help, perhaps these “idea warehouse” sites might:

And failing that, here’s a list of “how to come up with ideas for your tech startup” articles: