Here Comes The Spam

Since the bog has been up with Wordpress (under 24 hours and only now beginning to be seen by Google) I’ve gotten 46 comments. 41 were spam!

While setting up this new iteration of the blog I made a decision–all my older entries would again be open for comments. A few years ago faced with a plethora of blog spam comments were shut off after a week or two.

You know what spam is, but blog spam? It’s much more insidious!

Did you create your own blog or did a program do it? Could you please respond? 18 – Leila Caracci

Looks harmless, right? Except Leila’s email address says she’s GailWoolfolk@aol.com. There’s more.

My blog’s comment form allows you to enter a website address. Leila/Gail has attached MLBH0TD0G.TK (I have sanitized the site by substituting zeros). There lies the rub.

If that comment had gotten posted, accompanied by that URL, the named website would get a little rub of my Google glory. It would rank a tiny bit higher in searches. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of sites and the effect can become enormous.

I would have spotted this on my own, but WordPress comes with Akismet, a filter which performs the job silently and very well.

This blog is great. How did you come up witht he idea? 6 3 4

That’s another one appealing to my ego. Notice the random numbers at the end to try and throw off filtering. It didn’t work.

Great site! Your writing is so fresh compared to most other bloggers. Thanks for writing when you get the chance to, I’ll be sure to keep visiting!

That’s another with a non-matching email/name combo. The linked website soft sells French Press coffee makers with an affiliate link to Amazon. These folks are resourceful.

Any time anyone has something of value others want a piece of it, like my Google karma. What the Internet does is make tiny inconsequential pieces easy to aggregate. I would guess getting many Geoff’s to post your URL produces significant income for little effort!

Since the bog has been up with WordPress (under 24 hours and only now beginning to be seen by Google) I’ve gotten 46 comments. 41 were spam!

As long as Akismet holds its ground I’ll keep everything open. I am only marginally optimistic.

Apple And HTC: Let The Suits Begin

By keeping programs like Dragon Dictation separated from other functions Apple has made a powerful feature nearly worthless. I love the app. I never use it!

apple-iphone-3g.jpgAs a geek these are exciting times. Smart phones like the iPhone, Androids and Microsoft’s still-to-be-seen efforts are putting major computing in your pocket. They’re powerful enough that I’ve sometimes been guilty of disregarding my dinner companions as I work the phone (actually everything but the phone).

Of course nothing like this happens in a vacuum. Everyone tries to protect their territory. There’s so much my iPhone can do, if only Steve Jobs would say yes!

Seriously, my phone is purposely crippled in many ways.

An example is the Dragon Dictation app. It does an amazing job of translating spoken words to text. Unfortunately Apple says it can’t speak directly to the email or SMS programs. In order to use DD you have to cut and paste.

Though approved by Apple this applet is hidden from the iPhone’s most powerful features. It’s not that the software can’t perform this task, it’s been prohibited from performing it!

By keeping programs like Dragon Dictation separated from other functions Apple has made a powerful feature nearly worthless. I love the app. I never use it!

This is totally Apple’s choice. They could let it happen tomorrow and I’m sure Dragon would have the updated software waiting.
This is just one in a series of arbitrary or puzzling decisions.

Some friends say I should just ‘jailbreak’ the phone–remove Apple’s grip with a simple unauthorized software download. Good idea, though jailbreaking alone will not make this particular software work as it should.

Maybe I own the iPhone, but only under a strict license which says what I can and can’t do, what I can and can’t load into it. It’s as if your Ford was only allowed to use Ford gasoline and could only be repaired with Ford parts. Maybe you should only be able to chill GE water in your GE refrigerator.

Don’t get me wrong, this phone is killer. I love it. I am frustrated though because I can see what is being done to keep Apple as gatekeeper.

Now Apple is reaching out to keep competitors from competing. Yesterday they sued HTC, who makes smartphones under their own name and for others. This has to do with HTC’s phone that use Google’s Android operating system.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.” – Steve Jobs

Apple is enforcing its software patents. That itself is pretty controversial as software patents are a recent ‘innovation’ seemingly granted broadly and with little scrutiny. A software patent case is on its way to the Supreme Court right now.
Though companies with these patents say they are (and probably are) just protecting their investments in research and development, others say patents on software limit innovation.

It’s interesting to hear organizations perceived as liberal, like the Electronic Freedom Foundation use concepts normally reserved for the right.

Software innovation happens without government intervention. Virtually all of the technologies you use now were developed before software was widely viewed as patentable. The Web, email, your word processor and spreadsheet program, instant messaging, or even more technical features like the psychoacoustic encoding and Huffman compression underlying the MP3 standard—all of it was originally developed by enthusiastic programmers, many of whom have formed successful business around such software, none of whom asked the government for a monopoly. So if software authors have a proven track-record of innovation without patents, why force them to use patents? What is the gain from billions of dollars in patent litigation? – http://endsoftpatents.org/

None of this seems to be happening for our (my) benefit.

Why My Blog Traffic Exploded Today!

A confluence of circumstances conspired to raise my totals. The first says a lot about the power of Google

On March 11, 2010 NBC announced this documentary would re-air. More details here.

My blog is my entertainment. I enjoy writing. I enjoy seeing how many people read what I write. Recently that number has been between 1,200 and 1,500 page views a day. Not too shabby, especially when you consider it’s never been mentioned on-the-air during our newscasts! Today I’m at 9,000 11,621 and counting!

A confluence of circumstances conspired to raise my totals. The first says a lot about the power of Google.

brokaw-google.pngI watched the Tom Brokaw documentary about Gander, Newfoundland on September 11, 2001 tonight (and wrote this about that remarkable doc). On a Saturday afternoon there aren’t too many people writing abut what’s on TV, but there were a lot of people interested in this documentary.

When I ‘publish’ an entry word is automatically sent to Google and its competitors. My pages are in Google’s index in minutes. Usually on popular topics I’m drowned out by more powerful websites. Today, if you searched for “Brokaw, Gander” this site was number one or two (it changed during the day).

I experienced this once before when I wrote about Ashlee Simpson’s lip sync debacle on Saturday Night Live. My East Coast entry was up early and pulled lots of traffic. As Sunday progressed and the story was picked up my search position kept falling–as you’d expect.

This Brokaw doc brought thousands of page reads for both the EST and PST showings!

The second traffic driver was an entry I wrote in 2004. A friend sent me a note about terrible storm damage in California. Attached was a photo of a deck chair on its side. It was pretty funny.

Today someone on Fark.com attached directly to that same picture with a link reading: “Tsunami damage photos begin trickling in, not for the weak of heart (geofffox.com).” I guess that was funny after Hawaii prepped for a tsunami that didn’t come.

I only ‘saw’ that traffic by accident. Since Fark’s link was directly to the photo it didn’t register through my normal counting mechanisms. It was only because of my checking on the Brokaw doc that it was caught.

Linking directly to a photo without linking to my site’s content is like running your house off my electricity! That upset me.
Luckily it’s easy to command this server to redirect photo traffic to the original entry.

They still get a joke and now a little of my site too. I can live with that.

By Monday my traffic levels will return to normal.

On the other hand, links from other sites plus Twitter and Facebook mentions will help Google think more highly of me. This is how traffic is built.

Google, Easy As Pi

I just got this email from my friend Wendie:

go find the EXACT number of new shares of stock that google will be

selling in its secondary offering announced today.

tell me what it reminds you of.

w

So, I did.

Google Inc. Files Registration Statement with the SEC for a Proposed Public Offering

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – August 18, 2005 – Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) announced today that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed public offering by the company of 14,159,265 shares of Class A common stock.

Get it?

It’s as easy as Pi (also known as &#028), which is 3. 14159265

Sometimes, ya’ just gotta love Google.

Blogger’s addendum: I almost forgot. The number of shares shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, Google is named after a number. A “googol” is 1 followed by 100 zeros.