Netcruft

Dalhousie University launches a new website tomorrow. They've got a preview on the linked article. For the first time in half a decade, it looks good. But what made this blog-worthy was a quote:

A while ago -- at approximately the same time -- Facebook and Digg both started using a 'Navigation Bar' plopped at the top of all their outgoing links. Anyone who will remember the late 90's on the web will find this tactic familiar. Why is it annoying? Because it steals traffic, that's why.

I'm amazed how quickly spambots find a new site. Especially the comment spammers. When I had this on a temp URL, it had been found within two weeks. My solution? Turn off anonymous commenting. Easy, because it didn't matter, and there were no users to speak of.

But six hours after I pushed this site public, the comment spammers were at it again. Formerly, the site was running on wordpress. There, I used spam karma 2 to stem the tide: it worked really well.

There are a lot of complaints over the past few years about how startup sites are going with strange domain names: taking out vowels, coming up with original domain names.

In order to be memorable, there are two ways to approach getting a domain name: be original (e.g. 'strange') a la 'meebo', or have a common word or phrase. All the common dictionary words are gone, as are many common phrases. And where have they gone to? Domain squatters, mostly.

Podcasting is an even worse waste of time than vblogging is the podcast. Imagine a vblog, but without the ability to fast-forward and rewind with visual clues, where two thirds of the content is devoted to useless yammering (one third at the start, and one third at the end). Through in some (lots of!) grainy audio, and you have a podcast.

Judge judy flaming an ebay scammer who was selling photographs of phones.

Best Lines:
You're an Idiot!
She left feedback saying that I was a scam artist, that I was from Nigeria

Yes, I know she's not a real judge but I enjoy the endless criticism that some people get from her. Not all of it I agree with mind you, but she's good at criticism.

I'll just go back to selling photographs of merchandise, X-Box boxes, and p-p-powerbooks on eBay.

In the past few months it's been an increasing trend to have sites ask you for your username and password from some service. I've lamented about this in the past regarding youtube and embedding videos, and it's shoved in your face on facebook.

Though, admittedly, youtube has to store your password for some reason, while apparently facebook only uses it then discards it.

Still, I couldn't quite put my finger on why it was a bad idea. Apparently it's in every social networking site, too.

Unsurprisingly, spammers have a new trick up their sleeves for email garbage.

I get very little spam that I actually notice. So no wonder the fact that spammers are sending spam with PDF attachments aiming to fool content filters, since imagespam isn't working and filters have found ways around it.

I see lots of sites trying out this new 'Intellitext' service.... tell me it isn't annoying, what with tons of green links everywhere that create huge popups every time you happen to move your mouse over them.

Repetative spam sucks, but at least it's easy to filter

This is the subject line of half the spam I've received today. If one doesn't get through the spam filters, what makes them think thirty more will?