We all cannot come up with enough ideas some days to write a perfect blog entry, so writers block hits bloggers, and sometimes hard. Then there are the slow news days, that nothing seems to make any kind of headline, and there is essentially nothing to write about and comment on. Or the original idea once it hits paper seems weak, not really worth writing about but it sounded good. Curing bloggers writers block can be entertaining once you start reading the headlines, and here are some sites that I use to help cure my writers block.

Techmeme – not like they need an endorsement, but it is a meta engine for most of what is happening in the blogosphere when it comes to raw technology, with an interesting presentation format so you can get some of the discussion around the issue. While they focus on the majors almost to an exclusivity the top 100 bloggers, every once in a while they will bring in a good blog entry from an unknown writer, so it is usually surprising and interesting at the same time.

The GigaOM Network – especially NewTeeVee and GigaOM itself, NewTeeVee is a site I respect when it comes to finding out what is happening in the streaming media world, including BitTorrent. While they are part of a commercial network, the data they present has been some of the most fair and unbiased media I have read, it reminds me of the BBC. GigaOM for when I am looking for more techy geeky stuff, and also has a high level of quality.

Google News – almost ubiquitous, but searching for a story sometimes has massive benefits, add to that the Google blog search, as a way to get a counter point, and you usually end up with a compelling story.

The Seattle PI – most people are probably going to find that one interesting that I would also use traditional media, but the local business blog and the VC blog are good things to read about.

Venture Beat – want to know what is happening in terms of Venture Capital, then this is the place to go, add to that AVC Blog as a counter point and you have a winning combination if you want to know how VC’s are managing to make it today. Usually I’ll bounce between the Seattle PI and the venture blogs for point and counter point.

Torrent Freak – I have worked with Ernesto in the past, and usually want to see what he is up to, torrent freak is a multiple writer blog focused exclusively on the entire BitTorrent scene, usually has breaking news, and over the last 2 years has become the defacto place to get breaking BitTorrent news. Add to that Zero Paid, and P2P Net, and you get some good point and counter point on the BitTorrent issue of the day.

These are some great tech and BitTorrent sources for good information, while not everything on their blogs is worth writing about, usually you can find something that helps break the bloggers writers block when it comes to writing about something technical or something that is happening in the various media scenes.

Posted in: tips and tricks | Comments(0)

Spammers are annoying, and generally can cause problems, what is worrying is when spammers are busy out there testing the water, and no one seems to notice.

This handy little test got caught up in a spam filter from mail.ru. In general as spam goes this is pretty harmless, what makes it interesting is the Google search afterwards. The spam reads:

This is a test. Please ignore it. http://google.com - google 34n710

The Google search should make everyone stop for a moment, - the Google search is here

The whole search string only finds 10 responses, but there are a lot of things that Google didn’t understand here. With variations that number grows from 10 to 78 to 1010, and so on as you vary around the key phrase to take out things that Google didn’t search on.

This is a test. Please ignore it google 34n710
This is a test. Please ignore it. http://google.com
This is a test. Please ignore it.

The last one is pretty much so a bust, seems that a lot of people will send hello world messages with that text string, this is a test please ignore it.

Here is why this is interesting.

A quick Google search reveals all the people that accepted or otherwise let the spam message through their system. From there you have a viable set of URL’s and web sites where it is now possible for what ever system you used to send your spam, to simply do its job without having to worry, process, or spend time at sites that have good spam filters in place. 76 returns is not bad for a small spammer, 1010 returns is even better, and given the tracking number 34n710 the spammer can see how other people’s systems work, or like any good lab, each batch has its own tracking number.

There are also similarities in the topic number as if that was also part of the message, many of the Google returns have the view topic number of 6747774 as their code for the topic. Across hundreds of sites that is also an anomaly and is probably part of the sequence that is being used to get their message into the forums or blogs, comments, or systems.

The quick Google search also shows that it is not just abandoned web sites that are prone to what ever method was used to push the spam message. The I-mockery forum, bsdforum, and others are prominent on the first page (maybe not if they read this) of the Google search.

While spam looks simple when it hits a filter, it makes a great exercise in seeing who all has been tagged and cataloged as vulnerable within the spammers system. By the spammers using a unique tracking number and small groupings, it is very possible that they have a great list of systems now that are vulnerable to what ever particular tool or method that they used. Sometimes, spam is worth going through.

Posted in: Misc | Comments(0)

New word for the lexicon today, Spamdexing. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing) has a great article on Spamdexing that is well worth reading. Wikipedia describes Spamdexing as:

“Spamdexing or search engine spamming is the practice of deliberately creating web pages which will be indexed by search engines in order to increase the chance of a website or page being placed close to the beginning of search engine results, or to influence the category to which the page is assigned. Many designers of web pages try to get a good ranking in search engines and design their pages accordingly. The word is a portmanteau of spamming and indexing. Spamdexing refers exclusively to practices that are dishonest and mislead search and indexing programs to give a page a ranking it does not deserve. “White hat” techniques for making a website indexable by search engines, without misleading the indexing process, are known as search engine optimization (SEO). SEO techniques do not involve deceit.” (Wikipedia.org).

I like the reference to scraper sites, which in turn ends up being fake Blogs, and other sorts of spam on the network that personally we could all just do without. While interesting and disingenuous of those who make these kinds of Blogs and other assorted web sites. Is beating a search engine really the thing that we are looking to do. I keep on making the concept of original content is king, scrapers and other folks really don’t have their own content, rather they are happy pulling content from other sources.

All in all makes it all part of the fun. What do you all think of this one? What happens if your web site gets “spamdexed”?

Posted in: Misc | Comments(0)

Amazon Prime and Techdirt

Ok, we are not laughing at Techdirt, but in a small plea to Amazon, about Amazon Prime, they are basically saying that people who get the free one month trial of Amazon Prime, will be charged $79.00 to their credit cards as AMZ*Prime. Unfortunately Techdirt is the first entry in Google, and that is who they think is charging them.

First of all, it is difficult to imagine people being that flaky, and not putting things together, but then in the longer run, it probably is not that weird in the longer run that people will get confused over what is a blog, and what is Amazon.com.

The real problem, though, is that too many people are doing this Google search and are then blaming us, the nice folks at Techdirt, for charging their credit cards for $79. We have been receiving a regular stream of emails and phone calls from people demanding that we refund them their $79, which we never charged them for in the first place. In the last month, despite our earlier pleas to Amazon, the pace of such complaints has only increased. Source: Techdirt

This makes it all the more interesting, in that here is a blog that is in no way associated with Amazon, but it ending up taking the flack for what Amazon is doing. In the longer run, the credit card charge, and the blog entry, makes you wonder about the folks that are calling or emailing the blog. Are these folks really that out of wack to confuse the two, or are they knee jerk reacting about the whole thing to see what is really happening. Although it would be cool to see if we could get a recording of those phone calls, if anything that would end up being interesting to hear.

Posted in: Culture, Business | Comments(0)

Vinyl might be the death of Compact Disks and DRM

This is an interesting thought, with all the fuss, anger, angst, and downright nasty things that have been embedded in your digital technology that keeps you from just listening to it, Vinyl records are staging a quiet come back in the Indie/DJ scene.

You can’t put DRM on a Vinyl album, and that might be its biggest saving grace, yours and the artists.

Wired Reports today that the resurgence of Vinyl Records

Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today’s music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices. Source: Wired Magazine

This is something that most people would have been able to predict, not just that for the purists, vinyl has a richer tonality. But that to step back from technology that has been misused, abused, and otherwise restricts people from doing things with their music, Vinyl could be the best way to not only get to know the artist, but to also rip from Record to MP3 is really trivial to do.

Most PC’s come with an audio card, free software like Audacity can make an MP3 in a heart beat, it is so very simple to do something like this, and there is nothing in the way. Choose your bit rate, let the record play, just go with it. There are even USB record players that can tie in directly via the USB port on your PC to make recording even more stupid simple than it is now.

Cool idea, but given all that we have been through as consumers of music, and we have thousands of CD’s, and hundreds of records, the death of the CD and its overly restrictive processes, going back to simple clean vinyl records with nothing between the consumer and the artist, this is an interesting rebuttal to what is happening with media.

Sometimes, it is easier to fall back to an older technology than it is to deal with the issues of the new technology. It will be very interesting to see if HD-DVD and BluRay suffer the same issue down the road, with a resurgence of the humble DVD.

Posted in: Business | Comments(0)

YouTubes new Copyright Tool

This is going over like a ton of bricks, but most everyone agrees that Google’s YouTube (GooTube) had to do something, especially with a billion dollar Viacom lawsuit hanging over their heads. The stupid part is that if you go strolling through YouTube this morning, there is still a lot of stuff that does not fall under fair use. So they really haven’t run the tool against what is already on the site.

This is probably not going to be the demise of YouTube, but it will be a whole lot more boring, nor will it be the end of streaming media sites, stage six, guba, tv-links, and all the rest are still there, still serving streaming media, and still being very popular when it comes to something that people on the internet are doing on a regular basis. Mainly watching TV on their PC via streaming media. We are not talking about the 2 minute previews here, we are talking full episodes. All this means is that YouTube is out of the game for now, and might possibly fall into disuse as they become a dumping ground for adults getting hit in the crotch by a small kid.

<blockquote> The filtering tools are designed so the owners of copyrighted video can block their material from appearing on YouTube, which has become a pop culture phenomenon in its 2-year existence. The tools also give the owners of copyrighted video the option to sell ads around their material if they want the clips to remain available on YouTube. Source: Yahoo News </blockquote>

The hugely innovative part is the bit that allows copyright owners to carve ads around the copyrighted clips that are already up there. So if John Doe uploads the Simpsons or the Colbert report, then the owners of the copyright who have an Adsense account can wrap an ad around the uploaded clip, and maybe make some money off it. Good for Google, ok for the content owner, and well John Doe might not be beaten to death by someone for uploading a copyrighted clip. Either keep it up and make some money, or take it down and wait for it to be uploaded again.

So rather than dealing with the continual cycle of take downs, there is the possibility now for people who own the copyright to make at least a few cents off what is happening on YouTube. What this will do for companies, Google, and the relevancy of YouTube is anyone’s best guess. To survive in the current copyright litigation environment, Google can show that they are making a good attempt in ensuring that copyright material is not on YouTube, and if it is, giving the owners a chance to make money off the system.

This might just work, have to wait and see though.

Posted in: Misc | Comments(0)