the3rdrock.com

Spam is a major prob­lem, no doubt.

It’s evid­ent in all spheres of elec­tronic com­mu­nic­a­tion — not least of which is the humble blog.

The anti-spam ser­vice in use by this blog, depend­ing on traffic at the time, can block hun­dreds of spam com­ments per week — and I have yet to fault it, after months of service.

As you can ima­gine though, it’s an aeons-old battle between those cre­ate the crap and those who fight it.

Today though, it’s not quite as easy as it once was to dis­trib­ute drivel around the ‘net — we have anti-spam soft­ware, fire­walls, enhanced secur­ity and many dif­fer­ent types of devices and con­nec­tions. This causes a prob­lem for the spammers.

The answer, atleast in part, is to get you to go to them.

If you dis­agree with that notion, think about this for a moment: How many times hjave you vis­ited a mar­ket­ing ‘site unknow­ingly? Clicked on ‘badly-positioned’ link which drove an advert to you in some way? Been lured by phish­ing emails? Thought twice about a ques­tion­able email or offer that miiight be true? Par­ti­cip­ated in a ‘game’, ques­tion­aire or com­pet­i­tion in order to achieve an end result?

If you said yes to any one of those — and I’m will­ing to bet you did — you’ve fallen for their ploys.

…and get­ting you there usu­ally depends on one thing — Google.

Google is a behemoth. You don’t search for some­thing, you Google it.

Google has a sys­tem known as PageR­ank, which in layman’s terms is the repu­ta­tion of a web­site. PageR­ank is respons­ible for the near anni­hili­ation of old search engine tac­tics when it comes to get­ting your ‘site on top.

When you’re look­ing for some­thing, you’re look­ing at the first few pages — not page 374, for example.

So, instead of you say­ing your web­site is awe­some, now your peers need to do it. If John and Bob both make a mean hmabur­ger, but only Bob’s folks stand by that fact whilst the entire neigh­bour­hood vote in favour of John’s, then you will assume that John is mak­ing the bet­ter bur­ger out of the two. That’s PageR­ank for you.

Occa­sion­ally I sift through some of the spam com­ments picked up and blocked here, and I really do have to look twice or even thrice at some of them. They’re very, very clever. Most of the time though, they’re all deleted without a moment’s notice.

This morn­ing, await­ing in my inbox, sat a non­chal­ant email titled We Love Your Blog!.

First thought? Com­pli­ment, actu­ally. In my defense though, it was very early.

Dear Nich­olas,

My name is Tara, the assist­ant editor at We Spam You, http://www.wespamyou.com. We have been blog­ging about polit­ics, edu­ca­tion, and tech­no­logy for a few months now and we think it is about time to start reach­ing out to other pas­sion­ate people.

I would love to have one of our blog­gers write a guest post for your blog. If you have any topic or style guidelines for guest posts, please send them my way.

I am look­ing for­ward to talk­ing with you more.

Sin­cerely,

Tara Spicer
Assist­ant _{to the} Editor — We Spam You

Fol­low us @WeSpamYou

Well now that doesn’t look so bad now, or does it?

OK, the first thing we’re look­ing at here is that URL. It just screams automatically-generated. No Human I know in 2011 writes http://. That’s just sloppy cod­ing, I hope — or copy­ing!?

A little bit of Googling quickly revealed an array of Assist­ant Edit­ors — or is that Assist­ants to the Editor?

Gen­eric mes­sages too, and espe­cially across a vast scope of ‘sites, not all of which con­firm to their stated sub­jects, just scream spam cent­ral.

Their ‘site is accessed via the advert­ised URL but all links run off of another domain. Ding! Ding! Ding!

Lastly, I came across a few blog­gers who had encountered this trap — and fallen for it. Few wrote about the res­ults though. One was nice enough to lay it all out in detailed form. The spam­mers got their traffic and the blog­ger got little in return.

Keep your wits about you — whether above, below or on the line, mar­keters take on an evil tint when they get online.

A refresh­ingly true reflec­tion on life in the world cur­rently. Writ­ten about the USA, but applic­able to the world in general…

I’ll be 63 soon. Except for one semester in col­lege when jobs were scarce, and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I’ve worked, hard, since I was 18. Des­pite some health chal­lenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven’t called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn’t inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the eco­nomy, there’s no retire­ment in sight, and I’m tired. Very tired.

(more…)

If you’ve never heard of Post­Secret, where have you been?

Post­Secret is an ongo­ing com­munity mail art  pro­ject, cre­ated by Frank War­ren, in which people mail their secrets anonym­ously on a homemade post­card. Select secrets are then pos­ted on the Post­Secret web­site, or used for PostSecret’s books or museum exhibits.

It’s a fas­cin­at­ing look into the inner work­ings of the Human Mind.

Peoples’ deep­est and most intriguing secrets, fet­ishes, thoughts and beliefs.

Take a look — or send in your own — here: postsecret.com

I recently pos­ted a link to ‘The Dullest Blog In The World’, and few would think it pos­sible that a worthy adversary existed…

…but fear not, for I have faced the evil of bore­dom on your behalf. Behold! I give you — a blog ded­ic­ated to a man’s love for his ferret!

Yes dear read­ers, such inane server space does exist, and you can find it here.

Dave Walker has what he claims is “The dullest blog in the world”, and quite frankly, I think he’s right.

Clearly mundane, obvi­ously bor­ing, and determ­inedly uninspiring.

If you feel you have a few minutes to waste — and waste you shall — then surf on over to Dave’s life at dullestblog.com