Posts Tagged: spam

Miscellaneous — 16 Comments
21
Apr 08

Ramsay Ramblings 4/21/2008

Is the weekend over already? Time seems to be flying these days. We are well into spring and the suzumushi (bell crickets) are piercing my brain with their high pitched singing. It must be time for some more Ramsay Ramblings!

5 yen a bag, or take a box for free!

Free cardboard boxes at supermarkets near you now!Today, my mother-in-law came by for a visit, but before she did, she stopped off to buy some groceries. Now, in some parts of the country, perhaps at selected supermarkets, they are charging 5 yen for every shopping bag you use. Apparently, by encouraging people to bring their own reusable bags, supermarkets can reduce the “billions of plastic bags [that] are choking our planet” (reuseablebags.com).

Personally, I’m not convinced that shoppers will take the bait, and supermarkets will make a small fortune off these 5 yen bag sales… or will they? It turns out that my mother-in-law opted for a free cardboard box, rather than pay the 5 yen!

Yes, free cardboard box. Why pay for a plastic bag when you can get a cardboard box for free? :roll:

Mike McKinlay stuck in Seattle for 24 hours

Net Buddy 4 Life, Mike McKinlay, should have been in Japan by now on the start of his three-week vacation. However, when I opened my email box, I got this…

Hey net buddy… I’m in Seattle right now.. and yes I’ve missed my plane.. remember that snow storm in Calgary? Well that probably made our plane late which made us miss our connection… Don’t ever complain to me about high winds ruining your honeymoon flight again! Sure, you missed your connections, but this has caused me a full 24 hour delay! Actually, nothing really good happened today… more bad news that I can tell you about later when i see you!

Mike, if you’re reading this from an airport somewhere, our thoughts are with you! Be strong Net Buddy!

Watch out or I’ll spam you!

I’m a regular commentator over on Jason Irwin’s blog, but it seems I’m leaving comments without even knowing about it! In his post, Spammers Are Getting Stupid-er-er, Jason uses an example of someone spamming his site as me! Take a look, it really is amazing how far people will go these days!

Which looks better?

Don’t think for more than two seconds. Just look at these screen shots and tell me which you prefer.

Comparing Math Worksheet Wizard Styles

Those pictures are from my Math Worksheet Wizard website. I prefer one color/logo scheme while my wife prefers the other. This is what I do with my time. I make math worksheets. I’ve finished the kindergarten section and have most of first grade done. At this pace, I should have the whole elementary school math curriculum done by the end of September. Okay, I’m not a math teacher, but fortunately my mum is, and she’s kindly helping me along. Thanks mum! :)

That wraps up another Ramsay Ramblings. Thanks for reading!

JapanSoc — 10 Comments
21
Feb 08

See Spam on JapanSoc? Bury It!

Imagine you own a business. You need a website, so you hire a programmer to build one for you. You need content, so you hire someone to write articles for you. Now you have this great website, but you don’t have any visitors. The next step would be to hire an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) professional to get your site ranking higher in Google, Yahoo and co.

One way to boost a site’s rankings is by linking to it from other websites. So let’s imagine your website is about organic tea. Your SEO professional might email other tea-related websites and ask if they would link to you, but chances are they won’t. He might go onto a chat forum and mention your site, but how many people out there are talking about organic tea? Does this guy even know enough about organic tea to hold a conversation on the topic? Unlikely.

A good SEO professional will try to get legitimate links from relevant sources. On the other hand, less ethical “professionals” choose the easier option of spamming blogs and social bookmarking sites such as JapanSoc.

JapanSoc, like other social bookmarking sites, is an easy target. Once you’ve registered, you can submit any website you like. I’ve already seen Hawaiian weddings, CSS style sheets, and of course, organic tea among the upcoming stories. On some occasions, these submissions have actually been quite good! The title is descriptive and the summary of the site has been well-written. If you were paying for these links, you’d probably be quite proud of their quality.

The problem is, the SEO “professional” has wasted his time because his submissions aren’t related to Japan… which means they are spam, spam, spam, spam, with a hint of spam. You’ve put your heart into your organic tea business, you’ve had a fantastic website designed for you, and you’re not even aware that you are responsible for all this spam.

As long as people are paying for SEO, spam will continue. While I can do my best to ban and block every spammer that signs up at JapanSoc, I urge you to help me out by hitting the “bury” link on any spam submission. Thank you! :)

Technology — No Comments
26
Nov 06

No more spam with Mozilla Thunderbird

Update: When I got Windows Vista, I switched again. Now I’m using Windows Mail (Dec. 2nd, 2007).

The last few weeks had seen my spam-count sky rocket. I think the extra exposure I gave my sites with some pretty heavy advertising campaigns must have pulled in as many spammers as honest visitors. I guess I’d been averaging about 60 spam emails a day and ‘delete’ had become the most overused key on my keyboard.

Today I decided enough was enough. I had so many spam filters set up in Outlook Express that I just couldn’t keep track of what I was blocking, and I nearly lost one of my artists (for ESL-Kids.com) when her email got caught up with all the spam. I thought she had stopped contacting me and vice-versa.

A search on Google for “Email program” brought up a number of links for Mozilla Thunderbird, a free open-source alternative to Microsoft’s dated software. After reading that Thunderbird uses Bayesian analysis to intelligently detect spam, as well built-in RSS capabilities and the ability to import address books and mail folders from Outlook Express, it was an easy to decision to download it.

Although I use Internet Explorer 7 to browse the net, I always keep Mozilla’s Firefox close at hand should IE cause me problems. Because Firefox is a great web browser, I figured I could trust Mozilla with their email application…. and I’m so pleased I did!

First download it from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/, install it and launch the program. You’ll be asked if you’d like to import your address book, mail and settings from Outlook Express (or other application). If you agree to this, Thunderbird will take a moment to import and set things up and that’s it! You can customize a bunch of stuff if you like, but otherwise you’ll be up and running in minutes – spam free!

Ok, so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit there. Your junk mail will still come but Thunderbird will automatically mark it as spam. However, from Junk Mail Controls in the Tools menu, you can request the spam be deleted or moved to a ‘junk’ folder… and deleted later.

So with all that spam taken care of, you can spend more time reading web feeds! In Thunderbird, simply add a RSS News & Blogs account (from Tools -> Account Settings)and start subscribing to your favorite sites (maybe the one you’re reading right now?).

I’ve only just started using Thunderbird, but I feel like I’ve gotten off my bike and onto the Shinkansen. No more spam, and all the web feeds I want, right in my inbox! I’m kicking myself that I didn’t do this earlier!

Whether Microsoft can improve on Outlook Express enough to surpass Thunderbird when Vista is released next year, I don’t know. They impressed me with IE7, so I’m hoping for great things. In the meantime, it’s Thunderbird all the way!