Lock out Link Spammers and throw away their Key

: Attention All Blogspot Bloggers:




Ever click open your blog, quick-scan the 'Comments' numbers and notice that several new ones have been posted? Oh, the glee, oh, the anticipation of resonance, of popularity, of meaningful dialog!
You click the permalink only to discover that your comments page is cluttered up with imbecilic one-liners, thinly veiled advertisements containing hyperlinks to this commercial site and that. - Yep, you have been link-spammed!

Do not fret, the clever folks at Google/Blogger have come up with a feature that lets you SCREEN each comment before it goes live on your blog. Works just like your trusted friend, the telephone answering machine: You choose who you talk to - you choose which comments get posted and which ones deleted. See how to activate this new feature.

We sure hope that other blog-hosts will follow suit and implement comment-spam screening tools, if they have not as yet done so.

[Find more details on blocking spam links on the googleblog.]

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[Related reading: "So, now you are a blogger..."]

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UP IN ARMS

Forbes v Bloggers

An Amalgamated Perspectives Editorial


"You might be aware of the pissing match currently going on between the mainstream media, i.e., the corporate 'News' moguls, and the Blogger community. Confronted with the fact that the not-so-new phenomenon of blogging is taking up more and more bandwidth in cyberspace, the media giants take a stand.

Whereas Business Week and Fortune Magazine came out in support and praise of the ever expanding blogosphere, Forbes, while initially positive, published an article by Daniel Lyons accusing Web logs of "spewing lies, libel and invective". Predictably, this affront hit like the proverbial match in a powder keg: Acerbic volleys have been flying ever since.

We cannot help but notice, that BOTH sides are guilty of hyperbole and slander. The very practices that each side condemns, each side also engages in. What does this scenario remind you of? Yes, it is suspiciously reminiscent of the infantile squabbles in kindergarten! Whoa, is it not time that we put these childish rivalries behind us?
Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing except when it is (ab)used for petty and inflammatory obfuscation.

C’m on, guys, enough already: it is high time to kiss and make up. Let us rise above all this self-defeating anger mongering and come together in TOLERANCE and Peaceful Coexistence.


After all: The World Wide Web is big enough for all of us."

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[See also: a Post by Jason Goldman]
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[About us: The AMALGAMATED PERSPECTIVES Platform]


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The Phenomenon of Blogging REVIEWED

An editorial by Ana Elsner


You have signed on with a blog host. You have designed the layout of your pages.
Welcome to the Blogosphere! ... So, what next?

Obviously you feel the urge to communicate. The question is: What do you wish to say, and to whom are you addressing yourself ? - Answering this question will define your blog's platform, i.e., its basic theme and content. It will also determine your blog's readership and popularity.

Weblogs seem to fall into at least five general categories:

- The primary motivation for the blogger novice is to keep an online DIARY of his or her personal life, and share with the world-at-large their innermost hopes, fears and other private matters, concerns, events and affairs. This type of blogging seems to be born out of a sense of isolation and can be understood as an attempt to 'reach out'. These blogs, while often fascinating, can also be too recondite and boring to those of us, not enrolled in PSYCH 101.

- Another type of blog is the 'insider' SPECIAL INTEREST BLOG where all content and links center on a specific hobby, profession, pursuit or mission (such as photography, singers or bands, cooking, pets, to name just a few). These blogs have a devoted and highly interactive online 'tribe' of followers who, depending on geographic proximity to each other, will also meet in person or come together in support of a cause related to their common interest. Such blogs are self-limiting in that they appeal only to an exclusive group.

- Gaining in popularity are TUMBLELOGS. They are a type of modified 'remaindered links' style Linklog with minimal commentary, a maximum of eye-catching visuals, sparse text, little cross-blog chatter and the barest whiff of a finished article. They serve as a sort of 'switchboard' for the trigger-happy blog browser flitting about at break-neck speed, never stopping long enough to investigate any topic in depth.

- A fourth type of blog is pure and flagrant SOLICITATION in the weblog format. It serves no other purpose than to push products or services, which are often of dubious legality. Such blogs are stuffed with popular keywords in order to lure the searchbots to index their pages and thereby drive traffic to their site(s). Should you accidentally land on one of these, your screen will instantly light up with flashing banners, pop-ups and other annoying, if not harmful little programs. In addition to sending out cookies, many of these 'pseudo' blogs run sophisticated listbots on your harddrive that harvest additional data and send it back to their server. Blogsurfer beware!

- By contrast, there are the INTELLIGENT and INFORMATIVE BLOGS that aspire to meet the highest of journalistic standards. They are dedicated to bringing their readership a wide array of well written, well researched and thought provoking articles and news items. They are de facto Online Magazines rivaling those you pick up at the local newsstand. Their content delivery is made with conviction as well as with humor and promotes further reading. Rather than merely compiling a long list of links and condensing each post to the proverbial soundbite, these WEBZINES feature comprehensive articles that develop a topic from start to conclusion. Such blogs are made by writers for writers. They will not, however, appeal to the 'on-the-fly' websurfer with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).

Being a blogger means that you are the captain of your own ship in cyberspace. You map your course by the content you choose to present. Blog on!

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[See also: "On Cruising the Blog-Scene" ]

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[Related Post: "What type of blog is this?"]

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^^On Cruising the Blog-Scene^^ (OP-ED)

EDITORIAL by Ana Elsner

"Crank up your espresso machine, you’ll need all the caffeine you can stomach, as the hours go by while you click your way through an endless labyrinth of diaries and diatribes.
Pull up your emotional bootstraps and be prepared to wade through a vast pool of heart-wrenching exposés on the minutiae of a million private lives.
This journey is not for the faint-hearted.

As you deftly maneuver around the spam sites, the porn sites, the 404s,
as you dodge the incoming barrage of pop-ups,
as you turn down the volume so you don't get blasted out of your chair by various midi, wav and other sudden sound effects,
you find yourself getting snagged by this blog, sucked into another, turned off by the third, turned on by the next ... and, sooner or later, depending on your stamina, utterly exhausted.
You have just embarked on a Kafkaesque rollercoaster ride minus the pink cotton candy.

Yes, it is all in there, right there in the digital box in front of you, coming alive at a mouse-click.
The entire panoply of human caricature is mirrored in these web-logs:
There is the recluse, the addict, the whiner, the cynic, the former hippie, the former inmate, the fallen angel, the pollyanna, the eternal optimist, the borderline illiterate, the borderline schizophrenic, the self-proclaimed genius, the frustrated poet, the con-artist, the babe-in-the-woods, the narcissist, the tattler, the prowler, the punster, the pundit, the proselytizer, the producer and the prosecutor - the sexy, the nasty, the desperate.
All of them are busily pouring their hearts out to no-one-in-particular: Sigmund Freud would have a field day in the blog-o-sphere.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, 'All the Web's a Stage'. The curtain goes up each time you go blog-surfing. The players strut their stuff, many of them stripped of all restraint and modesty.
Their voices echo eerily in cyberspace. No audience steps forward in applause. Their pages are devoid of comments. Their hit-counters stalled out at 106, their email boxes empty. No dialog ensues.

And here you sit, the anonymous voyager, unbeknownst to those whose posts you just read, whose lives you looked in on. You've had all that you can take. Your head's still spinning. Time to log out of blog-o-rama."

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Are you a blog surfer or a blog owner? Give us some feedback via the 'COMMENTS'/'Post a Comment' Link below:

MISSION STATEMENT

Amalgamated Perspectives is a public forum. Its focus is and shall remain on you, our Fellow Web-Citizens. Our platform is multinational and independent. We strive to present material that is cutting-edge, informative, well-researched and of journalistic merit. The links which we build into our posts will take you to sites that explore our topics in greater detail. They do not constitute our endorsement of those site-holder's opinions, products or services. We rely on your good judgment when following a link trail that extends beyond our original referral.

The Amalgamated Perspectives site is always safe and free of advertising. The selection of topics presented here is designed to promote continuing education and critical thinking. We aim to induce discussion either with us by way of the comment feature below each posting, or among you, our readers. In some cases we provide our email address to enable direct correspondence."

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[A similar site: CROSS CULTURAL OUTLINE]

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