If you are reading this and it is your job to manually spam blogs and forms with links, all I have to say is I am onto you!

You don’t need me to tell you that spam is a problem. Well, if you do, Dunkirk Systems, LLC would be glad to put on a private, paid workshop for you, but I digress. Unfortunately there is no set solution to spam. If you look at it as spam is a journey and not a destination, you will grudgedly accept this. As a result, any method that you have used to prevent or thwart spam today may be rendered useless down the road.

When we think of spam, we think of it in large volumes. Opening our email to hundreds of spam messages on a daily basis, getting a ton of form submission spam, and on a blog a lot of this is in the form of comments. Robots tend to find our site somehow and have a field day. As turning off commenting and not using forms altogether does not make sense from a user perspective, other methods needed to be considered and deployed.

First Strike – Verify Submitters Are Human

My first step was to implement technology to “ensure” a form submission was made by a human. I decided to use a random question that needed to be answered. For example, a question is “what is 2 + 2 – spell it out” and the answer would needed to be entered as “four.” I chose this method over CAPTCHA for several reasons. In addition to personally not being a fan of it, CAPTCHA is as far as usable for those with are visually impaired. And forget the audio CAPTCHA – try it for yourself and see if you can comprehend it!

The random Q&A functionality worked initially, and cut down form and comment spam to almost nothing. But it did not block it entirely, as some kept coming through. After further review, I determined all was working well, and that people were the culprits!

Second Strike – Moderation

Even though I have always had moderation turned on my own blog and that of my clients, I consider this a final step after others are taken. Especially when human beings are the ones filling out the forms. How do I know this? There were 2 tell-tale signs. The first was courtesy of my site’s analytics. Many visitors came to my site from either a search query of something like “remember my personal information” or from a Web site that tracked Web sites that do not have the “nofollow” attribute on links. If tagged with nofollow, a Web site’s search engine will most likely not follow links off your page, which helps in the ranking of the sites linked from yours. As I think this is of value to me from both sides, adjusting this did not work.

The blog comments and form submissions manually submitted are interesting in themselves. Some are blatant and others are more subtle. Each post has a name, email address and some URL in it, and the comments tend to be short and choppy. Some say things like “interesting post” and others actually have some context of the original blog post in it. But as you take a look at the URL in the comment, and often the domain name and IP address of the poster, you can see they don’t really match the URL or someone associated with it, or even the same hemisphere. Those always get deleted.

Final Thoughts

Where I consider a blog a community, it doesn’t mean you necessarily have to log into it to participate. As a result, I don’t generally advocate logins for blogs. If one is considered to prevent spam, I would recommend methods as I previously mentioned. If it is thought these are too much labor than it is worth, I would ask you to consider your audience, and maybe even pose it to them. Unfortunately you may get some spam in response.

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Business • Technology • (5) Comments • Permalink

So I arrive at the venue after trudging through the snow. I ring the bell and someone greets me who has no idea who I am. As I enter, I see the opening act setting up. I grab a beer and get a place to sit as the lights dim and the first act starts. Oh, I forgot to mention that I rang the bell and was warmly greeted by the owner of what was a house in a nice neighborhood who was also the lead singer of the opening band. The beer I brought myself, and I sat on a nice rug just feet from the other side of the living room where the bands were setup. This is what is called a house concert.

The concept of a house concert was something completely new to me, as well as for the other attendees that night. It was held by The Locals a Chicago alternative rock band. They performed followed by Steve Lawson and his lovely wife Lobelia Lawson. It was from Steve I heard about the house concert – he and I met at Nokia OpenLab this fall in Helsinki and he talked about his house concert “tour” in several US cities over Twitter. Most all of the others in attendance were friends and fans of The Locals.

House concerts are apparently something big in the UK, from where Steve and Lobelia hail. Which is not surprising, because a lot of cool things come from Europe and Asia and find their way to the US, but I digress. The advantage of a house concert is that it is a small, intimate audience in a comfortable setting that is not filled with smoke or overpriced beverages, not to mention the up-close and personal relationship the audience has with the artists themselves and vice-versa, which for me was they key for this.

Two sets comprised the evening, one by The Locals and the other by Steve and Lobelia, the latter alternating between solos by each as well as duets. As someone who spent most of his college days in the late 80’s in the radio station studios, I loved The Locals. They are a 3-piece band, with Yvonne as vocals and guitar, Christy as bass and Kirk on percussion. Yvonne’s voice reminded me a lot of Kristen Hersh. They played mostly their own, awesome original songs as well as a cover of the Heat Mizer song. They didn’t do Snow Miser because they like the hotter sibling of Mother Nature better! For a better idea of their music check out The Locals Web site.

Though I met Steve at OpenLab, I hadn’t heard his music until after I got back from the event. Even after hearing his, it wasn’t until I saw him perform that I truly appreciated his art. He plays the bass unlike I have seen before, and it’s hard for me to describe it. On his Web site’s home page is the words “New-Age Post-Rock Ambient-Jazz Solo-Bass” and if that’s not enough of a hook I don't know what is. He uses equipment and looping techniques to make it sound like there’s more than one musician playing.

Lobelia is an amazing singer and guitar player. She has a very soulful sound and her own original songs reflected this. Her cover of “You Spin Me Round” by Dead or Alive had everyone who was a fan of the 80’s in disbelief! She has also learned looping techniques from her husband and integrated them well into one of her own songs. Check out her Web site and listen!

Needless to say, it was a unique event and wished it didn't end. It was great to see Steve again and meet Lobelia. I also appreciated the hospitality of The Locals and got to know of a great local band. As I was leaving, I made a comment how there should be more house concerts, but being in Chicago I bet the pols would find a way to try to regulate and of course tax it! I got a few hisses from people, but Steve acknowledged that this is also happening in the UK. But in these times where thinking outside of the box is required, I hope more will be able to experience a house concert soon!

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Business • Diversions • (8) Comments • Permalink

Web sites can vary in size. In some cases, you may want to take a Web visitor deep within a Web site without having them click multiple times to navigate through content they don’t need to see. You can do this 2 ways – 1 way is to publish a long URL that is to the exact location of the content, the other is to use a domain name that redirects to that long URL.

This came to mind recently when I saw a commercial for Shell promoting a concept called “Real Energy” where at the end they displayed the following URL verbatim:

shell.com/us/realenergy

The announcer read the URL as follows:

“Shell dot com US real energy”

Note the announcer did not read the slashes! Where this is not incorrect, wouldn’t it have been more effective if it was displayed and read as shellrealenergy.com? Note that as of this writing, this is an unregistered domain name.

If this domain name was used, it could have server multiple purposes. On a quick Web search, there are other versions of this commercial for other countries. By going to one domain name, it could have first loaded a Web page that could have detected where the Web visitor was coming from and automatically directed them to the appropriate country’s Web page? Or it could have displayed a map or list of countries for the Web visitor to select from.

One address, multiple destinations, all thanks to a domain name. I wonder if Shell will go out and register the domain name now?

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Business • Domain Names • (3) Comments • Permalink

There’s nothing like starting the new year than with a clean slate. But what if there are things on the slate, what are you to do? Do you simply discard them and start new, or make them your new tasks for the year?

As I was working over the holidays to hit the ground running this week, I found a task in my to-do system where I had over 50 ideas for blog posts! As I scrolled through them, they were all great ideas. So what do I do – delete it and start fresh?

I have decided to keep the list around and use it when I lack inspiration. I may use them verbatim or as a catalyst for another idea. As they had some meaning at some point, there’s no reason why they are no longer valid. Right?

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Announcements • (5) Comments • Permalink

The next likemind will be Friday, January 16, 2009 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Spa Cafe, 112 W. Monroe, between Clark and LaSalle Streets in the Loop at 8:00 am. Check out the Spa Cafe Web site for more information, and you can find your way with a Google Map to Spa Cafe here.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al.

No RSVP is required. You are also welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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Announcements • Business • (1) Comments • Permalink