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Scott Richter. Bleurgh.
25th May 2004
So, self-styled email marketer Scott Richter has decided to sue IronPort Systems, owner of SpamCop - it seems because SpamCop is rather too good at filtering out Richter's OptInRealBig crap. Plus SpamCop's reporting tools are rather effective at getting Richter's army of spammers LARTed.
If you like to see Scott Richter and his associates squirm, see this thread at Abestweb where the board members ritually tear him and his trusty sidekick apart. He never did answer about his Ukranian operations.
Oh yes, you might also like to compare www.cpaempire.com - Richter's site - with this parody site www.spamempire.com. Clearly they are not related in any way.
The Slashdot Effect
16th May 2004
I recently had the mixed fortune of experiencing the Slashdot Effect first hand. If you've ever wondered what it's like being on the end of a sudden shedload of traffic, then check it out.
Alltheweb and AltaVista - R.I.P. Google very poorly.
7th April 2004
The search engine carnage continues, with Yahoo! shutting down the excellent Alltheweb search engine, which was every bit as good - or better - that the new Google, plus AltaVista which was still quite a formidable search engine. These have been replaced by the absolutely awful results from the new Yahoo! search engine.
Their demise is made all the more hard to bear by the fact that Google's recent revamp combined with it's increasingly irrelevant search results make it much more difficult to use. For example, Google's decision to bury the directory and take directory categories out of the search engine results makes it much harder to research a topic. And now for competitive terms, the search results are either woefully offtopic or full of spam.
Out of the remaining search engines, the only two showing promise are Teoma and Wisenut. Of these two, I think Teoma is the better engine. Waiting in the wings is Gigablast, which has a much smaller database and radically different results.
But for the first time in ages, it appears the web is without a truly great search engine and we're all just making do until something else turns up.
After Google.. Yahoo!
2nd March 2004
Yahoo! recently unveiled their latest bright idea.. Overture Sitematch, a product that uniquely manages to be completely unattractive to webmasters AND produce crappy results for visitors at the same time.
Briefly.. because I can't imagine you would actually want to use the thing.. you pay $25 per page (like Inktomi) plus 15-30 cents per click. Only the paid results are mixed with the "free" results. And you have very little control over who clicks what. And in any case, most businesses can't afford that kind of outlay. As I said.. I can't imagine you'd want to use the thing, either as an advertiser or visitor.
The Overture Sitematch announcement is a shock for many, especially those who were conned into paying for now-nearly-worthless Inktomi listings (such as me) only to find that Inktomi was only running for about 2 months before being replaced by the stupid Sitematch scheme.
This isn't the first time Yahoo have scammed webmasters like this. A while ago they persuaded a lot of webmasters to part with $299 for a listing in the Yahoo directory, and then promptly dropped them out of the search engine results.
There are allegations from many quarters that this repeated "pump and dump" technique from Yahoo! constitutes dishonest advertising and quite possibly a scam. We wouldn't like to comment.
Google, of course, are laughing at this, because they were genuinely worried that Yahoo! might leverage some of its technologies to come up with something powerful for both advertisers and visitors. Instead, Yahoo! are following the same business path of the now nearly-dead Looksmart by using the same failed business model. Talk about grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.
You Could Drive A Truck Through It..
11th February 2004
Microsoft's gift for Valentine's day is a security hole so large you could drive a truck through it. This is a critical flaw in the implementation of ASN.1 which is used in various authentication mechanisms. Nope, I don't understand the details either, but if the Microsoft site stays stable enough they have a bulletin here.
Of course, what is really pisspoor about this is not that there's a flaw, but it impacts on all versions of Windows based on the NT core: Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server. So while Microsoft would like to convince you that they're actually working on a new operating system, again it turns out that they've been recycling the same old crap since 1996.
Don't worry though. We probably have twenty minutes or some before someone writes an exploit.
Google Whacks Webmasters (Again)
28th January 2004
Google's determination to clean up their act before they go with their IPO struck again over the weekend with an update on Burns Night.
A couple of months ago, Google started to put filters in for commonly search for phrases to remove sites that were "overoptimised". Typically this whacked things like gifts sites who'd happily been trading for years. The reason? Well, there were a lot of spammy results as far a Google was concerned, so they wanted to remove them. And if they ended up removing some perfectly legitimate retailers, then that wasn't Google's problem as long as the sites looked good.
Well, the January 2004 update went even futher than this. A massive range of filters was put out which effectively eliminated many mid-ranking sites. For product searches, you are suddenly faced with results from one or two big players like Amazon and some consumer review sites, a few spammy directories and the odd retailer who has escaped Google's wrath. The boost given to Amazon is huge, showing individual product pages where not existed before.
You can see the filter in action.. open two Google windows and do a search for pretty much any consumer item. Then in the other window, do the same search preceded by allintext: - what you see might shock you.
Google (as always) claim to be looking after the interests of the visitor, but the people impacted by and large have done nothing wrong. In one fell swoop, Google have torn up their traditional algorithms, wiped mid-sized sites off the map and given an enormous boost to Amazon.
The result? Well, where you used to be able to find a choice of retailers before, noe you'll get just a couple of retailers and the rest is cruft. But as long as the results look good enough to please potential investors, do Google really give a damn?
Ineedhits Inktomi Irritation
13th January 2004
I use Inktomi on some of my commercial web sites - it's the search engine that feeds MSN and will soon replace the results supplied by Google for Yahoo!
Inktomi is a pay-for-inclusion engine, where the deal is that you pay $25 per page ($39 for the first one) to be included in their premium search results. There's no guarantee where you'll be placed, that's down to the content of the page.
The deal is pretty straightforward, during the life of the subscription period, you get up-to-date statistics on page clickthrough and rankings, and you can change the URL of your included page - as long as it is within the same domain.
However, Inktomi don't deal with submissions directly, they use several different agents, one of whom is Ineedhits.com, who I have the misfortune of subscribing to. When I first started over a year ago, it was fine. However, I have had no clickthrough statistics for a month and now it won't let me change the URL - my research indicates that it is "broken" and won't be fixed any time soon. However, it's virtually impossible to contact Ineedhits, because none of the email addresses they supply work - everything bounces - and the support contact forms fail too. The UK telephone number they list comes up unobtainable. You can ring directly.. if you fancy a call to Australia. But of course, they're still happy to take your money even though the service is broken.
All in all, this is pisspoor customer service. My advice? Inktomi is great, but avoid Ineedhits at all costs.
CAN-SPAM Canned?
6th January 2004
The US government's CAN-SPAM act seems to have done absolutely bugger all to deter the evil spammers who flood my mailbox daily. Very little spam originates from inside the US though, and most of the spam that does is from trojan infected machines that have been turned into spam relays by hackers. Let's see what we have today:
- make yourself bigger for for the New Year: no thanks, I've eaten enough Christmas cake and fatty food over the holidays already thanks.
- intestate magnolia flatulent impartial gassy: Yes, I must stop eating those flowers and write a will. Thanks for reminding me.
- =?GB2312?B?s8nBos/juNu5q8u+Lc/tytzDs9LXweO52Muw?=: I always love the Chinese ones. I mean.. it could be anything at all couldn't it?
- WOW! Portable Lie Detector: I'd settle for a portable spammer exterminator.
- Win-Office-Autodesk-Adobe all under 20-99$ CDS talky: what a rip off.. there's no way Microsoft Office is worth twenty bucks.
Talking of spammers, the dreaded Topsites.us is still at it, but at least they've paid lip service to the CAN-SPAM act by putting a fake address on the bottom to go with the fake name on the top. Ho-hum.
Is a a Bird? Is it a Plane? No, it's a Phone.
3rd January 2004
I just finished writing a review of the Sharp GX20 phone and it struck me that sometimes technology goes a bit bonkers. Basically, once you've considered the quality of the camera, screen, video capture, ringtones, web browser and games then it's easy to forget that the darned thing is a phone too. 2004 should see the first mobiles with an integrated TV too. All we need next is something that can keep beer cool.
Blame
Canada
30th December 2003
The US has recently reported it's first case of mad cow disease and in true American fashion, it's blamed Canada for sending them a dodgy cow. This, of course, follows on from the US blaming Canada for the collapse of its third world electricity grid back in the summer.
Canadians had better watch out - the US things you have weapons of moos destruction.
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