Category: Blogging

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Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam.

I’ve never understood why people send spam mail or leave spam comments on blog posts (in the same way I don’t understand why people scribble graffiti tags on trains and walls), but I know that for spammers who really take it seriously there is big money to be made. I suppose in that sense, I DO understand why people create spam if there is the opportunity to make money from it… I guess what I don’t understand is how there continues to be constant stream of people who are gullible enough to take action on the messages and, in doing so, continue to generate an income for the spammers.

Let’s face it, the thing that keeps spam propagating and growing (and therefore making it worthwhile for the spammers to keep sending it) is the fact that there are enough gullible, stupid people in the world who keep responding to it.  If we all were much better at identifying and recognising spam as soon as we saw it, then the spammers would eventually go away because the financial incentive to do so would also disappear. Fortunately for them – and unfortunately for the rest of us – human gullibility (or stupidity) will probably ensure them an income for a while yet.

Having said that, the spam filtering in Gmail is pretty darn good. I currently have a few hundred spam messages sitting in my Gmail’s spam folder which have thankfully been identified and filtered before they get to me, so I don’t ever need to see them. They just disappear from the system after 30 days. Thanks to Matt Cutts and his team at Google, Gmail does a great job keeping the spam away. Thanks Matt!

One of things that happens to any blog as it grows is a substantial increase in the amount of spam comments it receives. Most spam comments are just plain annoying, and many are quite laughable, but it’s a good idea to deal with them before they have a chance to be published.  For example, this blog receives many comments that are never published thanks to the powerful Akismet spam filter running on the backend.  This WordPress plugin tracks my spam statistics, and in the two years that this blog has been running on its current server, the Akismet spam filter has trapped almost 11,000 spam comments with an accuracy rate of 99.8%. That’s an awful lot of comments that never see the light of day!

I wanted to share some of the most recent spam comments because they are kind of insidious.  On the surface they look harmless, perhaps even positive. For example…

My brother suggested I would possibly like this blog. He was entirely right. This publish actually made my day. You can not imagine just how a lot time I had spent for this information! Thanks!

A very impressive article. Well prepared. Very motivating!! Set off on to way

Good writing here I really really like the way you write your blogs. I will continue to visit your site in the future to read more great blog posts like this one! This is an awesome post here.

I dont genuinely know what youre talking about here. This cant be the only method to believe about this can it? It seems like you know a whole lot about the subject, so why not explore it much more? Make it much more accessible to every person else who might not agree with you? Youd get a whole lot a lot more men and women behind this if you just stopped making general statements.

Good day very nice website!! Man .. Excellent .. Amazing .. I will bookmark your website and take the feeds also?I am satisfied to seek out so many useful info here within the put up, we want work out extra strategies on this regard, thank you for sharing. . . . . .

An newsworthy speech is couturier comment. I consider that you should indite solon on this matter, it might not be a taboo mortal but generally group are not sufficiency to talk on such topics. To the succeeding.

On the surface it looks like people are leaving positive comments in response to something I’d written. However, aside from the extremely poor grammar, often a reliable indicator of spam, these comments are so generic as to be completely meaningless. By constructing comments in this way, spammers can spray them across thousands of posts on thousands of blogs in the hope that some will get posted. Unsuspecting bloggers, especially newer bloggers who are often keen to receive any sort of comments, sometimes fail to see these comments for what they are. Not surprising really, since the whole point is to trick you into publishing them.

I’m still not really sure what the point of these generic spam comments is. They don’t contain links to click, so they don’t appear to be able to lead you to an outright scam or scheme. They generally aren’t asking for money, or have any real call-to-action. They are just annoying. They gum up the Internet, clutter our email and clog up our blog feeds, but for no apparent purpose.

Let’s all be more vigilant about spam. If you don’t already, using Gmail is a good first step. Installing Akismet on your blog helps a great deal too. But mostly, stay aware of what spam looks like, and never, ever respond to it. Ever.

CC Photo by trustypics
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My Edublog Award Nominations 2011

2011 has been an interesting year for blogging.

I feel like my own personal blogging has been really suffering lately, not just from being really busy at work, but also from the endless distractions of Twitter and Google+ which, if I let them, could easily become my sole places for sharing stuff online.  Certainly, there are some people, like Mike Elgan, who use Google as their sole online presence and funnel all their other online stuff into G+.  It’s a potentially intriguing strategy, as the engagement factor on G+ is certainly very high.  You could also argue that Twitter has replaced a great deal of sharing that was one done via blogs, and there’s little doubt that between the “Big Three” of Facebook, Twitter and Google+, the nature of blogs and blogging  has shifted considerably since I first started using them back in 2005.  I’m blogging less, for sure, and it definitely leaves a void that I miss filling.

However, this was also the year when I introduced a whole bunch of new bloggers to the wonders of blogging.  At my school, I encouraged the teachers of Reception, Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 to give class blogs a try.  It’s been resoundingly successful, with the Reception and Year 2 classes in particular really running with it.

Then, our Year 6 teachers, librarian and kids took part in a well-structured blogging project  as part of an AIS-funded AGQTP Action Research project. The Year 6 teachers got time away from classes to learn about the culture and skills of blogging, and then they shared it with their students, who each got a blog and used it quite extensively during the latter part of the year.

Our junior school librarian also jumped on the blogging bandwagon too, and created both a Junior School Library blog which she regularly updates with library news and information, as well as a Book Review blog that is growing in popularity.

All in all, it’s been a busy year of blogging for many people I work with!

My Nominations

I would love to recognise some of these school-based blogging efforts that have emerged this year by nominating some of them for an Edublogs Award.  Bear in mind that these are all brand new bloggers, people that have never done it before and were willing to get in and give it a go. I really admire their willingness to try something new and learn some new skills.  I’d love to see their efforts rewarded with some recognition, and of course some additional traffic.  I think they really deserve it.

So, my nominations are…

Best Class Blog: From Little Things Big Things Grow: The PLC Reception Class Blog, by Sophie McKendry and Jaclyn Casella – In their simplest form, blogs make brilliant journals, and this Posterous blog has been a fabulous journal of the year’s activities for this class of 4 and 5 year olds.   With 39 posts over the course of the year, they have added photos, audio recordings and writing  to document the many important classroom events from 2011. The reaction from parents has been overwhelmingly positive.

Best Class Blog: The PLC Year 2 Blog by Catherine O’Doherty, Lisa Case and Katrina Avery – This blog has been used to connect, collaborate and communicate with our parent body and the world, and has generated an enormously enthusiastic response from the teachers, parents and students alike. It contains student work samples, photos, audio recordings, scans, and writing. It also documents the adventures of Cocoa, the class mascot. The blog has had 147 posts during the year and over 11,000 views. It’s an amazing first attempt at blogging and deserves some recognition.

Best Library Blog: Library Matters by Sandra McMullan – I think this brilliant new library blog deserves lots of recognition. It was started by our junior school librarian, Sandra McMullan, as a way to showcase the many great things that happen there. It contains posts, photos, stories and booklists, all designed to encourage greater dialog and exposure to what goes on in the library. It’s a stellar first effort at blogging, and really think it deserves some recognition. In addition, Sandra started a second blog for book reviews which links of the front page of her main blog.

After a fairly full-on year of introducing blogging here at PLC Sydney, there are lots more blogs floating around (including a blog for every student in Year 6).  While they are all interesting, I think the ones listed above have been the real standouts, and deserve to be nominated for a 2011 Eddie.

Now please go vote for them!

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Happy Snappy

RockpoolOn January 1 this year, thanks to a bit of prodding from my mate John Pearce, I started a 365 Photo Challenge… whereby I planned to take a photo every single day this year and post it to the web. I’d tried doing this once before but never made it longer than a few days before I lost focus and let it slip away.   So here we are nearly 11 full months into my 365 Days of Light Photo project and I’m pleased to report I haven’t missed a single day yet! ( I’ve been late to post them a few times, but never more than about 48 hours behind schedule either, which I think is pretty darn amazing!)

I post them all to a Posterous site I set up called 365 Days of Light, which in turn crossposts to Twitter, Identica,  Flickr. and PicasaWeb (which is really Google+).  It also used to post to Facebook until I quit my account there).  Here is a link to the collection so far… (minus the first few days of January which I forgot to include back then)

Part of the challenge for me was that I didn’t want to take a photo of just anything, but rather to try and find something of real visual interest each day.  I wanted it become to a collection of interesting artistic images, not just a bunch of point-and-click happy-snaps. Whether I’ve actually achieved that aesthetic goal is probably debatable and certainly not every photo has been a winner, but I must say that there are quite a few photos in the collection that I’m very, very happy with.  It really has forced me to try and be both disciplined and creative every day. Trying to find a new angle, to not be too cliche or derivative, and to still find something interesting each day has been a real challenge, but I’m pleased with how it’s gone so far.

I’m looking forward to the final month ahead, and to get to the end of the 365 days.  My plan is to turn them into a printed coffee table book as soon as I finish taking all 365 photos, and publish a few copies for family and friends. In the meantime, feel free to +1 any you like… I know which photos I’m happy with but I’d be curious to know which ones you like.