Friday, August 26, 2005

Splogs

A splog is a spam blog, defined by Mark Cuban as “any blog whose creator doesn’t add any written value” (i.e., an automated blog pulling content from other sites). Doc Searls wonders (my emphasis):

“Now, for the advertisers, does this splog not add value? If somebody clicks through to any of those four advertisers, or to AdSense, is their per-click expense well spent? Whether or not the answer to that is “yes" for everybody else, it’s certainly “yes" for the splogger who gets paid for the click. And that’s exactly how sploggers will defend their business model. (...)

I haven’t talked to anybody at Google about it, but I’m sure they’re fighting the problem too. Obviously, they’d rather have readers click through to advertisers from value-adding sites. (...)

Across the search engine marketplace, there is an enormous amount of duplicated effort fighting splogs and other forms of blog spam. There is also an open source solution to this: share the know-how. Even the data (perhaps through a public list of offenders).”

Splogs by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (2)

Gmail Mail Previews

Persistent Info tells you how to add Gmail conversations previews with Greasemonkey.

Gmail Mail Previews by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (0)

Nothing That Great About Google Talk?

Randy rants about Google Talk: “They didn’t invent the wheel, folks – they just painted a blue G on it - so have some perspective...”
(I suspect Google wants to get the app out early and add features later to not miss out on new, yet undecided users – and to do some testing with a real user base. While Google Talk has nothing that special really, it’s already my IM of choice because it has less to dislike than the other chat apps I’ve tried. Better to be clutter-free and simple than to have some good features along with a dozen you feel like turning off.) [Via Zawodny.]

Nothing That Great About ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (3)

Best of Worst

You probably saw the worst album covers ever (more here), the world’s worst web page, or the world’s worst book, but did you see the worst paintings in the world? [Via Feeeds.]

Best of Worst by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (1)

Zed1.com?

According to Technorati, this is currently the world’s most popular blog. (By the way, via Duncan Riley, here’s the Technorati Top 100 as it was back in 2002... with Scripting News, MetaFilter, and Slashdot leading the pack.)

Zed1.com? by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (2)

Woman Spotted Yesterday Reading Today’s Newspaper

Via Markus Renschler, the author of Regex-Builder, some fun recursion.

Woman Spotted Yesterday R ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (0)

Asking Google Who to Vote For

Germany will vote next month, as the current party in command is resigning (yet, they’re campaigning for people to vote for them again – don’t ask me). You can enter [Wen soll ich wählen] – who should I vote for – into Google, take the first result, and let this lead your choice... unless, of course, you strongly disagree. (I’m sure I’ll vote for the first party that gets the internet... not that it’s the only important issue, but it would show they’re not stuck in the wrong decade.)

Asking Google Who to Vote ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (0)

Kottke on O’Reilly’s Link-Spam

Jason Kottke reacts to the O’Reilly Link-spam discussion, arguing (my emphasis, and I absolutely agree):

“I love the idea that after more than 10 years of serious corporate interest in the Web that it’s still up to all of us and our individual decisions. The search engines in particular are based on our collective action; they watch and record the trails left as we scatter the Web with our thoughts, commerce, conversations, and connections.

Me? I tend to think I need Google to be as good a search engine as it can be and if I can help in some small way, I’m going to. As corny as it sounds, I tend to think of the sites I frequent as my neighborhood. If the barista at Starbucks is sick for a day, I’m not going to jump behind the counter and start making lattes, but if there’s a bit of litter on the stoop of the restaurant on the corner, I might stop to pick it up. Or if I see some punk slipping a candy bar into his pocket at the deli, I may alert the owner because, well, why should I be paying for that guy’s free candy bar every time I stop in for a soda?”

Kottke on O’Reilly’s Link ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (0)

Matrix ASCII Art Movie

This movie scene from the Matrix is made up entirely of ASCII characters – you can even open the source code and scroll through it to see the animation. [Thanks Jan Schlünzen.]

Matrix ASCII Art Movie by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (2)

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