On The Third Hand

Do you know a Blogosphere pundit? Pickled Pundit has created a blogroll that consists of all pundits, but he needs your help. With a blogosphere of 8-10 million blogs and counting the pundits are multiplying like rats on Viagra.

Briney, the proprietor, currently lists 69 pundits but needs help insuring the list is complete, so stop by and say hello, check the blogroll and leave a note if you see any missing pundits.

BTW, check the header image, if you see a likeness to a pundit you know let Briney know.

Cross posted within the Cranial Cavity

This time from “down under,” land of kangaroos, blonde hotties, great beer, and “hey you, better ’sign’ that blog!”

Bloggers and spammers could be forced to put their names to political commentary in a bid to close a loophole in the nation’s electoral laws.

Roused by last year’s furore over anonymous political websites such as www.johnhowardlies.com, the Howard Government plans to clamp down on web publishers who refuse to identify a person who authorises their content.

Special Minister of State Eric Abetz told The Age that the move would ensure internet publishers were bound by the same rules as television, radio and print.

Australia’s electoral laws force publishers of any electoral material to identify a person who agrees to authorise the content. But the laws do not say whether online publications must also comply.

Anonymous? How anonymous is it when a simple search via internet or NeoTrace (as one example of many such programs) locates both the ISP and the registered owner of the site?

Oh, sorry, silly me I forgot. It’s a prerequsite to have a working knowledge of the internet and those “Demon Blogs.” Something these people are sadly lacking. But before I go off on an uncontrollable rage over these idiots, I offer this cluebat, in the words of the father of one of the biggest blog tracking services, Technorati:

Technorati is now tracking over 7.8 million weblogs, and 937 million links. That’s just about double the number of weblogs tracked in October 2004. In fact, the blogosphere is doubling in size about once every 5 months. It has already done so at this pace four times, which means that in the last 20 months, the blogosphere has increased in size by over 16 times.

While that doesn’t breakout the number of Australian blogs, you can bet it’s a fairly large number. Any attempt to stop, or regulate, that flow would be like standing at the foot of Wallaman Falls, tea cup in hand, trying to catch the water before it hits the river bottom.

So tell me Mr. Special Minister of State, how ya gonna stem that tide. How will the government ensure each and every Australian blog entry contains a “signature?” I would suggest you’re about to attempt something the taxpayers can’t afford and the government can’t enforce if the money were available. All for what? Because a few politicians have wet their pants over a couple fake campaign websites. GEEESH, get a life.

G’Day Mates, err… Asshats

Cross posted within the Cranial Cavity

We are all aware of the spam-bots that infest our systems via comment and trackback spam. For the most part, whatever software used, it can be defeated through various hacks, plugins, and htaccess tricks.

I have a question for you. How many blogs do you visit that include enhancements to their sites with features such as music? Any feature that requires JavaScript and ActiveX is suspect.

Let the Blogger beware, I warned you, with the help of ZDNet:

The problem involves the use of JavaScript and ActiveX, two common methods used to launch programs on a Web page. Security experts said malicious programmers can use JavaScript and ActiveX to automatically deliver spyware from a blog to people who visit the site with a vulnerable Web browser.

Spyware tools also have been hidden inside JavaScript programs that are offered freely on the Web for bloggers to enhance their sites with features such as music. As a result, bloggers who use infected tools could unwittingly turn their sites into a delivery platform for spyware.

Evil bastards aren’t they? Just another reason to avoid blogs that contain “music” for my pleasure. Not that I ever intentionally visited any, or searched for them either. With thousands of dollars I have invested in CD’s what’s the point? To have some knucklehead offer me his/her choice in music? Thanks, but no thanks!

Get your “shocked” antidote at the ready. The IE browser is the most vulnerable to be infected, and Google’s Blogger in none to safe either:

The problem only affects Web surfers using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer who fail to choose the highest IE browser security settings, security experts said.

The blog vulnerability has cropped up most visibly in Google’s Blogger, the most widely used blog-publishing tool. But it could affect other services as well.

Visitors to Blogger’s Blogspot.com network have complained that they were exposed to infected sites when they used the “Next Blog” link. The feature was designed to help people discover new journals and takes Web surfers to a random Blogspot site.

OK, so you weren’t shocked and saved your “antidote” for another day. Here’s my advice, go here and get the hell off IE. After completing that task go here and get a better blogging system.

UPDATE: The 2nd Annual Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics, will be held in Chiba Japan [A prefecture near Tokyo] in May. Guest speakers include Ethan Zuckerman, Eytan Adar, Natalie Glance and Matthew Hurst co-creaters of BlogPulse. Among the many topics to be covered are “applications built on top of blog data” and “Alternative blog forms (podcasting, moblogging, photoblogs, etc.).” Both topics should address the current JavaScript and ActiveX problems.

Cross posted within the Cranial Cavity

I’ve got a WP client who I have admin access to and had left my own email address in the admin section. So, needless to say, I get the moderation queue notifications. Recently, that blog has been getting postively harrassed by permutations on one theme. They all go to something-top-pharmacy (dot net), and I’ve seen hundreds of permutations of it. It was this particular client who inspired me to go and change the moderation.php to make it check ‘delete’ by default, instead of ‘do nothing’. I got tired of clicking.

So, I did a search for this bottom-feeding-scum-pharmacy along with the term “comment spam” to see if anyone had gotten tired enough of them to come up with some sort of block (from the site, not just via a blacklist or moderation queue). Didn’t find any, but boy did I find blogs, mostly MT blogs, with lots and lots and lots of comment spam they’d never gotten rid of.

So, I’m offering a new service. Call it “blog cleaning lady, if you will". If you have a blog with spam problems, or know someone who does, please read on. And if you like the idea, please link, so I don’t get tempted to start spamming blogs with ‘remove your spam’ offers.

Says Uncle, with some help from yours truly, has moved from MT to Wordpress. Seems he got a bit tired of 45 minute rebuilds. Can’t say I blame him!

On The Third Hand has now moved to Word Press.

Thanks to:

• Carthik for the very helpful post on Moving from movable type to WordPress.
• Mark at Web Log Tools Collection for a lot of hacks and plugins that I’m about to install.
• Scripty Goddess for the show more plugin, plus being a veritable font of useful information, plus writing another couple of hacks/plugins I just saw that will also be installed.
• Everyone (including the people above) on #wordpress at irc.freenode.net who has answered my dumb questions, helped me out, and got me smiling instead of tearing my hair out.
• Last, but not least, everyone who has been in involved in writing and improving WordPress

I’ve learned a lot while moving and I’d highly recommend the above people as resources, as well as the Word Press Wiki and Forum

The people at PMachine are offering the next 1,000 personal bloggers who switch over a free copy of their Expression Engine. Details are here

WordPress people just mentioned that they will give their next million (or more) copies of WordPress out free. Though they wouldn’t mind a bit if all those people were to donate $1 or so…

You are on the new site now, as I’ve done a temporary redirect from the old site. You may see an odd address on the address bar. That is a temporary address until the DNS moves over. Please don’t bookmark it! The proper address remains http://site-essential.com as always. Cookies and such will be flaky for a couple of days, the comment ‘remember me’ will not work. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Once again, a note for those participating in various google-bombs.

Do not put the term dozens of times in your page. If you do, Google will discount that term and the links as ’search engine spam’. Put it in your links on the side, and/or in a post every few days. That ups the links without risking Google ignoring your links.

Like this: Jew. Or like this: miserable failure. And see my sidebar (toward the bottom). Ok? Good.

I shut up about MT. I’m not angry, just sad because it’s an excellent program (one that I would like to be able to support fully without starving) on a bad path.

But the following bit from this post, which Mena answered, but not with anything even vaguely approximating an explanation on why blogomania gets a pass, but no one else does, just burns me up.

But to confuse the issue, my hosting company, Blogomania, can install MT for me for a low fee. I don’t know what arrangement they have with Six Apart, but other hosting companies have been unable to get the same deal.

So what’s the deal, MT, and why does Blogomania get it when the rest of us don’t?

Or does it?