Is There a New Twitter to Blog Spam Bot?
Blogging January 14th, 2009
An older post, If Scoble Thinks He Found Bad Startup Marketing, He Ain’t Seen Nothing received several comments, all showing the same structure, pointing back to Twitter accounts – some are clearly spam accounts with only this one update, but others appear to be real users, although I am not following any of them.
lbfd (LBFD) | January 13th, 2009 at 6:58 pm e
This is a test.
(This appears to be a spam account with no real content.)
aleslie2 (Art Leslie) | January 13th, 2009 at 7:59 pm e
Hmmm … tweet completely disappeared. This is a test.
(This appears to be a real account.)
bisfourbritt (bisfourbritt) | January 13th, 2009 at 9:52 pm e
This is a test. Nd it ends with no friends. We will go on…..untl it hurts
Zonin with loud shit tonightt hah
(This appears to be a real account.)
radiomanmic (Michael Grider) | January 13th, 2009 at 11:28 pm e
This is a test. Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through.
(This appears to be a real account.)
deborahgtaylor (deborahgtaylor) | January 14th, 2009 at 6:10 am e
Is going to Brenham for a quilting lesson. This is a test.
(This appears to be a real account.)
This is a test.
(This appears to be a spam account with no real content.)
Is there some new Twitter-to-Blog spam bot that I am not aware of?
Update:  There’s more now, on another post:
lbfd (LBFD) | January 13th, 2009 at 6:58 pm e
This is a test.
Hmmm … tweet completely disappeared. This is a test.
This is a test. Nd it ends with no friends. We will go on…..untl it hurts
Zonin with loud shit tonightt hah
This is a test. Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through.
Is going to Brenham for a quilting lesson. This is a test.
This is a test.
sztelzer (Rodrigo Sztelzer) | January 14th, 2009 at 11:18 am e
SĂł bebo tequila. This is a test.This is a test.
http://tinyurl.com/7jww4a SĂł beberei tequila.
In the meantime I disabled the Tweetbacks Wordpress Plugin, which had not properly installed anyway, to see if it has anything to do with the attack.
Update:Â Follow-up thoughts @ CloudAve.
Related posts:
Tags: Blogging, spam, tweetbacks, Twitter, wordpress
Credit Crunch Has Reached Bloggers
Blogging, Humor December 26th, 2008
The Credit Crunch has reached the Blogosphere: it is now a Wordpress Theme by Ericulous, developer of the lightweight theme I use here.
I have not found a "Recession" Wordpress theme (yet), but there is one called Depression.
Tags: Blogging, blogs, ericulous, wordpress, wordpress themes
Am I Really So Sexy? C’mon…
Blogging October 3rd, 2008
Well, thank you all for finding me so sexy (blush, blush) that even my face pic is considered x-rated. From somebody else I might even consider it a compliment, but it comes from Gravatar, an “Automattic Joint”:
Which is why my gravatar does not show on Wordpress blogs. I’ve never thought one day I’d be caught by porn-filters. 
Tags: automattic, gravatar, porn filter, wordpress, x-rated
Cloud Computing and Open Source are Not Enemies
SaaS September 29th, 2008
Image via Wikipedia
Are Open Source and Cloud Computing anachronistic enemies? You’d think so, if you read GNU creator Richard Stallman’s interview in The Guardian:
Cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.
"It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign,"
Sure, there’s a lot of marketing hype as it is typical with any major technological advancement, especially as it reaches the peak of its hype cycle. But I think Stallman loses sight of who the “enemy” is.
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Tags: cloud computing, deki wiki, gnu, netsuite, Open Source, oracle, proprietary software, SaaS, wordpress
Google Chrome is Now a Wordpress Theme, Too
Blogging September 9th, 2008
Here’s a lightweight WP Theme inspired by Google Chrome – by ericulous, author of my current theme, Genkitheme:
Tags: ericulous, google chrome, themes, wordpress, wp themes
Why Can’t Wordpress 2.5.2 Display Bulletpoints?
Blogging June 4th, 2008
- They show in the wysiwyg editor – wordpress or offline
- The proper code shows in html view
- The bulletpoints flash up for a split second when displaying the blog post…
- Then they disappear
The above lines are all bulleted – except Wordpress 2.5.2 can’t display them. Does anyone know why?
Update (6/5): Well, apparently Stuart does. In a comment below he explains:
The Newsgator widget is inserting the following CSS which is disabling the bullets:
li {
list-style-type: none;
list-style-image: none;
list-style-position: outside;
}
Oops. I thought it was specific to the latest WP release, as I’ve only noticed this error recently. The Enterprise Irregular badge (the one from NewsGator) has been on my sidebar for a long time without causing any problems, so they must have changed something very recently.
I temporarily disabled the widget and bullets are displayed correctly, which confirms that Stuart is right. I am going to re-enable the widget (and thus kill bullets) hoping that NewsGator will soon fix the problem.
Update #2: NewsGator fixed the issue in a matter of hours. Thanks, guys, now we have our ammo bullets back.
Tags: newsgator, Weblog software, wordpress, wordpress 2.5, wordpress bugs, WYSIWYG
Facebook Runs a Sweatshop – Literally
Humor May 29th, 2008
Facebook runs a sweatshop – literally. The evidence is in the yellow circle on this Valleywag-supplied photo of their Palo Alto office space.
While employees are struggling with the heat, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is clearly wearing shoes instead of his trademark Adidas flip-flops at the D6 conference in Carlsbad (photo by Dan Farber):
Therein lies the solution: bring the flip-flops back. But don’t stop there: mandate beach-wear in the office. An amazingly simple solution to many of Facebooks problems:
- - No more heat problem
- - Increased employee morale, probably enough for them to forget about revoked housing subsidy
- - Additional incentive to stay in the office longer
- - Reduced energy bill
- - Going Green is trendy, there’s another $5B added to their valuation.
I’m a genius. Sending Zuck a $10K consulting invoice. 
Update: Why can’t Wordpress 2.5 dislay bulletpoints properly?
Matt Mullenweg and other Celebs on the SVASE Panel: Funding 2.0, How To Build A High Growth Startup Fast And Cheap.
Bay Area, Software, Startups, Technology February 6th, 2008
For all my love and support of SVASE, I sometimes complain that the monthly “Main Events” are a bit cut-and-dry. Well, that will certainly not be the case tomorrow: star-power, money, frugality are all well represented on the panel discussing Funding 2.0 – How To Build A High Growth Startup Fast And Cheap.
Matt Mullenweg started Automattic on a shoestring, and his product, Wordpress became the most popular blog platform before he and his company accepted major funding.
Peter Yared, ActiveGrid’s Founder isn’t exactly unknown, either, although he is no listed as Founder & CEO, wdgtbldr. WTF? – you might ask, but that’s a company name. His website says: ps: pls snd vwls. We don’t get a lot smarter from this… but his LinkedIn profile reveals the company name as iWidgets, and his motto is:
The first rule of iWidgets is you don’t talk about iWidgets.
Naval Ravikant has been called a lot of names: Venturebeat labeled him: Crazy Man, his website is StartupBoy, and he is a Partner, at The Hit Forge:
The Hit Forge is a group of entrepreneurial engineers building mass-market web properties. We are owners of our companies, share common tools and code, and have enough money to fund dozens of attempts to find the next big hit. We don’t get locked into failed projects, we replace pointy-haired MBAs with modern web marketing, and we share stock so that if one of us wins, everybody wins.
Oh, and since I am a SaaS fanboy, here’s another acronym: CaaS, as in Capital as a Service (although Shai Agassi would disagree
) .
Mike Cassidy has co-founded and sold three companies: Stylus Innovation, Direct Hit and Xfire. He is currently Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital, one of the Big Brand Names on venture capital. Traditional VC firms have to change: the capital efficiency of software startups means they cannot easily invest tens of millions in one startup anymore, and their traditional model is does not allow them to participate in much larger portfolios. But Mike is not a Partner: the Entrepreneur-in-Residence title means he is there fishing for his next Big Hit, and will jump back as entrepreneur quite soon.
If you’d like to hear these four superstars discuss issues like:
• Can any fundable startup really get to breakeven on less than $1M venture capital?
• What does a “Capital Efficient” startup look like?
• Where do you find the people & resources for next to nothing?
• How can you generate revenue straight out of the gate?
• If I can generate revenue, and I have minimal expense, why do I need Venture Capital?
• If $1M “hardly moves the needle,” what returns are VCs now looking for?
- hurry, register here, before the event sells out. See you tomorrow, at 6pm in Palo Alto.
Tags: automattic, entrepreneurship, funding, SDForum, Startups, SVASE, Technology, TiE, vc Funding, venture Capital, wordpress
When Captcha is Really, Really Bad
Blogging, Software December 13th, 2007
I confess: I also had a captcha on my blog, in my “prior life” on blogware. In fact my defenses were so developed (or primitive?) that Zvents CEO Ethan Stock rightfully called it an obstacle course.
Thankfully I have a better life (OK, just a platform) now, on Wordpress, where the combination of Akismet and Spam Karma 2. provides sufficient enough spam protection so I don’t have to torture readers with such obstacle courses anymore. But I guess not all blog platforms are created equal.
Today I tried to leave a comment on Vinnie’s post, which is protected by a captcha. That would be OK (well, sort of) if only I knew it upfront. But what typically happens – and I am not picking on Vinnie, seen this on several other Typepad blogs – is that I review the comment, hit “post”, then move on to another Firefox tab (hey, even I can multitask). Later, when I come back to review the comment/close the tab, I find the captcha screen still waiting for my input. The damn thing was so slow, it did not reveal the captcha screen in when I was here before.
How to improve the captcha? Well, displaying it right on the comment entry page would be a good start… but even better, remove it entirely, replace it with some more intelligent background process (like, if I am a repeat approved commenter on this blog, chances are I am not a spammer … but I am not trying to re-invent Spam Karma logic here).
The absolute irony of the situation: you can read it all right here, on Vinnie’s blog: UI again …don’t pretty up, destroy!
P.S. Vinnie, my friend, I am not picking on you … just your platform.
Update (2/28): A hilarious collection of the 10 worst captchas.
Update (3/5):Â CAPTCHA is Dead, Long Live CAPTCHA! @ Coding Horror.
Tags: akismet, blogware, captcha, spam, spam filters, spam karma, typepad, ui, user interface, wordpress
Zoli Erdos
Implementing DISQUS
Misc January 28th, 2009
Quick note: I’m in the process of implementing DISQUS now. (Thanks for the help, Daniel!) Thousands of comments are being imported, but they don’t show under the relevant posts yet. Also, DISQUS labeled a few hundred comments as spam – I need to manually comb through those.
So if you commented here before and don’t see your comment now – apologies, hope to sort this out soon.
Update (1/29): Pre-DISQUS comments are in the system but they don’t show for some reason. Bear with me for a while – either we’ll have a fix or I’m removing DISQUS soon.
Update #2: Removed DISQUS, due to ongoing SPAM trouble. I may write more on this one day…
Tags: comment tracking, commenting, disqus, intense debate, wordpress