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Even though we have lots of tools to detect blog comment spam these days, spammers always tend to be one step ahead of our algorithms. While early blog spam was often posted by robots and easily detectable, today's blog spammers are smarter. Instead of relying on robots, the team behind Automaticc 's Akismet spam filter reports that modern blog spam is often written by low-paid workers in India, South-East Asia and Turkey. Sponsor The "best written spam," according to Akismet, comes from South-East Asia. As the Akismet team notes, SEO firms will often hire these low-paid workers and set them up to work out of Internet cafes and local universities. Akismet: "The 'best written spam' comes from South-East Asia." Detecting Human-Posted Spam is Hard We have definitely seen this increase in human-posted spam here at ReadWriteWeb over the last two years or so. While early comment spam was easily detectable because it had nothing to do with the actual post, we now have to take a closer look at all the links our commenters use in their personal profiles in order to weed out the spammers. Often, comments that look perfectly legit will include a link to a Viagra or SEO site in the profile link. What About Regular Spam? Besides the rise of human-powered spam, traditional spam is still going strong as well. Akismet notes that "old-fashioned" pill, porn and malware spam still tends to originate from Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation. Spammers there still operate huge networks of malware-infected machines that run spambots. According to Akismet, the number of fake blog networks on services like Blogspot, Weebly, Tumblr, Ning and WordPress is also becoming more frequent and more highly organized. Instead of just abusing other people's blogs, these spammers just create their own blog networks. Other forms of blog-related spam that are on the rise are auto-blog pingbacks from people using auto-blogging plugins ( mostly for WordPress sites), as well as hijacked blogs and wikis. From Porn and Pills to Pet Food and Roofing Akismet also notes that while early blog spammers used to focus on the traditional (and highly lucrative) niches around pornography, pills and malware, today's spammers are often more interested in search engine optimization than hawking fake Viagra. Because of this, modern blog spam often includes links to "dentists, roofing and pet food." Discuss
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The State of Web Spam: Human-Posted Spam is on the Rise
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Google's developer version of the Chrome browser has made a significant change. In the URL the traditional first step, "http://" has been done away with. Thom Holwerda, of OSNews , had an idea why. "(T)he URL scheme bears little meaning to most people using a browser - they know it's there and how to type it, but it doesn't indicate anything to them. Since computing has been about abstracting away complexity for a while now, it was only a matter of time before browser makers started removing this piece of web history." Sponsor There are problems with this change, as far as developers are concerned. The change itself was unclear. When developers started noticing it, they interpreted and reported it as a bug . It seems that Google perhaps did not converse with their developers prior to implementing this Although the http is hidden, it is not gone. So the change is a visual one, perhaps not a functional one. Some developers are worried about what will happen when working with the https or ftp protocols. This is not an agreed-upon move, industry-wide. A moderator on Google's Chrome code forum said, "we include "http:// when copying the URL to the clipboard, so it will still appear when pasted elsewhere." This is a function that is apparently not in working order for a number of developers. Discuss
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Chrome Hucks HTTP://
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Chrome,
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developers,
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the-clipboard,
the-traditional,
traditional,
working-order
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Back when I was in graduate school getting my masters in journalism and mass communication, I worked on various "lab projects" which were challenges faced by media organizations that they wanted to tackle but didn't have the means or the resources to do so. So basically, the students at my school were a think tank for the local media. One of the first issues we were tasked with investigating was finding a new way to allow comments for online news stories to be more efficient and less offensive. Sponsor The problem faced by most online news sites is that the anonymous nature of the Internet makes it very easy for vulgarity and off-putting comments to be posted, and for some sites, these types of comments pervade their site. Many of today's popular sites with comments have integrated systems to where readers can vote down bad comments while promoting good comments, which helps the bad stuff to be filtered out. Others have tried blocking fowl language with asterisks or by deleting the comment automatically, but this has only lead users to find unique ways of spelling their beloved curse words. Some startups, like Disqus , have made it much easier to manage comments, and identity tools like OpenID and Facebook Connect have helped to lower the amount of anonymous commenters on the web, but anonymity is a fundamental cornerstone of Internet culture. Or is it? In a recent New York Times article about how many news sites are starting to remove anonymous commenting, Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post said she thinks that anonymity is losing its once exalted position atop the foundation of the Web. "Anonymity is just the way things are done. It's an accepted part of the Internet, but there's no question that people hide behind anonymity to make vile or controversial comments," says Huffington. "I feel that this is almost like an education process. As the rules of the road are changing and the Internet is growing up, the trend is away from anonymity." Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures says there is plenty of room for innovation within comment boards. Wilson uses Disqus on his blog and has some suggestions for features they could include to make the commenting experience better, but he believes one of the ways to innovate in the space is to introduce game mechanics into commenting. "Game mechanics will reward the kind of behavior the community wants and will punish the kind of behavior the community does not want," writes Wilson on his blog. "The anonymous commenter who has valuable information but can't publish in their own name will be rewarded. The anonymous commenter who leaves a hostile name calling piece of crap will be punished. And the comment thread and community will be better off for it." Entrepreneurs that strive to create a truly innovative product usually first start with a problem that needs solving, and comment systems are certainly a problem that needs solving. Therefore by some transitive property, innovation in the commenting space seems to be an open door of opportunity for startups to walk through and offer a solution. Are there other companies like Disqus that may be looking to disrupt the traditional comment system, or do you have an idea for making the process more user friendly? Let us know your thoughts on the state of comments and how you would change them in our very own comments section below! Disclosure: The New York Times is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb. Discuss
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Comment Innovation: An Open Door of Startup Opportunity?
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Tips,
traditional
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Gmail Labs, the "Settings" section featuring optional, experimental features for Google's webmail program has just received two new additions : "message sneak peek" and "nested labels." Now the sneak peek we definitely like - it lets you preview a message without opening it so you can take immediate action. Handy! But nested labels is a somewhat curious addition. It turns Gmail's once-revolutionary "tagging" system into something that more closely resembles the traditional folder structure found in email programs like Outlook. So now you can drag-and-drop your email into these so-called labels and you can create hierarchies, too? Oh, c'mon, Gmail, let's just call them folders already and be done with it. Sponsor The Tagging Revolution Wait! Before you rush into the comments and declare your love for nested folders, the option you've been waiting for since the day you got your Gmail invite back in 2004, hear me out. I get it - nested folders are great. I'll probably even use them. (I am nothing, if not a Gmail filter junkie. Nearly everything get tagged upon arrival and a lot gets pre-filed, too). The point is that these labels were introduced as a major improvement over folders because you could - Wow! - tag email messages with more than one label. That means mail could be tagged "Travel," "Coupons" and "Southwest Airlines" all at once. And wasn't that just amazing? But the problem with Gmail's tagging system is that there's no easy way to surface the combination of these tags. For example, what if you want to see all mail tagged "Work," "From Boss" and "Project X?" Quick! How do you do it? (And don't tell me to type in some long, complex search query with colons and Boolean operators, either. Tell me how the average email user would do it). The answer? Most people don't know how. They're just going to enter a few search terms into the "search mail" box at the top of the screen. Or maybe they'll head over to the "From Boss" folder and then search for "Project X." Missed Opportunity Sadly, it seems that Gmail really missed an opportunity to take labels to the next level. For example: why can't there be an easy-to-use function somewhere at the top of the inbox to filter your mail by labels? Why isn't there an email intelligence system that learns how you label your mail and then starts auto-tagging it for you? Why can't Gmail figure out that if a particular message matches a filter you designed to label your incoming mail that means the message is not spam?
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combination,
find-it-later,
love,
nested-folders,
outlook,
since-the-day,
tagging,
traditional
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Swiss startup Kooaba is trying to bring the worlds of printed news and virtual content closer together with its Paperboy iPhone app . This app, which is currently only available in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, allows users to take pictures of articles from a range of popular magazines and papers and then see additional content about these articles on their iPhones. Paperboy will also make a digital version of the article available in your Kooaba archive and users can then share this article with their friends by email and on Facebook and Twitter. Sponsor Note : Paperboy isn't available in the U.S. version of Apple's App Store. In the U.S., only Kooaba's app for recognizing books, DVD covers and other physical objects is currently available. Kooaba also worked with Wired last year to make some of the magazine's advertisements more interactive. Kooaba, which specializes in image recognition and already offers similar recognition tools for book and CDs, is working directly with a number of magazine publishers in the German-speaking world. The company plans to bring its services to other countries as well. Sadly, the service doesn't work for papers and magazines that don't work directly with Kooaba to get their content featured on the app. Kooaba needs a PDF version of the magazine to train the service's image recognition software. Besides making the article available for online reading and sharing, Paperboy's partners can also include links to their Facebook and Twitter profiles, as well as links to related articles and videos. Magazines and papers can also choose to charge their users for accessing extra content through Paperboy. In addition, advertisers can embed related links to their web sites whenever somebody scans a relevant article or print ad. Overall, this looks like an interesting concept. Even though the newspaper and magazine business is in the middle of a deep crisis, print won't go away for a while and applications like Paperboy can help print publishers to bridge the gap between their traditional publications and their online presence. The question, however, is if other technologies like QR codes aren't easier to use for publishers who just want to embed a link into an article for example. Via: Netzwertig Discuss
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Paperboy: Bridging the Gap Between Print and Online News
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