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How to write spam that sticks

Feb 25, 2009 in Productivity

Since last week I’ve been receiving upwards of 300 spam comments a day. I somehow made it onto the Internet radar, which is proving to be a mixed blessing. A pet peeve of mine is seeing well known, high profile blogs with spam comments, as if the owner doesn’t care about the quality of their community, only the amount of comments against their posts. For this reason alone I will continue to moderate comments against my blog. Readers who comment regularly will have their comments approved automatically from their third comment onward, unless their comment matches other triggers.

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What happens on the Internet stays

Dec 17, 2008 in Productivity, Strategy, Technology

A search for “How do you force Google to reindex your site?” returns several tales of woe from developers caught in the midst of updating their websites, but found Google already indexed their content, errors and all. When we least expect it, search engine spiders work their magic. However, when we most need to update our indexed pages on Google, we are forced to wait. And wait. And wait. What happens on the Internet stays on the Internet—forever. I consider this a joke because this has always been, but so many people think it’s something new. On the Internet time stands still: At the same time, people can be judged for their failings even as they are praised for their achievements.

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On Web Programming, SEO Consulting, and WHY

Dec 09, 2008 in Personality, Strategy, Technology

Last week I mentioned my foray into the world of creative communications consulting. Here’s a sampling of the kind of sideline projects I’ve been working on lately. Many of these are classified: top secret, for-your-eyes-only kind of stuff. By reading this post you agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement: Don’t tell a soul.

[Edit: Okay, the secret is out: the main intent of this post is to provide search engine links to my colleagues' sites in order to improve their SEO traffic... ooh how I hate spilling the beans!]

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WHY I haven’t blogged

Dec 02, 2008 in Personality, Productivity, Technology

So I says to my wife, “you know, I’d really like to work as an independent contractor for awhile and really get to see the world.” The following day, my manager told me that they’d lost my contract as a technical writer. I wanted to say, “Would you like me to help you find it?” Instead I played it cool. “Great! Lots of time for blogging.” As I wrote my last full post on November 6, obviously I didn’t spend as much time blogging as I thought. What did I do instead? It couldn’t have been because I ran out of things to say.

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ExtJS befuddles me

Oct 09, 2008 in Creativity, Productivity, Technology

I have only one more week on my current contract. My final responsibility is to finish off this über cool web view of one of our documentation products, which will be integrated as an output stream from the newly-installed XDocs XML content management system. The best part about technical communication is that I get paid to write all day, and when I need a break, I can fix the CSS for an embedded help system or hack some JavaScript. My Technical Communication department manager gave me permission to showcase the web output with obfuscated text in my portfolio, so be on the lookout for samples in the near future.

For the last month I’ve been going nuts trying to hack the ExtJS javascript application framework, recommended by the Technical Adviser from the company’s Web Services department. I have no problem applying different plugins to my project. However, when I try to add custom behaviours to the objects, I get that little red Firebug that shows me the hand and says “not so fast, cowboy!”

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