About Spam Blog

As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.

Orkut Spam Stopper

Today I noticed a new way that orkut has introduced (when ?) to stop spraps (Spam + Scraps).

we're sorry, but you must wait 713 more minute(s) before you can post another scrap to this scrapbook because you have posted other scraps too recently.

Other method that orkut was using before was image verification feature when a scrap had a link.

If orkut is planning to stop someone for 713 minutes then what will happen to their "organic growth" ??

We do not actively review content that users post on orkut. As you can imagine, it would be nearly impossible keeping up with all the new photos, community posts, and changes to user profiles. Additionally, reviewing newly written posts, photos and profiles would dampen the organic growth essential to any social network.

Harry Potter and the Deadly Hacker

The hacker, who calls himself Gabriel, said he had religious reasons for revealing the names of two key characters who allegedly die in the final pages of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

Bloomsbury, the London-based publisher of the Harry Potter series, deepened the mystery by refusing to say whether the ending published by the hacker was a hoax. Scholastic, the book's American publisher, also declined to confirm or deny whether the ending had been spoiled.

"There is a lot of material on the Internet. You can't believe everything you see," said Kyle Good, a Scholastic spokeswoman. "The only way we'll know for sure what happens is to read the book July 21st."

I think that this is just another fan-fiction publicised in a different manner. Given the number of fan-fictions available for the last book on the internet, no one would have liked to read this ^{(Alert: might be a spoiler)} one but this is a smart strategy, I must say.

JKRowling once wrote on her website :

“We’re a little under three months away, now, and the first distant rumblings of the weirdness that usually precedes a Harry Potter publication can be heard on the horizon. I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are they going. Some, perhaps, will read this and take the view that all publicity is good publicity, that spoilers are part of hype, and that I am trying to protect sales rather than my readership. However, spoilers won’t stop people buying the book, they never have - all it will do is diminish their pleasure in the book."

With a month to go until the book's release, Potter-mania is starting to build to a fever pitch. Read authentic information about the book here.

Update: Walmart has started "Harry Potter and the Walmart Pledge". Join their worldwide pledge and make the promise that you will keep the magic and not share the story's end!

How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

There is a 8 minute video-journey through how things have changed since 1996 and takes us all the way through to 2014. The video gives us a glimpse of how Internet is changing the way we live with couple of examples. However, if you think about all the other areas of life that are going to be positively affected due to advancements in technology, your excitement will know no bound. I say we are lucky to live in this day and age. The video mostly talks about Google and its innovation and future path.

There are 2 more nice videos on youtube (gooTube) worth watching:

Google MasterPlan
Web 2.0

There is a excellent book on search industry: The Search.

John Battelle’s, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture is the only book you need to read about the search industry in present day. John Battelle’s research is completely comprehensive and his style of writing is so easy to read you would never know you were reading about as complex a subject as the search industry. The book delves into the history of search and the monetization of search engine queries. The search also goes into depth about the present and future of search mainly revolving around Google’s role within the industry. The great thing about this piece of literature is that John Battelle does not take a side. He doesn’t write from the angle of being a Google supporter or a Google Hater. He takes a very neutral stance which makes is a much more enjoyable read. Mr. Battelle’s outlook on search becoming integrated with every facet of advertising is an opinion I have never read in the past but makes a lot of sense.

I have a small article which says: Don't be Too Evil

Google Stops "Did You Mean: He Invented"

Google was recently reported to correct the following search queries via their “did you mean?” functionality:


she invented -> Did you mean: he invented
she scored -> Did you mean: he scored
she instructed -> Did you mean: he instructed
she saved -> Did you mean: he saved
she discovered -> Did you mean: he discovered
she golfed -> Did you mean: he golfed

The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results. Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the comprehensiveness of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it.

From what I know Google’s spell-checker at its core works on phrases which are popular on the web, as opposed to manual edits. It might be Google engineers manually corrected this using a blacklist, or they advanced their algorithm to return more relevant spellcheckings for cases like these – it seems clear that a search query like “she invented” is not likely to be a misspelling