Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

Spam-in-blogs are getting smarter, I think. Today I received to two comment posts that seem to be legitimate, but after a closer look, both them are spams.

Post 1 — in response to “Google Earth Can Be a Political Weapon“.

Hi All Experts, Does anyone use google earth images as ground image planes for use in aerial scenes. I know how to stitch them together but are there any tools or tricks to make sure that the images are at the same height, angle and such to make sure they stitch well. I know in the pro version you can get bigger images but im not going to pay for the pro version when i could stitch multiple images together…

Post 2 — in response to “Attention College Students, Here comes iTune U“.

I just got my 2000t and all of my songs are skipping in iTunes, and I cant figure out why. If someone could help me out and tell me how to fix this I would really appreciate it because its driving me crazy. Thanks for the replys.

Both of these spams came from a user whose URL points to http://gameburn.org, which looks like an ads-directory web site.

My theory is that the spam-bots that post those messages actually do content analysis.  Post 1 targets blogs that mention Google Earth, and Post 2 targets blogs that mention iTune.

Has anyone else experienced this type of spam messages?

I’m fluent in two different languages, Chinese and English. Tim Finin’s recent blog post on “China predicted to have 60,000,000 bloggers by year’s end” got me to think about the benefits of being bilingual (or multi-lingual) on the Internet.

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Frank Ahrens at Washington Post asks the question, “Why do you blog?” He received many interesting responds. One blogger expresses that blogging is the only way for him/her to make friends. Some other believes that blogging is engaged democracy — creating an end-run around power publication, in that the people with the most power control what is heard.

Of course, not everyone thinks blogging is a such great invention. One person replied, “28.7 million blogs translates to almost 28.7 million illiterate fools with a digital soapbox who cannot manage to correctly spell the word ‘definitely,’ even with the help of a spellchecker.”

I asked myself, “Why do I blog?”

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Rob Walling sent me an email message about his new project Flogz.com. It’s a personal finance and investing news site that uses collaborative editorial control (similar to which used by Digg.com).

I think this is an interesting project. First, it provides a unified and shared information space for people to discover and discuss personal finance and investment news. Second, collaborative editorial control can help to filter out insignificant news and blogs posts. Fully automated blog aggregation sites such as the Money Blog Network are often cluttered with posts. As bloggers flood the site with tons of new posts everyday, it becomes harder for the readers to find useful news that are worthy of reading. Finally, it’s web 2.0!

Most of my Semantic Web related discussions are between groups of Semantic Web hobbyists. While I enjoy talking to others who share my interests, but sometimes I think our discussions are limited because we all see the Semantic Web from a Computer Science research perspective. It’s kind of like a group of philosophers discussing hardest problems behind a closed door, and they never get a chance to hear what others (those non-philosophers) have to say about the problems.

I find blogosphere to be the best place to hear what other non-Semantic Web hobbyists have to say about the Semantic Web. Technorati Watchlist is a good place to start.

Here is a few favorite links on my Technorati Watchlist:

• http://www.technorati.com/search/ontology
• http://www.technorati.com/search/folksonomy
• http://www.technorati.com/search/RDF
• http://www.technorati.com/search/semantic+web

Here is a recent blog from a mother of two kids who worked in the IT field for 7 years. In the blog she describes her understanding of the Semantic Web.

Pranam Kolari, a UMBC doctoral student, has discovered nearly 75 percent of blog updates that registered with weblogs.com are bogus (more technical details). So why do people spam blog ping servers?

The motivation behind splogs is the same as that for any other form of spam - it comes down to money.

Sploggers set up sites with filler content and keyword-based advertisements. Their goal is to entice, coerce or con people into coming to their sites, where it is hoped viewers will click on profit-producing ads, offer up their credit card numbers or be redirected to other shady sites.

With hundreds of millions of people online every day, a very small percentage of careless clicks can translate into big profits for splogs.

I wish there are ways to prevent spams. The sad truth is that there is no effective way to do so. People love making money, especially easy money. The Internet is the place to conduct such business. Whenever a new communication medium, e.g., forums, discussion groups, email, and blogs, becomes popular, people will try to exploit it to make profits.

Spams are like weeds. You kills them at one place, they grow back at the other.

According to Jeff Thurston, there are at least five different types of blog web sites:

1. Commercial Blogs: written with a financial view - sensitive to causing maximum financial return and oriented toward causing a stir to attract readers. Blogging for financial gain alone is different than blogging as a columnist, for example.
2. News Blogs: Basically scanning the news and re-writing what already exists. Original content is low. Regurgitated content is high.
3. Original Content Blogs: Strives for original content, links to existing content in exceptional circumstances to support original content. Opinionated. Perceptive.
4. Advert Blog: Sharply written to look like a blog but serving as advertisement. Usually easy to pinpoint over time.
5. Blog Aggregators: This is a special group, [which captures the blogs of a particular community or a specific topic].

Blog aggregators are great because they save me a lot of time on discovering new blogs. They also produce aggregated RSS feeds of all the blogs that I want to read.

Two blog aggregator sites that I monitor closely:

• Planet RDF — blogs that talk about RDF, OWL and the Semantic Web
• Planet Geospatial — blogs written by GIS Professionals and Hobbyists

The Geospatial Semantic Web Blog is a blog that combinds the two (sort of) …