I wanted to try and get some more people to use my Blacklist Peering Plugin for WordPress and suggest some improvements/features that they would like to see. Frankly, it is a boon for spam prevention. I peer with only two other weblogs and update every few days. I religiously add stuff to my blacklists and moderation lists but I only catch so many spam clues. The lists keep growing and I feel like they are much more powerful and comprehensive considering the fact that I am using the collective “spam experience” of three seperate blogs/bloggers. I have some very interesting suggestions from Geof and would like to add the ability to pick and choose the words that get merged into your blacklist/moderation list.

There is now documentation you can download, read offline and print ! Over at http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/docs are listed over 240 complete pages (a total of ~34meg of information) taken verbatim from Codex. You can download just those sections you need – and none that you do not. Before you start downloading or commenting though, please take a moment to read the information I’ve put together here: http://www.tamba2.org.uk/T2/codex-and-pdf/ It should address what I think will be common questions. Once Codex is back, the management and direction of this project will be taken to there with additional input from the WordPress Docs mailing list.

Just a quick note for everyone to take a minute and check out their credit card statements (especially Mastercard) for really suspicious but small charges from strange stores in foreign countries. You might be especially vulnerable if your Mastercard doubles up as a Debit Card and/or an ATM card (since you have opened more than one way of accessing funds through your card number). I know that I have not used the card in question in over two years and have not used it online for years. I saw a lone charge on it this month for $12.38 from England (an import export company) which caught me off gaurd. I have since cancelled my card, removed online access to the account and frozen all transactions. Better safe than sorry. We might see more of these fraudulent transactions once the stolen/lost lists make their rounds around the world. PS: I would […]

The Blog 500 Challenge (prize: $50,000 in advertising or $10,000 in cash) I suspect that to come up with a comparable solution to existing big wig aggregators (such as Technorati) a non-affiliated programmer would have to come up with some pretty innovative solutions to determine the top 500 AND keep it updated AND keep it spam free AND make Jason and Bryan happy, all at the same time. Some trials and tribulations to remember: http://www.pubsub.com/linkranks.php – Failed in the first few weeks (or was it months) with large multi user blogs corrupting the results. Almost useless to determine an “A List” of 500 bloggers because sites like blogger.com dominate the linking war. http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/ – A list of “most linked in people” that is most widely used to determine popularity. Technorati actively filters out sites such as photomatt.net (which is twice as more linked in than Boing Boing) from its top […]

Support Geoff in Blogathon 2005: Geoff is participating in Blogathon 2005 to make 48 posts in 24 hours to support the Blood:Water Mission which is seeking to bring HIV free blood and clean water to Africa. Please visit that post to make a pledge for Geoff or to directly donate to the Blood:Water.

Just a reminder for all the winners to email me (mark at wltc dot net) with your Paypal email address so I can send you your winnings if you haven’t done so already. Please put “WordPress Plugin Competition Winner” in the subject. Also, a heartfelt thank you to all the judges, supporters and well wishers for their involvement. 🙂

I think the people that promote anything also bear the responsibility of doing so ethically. One bad apple in a basket makes the basket look really terrible. I was TREMENDOUSLY DISSAPPOINTEDthis afternoon to receive comment spam on my blogs for getfirefox.com. If asked, I would have promoted the site free of charge (and as a matter of fact, have done so on many occassions including this one). The author was Nicolegrants Kidman (IP: 203.130.233.100 , quiksurfer1.telkom.net.id). If Asa or anyone else from the Firefox team reads this, I hope that they can take the necessary precautions to make sure that this does not happen. I strongly urge promoters to be really, really careful of their methods. Maybe I was a little jumpy with my conclusions. This very well could have come from “legitimate” (if there is such a thing) spammers trying to get their details approved and Firefox.com really has […]