Heather's Blogpile

Google today announced plans to block Blog Comment Spam, on the theory that if they don't give blog spam any visibility, if there is no value in spamming blogs, the practice will stop. Horay for Google!!!

From the GoogleBlog, Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Preventing comment spam
If you're a blogger (or a blog reader), you're painfully familiar with people who try to raise their own websites' search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like "Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site." This is called comment spam, we don't like it either, and we've been testing a new tag that blocks it. From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

We hope the web software community will quickly adopt this attribute and we're pleased that a number of blog software makers have already signed on.

We've also discussed this issue with colleagues at our fellow search engines and would like to thank MSN Search and Yahoo! for supporting this initiative.

Posted by Heather at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

News from UFMCC Headquarters ...
January 7, 2005

Metropolitan Community Church's relief efforts on behalf of victims of the tsunami were saluted on Al Franken's national (US) radio talk show, The Al Franken Show.

Franken pointed out that, as of earlier this week, none of the "religious self-righteous websites" (his words) even mentioned the tsunami disaster (Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc -- "while the United Church of Christ, Metropolitan Community Churches, and some reformed Jewish groups all had the disaster and disaster relief prominently displayed on their websites..."

The Al Franken Show is carried live on Air America Network on both Sirius and XM satellite radio, and on more than 50 radio stations across the U.S. Franken, a former star of Saturday Night Live, is the author of several books, including the New York Times #1 bestseller "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."

Want to send some help to the survivors of the Tsunami? I recommend you use Charity Navigator and The Better Business Bureau National Information System to help evaluate what charities to give to, based on ranking and percentage of donated money that is used for administration vs. money that is used for the program itself.

Posted by Heather at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Its Christmas - what a wonderful relief from work! I'm still struggling with this flu bug that nipped me last week - started with a nasty sore through and achy weakness, then shifted to a raspy unproductive cough with a constant nasal drip, then a fever ... and now, it may actually be fading away!

We had a big deal going at work for the last month or so - the final stages of turning our website into a Portal - and the actual launch on Dec 20th. Of course, that came in the middle of the scheduled office party. But it went through without a flaw and everyone celebrated. Tho I didn't feel much like celebration with this flug bug ... ick!

Posted by Heather at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres
P.O. Box 2247
New York, NY 10116-2247
(888) 392-0392
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org

Or, just go to the Apple website at http://www.apple.com/give/ and donate through one of the Charities they have linked to - or, you can even donate through the Itunes Music Store!

Posted by Heather at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)