Blog News and a Bit More on Splogs and Spam

First up I am sorry I have been quiet the last week or so. In honesty I have been doing a lot more posting on the podcast blog lately. I find it a constant battle to split my time. As well as trying to decide if a story should go there or here. It is important that I keep both sites current and active.

Today I added the MyBlogLog Widget. I joined the service last night. Adding the widget was easy thanks to engtech’s advice and a bit of tweaking from my side. It added a bit of code that had to be removed. I am enjoying the fact that you can see “who” has been here and actually having a look at their profile on MyBlogLog. You can see mine there as well. For those who host their blogs elsewhere there is also some nice statistics services that you can implement with a Java Script snippet. So join the community and appear over there in the widget.

I also noticed today that WordPress have upgraded their Blogger importer. Good for those that are wanting to move house to WordPress.com. This is especially true since it would appear that if you have a Blogger blog then you are probably living next door to a splog.

In the wake of my spam rant the other day I noticed that Steve Rubel posted some interesting stats on spam. These stats are from the ebiquity group and their latest spam analysis. Notable facts that leap out for me:

• 53% of all pings are spam
• 56% of blogs that ping are spam
• 51% of Blogspot Blogs are spam
• 99.7% of .info domains are spam

That last one is a shocker. I know that engtech has blacklisted this domain from commenting on his blog, not surprising. Now to my thinking; if this is the case, why not get rid of the domain? If I was a serious blogger or otherwise I would definitely not use the domain after a bit of research. The legit ones that are there? Why not give then a discount at Godaddy or something to get a better domain? Silly logic I know because what I am suggesting doesn’t work that way. I know that, so don’t flame me okay. But what the heck is it good for? Then again that would just force the splogs to move on and infest some other domain. At least this way we know where they all are and blocking the domain is an effective method of preventing comment spam.

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Feedburner Acquires Blogbeat

Feedburner acquires Blogbeat in a move that could see Feedburner make some gains in usage as it can now offer comprehensive statistical web site information as well as their present popular feed service and stats. The acquisition appears to be agreeable to both parties and the biggest benefit is to the users present and future.

The integrated site statistics will be offered to existing Blogbeat customers first followed by Feedburner users. The service is an addition to the free service level that is currently offered by Feedburner. Currently Feedburner only offers feed statistics. What this means is that people without access to or the knowledge will soon have access to comprehensive statistics about their blog including:

• Page views
• Estimated unique visitors
• Detailed individual visitor statistic; Browser, Operating System and country of visitors plus last visit time
• Incoming links including search queries
• Outbound links and counts
• Visitors by city, represented as a “cloud” (similar to “tag clouds”)
• Daily graphs as well (gotta love the graphs)

All this in an easy to read layout and look that is similar to the Feedburner dashboard that you may have seen. It looks very good. With this amount of detail in such a well presented and easy to use manner, I can see a lot of users ditching their “free” stats service in favour of Feedburner. If I had a site other than one hosted at WordPress.com I would. The main reason being is that free stats services are often confusing, consist of bad layout, visually poor requiring payment for a better service and some are associated with undesirable services and sites. From the screenshots Feedburner is offering a stark comparison.

We are fortunate at WordPress to have pretty good stats that cover most of the areas above. But for bloggers and podcasters these tools are priceless and good reason to use the Feedburner service. Smart move by Feedburner who are excited about rolling out the new features soon.

Lets face it we all love stats, they are a great tool and source of curiosity and wonder, maybe shock. Feedburner just got better and possiblly a very real challenge to other statistical services offering a free service. Current free stat services are on notice; you have been warmed and you might be burned by this one.

The Digg Effect

As previously mentioned The Podcast Network was Dugg over the last 24 hours. Cameron Reilly was astounded at the hit the TPN servers copped from Digg. This is the first time that The Podcast Network has been “Dugg”.

Today Cam released a post where he states:

“I did the same traffic to G’Day World in one 24 hour period that I normally get in a month. And we aren’t currently geared up for that kind of attention.”

The last sentence was in response to the “issues” with trying to access the network this morning. G’day World carried the story as well as The Global Geek and that was the one that got Dugg.

He is also kind enough to demonstrate with a picture and includes screenshots, this is amazing. Click on it for a full sized version.

This is “The Digg Effect”:

 

Nice 🙂

LibSyn Player Removed!

Well the Global Geek Podcast has been going very well. The website is working great, accept for the LibSyn Player; which has been broken for nearly two weeks.

The player is just a web page application that allows people to "stream" the audio directly from the web page. It is also detachable so you can surf the net and listen to the show. About twelve days ago, after the upload of show number 004 (I think) it broke. It failed to update with the new show and the situation stayed that way. For me the player does not work at all. For others it might play any show that we have published, at random! Not good.

You might think that this is a minor thing, but you would be surprised to learn that this is the way that most people listen to the show. The majority of people appear to not know about aggregators or "podcatchers". So the fact that it is broken is really affecting our statistics, we have seen jumps in other episodes that should not have occurred and a downturn in the numbers for the most recent show. We are fairly sure that it is related to the player not working. Part of trying to combat this was to put the WordPress Podcast Widget on this blog, you can go to the streaming page and listen to the podcast from this and download the podcast with the right click "save as" command. But it was not a total solution. We have also tried to search for a decent player from somewhere else but we are having trouble finding one that us gumby people can put on the page and looks good.

So after all this and three emails to Liberated Syndication I have removed the player from the site, I just hope that people click the "POD" button to listen to the show or download it manually or preferably subscribe to the show using a podcatcher of some description. I recommend Juice as a free option, open source and it works. For a payed version of an integrated podcatcher and RSS reader I recommend FeedDemon.

Still hoping to get the player fixed and reinstated on the website but until LibSyn get back to me my hands are tied. Normally they are good with support but on this they have sucked.

Global Geek Podcast #002 & WordPress Down

We have the second Global Geek Podcast done and dusted and available for download. The second thing is that I am contemplating moving the blog due to technical problems at WordPress. [This is the second attempt at uploading this post!, the “published just failed… again]

Sorry that I have been all silent for the last 48 hours. This has been due to WordPress being down. Well not completely down. Sure I was able to login and I was able to view my statistics, I could even write another page for the website! But do you think that I could write a blog entry? No. This has been the situation for the last 48 hours. I tried last night, this afternoon and now and now is the only time I was able to do so. The other thing of note is that the whole site is as slow as a duck in treacle and that’s bloody slow! It takes ages to log on, it takes ages for the pages to display, it takes ages to do anything and I am not the only one! I am not even sure if this entry will “work”.

To say that I am a bit peeved would be an understatement in the least. I am genuinely disappointed as well. As I write this blog Sebastian is trying to publish a blog and what do you know WordPress is down… again; failed to reach server error!

I rely on this blog to let everyone know whats going on and publicise the Global Geek Podcast. The other thing is that some of my posts are generating some interest in the wider blogging community. This is a real let down.

The fact is that WordPress have an obligation to provide a reliable, stable service and thus far this has not been the case. I am seriously considering moving to a payed service like TypePad, I would not mind the US$4. 95 a month for reliability and stability; a small price to pay.

WordPress should be a bit concerned about this as blog entries such as this will quickly tarnish their reputation and they will be known as unreliable. For those of us that have bugger all understanding of PHP or HTML or maintaining a server; they rely on services such as this. Please WordPress make good on providing us a more reliable service, I don’t want to have to cross my fingers every time I click “publish”.

Just as a side note I notice that the RSS Feed widget for the Global Geek Podcast isn’t working, don’t know why; the RSS is valid… another thing that’s not working I guess…

Rant over. Please head on over to Global Geek Podcast and take a listen to the latest podcast; which is I do say so myself isn’t too bad. A much better poodcast, the audio is better and the content quality is high. I urge you guys if you have not got an aggregator to subscribe to the podcast (and any others that you might want to) then drop me a line and I do not mind pointing you in the right direction. By the way when I say subscribe – don’t worry it is free!