I’ll tell you what depresses me about blogging (and the internet) these days. It’s the group of people who call themselves social media consultants. They present themselves as technical mavens, able to make a product famous and popular on the internet. They brand themselves nicely, pass around their cutting edge business cards, and say that [...]
Category Archive for 'blogging'
How do I get marketers to leave this blog alone?
Posted in blogging on Jun 29th, 2009
I love it when Mirabilis.ca readers send me notes, and that’s why there’s a contact form on this site.
I used to post my email address on the contact page, but I got tired of crap sent by social media marketing types. People wanted me to review books and blog about them, try their coffeemakers and [...]
The depressing thing about blog comments these days
Posted in blogging on Jan 10th, 2009
You used to be able to post any opinion at all on your blog, and the only commenters would be your regular readers.
Then it became possible for people to monitor the web for blog posts on a specific topic — anything about a particular product, say — and that changed things somewhat. Folks who [...]
Comment spam in 2008
Posted in blogging on Dec 31st, 2008
At the end of 2007, I noted that Mirabilis got 28,745 spam comments during that year.
I know you’ve been waiting all year to see what 2008’s total would be, so here you go: 35,135 spam comments.
Spam comments don’t get published here, but they cause some trouble nonetheless. I don’t have time to wade through all [...]
Personality test for your blog (MBTI)
Posted in blogging on Nov 20th, 2008
You know about the Myers Briggs Personality Test? Well, now there’s a version of that for blogs. Hop on over to Typealyzer.com, plug in the URL of your blog, and see what you get. Apparently Mirabilis.ca is an ENTP. The blurb says:
ENTP – The Visionaries
The charming and trend savvy type. They are especially attuned to [...]
Wanted: WordPress plugin to deal with AP lunacy
Posted in blogging on Jun 17th, 2008
Now you know why a whole bunch of bloggers don’t want to link to Associated Press stories anymore. (See: The Associated Press has gone mad.)
I’d like a WordPress plugin to help me — and others –deal with this nonsense. The No AP links! plugin I want would:
The Associated Press has gone mad
Posted in blogging on Jun 17th, 2008
So the Associated Press seems to have lost its mind: they want bloggers to pay them for quoting excerpts from an AP story. How much? 12.50 for four words. I don’t know what they’re smoking over there, but seems like it’s crazy strong stuff. Here are some of the best responses I’ve seen on the [...]
What’s a gravatar? The Gravatar website explains:
A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites.
If you want a gravatar, you sign up at Gravatar.com. Then you select the image you wish to [...]
Six years!
Posted in blogging on Jun 8th, 2008
Well, what do you know? Mirabilis.ca is six years old today. The June 2002 archives are still here, and you can even go read the very first entry, if you like.
Who knew I could keep going this long?
So, how much comment spam do you get?
Posted in blogging on Dec 31st, 2007
I know some of you have blogs of your own. So how much comment spam do you get, anyway? The Mirabilis.ca total for 2007 is 28,651 28,745. Isn’t that insane?
Fortunately the Akismet plugin for WordPress takes care of it all for me, but still. Some days I go for dinner and come back to find [...]