JeffreyMarx.com

Try saying that headline five times fast! Spammers are becoming more aware of the steps us bloggers and developers are taking to keep them of off our blogs and articles.

if you are on WordPress, then you should be using akismet which is a software made by Automattic (the creators of wordpress). That is the best wordpress plugin you can have to stop spam. other plugins and software include: Bad Behavior (use at your own risk, can be very buggy) and Spam Karma, and of course captchas. But these spammers are trying to make a living too, and they are figuring out new ways to get around our defenses. One of the latest trends I have seen are spam messages that seem complimentary to your blog, but actually contain links spam sites that could put malicious spyware in your readers’ computer. They stroke your ego to try and make sure you don’t delete their comments. So keep an eye out for comments that are a little too nice. Here are a couple examples;
“so impressive and beautiful thank you for preparing a site admin.”
“I wish to continue your success permanent”

Mouse over the the author’s name and you’ll most like see a shady-looking url that probably sells Viagara.
Be sure to mark them as ‘spam’ so that your akismet spam filter will recognize these types of messages more quickly in the future.

Not all complementary posts are going to be malicious, but if you have a wordpress blog, this is definitely something you need to watch out for.

• WordPress NYC Meetup (@ Sun Microsystems) http://4sq.com/3EpM54 #
• Me too RT @boonebgorges Listening to @sbruner talk about WP as a platform at NYC WordPress meetup. #
• @nycbbb Does that really constitute as a big day? I never heard of either of those guys .. lol in reply to nycbbb #
• I'm at Rebar (147 Front St, Jay St, Brooklyn) w/ 5 others. http://4sq.com/24CzN5 #
• I'm at Reka's Thai Restaurant w/ @djtonyz. http://4sq.com/7Y2Lal #
• @PeteAbe Why would they ruin it by expanding to 96 teams? I hope they keep it like it is in reply to PeteAbe #
• It's pointless to put Pulp Fiction on cable tv #
• Memo to Villanova: You can start playing any time now … To help save my bracket and the Big East's credibility #
• @unclejuicyjoe Looks that way … still a little hope in reply to unclejuicyjoe #
• Jeez .. what a rough weekend for the Big East. I guess #cuse is the only one that matters. Except that my bracket is dead now. #

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These days everyone is concerned about the internet and how it’s popularity is threatening to isolate people. It keeps them to close to their computers and haves them constantly checking their mobile devices and ignoring their friends and the outside world. One web site has been a leader in getting people off their couches and meeting other people in person. Meetup.com launched in 2001 founded by Scott Heiferman, Matt Meeker and Peter Kamali. I first joined a meetup group back in 2002, I was living in Poughkeepsie and looking for some professionals to network with in the new media industry. I really enjoyed it and got some great technical tips that I use for my job. I found a meetup group that met once a week in New York City. Back then, meetup.com was used mostly for networking and professional purposes.

When I moved to Westchester I didn’t know anybody, so I joined a local social group called the Westchester 20-somethings. We had a weekly dinner and drinks meeting at local White Plains restaurants and bars, with a group of people I had never met before. That same group of people are now some of the closest friends that I have and we see each other on a regular basis. Now you can find meetup groups for anything from local singles look for love, to people who like to watch movies, and those who want to share witchcraft techniques. There literally is something for everybody.

Meetup’s footprint now extends all over the country and beyond and has all kinds of groups for people of all ages and backgrounds. So if you are looking to network, make friends or just meet people with the same interests, I’d encourage you to surf on over the meetup.com and give it a try.

The Westchester WordPress meetup group held its first meetup on Tuesday, January 26th at my newspaper’s (The Journal News) offices in White Plains, New York. The audience was comprised of about 10 people looking to learn more about the software. The group was started by Anthony Zeoli , who runs a local web development firm called Digital Strategy Works. We’re joining a cluster of groups that have been popping up to discuss WordPress, an open source blogging system which is becoming more popular by the day. Meetup.com is one of my favorite sites on the internet as it’s main intent is to use the internet to organize the groups that meet off the internet. I’ll talk more about Meetup.com in a future blog post.

Zeoli did a fantastic job walking through the WordPress installation process. He explained the basics of themes, Search Engine Optimization and plugins. The audience was very active in asking a lot of questions. I’m an assistant organizer of the group and would like to think that my experience overseeing a cluster of WordPress Powered blogs is a big help to people who want to understand WordPress better. I chimed in and relayed a lot of good information that the audience seemed to appreciate

Our second Meetup will be held on Tuesday February 16th, also at the Journal News office in White Plains. The agenda is not set in stone yet. Members have said they want to learn more about SEO, Theming, Permalinks and Hierarchy, and just a general discussion around blogging with WordPress and the various opportunities blogging presents. So our plan is to take one of those general topics, and delve much deeper into it for our February meetup. In March, I’m planning on making a presentation on how bloggers can build traffic through link building, and engaging the audience.

if you are interested in attending, please join our meetup group. It is a great opportunity to learn about blogging and WordPress from professionals who are in the field.

Here is a link to Tony’s powerpoint slides from the meeting.

Starting in 2011, the New York Times will begin to charge for access to stories on its web site. However, this paywall is not like others we have seen in that it won’t start charging users until they click through several stories. Needless to say, this plan has raised more than a few eyebrows.

Their plan is to count how many times a user reads their articles and start charging them once they exceed a certain threshold (the threshold has yet to be determined). Sounds a bit counter intuitive doesn’t it? Why punish your most loyal readers? The reason for this is to stay relevant with search engines. Closing everything off from the massive crowd of freeloaders (err … i mean users) would alienate the casual web surfer as well as piss off search engines. They assume that their most diehard loyal fans will not mind paying for their content. That theory will be put to the test quickly.

This raises a lot of questions. How many articles do you let users read before you pull the plug? What type of technology will they use to enforce this? Even inexperienced users know how to clear their cookies these days. So how do you identify unique users with a good accuracy rate? Using IP addresses? Those can easily be manipulated. Maybe there will be some kind of free registration before you hit the paywall (seems like that would defeat the purpose of a “metered” plan). There just seems to be so many ways around this plan. Hordes of people will put articles on message boards, web sites, and in the comment sections of free blogs, while the NY Times legal department tries to hunt them down with copyright suites. The NY Times wants the best of both worlds where they can have a paywall, but still give away a lot for free. That is a very tricky balance to strike.

Another big question is whether or not the Times can make enough money through online subscriptions to offset potentially massive losses in online advertising revenue. It’s hard to imagine the Times traffic not taking a big dip once they put in a paywall. They simply won’t have the same volume of people viewing their articles, which will make them less attractive to advertisers. On the other hand, some advertisers may like the fact that they have a core set of loyal users and will have a very solid handle on their demographics (I assume the paywall registration process will ask people a lot of questions about age, income etc.).

The one thing that is for certain is that many eyes will be on this project to see if this plan can save the struggling newspaper industry. Only time will tell.