This past weekend I logged into my personal email account, the one that I forward all my UWM email to, and came across a disheartening realization: my EAI blog, yes, this blog, was spammed to hell and back.  The spam wasn't of the normal blog variety of comment spam, which I've become quite accustomed too, but rather trackbacks/referals from bogus web sites.  Just to clarify, I'm not talking about one or two emails, I'm talking around 75 emails in the span of less than two days.

I guess the thing I'm most curious about is how did a spammer actually come across this blog?  I know the blog statistics are sent out to technoroti and possibly a few other blog trackers, but there is no way these blogs appear towards the top of any serach results for any topic.  Furthermore, I wouldn't think a blog of this variety would be an ideal target for a spammer to spam.  The reader base is extremly small and it doesn't hold any weight with the serach engines.  However, the blog is hosted on a .edu site and I know .edu's hold more weight to the search engines than .com's or any other web site extension for that matter.  Nonetheless, thats neither here nor there.  The blog is new and the readers are few so I'm still at a loss for words.

If this continues, I'll be forced to turn off all trackbacks/pingbacks/referals etc. until the problem ceases to exist.

I logged on last night after work around 11 to finally take the exam.  Over all I think I did fairly well with all the information.  However my one drawback that I noticed is I spent way too much time paging through the book looking for answers.  Needless to say, the two hour time limit actually flew by quite quickly.  Hopefully professor Haines will get our grades posted quickly *wink wink*.

Anyway, I enjoyed the online format better than the contrary.  In my situation, it allowed me to prepare and take it when best suited my schedule.

In othe things, I've started looking up information on my term paper subject, Ajax, and have come up with some alright sources, but I'm having trouble focusing on the integration part of Ajax since Im more used to its presentation aspect.  Whenever I start my search for new information, I always get side tracked by finding some other interesting topic of how Ajax relates so some new cool design feature.  Nonetheless, there's still a month remaining until the paper is actually due so I still have time to gather the needed information.

Here's an awesome link describing how Ajax actually works.  It's slightly outdated (2005) and uses some old references, but there are some really helpful figures that demonstrate how Ajax interacts with servers and what needs to be processed on the server side vs. the client side.  Ajax alows for a huge decrease in bandwidth which means less wait time for us.  Huge companies such as Google are already using the technology; I'm sure more and more people will jump on the bandwagon in the near future.

 

I chose AJAX as the topic behind my term paper because:

1. I have some slight experience with it.
2. It's a fascinating topic that I want to learn more about.

As of now, I've used AJAX mostly in WordPress plug-ins, manipulating them in whatever way I need them.  Other than that, I've seen various websites that integrate AJAX into their web pages and it just creates a more fun experience for the user.

From what I do know about AJAX is it's able to update a specific portion of a web page without having to reload the entire page.  How it does this I'm not entirely sure, but I do hope to figure out after conducting more research.

 

XML, as discussed in class, is already ten years old.  Actually, XML turned ten on the tenth earlier this month.  The first public draft was released November of 1996, however the final release version of 1.0 was released out to the public in February of 1998.

Anyway, I can't remember if I ran across this blog post at Digg.com or Slashdot.org, but it quickly gained my atttention due to the fact that we've been covering XML in class.  The blog post is written by Tim Bray who is a co-editor of XML.  Tim wrote this article over ten years ago, but never had it published until recently.  Now marking the ten year aniversary of XML, he decided to share it with the world.

As for an intro into the article, be prepared because it is somewhat lengthy.  The article encompases the background of XML and all those involved in it's creation.  It really is an intriguing blog post and is definitely worth a read.

Read the article here.

XML otherwise known as Extensible Markup Language is an interesting standard.  Before our last class, all I knew of XML was what it stood for.  I didn't know that it was actually derived from SGML (Standardized General Markup Language) or the fact in how extensively it is used.

From the web sites I manage, I've learned a fair amount of HTML, I wouldn't consider myself an expert on the topic, but I can read the source code on any given web site and usually figure out what's happening.  However, with XML, there really is no deciphering.  The person coding the XML file can create their own tags for everything needed and add the content straight into the XML file.

I also like the fact that XML actually has it's own stylesheet.  I have some slight experience with CSS and that knowledge helped me better understand how the page can change so drastically when the stylesheet is manipulated.

Overall, I think XML is an interesting topic.  Hopefully, I'll get some hands on experience with it in class. 

Wikipedia defines screen scraping as a "...computerized parsing of the HTML text in web pages. In all cases, the screen scraper has to be programmed to not only process the text data of interest, but also to recognize and discard unwanted data, images, and display formatting."

The first thing that came to mind during our class discussion of screen scraping was -- what does the web master get in return for someone using his or her data in an unauthorized way?  The harsh answer is nothing.  Screen scraping allows the "scraper" to pull whatever information he or she wants from any particular web site and use that information however he or she pleases.  Furthermore, it allows the scraper to use the information in a way which it was never intended to be used.

That's not so bad, right?  The author posted that information on the internet so it should be fair game to all.  Well, most web sites have more in mind than providing information to all its users.  Sure the main goal of most web sites is to provide the "best", "correct", or "most up-to-date" information available, but the truth is, they're all in it for the money.  All those banner ads, annoying sound ads, click here to meet whoever ads are huge revenue earners for web sites that get a fair amount of traffic.

I own a fair share of web site and have advertising on most of them.  It's in my best interest for the users of my site to visit my advertisers or better yet buy something from them under my referral id.  If someone is screen scraping my information and posting it to a different web site, they're ultimately stealing all my information I either gathered myself or paid someone to gather for me.  The user of that new site could be making money off his or her own ads and I could be losing out on what could of been ad revenue.

To make matters worse, a huge part of driving large amounts of traffic to a web site is premium placement on Google.  One of the only ways to achieve this, is to have "original" content.  For all web sites that copy information from other sites, the almighty Google knows this, and places those web sites in a "supplemental index".  If a web site is placed in that index, there's a good chance that site won't recieve any traffic through search engines.

Ultimately, even though many things on the internet may seem "unfair", I think it just makes everything fair game.  If someone wants to screen scrape my site, I have to design it in a way which they are unable.  It's all in the back and forth battle of making money online.  Game on.

As a week has already passed since our first class, I figured it was time to write my first blog post.  On choosing a relevant topic to write on, I decided blogging would fit well because, judging from the responses given in class, most people have never kept their own web log.

I've been blogging for over four years and now have an extensive list of blogs I regularly read for everything ranging from news stories to pop culture to various hobbies such as golfing or playing guitar.  I currently have a few blogs that I update on occasion, but haven't found time to update them recently.  My favorite blog is definitely my site VidFad.com which deals with anything movie related.  I'm a movie geek.  I work at a movie theater. Nuf said.

The best way to read a large list of blogs in a short amount of time is, as professor Haines discussed in class, is to use an RSS reader.  RSS, otherwise known as Really Simple Syndication, is a tool which allows a reader to read the blog's content without actually visiting the blog.  All the blog reader has to do is subscribe to the RSS feed though a site such as bloglines.com and then begin reading his or her favorite blogs.

When subscribing to a blog, it allows the reader to read the content on topics he or she is actually interested in rather than sifting through article after article on a site such as the New York Times.

Blogs, in my opinion, are the best source for finding information on pretty much any topic.  According to Wikipedia.com, as of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.  In other words, there's plenty of information out there waiting to be found.

Ultimately, when writing a blog, it's yours.  Change the theme.  Post some pictures.  Make it unique.  However, always write about topics that interest you.  People can tell when you're uninterested in a certain topic, and that's the best way to lose readers.