It looks like spammers are using a tactic of exploiting your spam filters by incorporating known and reputable domain names in their comments. Pariah S. Burke calls this “Whitelist Spam Attacks”. In his blog, iampariah.com, he gives a very detailed and simple explanation of this mechanism which can potentially threat not only your blogs but your e-mail. He says:

Blog spammers are attacking blogs with their typical messages, but they have a new, ingenious, and potentially catastrophic trick. They’re incorporating links to legitimate, respectable domains into those attacks. The net result is that automated spam filters, even so-called “smart filters” like Dr. Dave’s Spam Karma plug-in system for WordPress-based blogs, are Blacklisting domains like CNN.com, IMDB.com, MacCentral.com, and dozens of others.

The anti-spam logic engine on one of my high search engine ranking sites, for example, Blacklists 15-25 respectable domains daily.

This is a threat that can be successfully fought if awareness is raised in the net. I invite you to read the rest of his article to better understand this phenomenon.

But don’t know where to start? Apple has a whole section about mobile content. While it is imperniated around the creation of mobile content with QuickTime, Apple’s FAQ section gives useful basic information that anyone starting in the mobile publishing field has to know.

The FAQ clearly explains vital things like what 3G, 3GPP and 3GPP2. You can find it here.

Here is an interesting article from About.com Weblogs Guide, Shai Coggins, regarding a case study conducted on the sale of Weblogs Inc.

The case study is by Tristan Louis and is based on the number of incoming links as shown Technorati.

Shai also posts a little quiz to find out how much your blog is worth. Do you agree that the value of blogs can be exclusively based on incoming links?

David Barringer takes up the aspects, pros and cons of the degreed and self-taught designer. In a comical debate between Ego and Devil, David brings up some excellent points. Have an educational chuckle while reading Myths of the Self-Taught Designer: The First Conversation between Ego and the Devil, on Voice: AIGA Journal of Design.

Apple Ads Collection for the Most Passionate

Apple is gaining more and more market share with their Mac OS X, their inexpensive Mac Mini and their powerful G5. As Apple released their Mighty Mouse, iPod Nano recently came on the scenes. But have you ever wondered how the very first Apple products looked like? Do you know what they were?

Apple Advertising and Brochure Gallery will show you their collection of Apple ads, ranging from 1976 up to 1998, when the iMac was introduced.

Technorati tags: hardware, Apple, computers.

Notes on Respecting Copyrights When Using Fonts

There seem to be a lot of interesting discussions occurring in the About.com forums lately as I find myself blogging more and more of them.

About.com forum member Shawnhudak questions how to use a font to avoid copyright infringment. What happens if a designer creates a logo with a font a client doesn’t have? Does the client have to purchase the font if the logo will be used everywhere? What if the client purchases the font and the designer doesn’t have it — would the designer have to purchase the font, even if he just uses it for that one client’s job?

Other questions are also asked. See how the thread eveloves with the replies of other forum members. If you have any input, why don’t you drop a message too?

Technorati tag: fonts, copyrights.

How is it that some articles seem to flow better than others? I am sure you have read articles that were terribly boring, while others were very impinging and were delivering all the information you needed to know about effectively. Whether you are a blogger, a designer or a copywriter, these 50 writing tips by Roy Peter Clerk can help you write better articles.

Technorati tag: writing