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Is Akismet Automattic’s best product ?

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Matt Mullenweg, of Automattic pointed out that social bookmarking service Ma.gnolia has integrated Akismet to help their battle against social bookmarking spam.

I’ve been a huge fan of Akismet and I think its just great that folks are starting to use it in other applications besides just blogs. Earlier in the year it was integrated into forum software.

I personally wish I had something as powerful for my email in blocking spam as I have for my blogs.

Originally posted on December 5, 2006 @ 6:47 pm

Jason Calacanis joins Sequoia Capital

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Jason Calacanis, the former General Manager of AOL’s Netscape division, announced he’s joining Sequoia Capital, a west coast venture investment firm. Calacanis’s Weblogs Inc. was purchased by AOL about a year ago. In an appearance at a trade show Tuesday morning, Calacanis said he had planned to leave AOL if he wasn’t President of the company by now. He was the keynoter for the Search Engine Strategies conference.

While I’m sure this comes as a suprise to some. To many it seems like the logical next step for Jason’s pursuit of becoming America’s Next Web 2.0 Billionaire.

We wish him all the best.

Source: Marketwatch

Originally posted on December 6, 2006 @ 2:33 pm

Did Akismet join forces with porn and viagra?

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akismetIn an apparent late night party, Akismet hopped into bed with the porn and pharmaceutical industries. Sometime late last night, Akismet decided to start allowing the porn sites and viagra hawkers access to a lot of blogs out there.

I’m just hoping the Automattic guys wake up soooooon.

Update: Looks like it was a DNS issue that is now resolved. Thanks Automattic.

Originally posted on December 8, 2006 @ 8:22 am

Qumana integrates with Typepad

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Qumana today announced availability of the Q-Ads tools and the popular Qumana offline blog editor for users of the TypePad blogging platform. Users of Six Apart’s popular hosted blogging service can now quickly and easily insert keyword-based ads directly into their blog posts, whether they use the Qumana editor or not.

“Qumana is thrilled to be offering the industry’s easiest ad insertion tool to this important blogging community,” said Fred Fabro, CEO of Qumana. “Q-Ads puts TypePad bloggers at the center of the explosive growth taking place in online advertising,” said Fabro.

“TypePad bloggers deserve creative and powerful ways to earn money from their blogs. Qumana offers bloggers a unique approach, and we are happy to introduce their tools to our customers.” said Michael Sippey, VP & GM of TypePad at Six Apart.

“With Q-Ads TypePad bloggers can choose which keywords best represent the editorial message of the blog post and then with one click pull an ad from our network that best relates to that content,” added Fabro. “The result is a matching of TypePad bloggers’ content to an ad message, which can give the ad message greater relevance to blog readers. Greater relevance means higher click-throughs and happier advertisers,” said Fabro.

I’ve been a Qumana user for awhile. It’s a great publishing tool, with an every growing ad network. Definetly worth a look if you are new to the blogging scene.

Originally posted on December 6, 2006 @ 2:17 pm

Canada declares ‘blogging’ a job

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After years of running away from jobs. It appears I’ve had one for a helluvah long time. It’s official I’ve had the same job for 5 years. I’m a blogger.

A New Brunswick court has recognized blogging as an occupation in a case involving an arrest for obstructing a police officer. The decision, R. v. LeBlanc, involved an arrest for obstructing a police officer.

The person charged is a well-known blogger who was covering a political demonstration for his blog.

The judge acquitted the man, concluding that there was reasonable doubt that there was willful obstruction.

More interesting are the judge’s comments regarding blogging.

In particular, the judge notes that that the blogger was “simply plying his trade, photographing a demonstration for inclusion in his blog when he was arrested.”

Source: P2P

Originally posted on December 8, 2006 @ 8:05 am