One of the most powerful ways in which bloggers find out (or at least, try to find out) about the latest news on the blogosphere and on the web is through the very popular Google Alerts.

Using the alert tool, you can specify keywords or key phrases, so when the big G finds new content in their database that matches your key phrases, they will drop you an email linking you up with the new content.

It has been a great way to find great content to expand on, give thoughts to, and even find like minded bloggers or people.

But there is one thing I noted recently is the increase in the number of alerts which are linked to sploggy and spammy sites that totally add no value to the the web. The screenshot below shows just one of the sites I was alerted for the phrase “make money blogging”.

What a waste of time and bandwidth.

I think I should spend less time going through the alert news and reading more legitimate blog feeds from the people I know give me good content.

Last Friday, I didn’t leave a message before I left for Malaysia to facilitate the seminar, because I was expecting that I would have time and Internet access over the weekend to continue to update my blog. However what happened was that the Wi-Fi access was not very good, and I had little time.

In fact, I woke up at 5:30am before the seminar started and had a super early breakfast, hoping that I could use the time to get back in touch with the online world, update my blog… but I wasn’t able to.

(Oops. Now you know how addicted I am to this blog, and how much I love you people dropping by and chatting with me )

So I was wondering… what would YOU choose to do, if you were in the same scenario as me? What if you were on a trip that you expected good Internet access but it was terribly slow, or you only had 10 minutes to spare?

Assuming you only have time to do one of these. Would you:

1. Check and attempt to reply your email
2. Post replies on your blog comments
3. Post a new blog post, saying that you are away and you are unable to reply to emails and blog comments until you are back in town?

Or would you have just left everything there and take that 10 minutes to sleep?

Just moments ago, I received a comment on my previous post. Wanting to upkeep my “SOB-ness” and hoping to make another friend from this blog, I hurried to see what the comment was about.

I was elated because it was from someone whom I’ve never seen commenting on my blog before. I thought my article was so good. I had a little suspicion, however, because the comment really didn’t add much value to the post – it was simply quoting two lines from my post text, and saying that that line was the secret.

So I checked out the commenter’s URL (which was a blogspot blog) and it was half-legit. It wasn’t really a totally rubbish site, but it was ill-designed and splattered with Adsense all over.

Never mind. I thought to myself. Maybe he’s new, or something like that. I thought I would allow the comment.

To my surprise, another comment came in 10 minutes later. It was from another new commenter, and she said that she had Dugg my post, and she even gave me the URL of the entry posted in Digg. But again, there was practically no value in the comment at all.

2 comments in 10 minutes? That’s not right! My blog doesn’t have that kind of popularity!

So I investigated further, I went to check my email notifications.

Dang! Bugger.

Both had the same IP address. Their URLs were different (the second was a Squidoo lens) but the contents are very similar, both talking something about some contemporary Indian art gallery.

Delete.

If you were really legit commenters, I thank you for taking the effort to Digg my article. Please add more value in your comments next time. I look forward to you coming back “for future analysis and tips”.

I know that two computers can share the same public IP address if they are on the same internal network, but then again, 2 comments coming from the same IP address claiming to come from different people in 10 minutes? Not me. My blog is not so popular yet.

I can imagine what it is like. It is either ONE person trying to be Superman and Clark Kent, or there are two (or many more) people in one room, both paid to leave such useless comments.

I remember Lorelle had articles about the new comment spammers and human versus human in spamming. Particularly, in the earlier post, she mentioned the “new version” of spam (then) sounding better, and she even recommended that one way of avoiding the spam police is to use the blog author’s name in the comment, and posting comments that at least relate to the article.

That’s version 2.0.

Now spam has upgraded to version 3.0. These spammers use the blog authors names, quote part of the post text, and even pull the poor innocent Digg into the game.

I’m not playing.

Amrit tagged me do my 6 predictions for 2007 last year (:mrgreen: that sounds really long ago isn’t it?)… and I’ve really been thinking about it, and I’m ready to take the challenge.

Here goes:

I think more corporations are going to start to embrace blogs as a means to reach out to its customers.

The Fortune 500 Blog Project shows an updated figure as of December 14, 2006 – we are not even halfway through, and there are already more corporate blogs than it was found in an earlier project, last updated in May! If you’d like to participate, just get on to the Wiki and sign up! I will be doing more reviews this year too!

I think community network and social media marketing will boom.

It has already, in fact. Businesses and companies already have Friendster, MySpace, and Multiply accounts, and they are using that to get messages across to people.

I think spam is going to grow so much that people are going to start thinking what their emails are for.

Look. At least 95% of my emails are spam mails. In fact, its grown so much for me, that I don’t welcome solicited mails from companies that I left my email addresses with anymore. If I’d want information, I’d Google it. If you want to tell me about your products, give me a RSS feed and you have a higher chance of success.

By the way, check out Debbie Weil’s post on RSSing yourself. Its a good starter.

I predict that VOIP calls will overtake normal telephony in urbanized cities.

People are travelling with cheaper flights, and broadband access is getting more widespread and cheaper. I’d rather pay 3 cents per minute using Skype than 20 cents per minute on a normal telephone call! It has been this way all the time, but its going to get better in 2007. People who are still not on VOIP calls are not because they still fear the Internet and computers (I think), but more gadgets like Skype enabled phones will make things a lot easier for these people to connect.

I think video editing is going to be made a whole lot easier.

We’ve heard so much about YouTube, and everybody wants to be on it! The problem? Not everybody knows the technical stuff about video editing. When there is demand for easier video editing, you can be sure someone, somewhere will come up with the product.

I think more people are going to quit their jobs, to work from home, or request to work from home.

Who likes to travel an hour, squeeze in the sardine packed trains, fight office politics and be under the breath of the boss? On the other hand, companies get to save on office rent! Go figure.

So there they are, 6 predictions for 2007!

Let’s see if my foresight is good when I check back at them next year!

And… I’ll pass this on first to my other two blogtippees for this month! (Hey! Do some work! :mrgreen:) Shi Hengcheong, Andrew, and also Ted (for tagging me the other time! here’s my “revenge”! :mrgreen:) and John!

What are your 6 predictions for 2007?

Amrit from Content Blog highlighted an couple of articles yesterday about people calling everything blogs. Actually, this thought was in my mind for a while, especially when I was posting about the Corporate Blogging and Internet Marketing yesterday. Its so true isn’t it?

If you trace back to why blogs are called blogs in the first place – they are meant to be “web logs”, and the word “log” goes back again to when people are recording data of events sequentially, may it be a computer error log, or a timesheet log book. So putting it in the “blogging” context, “blog” should apply to only websites that are really offering a sequential and continuous and flow of thoughts or opinions or experiences.

The Inquirer (the site highlighted by Amrit) clairfies:

…If it is an executive looking like they are talking about the products they sell, it is a PR exercise written by PR people. It is a lie masquerading as something hip and cool to sell you on a product. Not a blog.

If there are more than one person writing for the ‘blog’, especially if they get paid, it is a site….

When you have myspace pages for bands that are blatant promotional tools, not a blog. Movie sites/actor sites, not a blog. Paid for shills like the MS ‘bloggers’, not a blog. Spawn of paid for shills, not a blog. If you make you living from it, not a blog.

Haha! I like that “If you make you living from it, not a blog.” Doesn’t that make programs like Six Figure Blogging a real oxymoron then?

Should I rename my site to website-opreneur?