Bloggasm

Has it really been 30 years?

“Thirty years ago next week, Gary Thuerk, a marketer at the now-defunct computer firm Digital Equipment Corporation, sent an email to 393 users of Arpanet, the US government-run computer network that eventually became the internet,” says New Scientist. “It was the first spam email ever.”

Since that day there has been a long, protracted spam war. Every time we find a new way to fight spam, the spammers develop a new method to get past our filters.

I’ve noticed, however, that one main tactic for a spammer is to disguise the spam email with a bunch of gibberish. Doesn’t this, then, cut down on the efficiency of the spam? If the spammer can’t adequately relay to you what it’s trying to sell, then even when it does get past the filter it wouldn’t make a very good pitch.

I use Gmail, which has a pretty good spam filter. But even for the few spam emails that get through, I can’t remember the last time I actually opened one. What a computer algorithm can’t figure out, the human brain easily can. The only trouble is the time it takes to delete it.

Though there have been countless news stories on the decline of newspaper advertising revenues and the impending doom of the industry, magazine ad sales have remained mostly steady. It seemed for awhile that they would be able to ward off any major competition from the web. Also, magazines often focus on niche topics — and therefore, niche advertising markets — making it much harder to track general trends in the industry.

But now we have word that the decreases in offline record sales are reverberating to music magazine revenues. “Ad pages for the three biggest music magazines slid 26% in the first quarter,” says Crain’s New York. “Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone, the category’s iconic publication, saw a 33% drop, according to just-released numbers from Publishers Information Bureau.”

Because music listeners are now purchasing songs online, advertisers are migrating to the web. This makes sense for them, really, because online music offers an advantage over print magazines — impulse buys. If I see an album advertisement in a magazine, I have to have the impetus to leave my house or go to my computer to purchase the song. If I see an advertisement online, in a few click-throughs I can not only sample a song but then quickly follow up with a purchase.

So I was hoping to have a new feature article published by today but unfortunately I wasn’t able to finish it last night. So it looks like it won’t be posted until Monday. In the meantime, here are some media-related links for your amusement.

1. Ever wonder what domain names Google has purchased? It’s always interesting to get hold of one of these lists because sometimes it gives you some insight into future plans for an online company. Well, now we have such a list. I shudder to think what kind of product Google Poo will be.

2. Popular science fiction writer John Scalzi posted a short story online about a week ago and based it on a Radiohead-like honor system for payment. At the end of the week, he posted how much money has been donated. It comes out to about 5.9 cents per word, which isn’t a bad rate for short fiction.

3. Media Shift has an interview with a creator of the Smoking Gun. What’s interesting is the site pulls in so many readers with only three staff members and a very simple Web 1.0 mindset. They’re only just now considering adding blogs to the site.

4. Conde Naste, which mainly focuses on magazine publications, is vastly expanding its online presence. They recently acquired some travel blogs and reportedly are poised to buy up more blogs in the future.

A year ago today, artists and writers celebrated International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, an event where hundreds of them release their work online for free. I wrote about the day over here. Apparently it’s to become an annual event, and today’s the day.

Well, I got linked to today by conservative blogger Michelle Malkin and never have I seen such vitriolic hateful email. I feel sorry for political bloggers who get linked by her regularly.

Here are some media-related links for your amusement:

1. A sports blogger who up until recently used a pseudonym outed himself as a Washington Post reporter. He was promptly fired.

2. Here’s a step by step list on how to make your own Judd Apatow movie. If this formula is correct, then he only has about five more movies left before he has run out of Freaks and Geeks cast members to star in his films.

3. While much of the news coverage of Craigslist has focused on the damage it has caused to the newspaper industry, another competitor has decided that it won’t take it sitting down — Ebay has filed a lawsuit against the free classifieds site.

4. Every time you think cable news couldn’t get any worse, you come across a news clip like this one and realize that there is no limit to its vapidity.

Science blogger Greg Laden has an interesting post about the effects of pseudonymous blogging. As the blogosphere becomes increasingly powerful, I think this is an issue that will become more and more prevalent. I plan on writing a feature article about it one of these days, but given how slow I am in researching my feature articles, I don’t know how long it will be before I get around to publishing it.

Why doesn’t Google Blog Search have keyword advertising next to its search results? Aren’t they missing out on a lot of money by not doing so?