By leelefever on April 29, 2008 - 10:48am.
It started with a tweet. Eddie Codel described Boston's streets as "Kafkaesque." I found it on Wikipedia (it means disorienting), along with a listing of other name-inspired words. One caught my eye: Machiavellianism. The first line of the Wikipedia entry:
By leelefever on April 21, 2008 - 8:12am.
How fun. Imagine my delight to wake up the last couple of days to find thousands of bounced emails - all with my address in the From: line. It's such an honor to see my address associated with other legitimate brands that are so proven in the fields of appendage enlargement.
Here's what happens...
A spammer needs to send spam emails and they don't want to use an address associated with them. So, they add someone else's address to the From: field of the email. When the email bounces, it comes to the person's address. In this case, me.
By leelefever on March 4, 2008 - 9:27am.
The arms race between spammers and bloggers continues and I often feel like I'm on the front lines. I'm so thankful for tools like Akismet that automatically prevent bots from spewing bullshit in blog comments.
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By leelefever on December 20, 2007 - 1:19pm.
As Darren would say, this is a boring site note. I have finally turned on Captcha for comments to blog posts. This means that, in order to post a comment, you'll have to answer a simple question to prove you are human. I have a feeling you'll pass the test with flying colors.
More than anything, I want to know if you have any problems with the system. Thanks.
Updated: I'm testing a new system that I can't discuss right now (it's in private beta). This means that you may not see the captcha question as described above.
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By leelefever on November 4, 2007 - 11:51pm.
We're taking off for Sayulita, Mexico, where our good friends are getting married next week. We'll be back in action on November 12th. Until then, we won't be returning emails and answering phones on time.
Part of this vacation includes a vacation from dealing the beloved comment spammers. Comments are off until we return. Adios amigos.
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By leelefever on October 19, 2007 - 6:34pm.
Updated: Comments are currently on.
Unfortunately, this site is getting absolutely HAMMERED by comment spam from a single source. 100's of bullshit comments a day for a few days now - all peoples' names. Akismet (a comment spam fighting tool) isn't picking them up and I'm tired of dealing - especially with a weekend on the way.
I'll turn on the comments again soon. If you want to be in touch, please use the contact form.
By leelefever on July 27, 2007 - 4:28pm.
Check this out... someone uploaded a bullshit version of our RSS in Plain English video to YouTube with a crappy ad on it.

I would love it if you could help me rectify this situation by reporting it to YouTube as inappropriate and/or leaving a comment on the video about it being a fake.
By leelefever on April 18, 2007 - 6:39pm.
A little while back, I wrote about a brand new feature from the Robots who created the online community site 43 Things . The feature is "neighborhood watch" and it enables "community members in good standing" to contribute to fighting the site's growing spam problem.
Just to day Daniel Spils posted a follow up describing how it has worked so far.
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By leelefever on April 14, 2007 - 7:38pm.
The last few days here at Common Craft headquarters have been a mix of elation and dismay. We've been working hard on the next version of our website. Now, this isn't just a design change - it involves a completely new platform, new host and new design. I had high hopes of a smooth transition, but those hopes were dashed in the last couple of days by DNS server geekery.
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By leelefever on March 27, 2007 - 10:56am.
Since its roll out in December of 2004, 43 Things has won a webby, experienced steady growth and most importantly, formed a very engaged and interactive community of users who volunteer to help garden the community. Though it keeps a low profile, 43 Things is a community success story - they're approaching their millionth member and "thing".
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