bulknews.typepad.com

Bulkfeeds, the official source for Blog stats in .jp?

MIC (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) of Japan seems to use Bulkfeeds as a statistical source of their press release "The state of Blogsphere". I wasn't aware of the fact that their document contains URL of my site, which is really cool :)

DNS Blacklist as Splog database

As part of fighting with spams in my side project Bulkfeeds (The site is to search Japanese blogsphere and is currently only available in Japanese), I started my own URLBL DNS service!

The service postfix is rbl.bulkfeeds.jp and here's how to lookup spams: if your comment/trackback includes URL http://poker.example.com/poker.html, you have to lookup poker.example.com.rbl.bulkfeeds.jp. If the URL is blacklisted, it'll return 127.0.0.2 and otherwise it returns NXDOMAIN.

If you run Movable Type 3.2 with SpamLookup (which is on by default), all you need is to add rbl.bulkfeeds.jp to "Domain Blacklist Services" of SpamLookup configuration. (Example Setup)

Forwarding your splog data with MT

Since 3.2, MT has a nice default plugin SpamLookup to lookup spam comments and trackbacks pretty effectively. But by default, these spam comments and trackbacks are just junked, which looks like a waste of precious information. So I developed SpamSubmission plugin (svn is also available), which forwards URLs found in spam comments and pings to the Bulkfeeds DNSBL service, using its submission API.

Here's how to install: just drop the SpamSubmission directory into MT plugins directory, then go to SYSTEM OVERVIEWS > PLUGINS and click "Show Settings" for SpamSubmission plugin. Choose "TypeKey API" as Auth Type and enter your TypeKey identity, which is required to avoid Blacklist pollution (Example Config).

Submitted URLs are periodically and manually scanned with our splog filter and reviewed by me (to avoid Blacklist pollution), then reflected to the DNSBL service rbl.bulkfeeds.jp.

See Also

http://bsb.empty.us/ and http://www.surbl.org/ both provide URL based DNSBL service.

Bloggers' Best Practice: Take Pictures before Eating

WinXP Photo Upload Wizard

Link: Everything TypePad - An easier way to upload photos.

If you are a Windows user that likes to share a lot of photos with your family and friends, then you will be happy to learn that uploading photos just got a whole lot easier.

TypePad now released a WinXP Upload Wizard. It makes me uploading photos to TypePad Gallery so much easier. Why not try using it?

O'Reilly Radar

Link: O'Reilly Radar.

O'Reilly launched new Weblog aggregated page, O'Reilly Radar. It include weblogs by Tim O'Reiily, Rael Dornfest and Nathan Torkington. Must read for geeks.

Blog Pet in Japan

Link: KDDIとワークアット、ペットの種類が増えた「Blog Pet」ベータサービス.

KDDI, the Japanese cellphone carrier and weblog service provider (LOVELOG) has made a partnership with IT startup Workat about the integration of their blog pet application "Kousagi (Blog Pet)".

BlogPet is a flash based application that can be put on your weblog side bar, that talks something by learning words from your weblog via RSS feeds. It can also post a weblog entry and send trackback pings with random words using MetaWeblog or AtomAPI. That's thought to be a nice avatar-ish application suitable for Japanese bloggers.

Blog Business Summit

Link: Six Apart Professional Network: Blog Business Summit.

Anil is going to speak on Blog Business Summit in Seatle, and Jeff Barr is taking a fine minute for the whole conference.

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People at Six Apart, Google, Yahoo! and other search engines and Blog software developer has made their collaborations to work against comman spams. It's a small but a siginificant step. I want to say "Great work!" for everyone.

Commentlogging with del.icio.us

Link: Seb's Open Research.

This is obviously handy as a personal trail of places you've been, which makes it easy for you to revisit comment threads you're participating in.

del.icio.us' flexible Tag feature allows you to track blog entries which you made comment on (like adding "mycomments" tag). del.icio.us can feed RSS with username and tag specified, which means your comment history can be tracked by other bloggers, possibly fan of yours :)

People of the Year

Link: Six Log: Recognition for our founders.

Ben & Mena Trott have recieved "People of The Year" by PC Magazine, with Evan Willams from Blogger. They're also listed at 15 World Class Innovator from DEMO. Congratulations for what you've done this year!