Friday, February 03, 2006

My blog a splog?

I was trying out the email-to-blog feature in blogger to post to this blog. It worked properly with another blog I have on blogger, so I don't see why the same settings would not work on this blog.

I sent the email for the post from my iPAQ 2210 because I did not have access to a desktop for that day. The post did not appear, and I was not able to log on to blogger using my Pocket IE (not supported) or Minimo (too slow) to check the settings.

Only in the evening when I got back home, I was able to log in to blogger to check what was wrong. The post was received by blogger alright, so the email communications path was ok. However, the post was flagged as "Draft" and when I clicked into the post, this is what I see:

blog.spam.1

That's wierd, I was not aware that I had to enter word verification text for posting. I clicked on the orange question make beside the "Word Verification" label, and blogger gave me the following page:

blog.spam.2

So I had to dutifully enter my email and the word. One working day later I got an email telling me that some human being has verified that my blog is not a splog, and now I can post without requiring to enter the word verification text.

I did a little research, it seems like I am not alone. Apparently Blogger's algorithm for identifying splogs is flawed/buggy, and a number of genuine blogs have been tagged as splog just like mine.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Happy Lunar New Year!

Although it is a little late (we are into the 2nd day), I would like to wish whoever is reading my blog a Happy Lunar New Year!