Fighting the War on Spam

Well, I got my first spam to my Gmail account already, so I thought I would do a little research on using Apache to fight spam spiders. I found quite a few articles on different methods. I'm going to use the Apache RewriteEngine. Basically it will allow you to treat certain user agents in a certain manner. I've been looking for a comprehensive list, and for now I will use one I found at http://tech.ratmachines.com/downloads/sample_wbmw.txt. If you find a more comprehensive list of known spam bot user agents, please let me know.

Slashdot Article on Gmail

Well, I should have thought of checking Slashdot long ago. They had an article about Gmail beta testing with Blogger users back in April. From what I read in the thread, it seems like new accounts are not eligible for Gmail accounts. I'm not sure if this has changed since then.

Comments Added

With my renewed interest in Blogger, I realized that they now have comments. I've enabled them for jsierra.net. Enjoy!

More on Gmail

For those of you scrambling for Blogger accounts in order to sign up for Gmail, here's a quick update on my experience with it. Sheila has her own blog through blogger that she signed up for back in February. Unfortunately, it would seem she has not made enough posts to qualify for the Gmail offer. I know of some other friends that signed up after she did (in April) and they did receive the Gmail offer. They had made more posts, so it seems that is the key in obtaining the invitation.

Google might have some signup cutoff date to prevent people from signing up on Blogger for the sole purpose of obtaining Gmail accounts. It's certainly worth a shot if you don't already have a Blogger account. Besides, it's a really easy way to start up your own blog. Since it's Google, you know it's gotta be good. If you are able to sign up for a Blogger account and subsequently receive the Gmail offer, be sure to let me know so I can make a post about it.

You've got Gmail!!!

Woohoo!!!! I got a gmail account! You can now email me at
here!!! How did I get the account? Well, as you may already know I have an account on blogger.com and so I was given the opportunity to sign up through there. I haven't used gmail much so far, but so far it seems good. If you have a blogger account, be sure to sign in and check to see if you're given the opportunity to sign up for gmail.