De webmaster van de Asmterdam is op een SEO cursus geweest. "Doe maar veel met onzichtbare sleutelwoorden" wist het garagebureau ("ook uw vertrouwde plaats voor al uw tweedehands accu's") te melden. Kost je wat zo'n cursus maar dan heb je ook wat. Namelijk een ban van Google als het tegenzit.

Zie de source van loket.amsterdam.nl.

Goed te weten dat de webmasters van Amsterdam het internet begrijpen en gebruiken op een manier zoals dat bedoeld is; namaak content aanbieden aan search engines om meer traffic te genereren. Gemeente e-@msterdam-plaza? Alles voor de hits!

(tot ze zelf klappen krijgen van google!.)

Every now and then, I get customers for my employer Dutch Open Projects that have the weirdest functional requirements. Do not get me wrong, the customer is always right but it helps some time if we can discuss and ask why they want certain functionality.

Take for example the "mail this to a friend" function that is still popular in many designs. First of all, it is stupid functionality. If I want to notify a friend about a page, I bookmark it to delicious. If I really want to make sure (s)he sees it, I use instant messaging and as a last resort, mail.

But I'll never use the mailservice of the website, I have to give my and his email address and I do not think that giving aways another persons email address is a good thing to do, and will never give away my address if there is no need to. Then there is spam.

All User Generated Content suffers from:

1. IP right problems
2. Trolls
3. and spam

Anything that can be used by spammers, WILL be used by spammers, including the "mail this to a friend" functionality.

To proof my point, see this mail I got. There is room for some remarks hence that is were the spam goes. And now, the "good" name of GE is associated with the spam and they did in fact send it to me. Stupid functionality (no-one uses it), stupid functionality (everyone can abuse it).

Mail-this-to-a-friend must die!

This complete block is filled with spammers I am very sorry for the real users but AS8342 is /dev/nulled right now:

Regular readers of Willy might know that I have some history with Frans Alkemade. First he made a website that was full of Java nonsense promo talk while the product he was promoting was in fact Drupal (a leading PHP CMS). When the community found out about it, he quickly cleaned the site and claimed that a student has placed the text on the site without his knowledge. Then it came to my attention that he is selling Drupal as his Strategic Website violating the GPL. Then we found out that he copied the text from the Drupal handbook that is cc licensed (all he had to do it give a link) and when we found out he deleted all the entries (hence lots of dead pages at his site.

Now let me make it clear, I am fine with people making money, I know I make a lot enough. I am fine with people making money from open source products, it is the best way to make progress and make money. I even like the "Cathedral in the Bazaar" way of making money (for example: dual licensing a product). I don’t care, as long as people stick to the rules we made. I like it better when the people are aligned to the open source project as well, but that is not necessarily for making money in the Bazaar.

I am not on a crusade against this Frans Alkemade, I never met him and probably never will. He might be a nice person, I don’t know. But I do know that his track record is showing that he is using the GPL code and the CC text in a way that is prohibited and in a way I don’t like.

So if you Google for Frans Alkemade you will find lots of posting, most likely my postings first. Frans is smart enough to know the impact of Google searches on a person and on a persons business, so there are some very positive stories out there on the net written by his "customers".

Really, I have lots of customers, and some even like me :-). But never do they like me enough to write out of the blue a love letter on the net about me. They might drop a comment on my LinkedIn profile, the might send me a "thank you" mail. But never do they blog about me out of the blue.

The "customers" of Frans however do. They love him to pieces.

See for example HIS blog at blogspot where "John Franklin" writes a love story about Frans.

Frans Alkemade was fantastic to work with. He showed me many of his demo sites as well as his client sites. What he showed me was many different types of open source solutions that his company utilized, then customized to fit my needs.

Lovely isn’t it?

The exact same text was on a comment on my site as well. This time by a "Pete". I didn’t publish the comment (it was tagged as spam ) but here is a screenshot

[image:7990 size=preview]

And Drupal tells you the source address of the person publishing the comment as well:

[image:7989 size=preview]

So where do you think 75.80.158.192 will lead you?

Indeed, Frans' little hideout! Frans is writing stories about himself by himself!

[image:7991 size=preview]

Dear Frans, You have stolen our code, you have stolen our documentation, please stop stealing your own dignity.

Recently I have seen a couple of weird comments on my site. Not that having weird comments on a weird blog is weird, I have lots of proof that the internet is full with people like me.

But now there are some odd comments on my site:

Subject: No
I'm not agree with you. Sorry. Google google1980@gmail.com
http://www.google.com/index.html

The first time this happened I published it (anonymous comments are queued on my site). But now it happend again and again. Poor spelling in a "All your base are belong to us" way. And complete off topic.

But google for "I'm not agree with you." and you will find that this comment has been posted on lots of sites. And more then that, all the sites where the comment is listed are Drupal sites!

Since the link in the posting is innocent (google.com) I see no direct spam related reason for mass dumping this comment. Unless...

I think there are people out there, that are mass posting this innocent looking comment targeting at Drupal sites. And after some time, they will google for where the comment is published. And then they know, where they can push their real spamrun to.

What you should do:

1. Check the source IP address of the comment, write it down, check who owns it and file a complaint at the provider. Some people think it is useless, I worked at a tier 2 ISP and we actually dropped customers that were abusing our IP space (but see below)
2. Unpublish the comment! Dont let google index that you publish this comment. It is mass "spam", bad grammer and not relevant so unpublish
3. Maybe even better: dont publish anonymous comment without approval. And be sure to read the Call for a Blogger's Code of Conduct