Monthly Archives: May 2009

Of Interest

Spammers Need to Learn How to Spell!

Drew Hannush by Drew Hannush (29 May 2009)  |  Leave a comment

Was browsing my spam folder (I am so glad Yahoo! Mail is smart enough to sort out all of my junk emails) to make sure there wasn’t anything important in there.  And low and behold, there was an eMail from the IRS.

Well, I figured it was a hoax of some sort, since the Internal Revenue Service knows better than to use email to communicate, but I decided to look at it anyway.

Amazingly, I found all sorts of misspellings…first of all, the IRS is getting quite hip:

“If u don’t receive your refund within 9 business”

U? Nice, well apparently Prince Rogers Nelson has gone to work for or infultrated the IRS.

Oh, but then it just gets messy:

“your records must show wether
they are exempt under section 497″

“the purpose of the award; the maner of
section; and the realtionship of the recipient”

The email was addressed by John Stewart (looks more like Jon Stewart if you ask me, because its pure comedy).

Anyway, they add a link that they say goes to the IRS and that you need to give them your personal information.

Are people really that dumb?  I mean, I understand if maybe you have some issues with spelling, but are you really going to go to some non-IRS address and type in all of your critical information like Social Security Numbers, etc.?

All I can say is, someone better start a school for spammers…they need some major help.

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SEO Tips

New Competition For Google

Drew Hannush by Drew Hannush (5 May 2009)  |  Leave a comment

As I am prone to do…I am always looking for a better mousetrap.  So, while doing a little research on the search engines, I read a curious post on Matt Cutt’s blog about new competition for Google.  The site is called Blekko. Curious as I was, I went to look at the site to see what they had posted on their site (since so many of the less professional sites I’ve seen feature those ugly under construction graphics).  To my surprise, this is what I found (http://www.blekko.com).

The image you see is appropriately called Boo.jpg.  Apparently the marketing VP discussed in the blog is going for “shock” value!  So far, Google has little to worry about from Blekko.

On another front though, there is a challenger to Google that might make some headway.  More than just a search engine, the Wolfram Alpha project is meant to think for you.  When it was first explained to me, it sounded like another version of Ask.com, where you give a question and this engine gives you back related sites.  But Wolfram Alpha is much more advanced than that.   Apparently Dr. Stephen Wolfram (obviously the engine’s creator) took his brilliant mind and came up with a search engine that actually intelligently takes the question you ask and finds the results and prints it on the screen…so it doesn’t necessarily take you to sites, but gives you the answers you’re looking for.  This I’ll have to see for myself.

Anyway, for anyone that is interested…check out his video presentation and read this article from G4 that gives you an overview.  It’s supposed to launch this month.  We shall see.

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