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(Posted on 1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech and Fort Hard Knox)



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Welcome to the New Home of 1389 Blog

1389 Blog on Blogspot has been migrated to 1389 Blog on WordPress.

The WordPress blogging system will allow more features to be added to the blog, but the purpose will be the same. It’ll be an antijihadist/techie blog, as it is now, with emphasis on exposing jihadism and particularly cyberjihadism, and of providing access to the technical news, tools, and techniques that help antijihadist activists to be more effective on the Web.

Other blogs are not affected:

Also see 1389 Elsewhere on the Web.

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Blogger.com Makes It Too Easy to Censor Blogs – What to Do?

First, please read these two articles:

What is the current status? As of 4:30 Eastern Time (US) 7/18/07, Gates of Vienna was back up.

So why be concerned about it now? Because other bloggers need to know about this situation, and because it’s time for Blogger to do something to prevent its blogs from being shut down either maliciously or by mistake. Gates of Vienna is a respected counterterrorist/antijihadist blog that in no way deserves to be treated as a “spam blog.” This situation also shows how easy it would be to misuse Blogger.com to censor another blog.

How did this happen? It is possible that someone unintentionally clicked the “flag” button in the Blogger.com toolbar while attempting to navigate. But then, if a single error like that can cause a blog to be blocked, something is very wrong with Blogger.com! More likely, Gates of Vienna was maliciously flagged as a “spam blog” multiple times by one or more individuals who object to antijihadistist messages being made available to the public. Either way, Blogger.com is allowing de facto censorship, and this is wrong. It allows wrongdoers of every stripe to muzzle anybody who may be trying to warn the public about the crimes they have committed or are preparing to commit. It also will intimidate some bloggers into keeping silent – though not this one!

Does this remind you of anything? It should! The Digg “bury brigade” has aroused intense controversy for exactly the same reason: because it became too easy for a few anonymous users to muzzle opposing points of view or to cover up uncomfortable facts simply by clicking on a little button.

What are we asking Blogger to do? Blogger should add safeguards to prevent the same thing from happening again to this or other blogs in the Blogspot domain. If Blogger.com fails to take action, then other blog owners will have reason to worry about losing access to their blogs. They’ll migrate to other blogging systems and and hosting providers that will help them to safeguard their ownership.

You may recall that I’ve blogged before about the issues that Blogger.com has with spam blogs (see Does Blogger.com think your blog is spam?) but this is a different situation. There is a very big difference between the minor inconvenience of requiring the blog owner to enter Captcha characters before posting to the blog, and the major intimidation Blogger.com causes by blocking the blog entirely.

Now please do this:

  • Link to the stories at Gates of Vienna and Foehammer.net from your own blog.
  • Ask everyone else you know who has a blog to do the same.
  • Publicize the story in every other legitimate way that you can think of: StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Twitter, Pownce, word of mouth, chat rooms, you name it.
  • If you wish, post a comment here indicating where else this article is being publicized.

Contacting humans at Blogger.com: Google makes it especially difficult to contact anyone at Blogger.com directly. But at least for now, you can contact them at support@blogger.com. And here’s a website with rolling updates on how to contact Blogger.com: How to Contact Blogger Support. So if you are not happy about the way Blogger.com is misidentifying Gates of Vienna and other blogs as spam, you can still let them know what you think.

Also see:

Keep the pressure on Blogger.com to do something to safeguard their blogging system against being hijacked by the same “bury brigade” that has rendered Digg.com all but useless! And for what to do about THAT, see How to Bury Digg.com.

Update: Google mistakes one of its own blogs for spam!


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Updating a Blog Post in Blogger.com

If you’re a blogger, no doubt you’ve sometimes wanted to add more information or make corrections to one of your existing blog posts. You can use the editor in Blogger.com at any time to make your changes.

Here’s how to update your blog post in such a way that readers of your blog will notice the entry and see what has changed:

  • To get into the editor, sign on to Blogger.com to display your blog(s).
  • Click on “Manage Posts” for the desired blog.
  • Select the individual post that you want to update.
  • (If you are already signed on to Blogger.com, and the blog is on your screen, you can begin editing by clicking on the pencil logo beneath the blog post that you want to update.)
  • Type in your changes to the body of the blog post.
  • Add a line of text to indicate what has been updated. If possible, the line should be bold or highlighted in some way.
  • You can also update the blog post header. It’s safe to do this, because changing the header for an existing blog post will not change the blog post URL.
  • Change the blog posting date and time:
    • At the bottom of the text box in the Blogger.com blog post editor, there’s a Post Options selection with a “flippy arrow.”
    • Click on the “flippy arrow.” This will reveal various options, including the blog posting date and time.
    • Overtype the blog post date and time to change it from the past to the immediate future. This will cause Blogger.com to treat this blog post as the newest, and to reposition it to the top of the list.
    • Blogger.com differs from some other blogging systems in that Blogger.com will not hide a future-dated blog post until the future date and time arrives. On the other hand, Blogger.com will recognize this blog post as having the newest date, and reposition it accordingly on the screen.
    • If you are using Blogger.com’s feed option, Blogger will re-stream the updated version of the blog post into your Atom feed.
  • Publish your blog post as soon as you are satisfied with it.
  • Note that the changes to your blog might not appear immediately on your screen. To see the changed version, it may be necessary to clear your browse cache by deleting the temporary files in your browser.

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“What’s an RSS feed, and why should I care?”

Good questions. First, here’s why you should care.

Unlike getting website updates or ezines by email, RSS feeds give you absolute, 100% complete control over the situation.

You don’t have to reveal your email address. If you want to stop receiving content, you don’t have to request to be “taken off the list.”

One click, and poof… the subscription is gone.

Plus, since there’s no email address involved, there’s no way a publisher can sell, rent or give away the means to contact you.

That’s right… no more spam, viruses, phishing, or identity theft. And best of all, no reason to put yourself at the mercy of the publisher’s intentions.

You won’t need to suffer through the legalese in the privacy policy (if there is one) looking for loopholes that will send you deeper into inbox hell. No more setting up dummy Hotmail accounts “just in case.”

Again, if you don’t like the content, you can make it disappear as fast as you can change a TV channel. With just one click.

Pretty cool, huh?

“That is cool! Umm… What’s RSS?”

All right! Now we’re ready to get to that part.

RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest.

You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed – you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.

If you actually want to know how RSS works, click here.

“What’s a feed reader?”

You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, and it’s also free and easy to get started with.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. The next version of Internet Explorer will add this feature as well.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. Examples include Newsgator and Feed Demon.

If it sounds complicated, it’s really not. And things will get even easier when the next version of Outlook integrates feed-reading capabilities. So, you’ll have the same convenience that email subscriptions offered in the old days, without any of the terrible consequences of giving out your email address to potentially unscrupulous characters.

“Sounds good. So how do I subscribe to a feed?”

First of all, look for the subscription or feed options (some bloggers make this difficult for some odd reason). You might see a variety of buttons (amusingly called chicklets).

If the site you want to subscribe to uses FeedBurner to aid in the subscription process (like Copyblogger and many other popular sites), you’ll likely see the standard RSS icon, which takes you to a page that will give you an array of the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you’ll go from there. This is the new standard RSS icon:

Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see these (among others):

Add to Google

Subscribe in Bloglines

Finally, you may also see little orange buttons that say XML or RSS. Often these chicklets will take you to a page that looks like code gibberish. In this case, you simply cut and paste the page URL from your browser window and manually paste it into your feed reader subscription function.

Hopefully this last method will soon disappear, never to be seen again.

In summary: RSS solves BIG problems.

So there you have it… RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone.

The benefit to readers is obvious. And it’s good for publishers too, because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable subscribing, and that our message is not nuked by an overzealous spam filter.

If there’s anything here that is confusing, or you have a question, please contact me and I’ll be happy to help!

Thanks to Copyblogger for a helping hand with this tutorial.





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Does Blogger.com think your blog is spam?

If you have a blog on Blogger.com, you may find that Blogger has begun requiring you enter an odd-looking string of characters each time you publish a post. This extra step is called “word verification” or “Captcha.” You must enter a string of characters to identify yourself as a human being, as opposed to an automated procedure.

Blogger Help gives two reasons for this requirement in Why do I have word verification on my posting form?

  1. Blogger suspects that your blog is spam. An automated process within Blogger applies certain filters to identify potential spam blogs or “splogs” – bogus blogs full of gibberish, designed to fool search engines. The endless proliferation of “splogs” causes problems for the Web as a whole, not just for the owners of legitimate blogs, as Wired.com explains in Spam + Blogs = Trouble.If your blog is flagged as potential spam, then Blogger will require word verification every time you publish a post.

    Not only is this a nuisance for you, but it also hurts your efforts to gain readership for your blog. Your blog will be penalized in Google’s search algorithms. Moreover, your blog will be excluded from the “Next Blog” taskbar button and the blurbs on Blogger Dashboard.

    So what do you do if you know your blog is legitimate? The next time you post to your blog, click on the encircled question mark next to the Word Verification caption. A form will pop up that lets you submit a request for a human review of your blog. Enter your e-mail address, and in a few days, you should get an answer from Blogger Support about clearing your blog for regular use.

  2. You, or your blog team members, have been posting too rapidly. Blogger will require word verification for the next 24 hours to control the load on its servers, as well as to discourage spam. During that period of time, if you post to your blog by e-mail, the blog posts will be held as drafts.Blogger makes no exceptions for specific blogs, so it’s no use contacting them to complain. So if your blog must support an unusually high posting rate, you’ll have to host it elsewhere and support it with more specialized software.

Update: Google mistakes one of its own blogs for spam!


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Covering social news and Web 2.0

Hi!  Nice Moblog.  I noticed the article on writing about social news…are you going to have a social news section?  I’m always looking for good info on that.

Jenn Sierra
www.jennsierra.com

I’m glad you like it. Instead of sections, Blogger offers labels, which are more flexible. I already have defined a tag for ‘social news’. Just click on the label to view them all!I’d like to welcome you to this blog as a co-author, and I’m looking forward to receiving more posts from you!

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What is a moblog, anyway?

According to Wikipedia:

Moblog is a blend of the words mobile and weblog. A mobile weblog, or Moblog, consists of content posted to the Internet from a mobile or portable device, such as a cellular phone or PDA. Moblogs generally involve technology which allows publishing from a mobile device.

Learn about Blogger Mobile here and here.

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