Blogging

We should have known this (a new Google employee blogging candidly — including negatively — about the company and his experiences) wouldn’t last. We’ve seen it a few times now. Criticize your company, reveal “inside dope,” etc. and you’re probably lucky if it’s just your blog (and not your job) that disappears. Battelle has more.

UPDATE: Google Blogoscoped has the story of Mark Jen’s return to blogging, and a comparison between the new (edited) content and the old. Mostly, he just took out financial-related info. That portion of the blog had raised red flags with me, too, when I first read it. Not surprised Google felt the same, being a public company and all.

I’ve decided to migrate myself over to TypePad and was pleased to find that I could easily recover all of my archived postings from Blogger. Thanks to the tech support folks at Six Apart who’ve helped through this process. Still migrating, so please don’t link to the URL of the TypePad blog, as it’ll ultimately be switched over to The-River.net.

Nothing should change with regard to the RSS/Atom feed, so no need to adjust your sets.

I had hoped the diversion of my RSS feed to the “safe” feed had protected people, but a quick look at the Feedburner report shows that’s not the case. (So sorry!) Here, for your viewing pleasure, stats on some of the most clicked-through items from the spam deluge. (Don’t ask me how these things have different ranks given they all have 2 click-throughs.)

Content Popularity (Item-Level Stats for Last 7 Days)

Rank  Click-Throughs Content Item
12 	2 	Shipping Status, Package Number : 5489HX221737CVD
13 	2 	Re: equally unconvincing. Not for
14 	2 	We need your updated info (acct # 40206053)
17 	2 	Immediate delivery prescripiton medications
18 	2 	Become the woman in his dreams
19 	2 	# 1 Spam and Porn Blocker!
20 	2 	Notification: Rates are at the lowest
21 	2 	Prescription Drugs
22 	2 	Online Pharmafh
23 	2 	Shipping Status, Package Number : 512517ZU2891TK
24 	2 	Drop 6-8 inches of body fat in one hour! Guaranteed!

One amusing consequence of the loss of all my archives is the affect it’s had on the Google AdSense ads. Here’s what’s appearing for me — context on the basis of one post, apparently (in which I talk about my RSS feed):

Liquid Feed Supplement
Beef, Dairy, Swine Feed Supplement Better gain with less cull rates
1on1nutrition.net

Feed Mixers from Loewen
Vertical and horizontal feed mixers Loewen Welding since 1967
www.loewenwelding.com

Or maybe this is left over from my previous post about cattle eating habits.

Not-so-amusing consequences include the possibility of losing every entry I ever made on this blog, which I’ve been spilling my guts into for quite some time now. (I’d look back at when I started the blog, but I can’t. This hurts. )

A bad thing happened on my blog. When I logged in this morning to edit a post, I discovered hundreds of spam messages had been posted in my absence. My best guess is that some spammer got a hold of my supposedly secret blogger.com e-mail address, which I can use to post remotely.

When I tried to load The-River.net in Firefox, I got all sorts of scary pop-up warnings that seemed to indicate that the coding in these spam messages was trying to install things on my computer. Needless to say, I was not happy, and I was very concerned about what affect this might have on my readership.

I immediately disabled the e-mail posting function, made my site password protected, and diverted the Feedburner version of my feed to a safe place that apologized for the inconvenience. Still, the spam messages have kept coming, so things aren’t looking good for the former The River.

Until I can repair things and recover all of my archives (if possible), I’ve created this Replacement River, which will live in The River’s place. I have contacted Blogger, but I don’t expect speedy response from a free service. Does this mean it’s time to switch to Typepad? Thinking about it…

Somehow my blog has been hijacked again. No time now to delete all the spam, though I will do it asap. Many apologies to my readers for all of the lameness and vulgarity. A curse upon those evil spammers!!!!