Spam Blogs

Once upon a time, The Digital Blue Wave does not resides at the same URL as what it is today: I migrated it to another "virtual real estate" (read: subdomain) in the same "neighbourhood" (Blogger).

Apparently months later after the move, my friend, Eng Lee told me that my old space was occupied. Just out of curiosity, I paid the newcomer a visit. And boy I was surprised!

Nastily surprised, in fact.

Yes, you probably could have guessed it: it has become a spam blog, much worse than one, in fact. It's pretty funny to see how creative those spammers had become, and in the end of the "scan", they even attempted to give me a fishy download file, which that could anything but a nice present for your computer. (well... unless you liked the idea of having your computer spied on)

And they are smart enough for not making it easy to report it as inappropriate (you know, there's a "Flag as inappropriate" button on the Blogger navigation bar on top that you can click on). Even with my attempts of not letting the mock malware scanning screen shown by disabling all graphics, CSS and Javascript, the "Flag as inappropriate" button is no where to be seen! O_O

I have to say that spammers are really a smart shady bunch indeed.

In the end, after rummaging around with Google, I finally found Blogger's spam reporting page (really, they should have make it more.... umm, visible). Just filed my report and let's see how long does it take for Blogger to respond to that one.

In the meantime, I got around to install GreaseMonkey and a script to make sure the damn flag is not made hidden by those hideous spammers. Hope that would greatly help me to weed out those spam blogs as soon as I see one.

[Correction] Outlook 2003 Desktop Alert Problem

There's a correction being made to the previous post "Outlook 2003 Desktop Alert Problem" due to the incorrect solution that I have posted up yesterday. A correction has been ammended and any misinformation caused is greatly regretted.

[TechTip] Outlook 2003 Desktop Alert Problem

It's been a week ever since the PC in my workplace has been installed with Microsoft Outlook 2003, and as far as everything goes, everything with Outlook 2003 looks so cool with the reading panes, cooler UI and mail organization, but one major problem: I don't receive any alerts when the new mail arrives! And saying that, I have make myself very sure that I have the mail arrival alert email options all switched on every single day ever since I got Outlook installed!

This has to be one of the most annoying thing that can happen in the office when you have no idea when any new email messages arrives (OK, probably to me as a worker who although receives less emails per day, but every single email has a lot of weight = work). So I have been getting the usual question "Haven't you received my email?"

So checking through the online resources, I finally found out what causes the problem: It has to do with Microsoft Exchange server and caching. Then I found out that in order to have the desktop alerts, you'd need to enable "Cached Exchange mode". This can be done by:
1. Go to Tools - E-mail Accounts
2. Select View or change e-mail existing accounts radio button under the E-mail group, then click Next
3. Select the MS Exchange Server email account that has been configured in your Outlook, then click the Change... button next to it
4. Tick the Use Cached Exchange Mode checkbox and click Next

[::Correction -- 14 July::]
After further fiddling with Outlook, I only notice that the real problem is actually the Tools - Rules and Alerts setting. Desktop alerts will only notify any new incoming mail that goes into the Inbox, but if you have set a rule which will move the message to a separate folder, you'd need to set the Display a desktop alert action to the rule.

After testing, I conclude that the Cached Exchange Mode does not contribute to this problem.

I'm sorry for the misinformation.