Alec Saunders SquawkBox

The folks from Joost dropped me a note yesterday telling me that they had increased the number of invites I have available to me.  If you need one, drop an email address into the comments below. 

If you don't know what Joost is, it's the Skype founders latest venture, using peer to peer technology to broadcast television programming via the internet.  There's a surprising amount of good stuff on it, especially if you're interested in documentary.  They'll also have the Stanley Cup hockey games in the coming weeks. 

Twelve months ago from today this blog was being inundated with blog spam.  After trying capcha's and other kinds of filters, I turned to Akismet.  Installing it was simple, although it did require getting a Wordpress.com account.  Since that time, the volume of spam I personally deal with has dropped dramatically. 

How dramatically?

As of this morning, Akismet has trapped 332,579 spam comments.  That's more than 911 per day all year.  Currently, more than 2,000 spam comments get entered daily on this blog.  It's more than any human being could manage manually,ever.

Thank you, Akismet, for making this blog manageable.

Decima Report's Stefan Dubowski dropped me a note to ask me my opinion of Facebook.  He asks:

Would it work as a business tool? Definitely.  Business is a social environment.  With Facebook I can find out what business associates are doing, who is attending an event (for instance, there are a number of people I know of going to Mesh, and I learned through Facebook), and who is connected to whom.  It's better than Twitter because it gives me control of that information, and also acts as a central information gathering tool.

What do you think of businesses that are banning Facebook?  It's a knee-jerk reaction.  They don't understand that people socialize for business reasons as well as personal, and they certainly don't understand that firewall bans can be defeated easily and quickly by determined people.

How does it compare to LinkedIn?  Well, they're different.  Yes, they have overlapping functionality in terms of profiles, but Facebook is about socializing with people you know, whereas LinkedIn is about discovering relationships that you don't know.  Facebook is a great tool for organizing an event or a discussion, but would make a terrible recruiting tool.  LinkedIn is a great recruiting tool, but not so good for organizing an event. 

Toronto uber-blogger Randy Morin is sick and tired of the 407 ETR, or at least their wacky billing systems.  He's in the process of escalating a complaint through the premier's office, trying to get his bill sorted.  And in the process he's tossing around lots of loaded words like "racketeering".  Pull up a chair and enjoy the fireworks this May 24 weekend…