I love the new takes on networking that the web makes possible.
My favourite discovery recently has to be ConnectViaBooks, which is a not-for-profit project run by Flemming Madsen and some of his book-loving buddies. By uploading your favourite booklists and a profile, the site can potentially put you in touch with people who share your reading interests.
I don’t know how many users ConnectViaBooks has to date, but I can see this (and for that matter other social networks that use similar mechanisms) working. The books you read say a lot about you and if you are looking for like-minded people this could be a useful approach.
It will be interesting to see how Flemming and his team develop the site; as well as participating in discussion forums, members can enter a virtual ‘lab’ which allows them to test features – right now, they are testing ‘SocialBooks’ which makes recommendations of new books you might like from people who share your reading tastes.
You can specify the circumstances under which people can make contact and it’s interesting to note two of the options are work-related; I’m intrigued to see how this might develop.
Another fun initiative is the London Weblog Directory, which is a directory of blogs written by people who live and/or work within the London transport system – you’ll find me at Lambeth North on the Bakerloo Line!
Unlike ConnectViaBooks, which will put you in touch with people who are essentially on the same wavelength as you, London Bloggers has the potential to introduce you to people who represent a wide range of views. Good news if you're in danger of Groupthink...
Sadly London Bloggers appear to suffer as much as I do from spam blogs (the latest tally at dompannell.com is 285…).
I've now banned 234 IP addresses from this weblog. That's 74 new spam blogs (splogs) since I originally grumbled about the problem just under a month ago.
I've been experimenting with alternative blogging software and have concluded that WordPress is both easy to use and (according to Julian Guppy and several others who are more technically inclined than I, simplifies the process of dealing with spam.
Consequently, I intend to migrate the content of this blog to WordPress as soon as I can organise it. I have no idea what that will mean when it comes to dates, etc. but it can't be helped. I'm fed up with Movable Type and that's that.
Postscript 18/01/06: After several weeks' respite, I just banned another IP address and was informe "You have 308 users in your list of banned IP addresses."
I wonder what the maximum penalty for splogging should be...?
Well I can't say I never learn anything. Over the past two weeks I've learned quite a bit about Zombie Computers! This is not because I plan to hack into somebody else's machine with malicious intent, but because someone did it to me.
In short, my firewall was successfully penetrated by a piece of malicious software that allowed somebody to use my PC to attack other machines remotely. While they were at it, it's quite likely they were sending spam from my IP address and lots of other things to boot.
Warned by my ISP that something was amiss, I scanned the PC with every kind of antivirus tool I could get my hands on, but it appears it wasn't enough. After successfully attacking someone else's machine, the malefactors decided to leave my computer and disappeared off into the ether, but not before ensuring that I can no longer boot to Windows. According to my ISP, this is a rather drastic method of ensuring their their tracks are covered.
Consequently, I am now the proud owner of a laptop that, when switched on, has a very attractive blue screen with the words UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. What's more, it will remain that way until I can locate the correct CD that will allow me to start. Tremendous.
Thankfully I have been able to borrow a laptop (hence my being online now) fir the time being, but it's all rather frustrating.