It has been quite a while since I have posted.  And while I’d like to say that I will be posting more regularly, that really depends on whether I have something to say or not. I can’t see myself spouting out crap posts just to say I am a regular poster. Rather, I will try look for things that are important to me, and will post accordingly. Which brings me to the point of this post.

I’ve been getting steady Twitter follow notifications since I really got in to Twitter as more than just a passing glimpse about a month ago. Many of these notifications are from legit Twitter users. However, Twitter spammers are absolutely horrible about hiding their spamminess.  Following are my top signs that a Twitter follow notification is from a spammer:

1. They are following more than a thousand Twitterers but are followed by very few. Very few is relative.  I’ve seen some followed by under 10.  If someone follows thousands of Twitterers, they are bound to get a bunch of autofollows, so having even a hundred followers could still mean spammer.
2. After reviewing their profile and deciding to follow, you get an auto DM that say “thanks” for following them and (here is the key) it contains an affiliate link to some “Make Money Online” scheme site.
3. Upon reviewing their profile, you see that that they have less than 5 updates.  The updates they do have are a couple words long.
4. Upon reviewing their profile, you see that all of their updates are the same thing.  For example… hey, follow my link (because I am not smart enough to realize that you know what an affiliate link looks like), and you will receive: a) great wealth, b) hot chicks, c) a great body, or d) great wealth, hot chicks, and a great body.
5. Their profile link is an affiliate link.  Good god people! Do people really click on tinyurl profile links? Are you that crazy?
6. Their profile bio and/or Twitter name imply that they are an SEO, and they have less than a page of updates spread out over the last year. Ok, I can accept that you may have been skeptical of Twitter with regards to SEO.  But if you are not on board now, I’d say you are a spammer or an incompetent SEO.
7. While not a 100% guarantee, if they have a picture of a hot chick, preferably barely clothed, I’ll lay money that they are a spammer everytime. It’s amazing to me how many hot chicks there are on social media sites, and how they love to post their scantily clad profile pics. Awesome!

So now that I get to the end of this list, I guess you are probably wondering what I consider a Twitter spammer. In my mind, someone who is only on Twitter to get you to follow a link of theirs that will make them money is a spammer. I personally don’t care if you are using Twitter for SEO or just to spread the word about sites you want when you post a link.  But if all you do is post links to your crap without offering anything of value in return, that screams spammer to me. You are best not even following me if that is what you want me to do, because I will never (no never) follow your links.

If you have good links and you actually communicate with me on Twitter, I will likely follow your links that intrigue me.

If you are reading this then I bet I have nothing I can add to the discussion of support for the new canonical URL tags by Google, Yahoo, and Live that was recently announced.  If by chance you have not, here are links for the spin by each engine:

• Google
• Yahoo
• Live

Technical interpretations abound, including:

• SEOmoz
• Search Engine Land
• Yoast (with a Wordpress plugin already)

The SEOmoz and Search Engine Land articles do an excellent job of talking about the canonical URL tag.  The immediate thoughts that come to my mind are:

1. Will the engines later use these tags for some other purpose, like they did when the switched the intention of nofollow from generally indicating a level of distrust to force feeding the idea of nofollowing paid links.
2. Will they shadier SEO’s work on a way to use canonical URL tags to their advantage? On this, I can say with certainty they are already postulating.

Do you think they will succeed?

While getting ready for the day this morning, I listened as the local TV wonks commented on the Michael Phelps Internet photo debacle.  If you have been under a rock for the last week or so, you can see the story here. The gist of the story is someone got a picture of Phelps with a bong last  November at a college party, and it showed up on a tabloid site. I’m not here to discuss the legalization of marijuana, and won’t even venture an opinion on it. However, I will say that if you don’t think this kind of thing happens every night at nearly every college of any size in the country, you should probably consider asking your kids if they can give you a talk about drugs. To his credit (possibly), and apparently as a smack in the face of one former Illinois governor, he actually did not try to deny it happened.

Well, last night it was announced that USA Swimming was giving Phelps a three month ban.  Additionally, Kellogg is pulling their endoresment deal. Are these actions fair?  Similar to my stance on legalization of marijuana, I’m not really interested in discussing that. People will form their own opinions — and I don’t really care to waste time on an argument where neither side will yield and feels that they are absolutely right.

So what the heck am I here to talk about?

Actually, I am really here to wonder out loud… how long before these Internet photo outings will become so overplayed that the general public views them briefly and then moves on as if nothing happened? I mean really, how long before we become so de-sensitized to this stuff that we just give a “oh, is that so” reaction?

It seems that everyday another high school or college kid has a scandalous photo posted on MySpace, FaceBook, Flickr, or a personal blog; a pro athlete has a photo posted with a drink in one hand and a hot chick on each arm; a teacher somewhere has a photo posted somewhere while doing something amoral like having a beer (gosh forbid); or some moron puts together a video of themselves acting like a fool for 15 minutes of fame

The viewing public, after pausing The Jerry Springer Show on that there Tivo machine, acts outraged that this kind of thing can happen in America — somehow America is plunging in to an ever apocalyptic spiral to hell. Oh, then Bubba presses play on that there Tivo machine and gets back to their own version reality.

Every night on my local news I hear breaking news of people getting killed by a estranged spouse. Teens get murdered at 3 in the morning on a street corner (there are no motives and the mom can’t understand why someone would do that to their precious son — don’t get me started on that). And my point? After these reports, the talking heads move on to the next story with no indication of impact over what they just said. We have become de-sensitized to those stories because they happen every day in every city, and we’ve seen the dead bodies on the street for years now.

It is only a matter of time before we just turn the page after each public Internet photo outing. Please, I hope this happens tomorrow.

If you are a coder like me, I’d bet you are constantly dabbling in social media coding.  I’ve put together MySpace and Facebook apps.  I’ve experimented with my own Twitter apps.  I’ve looked in to coding interfaces to Mixx and other social bookmarking sites. The one common denominator for my projects is that I always (yes always) need to get to API documentation, and I never seem to have it bookmarked.

I realize this post may be of no interest to most, if any, of you. However, I am using it as kind of my own de.licio.us bookmark — a place that I come to often, and can modify as needed. Here goes:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Mixx
• MySpace
• Digg
• OpenSocial
• Not social media, but important to me: Wordpress API