Psst, Wanna Swap a Link?

November 19th, 2008

Ever get one of these spam emails? (Names and details removed to protect the spammy)

Dear Webmaster,

My name is _________, and I run the web site ________________.com:

I recently found your site http://www.jonathancrossfield.com and am very
interested in exchanging links. I’ve gone ahead and posted a link to your
site, on this page:

__________________.com/linkmachine/resources/resources_business.html

As you know, reciprocal linking benefits both of us by raising our search
rankings and generating more traffic to both of our sites.

Don’t Interrupt Me!

November 7th, 2008

Every day I visit The Sydney Morning Herald online to catch up on news. Recently, these visits have become marred by rich-media overlaid advertising that seems to be focused entirely on interrupting my news-reading experience.
Some of these adverts are extremely clever in using transparent backdrops and disguising the close button to prevent the user from [...]