Mathew Browne

As part of my job at UCL, I’ve spent the last two weeks working on some Flash-based gimmicks for the sites I’m putting together. Very whizzy and Actionscript-laced they are, too. Except I have a meeting with my boss later and I only have one-and-a-half SWFs to show off.

How come Flash programming eats up my time so much? My problem is I get caught up in unnecessary details - turning the slightest movement into a carefully-described variable, rather than just tween an instance from A to B (you know, just in case…) or defining dynamic text boxes and filling them out via Actionscript rather than - you guessed it - just writing it in a static box and forgetting about it. Granted, these examples only illustrate a workload increase of seconds rather than minutes or hours, but over the course of a fortnight these really have stealthily gobbled up my time.

I’m approaching my work too much like a programmer and not enough like a designer.

I’m receiving an ever-increasing influx of emails asking me to link to Site X in exchange for a link from some crappy subpage of Site Y - a twist on the old reciprocal linking model. I must get about 50 of these every day. Today, however, I’m in a bad mood (and a little bored) so I replied to one of them inline. Enjoy.

Hi,

I came across your website and was wondering if you would consider a link exchange with me. In return I am willing to place a link to your site on our PR7 site here: http://www.scienceonstage.net/top-hits.html (I can put your link in the perfect category match for your site)

YAY another generic directory. Doesn’t look like spam at all - sign me up!

I understand that you probably get 100’s of spam emails everyday asking the same thing, but I am a real person and not a spam bot.

“I understand that you probably get 100’s of spam emails everyday asking the same thing. Here’s another.” <- fixed.

If this is of interest to you simply reply to this email and I will put your link live first. (Please send me your link details along with a short description of your site)

Title: SEO Services

URL: http://www.doneseo.com

Description: DONE! SEO Services is a leading Search Engine Optimization Company based in California, USA. Call us at 1-888-372-8335. Founded by Internet Entrepreneur Ben Padnos.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Kind regards

You have got to be joking.

Firstly, your “Science on Stage” site is a dropped domain you’ve picked up. Smart move - toolbar PR still shows 7 and you still have backlinks from CERN and the European Organisation for Astronomical Research from back in the days when it was a legit, useful website and not another piece-of-shit spam directory.

Secondly, you expect me to provide link to your SEO company and in return I get a link from some crap linkdump, sharing a page with about 200 others? No deal.

Thirdly, thanks for the personal touch - addressing your enquiry to root@ rather than the email@ address I have posted on my site. Now I know you’re not a bot, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Keep wearing the ever-darkening grey hat.

Mathew

Irritating as this approach is and however questionable the ethics, it’s probable that - at least for now - this stuff passes under Google’s radar. Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, no recriprocal link, everyone’s happy. It’s not an obvious paid link for Google to investigate either, which is how many of us fear Google is investing it’s time.

I’m really interested to know if Google have anything in the works to combat this sort of spammy approach. I’m looking at you, Matt.