Review of the Podcast for the Book "Read This First!"

I just had an informative few minutes listening to the first chapter of Ron Ploof's new book Read This First!. The book was made for people, especially corporate managers or anyone involved with marketing, who are faced with the challenge of dealing with new media like Twitter, YouTube, or podcasting, but have very little idea of what it is all about.

While Ron Ploof's book may not answer all of your questions, he does make it easy to for you to get in touch with his ideas. You can read the book, or be like me and listen to the podcast for free. Podcasts are a mystery to you? No, problem, just go to http://www.ronamok.com/readthisfirst/index.html and play the chapters right on the site.

How I used Google translation tools to find a Chinese spam comment

As many of you know, I run several sites and blogs, including the Parenting and the Internet blog. I have all the blogs set up so that I have to approve every comment, in part to keep spam comments out of the blog. This morning, I got a somewhat long comment in Chinese:

免費日本成人圖片 -
天馬流行音樂網 -
哈啦免費視訊網 -
洪爺自拍貼圖網 -
UOUO成人影音聊天室 -
成人交友聊天室 -
辛辣聊天室(限制級聊天室) -
小高聊天室 -
免費影音聊天 -
免費影音聊天室 -
成人影音下載 -
淫娃免費視訊聊天室 -
免費影音播放軟體下載 -
日本美女成人AV免費 -
OL絲襪美腿圖庫 -
下載免費防毒軟體 -
免費中文防毒軟體 -
免費線上掃毒 -
中壢電音急診室 -
080-6K聊天室 -
視訊相親館 -
東部網友聊天坊 -
同志交友俱樂部 -
愛情廣場聊天聯盟總站 -
拉子女同志聊天室 -
酷兒男同志聊天室 -
柔情聊天網 -
柔情聊天室 -
有間遊戲網 -
天馬音樂網 -
真情夢工廠聊天室 -
戀愛天堂聊天室 -
080北部人聊天聯盟 -
Kiss聊天聯盟 -
摯愛中年同志聊天室 -
080台中聊天室UT -
豆豆6K聊天室 -
6K小高聊天室 -
6K南台灣聊天室 -
天馬080聊天室6K -

Not having a clue about what it said, I went to Google's Language Tools page for help and got the following translation:

Free Japanese Adult Photos --
Pegasus Pop Music Network --
IMs as text Free Video Network --
Hung Shing Yeh Self-mapping network --
UOUO adult video chat rooms --
Adult Dating Chat --
Spicy chat rooms (adult-rated chat rooms) --
Small high-Chat Room --
Free video chat --
Free video chat rooms --
Adult Video Download --
Yinwa free video chat rooms --
Free audio and video player software to download --
Japanese AV beauty adult free --
OL Stocking Legs Gallery --
Download free antivirus software --
Free Chinese anti-virus software --
Free online anti-drug --
Chungli denon emergency room --
080-6K Chat Room --
Video deeply attached to each hall --
User chat Square East --
Comrade Dating Club --
Love chat Union Square Station --
Chat Room Latin Comrade children --
Queer gay male chat rooms --
Tenderness Chat Network --
Tenderness Chat Room --
There are games in net --
Tianma Music Network --
Truth DreamWorks Chat Room --
Love Paradise Chat Room --
080 Northern someone to talk to union --
Kiss Chat Alliance --
Comrade middle-aged love chat rooms --
080 Taichung Chat UT --
Peas 6K Chat Room --
6K small height Chat Room --
6K southern Taiwan Chat --
Tianma 080 Chat 6K --

It wasn't a perfect translation, but it was good enough for me to know that the comment had no place on a blog giving parents advice on how to manage their online children.

The lesson from this episode is to always approve comments before they go on your blog, and to translate the ones you can't understand before you approve or reject them.

Just for fun, I ran the following through the Google translator from English to Chinese and back to English:

Original- Keep your spam comments out of my blog

Chinese (Simplified) - 不要让你我的博客垃圾评论

Back to Eglish: Do not let you spam my blog

Network Solutions Will Cut Your Prices - If You Ask

The laws of free enterprise can do good things, especially the law that says when two companies offer the same service at wildly different prices, something has to give. Like many who run blogs and web sites, I manage several, and have several domain names on standby. When I took over the Money and Minds blog, the domain name was managed by GoDaddy. Looking at renewal options, I saw that it was only going to cost me $9.99 to add an extra year. It seemed awfully low compared to Network Solutions where I had my other domains since the 1990s. I decided to check, and found that adding one year to my domain name managed by Network Solutions would have cost me $34.99.

If there were only a few dollars difference, I wouldn't have bothered changing providers, but being close to renewal on another domain, I decided to transfer that one over. After arranging the transfer on GoDaddy, I called up a customer service representative at Network Solutions. Once he found out I was going to make a switch, he immediately offered to extend my registration not by $34.99 a year, but by $8.75 a year. Unfortunately for him, I'd already paid my money to GoDaddy, so that transfer was going to go through. Smelling an opportunity, I asked if the same $8.75 deal was good for all of my other domains. His answer was yes. He was more than happy to extend my registrations of all my domains at that lower price.

I don't know why Network Solutions insists on charging more than three times the amount GoDaddy does for the very same service, and only offering a competitive rate when they are about to lose a customer. I do know that if they offered me this deal, they might offer you the same. If you are a Network Solutions customer, ring them up and mention that you want to transfer your domain management elsewhere. If you don't use Network Solutions, and a renewal would cost you more than $8.75 a year, either ask for a discount or go shopping for a better value.