Archive for June, 2008

Wordpress Ping Lists

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

I've come across what is purported to be the top Wordpress ping list over at SEOfeed.com. That list is supposedly regularly updated.

Here are the current contents:

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc/
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

Brandon also recommends using the plugin Smart Update Pinger. Why? To make sure that when you edit a story and update it, that pings aren't sent out a second time. Some people (and it could include me) have had their Wordpress weblogs dropped from some ping services as spammers for repeated changes and new pings.

Strangely, Smart Update Pinger is no longer being supported - last version of Wordpress officially supported is 2.0. Daven in turn links to PingFix "for more functionality". Jan Piotrowski is quite explicit: "Pingfix is obsolete for Wordpress 2.1 and newer versions."

So why is Brandon recommending it?

Moreover there are two comments on his post which suggest that this ping list may be overkill. Taff suggests:

Just a thought Brandon but doesn't the use of Pingomatic mean that most of the sites are being pinged twice as nearly all are on the Pingomatic ping list? I thought I read somewher that IceRocket does much the same but can't find any info on their ping list. Just thinking about the possibility of spamming.

Joel asks:

do you think there is a chance that by pinging pingomatic and all the other services on the list that you may be sending pings twice to some services? one directly and the other by way of pingomatic.

Ken Xu mentions that four of the services just won't work for him.

For some reason Brandon Hall has no answers.

Two questions:

  1. Is this an accurate ping list?
  2. Do we need to tell Wordpress not to ping again on update?

I've like to have some answers.

Alec Kinnear
By Alec

WordPress | 3 comments

Domain Submission Center scam

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

I received yet another fake domain renewal notice, this time from Domain Submission Center. This one was from the city in which I went to university, Toronto.

What was new about this scam is that it used the search engine submission scam, within the domain renewal.

Go and learn more about the Domain Submission Center.

In line with this article, we've finally started our new tool, a directory of internet marketing scams to help people avoid getting ripped off.

Alec Kinnear
By Alec

Internet Marketing | No comments

Outsourcing in Europe

Sunday, June 1st, 2008

From the European Outsourcing Conference last week: it's difficult to do large scale outsourcing in Easter Europe:

The delegates realised that Eastern European nations do not have the scale of staff to resource huge outsourcing deals, with the majority (58 per cent) believing that different geographies are suited to different types of outsourcing projects. Only 17 per cent believed that Indian providers are leaps and bounds ahead of all other geographies.

Absolutely. There are just not the numbers here necessary to be able to do it efficiently.

What you can get are a few good programmers on a project.

Or a lot of reasonably multilingual (we're not talking about the Netherlands or Austria here) customer service bodies.

The very high euro - which seems to be carrying the local currencies with it - does make European outsourcing pretty much a local sport at this point. But there is no shortage of European companies and divisions looking to cut costs without transcontinental travel.

Alec Kinnear
By Alec

Business, IT | 1 comment