Update: A couple of readers have written in to say that I misunderstood how this one works or at least missed some significant features — wouldn’t be the first time. See below.
The folks behind a dead anti-spam service called Blue Frog have decided to adapt their technology as an advocacy tool, which they’re calling Collactive (get it?). As Ryan Singel reports in Wired News, Blue Frog was based on a model that was similar to a distributed denial-of-service attack — once the system identified a site as a spammer, it coordinated mass hits from Blue Frog subscribers’ machines to the offending company’s server to shut it down. Ultimately, Blue Frog itself fell victim to a Russian spammer’s DDOS attack (at least the retaliation didn’t involve polonium).
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December 18th, 2006
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Extra-long weekend catch-up edition.
- EVERYBODY’S writing about Time’s choice of you (i.e., Web 2.0, participatory media, etc.) as Man of the Year. Thanks for noticing, MSM guys. Welcome to the party.
- Advocacy Tools You Need, Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle. Democracy in Action’s Jason Z. puts the smackdown on a new Capitol Advantage “feature.” Let’s send MORE spam to Congress…
- Oppo Knocks? Did the Webb campaign conduct opposition research on friendly bloggers? Blog P.I tackles the case.
- YouTube Explains the Mystery of Home Page Picks. Get front-page placement, become famous. Easy, right? From Mark Glaser at PBS’s MediaShift blog.
- Moolah is Largely What Separates Citizen’s Media from Mainstream Media. Micropersuasion looks at the continuum of citizen/professional media. My (somewhat related) take: bloggers are journalists with particularly cheap printing presses.
- Two articles to check out in Beltway Blogroll: First, looking at the much-reported prediction of a flattening blogosphere, Danny Glover talks about a 2008 peak for political blogs. Next, our second smackdown of the day: The Blogs vs. John McCain.
- In Personal Democracy Forum, Noel Hidalgo looks at SecondLife Fundraising and Political Activity, including an adopt-a-yak program. But Micah Sifrey pours a little cold water on the Second Life hype.
– cpd
December 18th, 2006
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