Search engine Blekko says they’ve banned some 1.1 million spammy domain names from their search results. The banned domains are the result of a new algorithm the company has developed that looks at both poor quality content as well as the types of ads that the domains include along with the content. It’s part of their ongoing war, they say, against content farm and other very low quality content. It follows an action earlier this year where they banned twenty content farms from their results.
They’re calling the new algorithm “AdSpam.” “One of the strongest signals that a page is spam is aggressive participation in self-service
online advertising networks,” says the company. When they compare low quality sites (based on existing signals) and see lots of keyword based ads alongside that content, it’s very likely to be blocked.
“Domains with low quality content plus keyword ads are “machines that print money,” says Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta. “Machines that print money will be exploited.”
Blekko is processing around 1 million search queries per day and has 500,000 unique monthly visitors, he says.
David Bradley is the IBM programmer responsible for bringing “Control-Alt-Delete,” that most comforting of key-combinations, into this world. Here he explains how it came to be and can’t help but add who he considers responsible for making it a ‘cultural icon.’ Hint: that person is not very amused with the distinction! [YouTube]More »
Code for America, the non-profit organization that creates government-changing apps for communities around the U.S., has received applications from 19 U.S. city, state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of State.
Each of these government entities will compete to be one of the three to five communities that gets Code for America fellows to create a customized, open-source app to solve a pervasive problem in public service or government administration.
For example, in the last Code for America cycle, five cities were picked for projects such as an Open311-type project and an application that allows citizens to monitor and give feedback on city hall proposals.
The 19 applicants will compete for a spot in the next Code for America cycle. Applications will be judged based on the government’s commitment to the partnership, funding to support the project, and the openness, efficiency, and reusability of the proposed application or project. The selection process will be guided by a committee, which will announce the winning applicants in June 2011.
Once three to five candidates are selected, the custom apps will be developed by Code for America fellows, a team of 20 crack web and mobile developers hand-selected by an all-star committee that includes Irene Au of Google, Paul Buchheit of Facebook, Anil Dash of Expert Labs and many more.
Code for America’s Government Relations Director Alissa Black said in a release, “It’s great to see not only this much interest in Code for America, but also enthusiasm from public officials in using technology to change the way government works.
The response we’re seeing proves that government is thinking creatively about ways to innovate in response to our fiscal crises, and that the open government movement is really taking hold within government itself.”
The OpenStack cloud computing platform, backed by Rackspace, NASA, Cisco, Dell and others, ramps up commercial support options for cloud and enterprise users.
Search engine Blekko says they’ve banned some 1.1 million spammy domain names from their search results. The banned domains are the result of a new algorithm the company has developed that looks at both poor quality content as well as the types of ads that the domains include along with the content. It’s part of their ongoing war, they say, against content farm and other very low quality content. It follows an action earlier this year where they banned twenty content farms from their results.
