farp.blog » mturk http://fredandrandall.com/blog Bloggin' about whatever Tue, 04 Nov 2014 07:15:30 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 I get a shitload of spam. Does anyone read this? http://fredandrandall.com/blog/2011/04/07/i-get-a-shitload-of-spam-does-anyone-read-this/ http://fredandrandall.com/blog/2011/04/07/i-get-a-shitload-of-spam-does-anyone-read-this/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:33:56 +0000 http://fredandrandall.com/blog/?p=321 Continue reading →]]> This blog gets about 20 views a day. Mostly on the page about Toto, but I do get a few on my post about who has the best burritos. What’s interesting is how many comments I get every day. I usually get about 4 or 5, which means that 20% of my views lead to comments.

Who are these commenters? Spammers. I’m not sure if they’re robots or lazy people from Mechanical Turk. All I know is that I get a kick out of how they try to make the comments seem real.

“Im sure I can speak for all that we would love to see a follow up to this post.”

“I was very pleased to find this site.I wanted to thank you for this great read I definitely enjoying every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post.”

“Bariatric Surgery Atlanta…
[…]we like to honor other sites on the web, even if they aren’t related to us, by linking to them. Below are some sites worth checking out[…]…

Those are just a few of the most recent ones. When I first started writing the blog, I let a few of these comments through. I didn’t really pay attention and just approved any comment that came through. As the comments became more ridiculous (and I actually started to get some real ones) I stopped approving the spam.

I can get a WordPress plugin that will automatically filter out the spam. Too bad it costs money. For now, spending a few minutes every month or so and deleting the spam isn’t a big deal. If I ever started getting any traffic, maybe it would be worth it.

So what I’m planning to do for this blog post is approve ALL comments. I’m kind of curious to see what happens.

]]> http://fredandrandall.com/blog/2011/04/07/i-get-a-shitload-of-spam-does-anyone-read-this/feed/ 20 Mechanical Turk and Trendy Jewelry http://fredandrandall.com/blog/2010/08/29/mechanical-turk-and-trendy-jewelry/ http://fredandrandall.com/blog/2010/08/29/mechanical-turk-and-trendy-jewelry/#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 01:19:35 +0000 http://fredandrandall.com/blog/?p=14 Continue reading →]]> Awhile back I heard about Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. It’s a service that lets you outsource simple tasks. It basically works on the principal that there are some things that people are still WAY better than computers at doing. For doing these things, people get a small fee (somtimes very small). In an effort to make more money in my spare time I decided to check it out. I’ve done a few simple things like finding email addresses on websites (which made me feel pretty scummy) and solving simple puzzles.

My latest HIT (Human Intelligence Task) is to write a blog post that uses the words “trendy jewelry“. I also need to link it to TheLimed.com. Its a website that sells “limes” or a single design for a certain price. What is interesting is that you pick the price for your item, and once you buy it, nobody else can buy it for that price. The website seems fairly well made and uses some casual humor while you browse the site.

So is the Mechanical Turk worth it? Probably not. I don’t think I’m going to make much money off of this but it might be a nice way to make a few extra dollars (and I really mean only a few extra dollars) while I veg out in front of the TV.

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