I’ve had it with the Contact Form Spammers.

We’ve been getting between 5 and 20 junk inquiries a day from spamming robots. This started a couple of months ago. With the first few, I looked at our webserver logs and found the offending spammers and blocked them with the .htaccess file. Still, the spam came. It seems there is a zombie army of Windows computers out there with nothing better to do than vomit garbage all over contact forms. Here’s an example:

Your Name: xahAxYAHoakdYISFh

Your Email: evXeDwsFSgqESxvpX

City: QBxymQfMqeitFAAsL

Subject: fohFHYyQdeJsjkyq

Message: comment2, ice cream flavor list, someotherspamurl ice cream flavor list, pvfid, ice boat, someotherspamurl ice boat, vljrfo, pop music quiz questions, someotherspamurl pop music quiz questions, 7555, carb free ice cream, someotherspamurl carb free ice cream, %-DD, big ten network, someotherspamurl big ten network, kay,

Telephone (optional): HdUjxhsZbQ

How did you hear about us? comment2, ice cream flavor list, someotherspamurl ice cream flavor list, pvfid, ice boat, someotherspamurl ice boat, vljrfo, pop music quiz questions, someotherspamurl pop music quiz questions, 7555, carb free ice cream, someotherspamurl carb free ice cream, %-DD, big ten network, someotherspamurl big ten network, kay,

(In the above example, I’ve replaced the active URLs with “somespamurl” and plain text URLs with “someotherspamurl.”) If you look closely, they’re even obscuring spam URLs with other spam URLs.

Bottom line is that this is the single most stupid form of spam that I can imagine. I mean, instead of reaching thousands of targets, they only get the webmaster of the site they’ve targeted. And, webmasters generally don’t fall for foolishness like this.

Up until this point, I simply set up a rule on the company’s email client to automatically place the spam messages in the trash mailbox. No more. As of today, we’ve implemented a CAPTCHA system. This means that new potential customers will have to determine and type-in a 6-character code to prove that they’re human when making an inquiry. I’m sorry that we’ve had to do this. Nobody likes dealing with CAPTCHAs, but they’re one of the only (mostly) effective ways of dealing with Contact Form Spam.

UPDATE: I don’t really like CAPTCHAs... so I’m going to be investigating the possible solution I just read about here.

There's a nice article in Business Week this week describing how Macs are becoming more and more likely to turn-up in the enterprise, how little Apple does for this to happen (or needs to do, given that it's not really a market that they pursue), and how CTOs/CIOs are finding them easy to integrate with little additional overhead or costs. The pull quote?

"Steve Jobs doesn't need a sales force because he already has one: employees like the ones in my company."

Well, tomorrow (February 19th) will be my first time teaching Mac OS X 201, Server Essentials 10.5. I've got the required test score, I've got the teaching certification, I've got the AATC, and I've got the students. I've been preparing for actual presentation of this class since last Tuesday morning, and the fact is that I'm co-teaching with another Apple Certified Trainer.

So, why am I so jittery about the process? Well, it's a big deal to me, as it's very important to me that my customers receive the training they deserve plus I have to travel hundreds of miles and be away from my family for days at a time to do this.

To my St. Louis customers and colleagues, I'll be out the rest of this week. Have a great week, and I'll see you during the following one. In the meantime, please wish me luck!

Early in December, Apple Certified Trainers representing Apple Authorized Training Centers around the world descended upon Austin, Texas for two weeks. Did they choose to do so during prime Christmas present shopping season because of Austin's retail offerings? While several of them were seen shopping at The Domain, they actually were at Apple's facilities in Austin to participate in beta training sessions for Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.5 (Mac OS 101) & Mac OS X Server Essentials v10.5 (Mac OS 201).

About 40 trainers attended, and got to know their neighbors pretty well after having to attend the classes together for two weeks straight. During their time there, in addition to taking the class as students, they worked on editing and perfecting the course's textbooks, student workbooks, and presenter's slides. Since that time, Peachpit Press has actually brought those textbooks to market and Apple has updated the training and certification websites to reflect the new content contained in the courses. At the end of each week's class, each student trainer all took beta versions of the official certification tests. Provided that the test taker passed the score at the "instructor" level, s/he is now (1) certified with the Apple Certified Support Professional 10.5 and/or the Apple Certified Technical Coordinator 10.5 and (2) authorized to provide these courses to students. Another noteworthy new development is that participating AATCs are now able to offer Apple Certification tests onsite, although students can also continue to take the tests at Prometric testing centers.

Be on the lookout for these new courses, tests, and certifications in February at your local Apple Authorized Training Center across the globe.

A recent exchange with support staff @ Realmac indicates that the %site_logo% URL issue is a known one and, while not remedied in RapidWeaver 3.6.5, a fix is on the horizon.

Let's see if this fixes the %site_logo% URL issue.

Well, I have decided to let my seed in the Apple Developer Connection expire. Once Leopard ships next month, there won't be a major new OS X release for about 2 years, so I won't need seeds during that time. Sadly, my subscription was supposed to run long enough to include the release of Leopard, but we all remember what happened to the release date this Spring in favor of getting the iPhone out on time.

Not being a major (or even a minor, really) developer, this decision won't be a huge impact on the business and I will, of course, retain my basic, free ADC account.

I've been thinking about adding a blog to this site for a while. I'll see how that goes and whether or not it's a good idea to include this on business pages.

Stephen