Feedburner launched a pinging service named "PingShot" recently. Its supposed to ping to a number of services, just like Pingoat does, everytime you update you feed. But odd enough, they have included certain Ping services like Pingoat, that again ping the same sites Pingshot pings individually.

A couple days back, FeedBurner contacted me saying that they're interested in adding Pingoat to their ping list. Indeed I was really excited about this. But out of perplexion, I asked them how their pinging works, i.e, how does it prevent ping redundancy (what i mentioned above). But still, I haven't received any answer.

So unless FeedBurner is doing something to stop ping redundancy, pinging services like Pingoat from within their system, along with the individual pings they send is a major flaw. Still unsure why they aren't taking any action on this matter.

UPDATE
I've heard from FeedBurner and I see light! Will post once everything is confirmed.


PS: And yes, Pingoat has a lot of surprise services coming soon, just for you!

I would like to announce the opening of my latest project, SplogSpot.com. Its as crazy as it sounds



What is splogspot
SplogSpot is just a piece of software that feeds on Pingoat's blacklist database. It is the service designed to make Pingoat's blacklist database public. With the Splogspot API, anyone can query Pingoat's blacklist database. So if you are starting a blog aggegator or something, or even a blog directory, use SplogSpot's api to keep your sites clean!

Why a SPLOG search!
Splog Search is just a silly cosmetic addon. Just for fun. The core idea is still making the pingoat's blacklist database publicly accessible.

The Splogspot website : http://splogspot.com


Stats
Now a bit of Pingoat stats. Since July 22, Pingoat processed more than 1103663, yes, more than 1 million pings! But the interesting part is not that. Out of these one million+ pings, only around 63,601 were actually served. The rest were rejected either due to spam/high frequency pings.

And also, the time-restriction between the pings has been reduced to 1 hour from 2 hours

Its funny and most of the times frstruating to watch the 'splog trend'. I've been working with splogs so much that just by seeing the title and the url, I can accurately predict whether a blog is splog or not! Also, everyday, I see funny trends in splogs.

Like on certain days, there would be very less number of splogs or no splogs at all or the opposite. Sometimes I see a special group of splogs that I'd like to call 'celebrity spam' That'd be "Bradd Pitt, brad-pitt.blogspot.com/brad-pitt1", blogs with junk contents and dozens of them focusing on different celebrities. Now I've added an automated filtering techic that completely filters out celebrity spam. This is obviously done by one person or a group of connected persons.

And what ever the trend is, blogs on the subjects 'Weight loss, Pills, Investment/Insurance, Dieting..' tops the charts. Among this, weightloss is the worst. I've seen a lot of people justify their spam blogs, but the funny thing is that Why in the world is everybody starting a new 'Weight loss' blog crammed with ads!

Then comes the adult blogs. I haven't seem much adult splogs, but 99% of the adult blogs being submitted are just pics and no content :| Verdict: blacklist.

What these sploggers dont realise is that they wont anything but hatred (I hate to say that). I haven't heard of any splogger who has become a millionaire by cramming adsense and spamming directories and all.

And finally, I'm really happy to see a lot of people writing on subjects like 'Weight loss, Quit smoking, Clear debts..' crammed with adsense ads. Its really interesting to see these people's willingness to provide valuable information and help to others :| (When is this going to end

Yes, Pingoat just underwent a major upgrade and obviously, just gew bigger

Added support for weblogUpdates.extendedPing
Checkout http://pingoat.com/goat/rpc_help for technical details
Now you can pass your blog's rss feed in the ping to the services that support this method (Pubsub, blo.gs etc..) A field for the RSS url has been added on the homepage

New services
- Planetoftheblogs.com
- Gen.nz
- Longrank.com (currently under development. Service opens soon)
- iPodder.org

- And as some of you might have already seen, Blogexplosion has launched the "PingMyBlog" tool which is powered by our own Pingoat - http://blogexplosion.com/pingmyblog
- Pingoat on LockerGnome - http://channels.lockergnome.com/windows/archives/20050914_pingoat.phtml

PS: I read somewhere that Pingoat is trying to exagerrate its services by including low-quality services and emphasising quantity instead of quality. But the truth is that Pingoat = Quality+Quantity And Pingoat was never opened for "competition". I believe in what we usually call "Survival of the fittest"

Its been a few days since I showed myself on Pingoat. I'm feeling almost ok now.. Today I am working to add the weblogUpdates.extendedPing and three brand new services to the service list! I will be able to release the anti-splog project which I had mentioned earlier, very soon.

Today is one of the worst days of my life. My dearest of the dearest friend Tithin passed away today morning, after a year long struggle with Blood cancer. Maybe God isnt so good afterall
God bless his soul.
Tithin, lots of love - Kailash

http://boastology.com/blog/post/index/157/Sad-demise

Pingoat will soon be adding support for the weblogUpdates.extendedPing method. I am always looking for innovation and I'll be more than happy to try out new concepts The only question is, which all services support this method! ?

This really makes me sad I'm taking down 10 services from the Ping list. We now have 50 services only A couple of services are dead, another couple (foreign) blocked has Pingoat. I couldnt find a "contact page" on their website as I cant read Japanese and for some reason, the translation didnt reveal and contact links.

And the rest of the services, well they shut down because of SPAM abuse They are not accepting pings from anywhere because of spam abuse. I have mailed them asking whether they could open their services to Pingoat offering them a no-spam guarantee. Not sure how they'll respond.

Removed services
datashed.net
blogsnow.com
snipsnap.org
lasermemory.com
myblog.jp
logoole.com
thingamablog.sourceforge.net
xmlrpc.blogg.de
blog.goo.ne.jp
blog.rank10.net
blog.with2.net
ping.exblog.jp

You'll be seeing a brand new and interesting service in a week Yes, Pingoat's sister project, The " " :P Wait for a week..

With this unique, first of its kind service, I hope to expose all the spammers all around the web. Maybe this will put an end to the blog spam permanently! ( just maybe.. )

Alogorithms can do demolition. Atleast it did, in my case! Pingoat's anti-spam algorithms got too smart and did a real stampede, banning everything. :| And thanks to everyone for your overwhelming response (complaints) that crashed my mailbox!!

Again I am really sorry for what happened and I assure you, no such thing will happen in the future. I am rewriting the antispam system and making it a bit more efficient. ( The current one was highly efficient, but it ended up banning every single blog )

A forum !
Oh come on! Not another forum!! Thanks to Steven Hargrove (DigidogStudios.com) who was kind enough to customize and setup a forum for pingoat. Now I suppose if ever something goes wrong, that can be reported on the forum. Complaints and all will be immediately taken care of.
http://pingoat.com/forum

Update
I had taken down the spam filter for an hour or so, when I was working on the security system. I am really stunned to see the number of spam blogs that got into the system in that tiny interval!