Day 137: AWAI Online (Follow up)

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 137: AWAI Online (Follow up)

After yesterday’s post, AWAI Online has been bombarding me with emails:

[FINAL NOTICE] Just a few hours left to improve your life forever…

I just wanted to quickly remind you that this is the last day you can take advantage of the very special offer we put together especially for you.

This is it, Conny … Your very last chance to access our popular B2B Writing Successmembership site. Last chance to become a member. This is the last time we will contact you. We didn’t hear from you so we’re giving you another chance. Last chance to take us up on our offer. On and on it goes. One email after another. Just how many last chances do I get? If nothing else, this confirms that AWAI Online is a scam. No legitimate company pesters potential customers with so many emails, time and time again repeating the same offer. What’s worse, no matter how many times I unsubscribe from their website (and I never subscribed to begin with) the emails just keep coming. This borders on harassment.

Computer virus alert

A few days ago, a long-time friend sent me a picture via Facebook chat. Since I know the man well, I clicked on the picture without any reservations. Nothing happened, so I clicked it again and again, but still the image was not displayed.

Moments later I received a message from Jess asking me what kind of picture I had sent her. She stated “Since we don’t usually chat on Facebook or exchange pictures, I’m a little suspicious.” I commented back that I hadn’t sent Jess any picture.

A string of comments followed. Some Facebook friends were nice and polite about the shared picture, others were rude and even defriended me.

As it turned out, the picture was in fact a virus. My long-time friend’s account was hacked, the picture was shared with all his Facebook contacts (including me) and now the virus was in my Facebook account and was shared with my contacts. Quelle nightmare.

Facebook got wind of this virus, restricted me of using certain features (such as sharing posts) and offered to help by way of a virus cleaning program. I ran the program, but nothing happened. I ran it again and again, but still no luck.

In the end it took Malware Bytes Anti-Malware to clean my computer system.

Still, every day I’m getting emails from people asking me about the shared picture. So, should you get a picture ‘from me’, without any explanation, for heaven’s sake DO NOT CLICK ON IT!!!

www.connymanero.weebly.com

Why Use the Plus Sign When Searching the Internet

With the arrival of the Internet, the world is your oyster.  Unfortunately, it’s not just your oyster, it’s anybody’s and with a pearl of information, you find a whole lot of junk.  Along with reputable companies, advertisers, spammers, bloggers, and other Internet users all vie for your attention.  If you’ve heard of the plus sign and you’re wondering, why use the plus sign searching the Internet, your life is about to become a whole lot easier.

The problem

If you’ve never used the plus sign when searching the Internet, you probably shake your head in frustration wading through pages and pages of useless information.  You know what you want, you formulated your request in your favorite search engine, but you still have to put up with bogus sites, websites with misleading ads, link farms, and false listings.

The solution

Next time when you use a search engine, start you search with the plus sign (+).  As an experiment, say that you’re looking for information on owls.  Type “owls” in the search engine and you’ll be presented with 72 million listings.  Now type “+owls” in the search engine and you’ll only get 71,000 listings.  The plus sign removes all the rig raff.

What does the plus sign do?

The plus sign removes (almost) all undesirable info from your search.  The plus sign tells the search engine that whatever you’re looking for has to include the word that you specified.  If you’re looking for owls, the search engine will only bring up information on those birds and will ignore pages that link themselves to info about owls.

Broaden your search

In addition to the plus sign, try broaden your search for a particular item.  For instance, if you’re looking for sugar free drink, don’t type just drinks in the search engine.  Typing “+drinks” produces about 8,660 results, while “+sugar free drinks” generates only 2,300 results.  Try to be as specific as possible.

Where it goes wrong

Clever advertisers know that subjects such as “love”, “employment”, “pets” and “cars” are hot topics.  They link their marketing pages to those popular sites and as a result you get flooded with millions of search results.  Fortunately, a few search engines are on to those advertisers and eliminate their ads automatically.  Still, it doesn’t take long to type a plus sign before the word or term you are searching for, letting the search engine know that you are not willing to put up with useless pages.

When it gets worse

You might find that, at certain times of the year, you get presented with more and more junk pages while looking for valuable information.  The problem is obvious, annual celebrations such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother and Father’s Day bring on a stream of advertisers all trying to lure you to their sites.  

Wonder no longer about why use the plus sign searching the Internet, try it, you’ll be pleasantly surprised and save a whole lot of time finding what you’re looking for.

www.connymanero.weebly.com

Gaining popularity

This blog started out as a way to vent.  You know how it goes, something gets on your nerves and sharing your grievances with your cat just doesn’t cut it.  A blog seemed like the ideal solution.  I could have my say and move on.

For the longest time “Under the Toronto Sun” had limited viewing.  A few friends followed my posts, averaging between 35 – 50 views per day.

That has changed.  I don’t know what happened, but ever since “Under the Toronto Sun” reached its 25,000 mark, readership has exploded, averaging between 400 – 500 views per day. 

Much to my surprise, I’ve noticed that “Under the Toronto Sun” isn’t just being read in Canada in the United States, but enjoys readership in other parts of the world as well.  Statistics show that this blog has readers in England, Scotland, France, Spain, Belgium, Chile and (a large following in) Brazil.

Unfortunately, so have the comments.  Some are flattering and encouraging, others are on the hurtful side, and then there are the spam messages: financial consultants, marketing experts, diet programs, sex toys and porn sites, they all hope for a posting.

If I see a site I agree with, I will let it through, but most spam messages get deleted.  It’s one of the reasons I started screening the comments.  When this blog was young, anyone and everyone could leave a comment, but since gaining popularity all comments have to be approved by yours truly.

My message to spammers … don’t bother.  If I don’t agree with what you’re advertising, your comments won’t see the light of day.