CAPTCHA is a trademark of Carnegie Mellon University. This document describes a similar technology that is available for free.

I implemented a contact form on my new site recently, and would you believe that I was receiving lots of spam through it very quickly indeed! The site had hardly been indexed by the search engines before this happened.

I tried implementing a weak human test of my own - one of those things where you input a code that is presented to you as a graphic to prove that you are human, but this was attacked very easily indeed, and I was still receiving the spam.

I was amazed when I read of the technology that has been developed to get around the human test. (CAPTCHA is a mnemonic that stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It is designed to stop automated systems filling in scripts protected by it on the web. For some background on Turing tests, visit Wikipedia here.) I realised that optical character recognition could conceivably be used to defeat most CAPTCHA systems, and some really sophisticated software has been developed to do this. It is even available to the public.

I could not spend days refining my own solution. After a little bit of research, I came across puremango, a free visual confirmation PHP CAPTCHA script. It's very easy to integrate with your web site; I had it up and running within an hour or so! Since I installed that script, the spam has stopped. I'm still getting mail from humans through the contact form, which is what it's there for.

David Thomas, The Affiliate Marketer

If you have a website, you can quite easily add an icon to it, but you need the right software. Some of it is rather specialised and quite expensive, but I'm going to tell you how to make your favicon, as they are called, for free.

1. Take some image-processing software. If you've got it, you may wish to use Paint Shop Pro, or a similar package. If you haven't got any, use the GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. This package won't harm your wallet at all!
2. Make two pictures. One of these should have pixel dimensions 16×16, and the other, 32×32. If the icon you create is not perfectly square and does not fill the entire area of the image, as would be the case with most icons, add an alpha channel or a mask for each picture. This will enable your icon to blend into the surrounding background colour.
3. Save these as files of format PNG (portable network graphics).
4. Download png2ico, which is a command-line-driven application that will turn your PNG files into a single ICO file.
5. Use a command like this:
   png2ico favicon.ico logo16x16.png logo32x32.png

If you've followed those steps, you'll have created a quality favicon for your website for free!

David Thomas, The Affiliate Marketer

I've just done my first ever podcast with PRWeb.

I've put together a press release for my new dating site. Here is the press release:

"A New Unique Online Dating Service Website Offers A Free Dating Guide To Members."

I am told that the podcast should be added to it tomorrow. You get the option to have a podcast recorded if you contribute at least US$200 to the funding of your press release. What happens is that you arrange a specific date and time for an interview to be conducted. The interview is very short, and as I say, you should be able to hear it tomorrow.

Podcasts are published separately on the site PRWeb Podcast. You get another link to your press release, and it lasts quite a bit longer than the one on PRWeb's home page. I used my time to talk about what is unique about my new service. If you want to hear what I sound like, check it out from tomorrow.

If you want some material that will help you write press releases (note that it does not go into podcast interviews), Brad Callen has produced a set of ebooks called Press Release Fire. The sales page is a bit over-hyped, but it's worth the current price of US$19.95.

David Thomas, The Affiliate Marketer