Friday, November 16, 2007
00:23 by FoxTwo Ahhh the wonders of what a restrictive company firewall can do to its staff....
Well I spent the whole day surfing whatever sites I could, and they're usually technology-related sites (and yeah the network guys didn't block my domain so I could still do stuff on it). Yup, I came across this website which is new to me, and which I think should have been discovered by me much sooner, like maybe 5 years sooner.. :)
The website? It's called Contactify.
What does it do?
Nowadays it's damn dangerous to even put your email address up on the web in the clear, unless you really like attracting spam-bots. One of the ways to beat these spam bots is to convert your email address into a graphic to foil the spam-bots, the other is to use Contactify. It's sorta like what Haloscan does for comments and trackbacks in a blog. It's a free service which presents a form where users on your website can email you, but you don't even have to reveal your email address at all.
The basic service just gives you a URL link which is uniquely yours. You just slot this link just like any other link onto your site, and when the visitor clicks on it, it brings them to contactify's website to fill in a form to send an email to you.
Better yet, it also offers a widget which you can use to integrate it into your own website, and even use the CSS stylesheets on your website, so that it has the same look-and-feel as the rest of your website. When you choose this option, the visitor doesn't get whisked off to contactify's website - they can fill in the form right there on your own website, with a form that is css-styled to suit the rest of your website theme.
Want a real live working demo? Sure, click here to email me :)
Cool huh?
As I said, this service should have been around years ago, before blogs became prominent. Back then, spam was a big problem (still is, now). People used to have "homepages" and left their email addresses as valid mailto: links, and spam-bots quickly picked these up and spammed them. If Contactify had been around back then, this problem would have been quickly nipped in the bud.
Now, I guess you don't really need this service much. Most people now have "blogs" instead of "homepages" (I'm one of the few dinosaurs who still have a homepage, and you're on the "blog" part of it). I just happen to have both, and integrated my blog as part of my "homepage". Yeah my website's kinda retro heh!
00:23 by FoxTwo Ahhh the wonders of what a restrictive company firewall can do to its staff....
Well I spent the whole day surfing whatever sites I could, and they're usually technology-related sites (and yeah the network guys didn't block my domain so I could still do stuff on it). Yup, I came across this website which is new to me, and which I think should have been discovered by me much sooner, like maybe 5 years sooner.. :)
The website? It's called Contactify.
What does it do?
Nowadays it's damn dangerous to even put your email address up on the web in the clear, unless you really like attracting spam-bots. One of the ways to beat these spam bots is to convert your email address into a graphic to foil the spam-bots, the other is to use Contactify. It's sorta like what Haloscan does for comments and trackbacks in a blog. It's a free service which presents a form where users on your website can email you, but you don't even have to reveal your email address at all.
The basic service just gives you a URL link which is uniquely yours. You just slot this link just like any other link onto your site, and when the visitor clicks on it, it brings them to contactify's website to fill in a form to send an email to you.
Better yet, it also offers a widget which you can use to integrate it into your own website, and even use the CSS stylesheets on your website, so that it has the same look-and-feel as the rest of your website. When you choose this option, the visitor doesn't get whisked off to contactify's website - they can fill in the form right there on your own website, with a form that is css-styled to suit the rest of your website theme.
Want a real live working demo? Sure, click here to email me :)
Cool huh?
As I said, this service should have been around years ago, before blogs became prominent. Back then, spam was a big problem (still is, now). People used to have "homepages" and left their email addresses as valid mailto: links, and spam-bots quickly picked these up and spammed them. If Contactify had been around back then, this problem would have been quickly nipped in the bud.
Now, I guess you don't really need this service much. Most people now have "blogs" instead of "homepages" (I'm one of the few dinosaurs who still have a homepage, and you're on the "blog" part of it). I just happen to have both, and integrated my blog as part of my "homepage". Yeah my website's kinda retro heh!
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