With the online community getting rapidly very fed up with the moaning and groaning of a the "backbiting club" - a group of no more than a handful blog writers including Simon Moores, OVIT and other (fictional) characters who have been making (largely indirect) snide remarks or attacks on each other for some time. What happened recently is that Simon has still failed to realise that all attention is not equal and getting insulted by a small hardcore of immiture Internet users, with too much time on their hands, is not the same as being famous. What's more it does not feel too nice.

Simon has, fairly recently "closed his blog" in a move that others have all-but-called sulking, by our local Tory boy (and high carbon footprint) writer of "Thanet Life". It has gotten to the point that this particular political "pundit" has gained a satirical commentary all of his own "Thanet Strife" is the result and it shows a great skill at satire (whoever the author may be).

Thanet is no stranger to satire and controversy. Who can forget Gannet College, the one shot blog critical of Thanet College. No one knows who put it up and if they do they did not manage to get it taken down (they did make the local news though).

Quite rightly the more mature element of Thanet blogging (those of us that actually have something to say, for example) have been pressing for the discussion of real issues. Real issues like the loss of jobs due to the death of the local town centres, supporting local museums and businesses and seeing things in the bigger picture. The message is clear to all that want to bend the ear of the local press over this storm in a tea cup - "get over yourself!"

Looking back over the last three months of Thanet Star I have tried to select a handful of articles that represent the best of the first quarter and yet are still likely to be of reading interest now. What you will notice is that the list is that of ideas, questions and resources. I'd shrug but you would not see that.

• Setting up a personal or business website
• You Don’t Have to Be A Geek to Understand SEO
• The Thanet Blogger Vote. See Grown Men Beg! Make Sandy Ezikiel & Co Fight For Your Vote.
• Is Thanet In Trouble?
• How to Revive Margate Museum and Old Town in One Day
• Is blogger.com harming Thanet blogging?
• Dentists and Thanet - Things You Should Know
• Please feel free to comment

By now the more forward thinking business men and women of Thanet (such as Michael Child or Simon Moores) will have started to realise that blogging has the potential to increase their sales disproportionally to the small effort required. Others have realised that blogging is a way to engage with others and "join the conversation". There is a problem!

The problem is the curse of conformity and it does not just happen in blogging but in "the real world" too. Look at all of the businesses in any given sector today. Just about all of them look roughly the same and are saying roughly the same thing. Yet, they each are hoping for better results.

It's natural to look at the competitors and see what they are doing but you will also be copying their mistakes and errors as well as their successes (if any). Without an understanding not only of what others are doing but why they are doing it it is impossible to do more than make yourself "yet another entry in the market". If you do that how will you stand out?

This is the solution.

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» Continue Reading: Standing Out In Thanet Blogging

For those that have never heard of the term "guest blogging" before here is a quick rundown. A guest writes a blog post for you. No, that's all there is to it.

"What's so great about that?" You ask.

For the host blog it is a chance to give the readership something different and for the blog owner there is an opportunity to not have to write a post. For big time blogs like ProBlogger it allows the main writer to travel on business without leaving the readership feeling abandoned. For the readers it is a chance to hear from experts in specific areas and enjoy a visit to another style without giving up on the one they have come to love.

One thing that has always surprised me about Thanet blogs is that I see no guest posts. Admittedly it's a fiddly thing to achieve on blogger.com as it requires giving access to the blog or posting the thing yourself (which you can not do if you are halfway across the Atlantic at the time).

Still, I see no reason why guest blogging should not take place in our niche. For this reason I am going to create another first for Thanet Blogging and offer my services as a guest blogger. I am happy to write on any Thanet related theme (or on a technical topic) on request. I will set a limit of no more than two such guest posts a week.

Tell Me About The Sort of Post You Require.

Happy valentines (what's left of it) - I hope your love life is going well even if the local blogging is not.

The big buzz across the Thanet blogs is the closing of a prominent blog (I'll not link as solicitors threats are not nice and I can not be bothered to pay lots of money to defend my right to an opinion), the defacement of another (allegedly, but I've not looked into it) and the mentioning of other forms of blog based harassment.

Let us be quite clear that we are discussing not only trolling (posting volatile or inflammatory comments for the reaction) but also illegal harassment. The more "famous" a blog and it's blogger the more that personality will become the target of the attention of others. This is normal but death threats are a crime and should not be tolerated.

Cyber bullying was one of the issues at the heart of Internet Safety Day but it does not just happen to teenagers (a third of all kids have experienced this according to some sources). It also happens to bloggers of all levels, ages and political leanings.

Who can forget the high profile harassment of Kathy Sierra who not only stopped blogging but canceled speaking engagements and was to scared to leave her house (Wikipedia article). Then there is the story of the 78-year-old Holocaust survivor attacked by a nutter who traveled a very long way to carry out his threats. This form of behaviour has prompted repeated calls for a "blogger's code of conduct" and one of the reasons I have a written comments policy.

In that gray space between the cut and thrust of a hot debate and the need for arrests there is a lot you can do to protect yourself. There are also some things that you can expect if you get mildly famous. Things that (often) go with the territory.

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» Continue Reading: Do You Know How To Deal With a Cyberstalker?

I was alerted by one of our councilors to the fact that Thanet Star was not exactly available today. This is very irritating as I had taken the day off and gone out to enjoy the fresh and unseasonably mild weather. When I got back I had something of a situation to deal with.

My "AI" like script that keeps the spam at bay started to notice spam in flood loads yesterday. I had let about 10,000 through before I noticed the problem. I used the spam to train the filter and then I removed it.

The system was then able to keep the system clean while we all slept. Between this morning and about 2pm it picked up over 25,000 spam log events. Of these it dropped two and let them through. That's an error rate of less than 0.008% which is very good.

I have trained the filter on the spam it let through and have reset the logs but they represent around 50,000 to 75,000 hits of a purely automated nature. This is more than 25 times the daily reported average for Januaray 2008. It seems that it is time to roll out an even more proactive defense of my server as I will not put up with this sort of thing.

Unfortunately I have turned off logging to conserve stability and this means that if your comment gets eaten I will not be able to restore it. The only answer will be to try again using different words. (sorry).

In order to get to the bottom of the Dane Park issues raised in recent articles I sent out some emails. This effort was hampered by the lack of availability of some parts of the council website. However, despite technical issues from these emailings I learned a number of things which only a few directly applied to the issues at hand.

In response to the chain of events my emails put into motion Thanet Life has more details as to what is going on in Dane Park. Apparently the grass will be seeded in the spring and the lighting issues are currently slated for work.