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A new kind of spam?

I wonder if this is some bizarre variation on the Nigerian email scam. Received this just now via my feedback form:

Sir
we are one of the bigest family entertainment company in kuwait. We
have 8 different branches all over the kuwait.
We are interested to buy cotton candy vending machine. so could you
please send us all information regarding cotton candy vending machine

regards

Ashfaque

Hmmn, have I written about cotton candy before? I did write about vending machines in Japan once, perhaps that’s the connection?

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Here’s a good start on defining blogging terms

Yesterday I mentioned that while there exists a few “blog glossaries,” none really seem to take the subject seriously enough to be of use. (What’s the use of defining opaque terms with even more opaque terms?) Tonight I came across an example of the kind of glossary I think we need: Phil Gyford’s “An introduction to weblog terms for weblog readers”. Gyford is the man behind the ever-popular Pepy’s Diary, and rightly realizes that:

[…] sites like Pepys’ Diary, that cover non-technical matters, must be aware that such [weblog] words often mean nothing to new readers and should explain such concepts in terms normal people can understand. Otherwise it is impossible for a reader to tell whether to ignore an “RSS feed” or learn how to use it.

Gyford only covers four terms in his article (“weblog/blog,” “permalink,” “RSS,” and “Trackback”), but does so in a manner that’s clear and easy to understand, but doesn’t cop a tone of condescension. Reading it was like intaking a breath of fresh air.

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Ask and you shall not receive

I received my first search engine referrals from Ask Jeeves today, and it took me back to 1999, when I tried to use this “natural question”-based search engine for a month before giving up in frustration. (And point of fact, someone showed me Google and it was love at first site, and I never turned back.)

To wit, one of the two queries posed that brought a user to my site was for “where can i type in words and hear them in japanese”. Through the magic of Ask Jeeve’s algorithms, somehow this site comes up first on the subsequent page of results for this query. Needless to say, you will find no answers to such a question herein. Gomen’nasai.