Has anyone else seen some different activity coming from MSN? What I mean is that I’m seeing the following entries in my search logs, but it doesn’t appear like traditional MSNBot crawler behavior.

Why this activity is different:
1) The originating IP address is from the MSN netblock.
2) There is an alleged referrer that looks like it is from an MSN search http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=keyword&mrt=en-us&FORM=LIVSOP
3) The user agent is showing as a browser.
4) This activity is showing very close to when I see MSNBot entries in my logs.

And no, the behavior does not appear to be a real life user.

Host: 65.55.165.38
*
/2006/06/17/live-blogging-from-the-philly-blogger-meeting/
Http Code: 200 Date: Dec 17 02:59:16 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 40839
Referer: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=podcasts&mrt=en-us&FORM=LIVSOP
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

Host: 65.55.165.42
*
/2006/06/20/how-e-commerce-will-be-affected-by-ie-7/
Http Code: 200 Date: Dec 17 03:13:02 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 43238
Referer: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=podcasts&mrt=en-us&FORM=LIVSOP
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

Technorati Tags: MSN, MSNBot, Live, Live search, User Agent, crawlers, bots

Two trends I’ve run across recently in the email deliverability world.

First, and this is for you designers who have to work on HTML email campaigns, the Email Standards Project. Because, let’s face it, the need to use old school HTML 4 for compatibility with current email clients makes baby jesus cry.

It’s been kind of quiet on the spam filtering front, aside from the proof of concept .ogg and .mp3 spam. In real deliverability terms, from what I’ve been seeing, there seems to be an increased reliance on URL filtering and on sending IP reputation.

And with that in mind, I was sort of amused to get the following text based email body in my inbox last night. It seems that the spammers are giving up on live URLs and are hoping you’ll be intrigued enough to open a Web browser, find a stock trading site and buy a penny stock.

Hi from Christian . Hope your Friday is cool and happy holidays. Something big for [SOME STOCK] over next few weeks. Check otc boards. Keep an eye out for it and get in early.

Hey, I’m just impressed the guy wished me happy holidays.

Technorati Tags: Email Deliverability, Email Standards Project, HTML Email, Email Clients, SPAM, Text based email

iConcertCal is a neat little plug in for iTunes that will scan your iTunes music library for artists and generates a personalized calendar of upcoming concerts and new CD releases. Pretty cool.

It’s such a clever idea, I just have to wonder why Apple hasn’t included it already in iTunes.

Technorati Tags: iConcertCal, iTunes, music, indie

Well, not madness, but something definitely weird.

I was wondering if anyone has seen any iPhones getting onto networks they should not be on. I am aware of a situation where an iPhone jumped on a wifi network with WEP and MAC Address filtering enabled.

The thing is, the iPhone only had the WEP key, but the iPhone MAC address hadn’t been authorized and iPhone still was granted an IP address via DHCP.

When I tried my iPhone on the network with the WEP key and but no MAC address authorization, I could not get on.

Another wrinkle is that the successful iPhone had been synched to a Mac laptop that was previously allowed on that network. Could that be it?

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, wifi, wifi networks, MAC

I was hit with this referrer string by an iPhone using visitor… URL makes me think that it’s an up and coming iPhone specific Google start page. The IP was from the AT&T network.

http://google.com/uds/samples/iphone/isearch.html

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, Google, Google Search, iSearch, Google Start Page

One thing to note, I think I’m getting better battery power now after a few full battery drains and then leaving the iPhone to charge overnight. Once I fully charge the iPhone, I am getting the power plug icon.

Yesterday, without wifi on and without using the iPod, I got about 24 hours worth of standby/active email/Web time.

Still not awesome, but better than what I have been seeing. It looks like I will have to charge every night. Here’s hoping that the battery time improves as I drain/recharge it.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPhone battery

Why yes, there is an RSS reader built into the iPhone. To access RSS feeds on the iPhone, all you need to do is enter the RSS feed URL into the Safari address bar. The feed is seemingly fetched through http://reader.mac.com. Radical, huh?

In fact, one of my readers clicked through my RSS feed and I was able to capture the referrer and user agent.

/2007/07/15/some-iphone-camera-pics/
Http Code: 200 Date: Jul 15 17:21:13 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 9887
Referer: http://reader.mac.com/mobile/v1/http://www.cleverhack.com/feed
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPhone RSS reader, iPhone feed reader, Safari, RSS

In case you were wondering about the iPhone picture quality, here are two pictures I took on Friday night in Old City Philadelphia. Of course, there is no flash or zoom on the iPhone.

Korean War Memorial Statue

Building bathed in light

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPhone images, Philadelphia

Just for you non-iPhone owners out there - let’s see if the iPhone can blend.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Will It Blend?

Oooh, just wanted to share that I got a few accessories for the iPhone.

-Extra USB Power Adapter

-The Griffin PowerJolt Car Charger for iPhone

-Case Mate iPhone Leather Case for iPhone. It even came with a protective clear film for the screen, which I liked.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPhone Accessories, iPhone case, iPhone car charger, iPhone extra power charger

First, a serious whine which is that I think my iPhone battery is not going to last even 300 charges. The iPhone not only feels a little hot to the touch, but today I was using it as an iPod for a few hours, with wifi turned off and checking email once in a while and the battery quickly drained. I mean drained so fast between 7:30am when I took the iPhone out of the dock fully charged to around 2:30pm where the battery was at about 30%. This was in comparison to others like a Gizmodo blogger, who had a gimp battery at first and the following tech blogger battery comments compiled by Gizmodo:

Pogue had 5 hours of video, 23 hours of music (with Wi-Fi on). Mossberg saw 7 hours and 18 minutes of continuous talk time. 22 hours of music, just under 7 hours, Internet/Youtube/Email over 9 hours (All with Wifi on and email being fetched). CNet found the iPhone’s battery life to be on par with its rated times.

As far as the iPhone and everyone asking me how I like it. I like it enough, it has some quirks, which everyone and their Mom has discussed. Macenstein has a long feature request list, mostly of “well, duh” stuff the iPhone did not ship with. I think my favorite review of the device so far is Gizmodo’s review (warning some adult language and ideas).

Off the top of my head, the quirks include: no video capability, lack of flash in the web browser, no real text editor, no mms, some and not all apps going into landscape mode is distracting, there should be a keychain password store capability on the phone, where is IM, there should be a direct link to your contacts from the menu, the defaut alpha keyboard should have a few punctuation keys, weather app doesn’t auto update and how do you add an entry to the built in dictionary?

However, the iPhone does look damn pretty. Everyone, even some very jaded people who handled the phone have “ooohed and ahhhhhed” at it.

My conclusion: It’s cool, not perfect, much like a boyfriend who has a few personality tics. And since I keep my electronics a whole lot longer than boyfriends, well, I should be set.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Apple, iPhone battery, iPhone quirks

Because you all knew I would post this…The iPhone User Agent

Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Apple, iPhone User Agent, User Agents