Another milestone reached here at this humble blog. Since May 2006, when I installed the fantastic anti-spam tool, Akismet, I have now clocked 200,000 comment spams on this blog.

Perhaps it’s my previous posts showing my fascination with comment spam (see this November 2006 post and this January 2007 post), or I am just an unwitting spam magnet, however the graph above illustrates that Akismet is catching an average of 12,500 spammy comments each month (this works out to 416 per day).

Please, celebrate this milestone with me. Let’s send our thanks to all of those peddling dubious medications, nasty spyware and other less than savoury products and services for this milestone.

Image: Graph of comment spam received at Miles’ Blog.

Well, another AWIA Annual General Meeting has come and gone. We had a great turnout, and there were 11 nominations for the eight positions available, which was great to see. Already bolstering the star studded committee line-up, we’re also joined this year with four new committee members, Harriet, Bronwen, Richard and Jamie.

Harriet Wakelam is currently Manager, Educational Technology in a new role at West Coast TAFE. Bronwen Clune is the CEO and Founder of Norg Media, a new media company that builds online news sites for local markets. Richard Giles is the author of two books, and co-founder of Web2.0 site, Scouta. Jamie Lyford is a technology lawyer and the director of a community portal developer, and is an executive member of WAIA and ICTICC.

Welcome aboard guys, and glad to have you on the team!

We’ve also seen, thanks to Ben Maden from Matter Solutions, the launch of Port 80 Brisbane, our latest chapter. They’ve got another event being held in a few weeks, so if you are in Brisbane and in the web industry, it’s a must attend event. Visit this forums thread for all the information.

Photo: Hedge & Sky, North Yunderup.