Filed under: Software
Hivelogic Enkoder is back and better than ever
The talented Dan Benjamin brings us Enkoder 4.0, a nifty utility that allows you to create JavaScript links to your email address that scavenging robots have a hard time reading, thus (hopefully) reducing your amount of spam.
Of course, as Benjamin notes, there is no perfect way to prevent spam altogether. Even so, using tools like this, especially on behalf of your clients, can make you look like a hero.
The code ("kode"?) it generates appears to be more robust than prior versions as well, with every character in the email address very well obfuscated. With the old version, I could pick out three or four characters in a pattern that looked vaguely like the email address, but this one generates code that's practically unreadable. In a good way.
One nit-picky problem with this 4.0 release is the tab order of the fields, which I'm sure can be corrected in a snap. Enkoder fields even save your prior entries so you can quickly re-use them later.
The technology behind Enkoder is also available as a web form, if you prefer.
Enkoder is donationware, and works with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5.
Update, June 13: Enkoder 4.0.1 is now available, fixing the Tiger crash-on-launch problem, and the field tab order.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris said 7:07AM on 6-12-2008
Crashed on Tiger directly at start. I'll try later under Leopard.
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Bertil Holmberg said 12:09PM on 6-12-2008
This is really so simple, spammers are not fools. They will not waste their own time and money spamming people that they know for sure never will buy their snake oil.
So it is unlikely that they will invest heavily in bots trying to decode your coded address. It would be pointless.
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Kryptinite said 12:21PM on 6-12-2008
It's crazy because I've been to lunch and hung out with Dan not knowing that it was Hivelogic Dan.
Small world
That's also explains why I say his picture on a Twitter advertisement.
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Cowicide said 5:26PM on 6-12-2008
Same here, started and quit immediately without running on Tiger 10.4.9 - crap.
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Slobi said 8:18AM on 6-26-2008
Sorry, this app is a crap. Doesn't work on Tiger and developer (probably rightfully so) doesn't provide any support. But, cheap piece of crap is no better than an expensive one.
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