As you can see, things look a little different around here. Thanks to your generous donations last month, I was able to pay for some programming hours. The first thing we did was figure out how to get Google AdSense scripts to run on this SCOOP platform. For pretty much everyone else, this was a simple copy and paste job. For me? A significant investment that I hope will pay for itself in the not too distant future. The second thing we’re going to do is create a new RSS feed that supports formatting. You know, so you can actually read the Frog Pond in your RSS reader. What a crazy idea! The RSS feed should support advertising, too. So I hope to get some revenue through that as well. The third thing we’re going to do is fix this spam problem I’ve had for over a year. We have something like 150,000 spam accounts that have been created, and we’ve had lots of spam diaries and even some spam comments. That’s going to end thanks to Markos Moulitsas’s incredible generosity. He had to pay a considerable amount of money to create a spamkiller, and he’s letting me have it for free. All I have to pay for is the manhours to get it copied over and installed. So, I really want to thank him for that.

We’ll have to see how much money is left over, if any, when these first three tasks are completed. With any luck, I might be able to do a couple more things to make this a better, more updated place to hang around and blog.

I apologize for cluttering up the joint with ads, but you know it is kind of the point of being a writer to get paid for it. I have no control over what is displayed and many of the ads are targeted to your location. So, we’re not all seeing the same ads.

Thanks again to every one who made a donation last month. In fact, thanks to everyone who has ever made a donation. You make the Frog Pond possible.