

Tynt: What's being copied from your website right now? - epall
http://www.tynt.com/

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martey
From their about page: _Tracer inserts a java script tag into the html code of
your website to non-invasively track users interactions with your website
content. The only change the user sees is when copied content is pasted into
an email, blog or website, we automatically add a link back to the originating
site at the end of the content._

What happens if the user just deletes the link, as I have with the above
quote?

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tsally
I'm pretty sure this service is not meant for the technically inclined. If
someone who _is_ technically inclined was worried about this, they would
understand that they could use Google and/or a custom web crawler that
searched over a subset of sites you cared about[1].

[1]After all, if someone copies your work and no once sees it, who really
cares? The scope of your web crawler must be limited somehow. You could simply
have it check up on your competition and/or popular links on news aggregating
sites for categories related to your business. For example, if I was starting
a technology blog, I could write up a Python crawler in about 30 minutes that
parsed through blog articles on other popular tech blogs with related tags.

~~~
martey
I think that there is a difference between services not meant for technically
inclined people and those built by non-technically inclined people. In its
current incarnation, I do not see how this service is useful, even if you are
not technically inclined.

I think there is a need for a service like this (that watches the web for
people republishing your content), but Tracer is not it. Tracer is just a
silly JavaScript hack.

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tokenadult
Years ago I applied a trick I learned from the Associated Press. Back in World
War I, the Associated Press suspected that the Hearst newspaper chain was
copying their stories from the Russian front, and they began running stories
about a fictitious general Nelotsky. When the Hearst newspapers picked up the
Nelotsky "story," the AP called them on it, pointing out that the first part
of the general's name is just the English word "stolen" spelled in reverse. I
used a similar technique on my most plagiarized webpage,

<http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html>

mentioning a college that doesn't actually exist, but has a name from the
Greek word for "steal." That finally got one persistent thief to acknowledge
that my site was his source.

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scott_s
Map makers (at the street level) did a similar thing.

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likpok
Although some of those ghost streets were simply city projects gone wrong (ran
out of money/support), so only some errors on maps are traps.

There is one (somewhat) famous example of a trap, in the placement of two
fictitious towns in Michigan, Goblu and Beatosu (this being back in the day of
their rivalry).

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Guatejon
These guys are not fans <http://www.ericlander.com/324.html>

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tectonic
Looks to me like Tynt is trying to head in a new direction with Tracer. I
don't see any references on their homepage to the sort of technology that
these guys are concerned about.

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BigCanOfTuna
Great idea! Now we can finally, with accuracy, determine what portion of the
internet population uses the click-drag technique when reading long blog
posts. Yeah!

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diN0bot
i believe this still works with copy (apple-c) and paste (apple-p), which i do
all the time. not just click-drag.

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westside1506
Interesting concept, but this is not designed to find where your content has
been copied onto other sites/blogs. That would be an cool service.

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jonursenbach
That service is called Google.

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patio11
And if you're looking for a slightly more scalable solution than "Find a
sentence from Page A which is juicy, Google it, record results, repeat for all
10,000 pages on my website", you may be interested in CopyScape.

For example, if you feed them www.tynt.com, they'd tell you that feedmyapp.com
has borrowed a few sentences from them. (It makes sense, as the borrowed
phrases are part of a listing for tynt.com)

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PStamatiou
i use <http://copygator.com> but am interesting in how tynt solution differs

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teej
Copygator actually crawls the internet looking for your blog posts. All Tracer
does is sniff for a ctrl-c command from someone visiting your website and
injects a link into the copied text.

