Wugly stuff

I received this spam through the contact me form:

Name: Wuglies Convenor of Judges
Email: moderator@thewuglies.co.nz
Website:

Dear Web owner

Congratulations!? Your webpage has just been nominated for the inaugural Wuglies.

Bought to you by Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, The Wuglies exist to raise awareness of plain Jane and wugly web sites.

Our driving cause is to give all web pages the opportunity to be well crafted and more beautiful.  So if your page is judged ‘Wugliest of All’ you’ll receive a homepage design makeover worth up to $2000. You win, your page-viewers win, and wugly blossoms into bewdiful.

We hope you accept your nomination in good humour and with slightly embarrassed grace. You can see some other nominated sites at http://www.thewuglies.co.nz

Please let us know if you accept your nomination.
Good luck in the vote-off.

Yours sincerely
Convenor of Judges – The Wuglies

Time: Sunday September 19, 2010 at 9:42 pm
IP Address: 121.98.134.189
Sent by an unverified visitor to your site

That IP address looks to be an Orcon static address in Auckland. Apparently. It’s listed with Spamhaus, but none of the other blacklist sites. Others may be able to find out more.

Overall it’s just a social media promotion.  Someone has gone to the trouble of sending the contact me form, which is a manual process, but it does mean I get to see the nomination and react – perhaps by blogging even. It’s not a bad approach, especially if you seed the first sites. Friend’s tell your friends that their website sucks. Hilarity ensues and everyone gets to see a Download Microsoft IE9 link.

Pity it doesn’t work on Macs, iPads or iPhones, but great to see Microsoft has finally come back to the browser wars.

No mention of where that $2000 is spent, and when it comes to web design that could be a lot or just an invitation to a black hole.

Oh – and I should point out that any and all criticism is fine by me – I do tend to throw a few stones myself. Feel free not to be anonymous though.