Literally.
Bookmark this page: RealSnailMail.net
It’s officially launching on August 11, but you can test it now.
An email is loaded onto a chip on the back of an a live snail, when it comes near enough to the pick up point. Then, whenever the snail gets near enough to the drop off point, the email will be picked up and sent on to the recipient. Speed of light everywhere except on the snail’s back–so who knows how long it’ll take to arrive.
So cool!
(Apologies to Monty Python)
According to the November/December Marketing Management magazine, the U.S. relays more span than any other country (19.6%), according to Sophos, which scanned all the spam stuck in its traps and traced how they traveled there. China is next in line with 8.4%, then South Korea with 6.5%.
The brief goes on to say that it’s estimated that Americans spend about “$7.8 billion for computer repairs, parts, and replacement over the past two years as a result of viruses and spyware alone.”
Just a hunch, but I bet not much of that $7.8 billion was spent by Mac users.
Someone is actually working on a stupid filter for email messages, as Josh Quittner writes in this week’s Fortune magazine. This “promises to do to idiotic online comments what a spam filter does to unwanted e-mail: put it in a place where it can’t hurt anyone.”
We all can write stupid sometimes. But irony and sarcasm, not generally considered stupidity, are harder to keep on the right side of the filter. Here’s an intriguing quote from the article, and something to think about if you want not to be seen as stupid.
“…Ortiz, who studied linguistics as an undergrad, recently noticed a pattern in the way some writers use letter repetition. The clueless tend to repeat consonants: ‘This video is amazinggggg!!!’ By comparison, say Ortiz, ‘when you repeat a vowel, you are being sarcastic–’Yeaaaaaah.’”
Visit StupidFilter if you want to help out.
Guess what…today I got an email telling me that I’ve qualified for a free John Deere tractor lawn mower. No worries that my lawn is the probably the size of the tractor and we pay someone to maintain it anyway. The link to sign up for my prize (participation required) was going to take me to mankeep.info (whose WHOIS information did not jive with the information given in the email. Surprise, surprise.).
This was in my spam folder following the email filled with nonsense sentences and nary a link to be found.
I understand that spam is unsolicited email. But is an email from a legitimate company with whom I’m not interested in doing business really the same as garbage email messages (whose purpose must be to just stuff an inbox?) or phishing for personal information?