May 2008
75 posts
Slate Explainer: What's a "botnet"? →
April 2008
28 posts
ars technica: An elephant never forgets? George W.... →
how the Bush white house replaced Lotus Notes with Microsoft Exchange, a manual backup process, and criminal incompetence
Ken Magill: E-mail is Like Crack for Marketers →
…which explains their attitude towards ISPs who won’t give them their medicine.
classic jwz: message threading →
I’ve been hearing for years that message threading in email clients is difficult, and requires years of user testing. jwz’s algorithm, described here, has already had years of user testing — and is based on years of using earlier algorithms.
Foundry Group: Did Darwin Skip Over Email? →
the email user interface hasn’t evolved much, but maybe it will…eventually.
Thoughts on OnlyOnce:Drawing the Line
JD posted this a little earlier - http://onlyonce.blogs.com/onlyonce/2008/04/drawing-the-lin.html The question is - “as certification/whitelist programs move towards purely quantitative models, is there still room for morality?” But that’s just it, the quantitative models already have morality. It’s just that it’s the morality of the recipients that matters, not...
Joho the Blog: Comcast’s ID overkill →
David Weinberger reports that Comcast’s web chat tech support won’t help unless you hand over your social security number. This isn’t just a privacy issue anymore: have they not heard about phishing?
OnlyOnce: Drawing the Line →
as certification/whitelist programs move towards purely quantitative models, is there still room for morality? (disclaimer: at least one contributor to this blog is employed by a company mentioned in this article)
Email Insider : Why The Open Rate Must Die →
“Using the open rate to measure email marketing performance is akin to the music industry measuring sales based on the number of CDs sold. It just doesn’t reflect how people buy music today.”
New Scientist Tech: Spam reaches 30 →
New Scientist rehashes the boring old pre-history of email spam — and of course the first comment is blog spam.
The Iconoclast: FBI, politicos renew push for ISP... →
it’s not clear which data they want retained, but Declan says we should be scared anyway
The Email Wars: What If We Sent Hugs Instead of... →
viral marketing isn’t some crazy disease concocted by a mad scientist in a dark basement laboratory. so, why do marketers act like it’s something they can create and control?
Spam Resource: On Blog Etiquette and Content... →
Al Iverson reminds us that “It’s not cool to steal content from somebody else’s blog to put on your own” — which should be a no-brainer, but I guess a lot of people are somehow able to get online without brains.
Ken Magill Exclusive: Habeas Getting Shopped... →
the Matt Drudge of email marketing has learned that a company which started out defending poetry may now be for sale. (disclaimer: at least one contributor to this site is employed by at least one of Habeas’s competitors)
Seth's Blog: You're right! →
Email marketers keep trying to convince ISPs that complaints from their customers are somehow “wrong” and should be ignored. In this article, marketing guru & action figure Seth Godin describes the only right way to respond to a complaint from a customer — assuming, of course, that you want to keep that customer.
Missing the point
Ever since I first read e360’s press release about the not-that-surprising ruling from Judge Zagel I have been mentally counting down the ways that the press release demonstrates their foolish belief that ISPs are around only to make money for spammers. Over and over again, I read a phrase and just mentally start screaming NOOOO! that’s not how it works! Let’s count all the ways they climb aboard...
No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded.
Earlier, JD posted a link to MailChannels’ Blog. The long and short of it is that InfoWorld has published a comparison of various antispam systems and the folks at MailChannels have a few issues with it. They make some good points, like needing to figure in the reaction time of a solution to new threats, and I have to say that in general I agree with them in that InfoWorld’s...
Charlie Stross investigating 419 (advance fee)... →
brilliant author Charles Stross asks for pointers on 419 scams; tons of interesting replies
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Welcome to Box of Meat!
Welcome to Box of Meat, a cooperative linkblog about email technology, spam prevention, “deliverability” (which is not a real word), and so forth. As you can see, I’ve already posted a few links to get things started. This tumblog isn’t called “Box of Meat” because Hormel’s SPAM product is sold in a metal box. Jokes about spam were old and tired in 1999,...
Email Marketing Reports: Remember your subscribers... →
…or perhaps it’s that AOL knows how their users think about email?
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Word to the Wise » Dealing with ISPs when you are... →
a useful list of things to do, or not do; the comments are fun
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Return Path: Court Affirms Comcast's Right to Keep... →
my take on judgement day in e360 vs. Comcast
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Return Path: Focus on Subscriber Experience:... →
this is something I’ve always hated about evite, too.
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Do Not Reply: They Told You Not To Reply →
It’s rude enough to send mail and not accept replies, but it’s even worse to use someone else’s domain (like donotreply.com, or domain.net) and make them deal with your replies. Here, the owner of donotreply.com explains — with examples.
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“The e-mail of the species is deadlier than the mail.”
– Stephen Fry, quoted in the London Independent
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MailChannels | Anti-Spam Blog: Why anti-spam... →
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Return Path: How to Impress the ISPs →
the post that brought the box of meat story out of the conference bar discussions, and into the vernacular