Nigerian Email About Viagra
Pontificating on the death of email appears almost as popular these days as is funding social networking software companies. In an article [registration or subscription required] on Salon, Dave Farber, Dave Crocker, Brad Templeton and Jakob Nielsen all comment on the state of email today. They are in agreement -- "...basically e-mail does not work anymore, which means that we have to tear it apart." (Nielsen) Interestingly, none of the technologists believe that today's technology can save email. I particularly enjoyed Templeton's comments on content filtering:
"Filtering on the content is generally a bad idea. If you're actually going to really mail someone about Viagra, I don't know how you'd get that through. I'm sure the Nigerians are facing the same problems."
No great solutions are proposed by the panelists in this article, but rest assured folks like Farber are working on the problem.
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Hornik wonders how you would actually mail someone about Viagra. Or what if you really were Nigerian?... Read More
I was just reading that Jakob Nielson and others think email is broken and can't be fixed, and that filters and other resources being brought to bear on the problem won't work and we need something completetly new. Jakob Nielson... Read More
About "rest assured folks like Farber are working on the problem." I read Farber's "Intereseting People" mailing list and he posts a lot of useful information, but he is not very technically savvy about email (and I'm sure that he would agree with that). I am resting assured that folks are working on the problem, but Farber is not one of them. Although he's very good at disseminating information and solutions!
Ok. Rest assured one of Farber's students is working on it.