A demonstration of wasting time with technology. Use iSight to take a picture of cookies. Use FlickrUploadr to send to flickr. Use blog-it feature of flickr to put on blog.
Archive for August, 2006
Turning Email Upside Down: RSS/Email and IM2000
August 9, 2006This is an interesting presentation of a slightly toyish implementation of DJBs IM2000 idea. (I doubt he’s the first one to think of it, but he put up a page about it a long time ago, so he gets some credit.)
At one point somebody in the audience asks about the situation where a receiver decides that they don’t want to receive email from the sender anymore. The presenters basically shrug their shoulders and say something about the system assumes that once you make contact you’ll always come fetch your mail.
It looks to me like we (they) are missing a real big opportunity here. One of the problems with the current SMTP email infrastructure is that there is no standard, built-in way to “unsubscribe”. These guys are just thinking about spammers on one side, and real people who want to exchange email on the other side. But there is a third situation where real people want or do not want to receive mass email from somewhere. These could be regular discussion mailing lists, or email newsletters from your favorite environmental/do-gooders organization.
Adding something to the protocol to say “I don’t want your email anymore” would be a big win, since then an “unsubscribe” button can be added to email clients.
So, these guys have not done anything earth-shattering, but they have taken the IM2000 proposal and DONE SOMETHING. Perhaps we can see some progress on this now. It does sound to me like a very effective way to combat spam.
scripting is faster/better?
August 8, 2006
First Pass Under Heaven
August 1, 2006Nathan Gray – First Pass Under Heaven – One man’s 4000-kilometre trek along the great wall of China
Well, who’d a thunk it? I didn’t realize he was gonna make a book.
Order yours today! (Amazon links on the linked page.)
