Andrew Pavey

I came across this brief report on the net...

"A study of 3000 UK email users ranks the top five gripes about email, with overuse of CAPITAL LETTERS leading the list, reports Vnunet.com. Rounding out the top five gripes were overuse of abbreviations, blank subject boxes, being copied on every email, and "people being 'too friendly.'" Perhaps more alarming for email users, the study revealed that font selection may be a hidden danger. The research also threw up some interesting views on fonts. Two thirds of bosses indicated that they would not interview a candidate if they did not like the font of their CV, and 80 per cent of bosses would confront a co-worker if they used a font they did not like." http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2140520/research-shows-top-five-email

Our current email system, groaning under the loads of junk email is working - but only just. I get thousands of junk emails a week at work, however due to a relatively efficient email client (Eudora) most of them end up in my Junk mailbox and I get to delete them 60 at a time (while I check them for false positives). This is an unwelcome and time consuming task. The "success" of junk email relies on an email system designed in days when no-one expected unscrupulous individuals to bombard us with the astounding volume of junk emails we are seeing today. There is very little verification or security in the current system. Many junk emails are simply generated with random addresses, those that prove to be not valid are discarded within the system at no cost to the spammer. The few that resolve to "real" email addresses get through and plague us.

The only feasible system I can see to slow down this deluge is to move to a "user pays" and in particular a "sender pays" system not unlike the post office uses. The current system whereby a spammer can send literally millions of emails with little cost has lead to our current problems. Of course that is not all that is needed, the current system has almost no way of checking if an email is apparently sent from a valid address or contains valid identifiers. The spammers constantly create fake headers and the current system continues to deliver their mail. Like the security requirements slowly being imposed on us in the wake of the 'War on Terror", such a system would lead to less convenience, but would hopefully save from some (but probably not all) unwanted email.

I had to pinch myself and check it wasn't close to April 1st, when I first read the report of the new Mighty Mouse from Apple - a multi-button mouse incorporating a scroll wheel! I can almost hear Steve Jobs kicking and screaming as Jonathon Ives dragged him to that decision. As is often the case with Apple products, the Mighty Mouse looks good, incorporates some technologically advanced features, but some users are already reporting small and annoying ergonomic problems with the design. Aaahh for the good old days of the round puck mouse...