Read/WriteWeb reported yesterday that anti-spam firm Marshal released the results of a survey recently conducted via their website. Marshal claims that 29% of the respondents reported to have purchased “something” from a spam email.

As RRW states, Marshal probably has a vested interest in promoting the sentiment that spam is intolerable, wasteful and dangerous. It’s somewhat hard to argue to the contrary, save for the fact that most of the known world has pretty good spam filtration handily eliminating the problem. I also agree with the RRW assertion that the study itself was conducted in a manner that is clearly less than scientific. In fact, the “study” could be regarded as so potentially skewed that it’s debatable whether the statistic is of any value at all. One possible reason that it was undertaken at all was that they are looking to play catch-up or remain relevant in light of their competitors claims.

Whether or not spamming is an effective marketing approach is continually a mater of debate. It’s more than apparent that spammers and the filter makers have created an ecosystem that mutually benefits both sides, akin to the tension between anti-virus, anti-spyware crews constantly working to out maneuver one another.  Spammers benefit from direct sales of items offered, and filtering firms from the sales of protection solutions. A rather convenient arrangement, don’t you think?

Another way to look at anti-spam solutions would be to consider them as aggregators rather than filters. If I were a spammer, I wouldn’t want my messages lost in the noise of all that attention-stealing “information & correspondence” in my inbox. If one has interests that they know to be served by the spammers, and according to Marshal apparently 29% of you do (and you know who you are!), then the spam folder could be considered a treasure-trove of goodies of every stripe.

It’s probably  safe to say that the only folks who are really getting the short end of the stick are those who are actually paying for the problem… entities who host and administer email systems. Further, is spam really a problem anymore for the recipients? It’s probably safe to assume that anyone who is still truly annoyed by spam is likely utilizing sub-standard protection. I used to be inundated before the days of contemporary spam filtering, and my email addresses are still most certainly “out there”. I almost never see spam unless I go looking for something accidentally caught.

As one who participated in the
desktop anti-spam and system security gold rush of early 2000, it’s
safe to say that the market has matured and spam’s not going away any
time soon. Perhaps it’s time to legitimize communications that are
considered spam to the point that it’s more effective to do it
above-board rather than below. Much of the same has been done to legitimize direct mail with efforts like the Direct Marketing Association’s “Do Not Mail” registry, borne out of efforts to curb paper mail that inundates the mailboxes of a great many postal mail recipients.

What’s interesting to me, aside from the obvious fact that I work for Earth Class Mail and all this mail stuff is near an dear, is the potential of efforts underway to kill both birds with one stone. “Trusted Postal Email” is a mechanism and a set of global interoperability standards to support a convergent postal communication solution for postal mail and email. Earth Class Mail’s Ron Wiener recently stated in Earth Class Mail’s blog:

“Included in the UPU’s strategy document is reference to the
long-awaited “.post” TLD (“Top Level Domain”), which ICANN (the
international governing body for the Internet domain-name space) had
awarded to the UPU in 2004. For a variety of reasons the signing of a
Registry Agreement between the UPU and ICANN, and the deployment of
“.post,” has been delayed for several years; however, now appears to be
the ideal time for its debut – just in time to save the business models
of many national posts from aggressive cannibalization by electronic
substitutions.”

Converging the world of physical postal mail with that of the digital world and email, in and of itself, is not the entire solution to unwanted mail advertising. But creating a trusted electronic messaging exchange does create some possibilities for making spam obsolete. Imagine if you were given the choice to receive correspondence, whether physical or digital, only from sources whom you “trust”. imagine if spammers HAD to pay to get their messages to you, just like direct mailers do today. It might seem cumbersome on it’s face, but there’s probably a better-than-good chance that a trusted electronic exchange would go a long way towards curbing the “Junk”.

Disclosure: I am currently an employee of Earth Class Mail. My
statements and opinions are meant in no way to reflect those of my
employer, however convergent or divergent that may be.

Airbed & Breakfast is a peer-to-peer service where you can secure accommodations posted by individuals willing to open their homes, for a fee, to travelers. They currently boast accommodations in 125 cities in 25 countries. Airbed & Breakfast actually allow each party to evaluate one another prior to any commitment, and it also provides a forum for the financial transaction to take place between the parties. The person advertising their space gets 100% of their asking  price, and the guest pays a 6-15% service fee upon checkout. Simple!

Airbed & Breakfast was launched by a trio of SF entrepreneurs, Brian Cheskey, Joe Gebbia and coder Nathan Blecharcyk in mid-2008 after beginning their efforts back in later 2007.

They seem to be getting quite a bit of traction with DNC/RNC convention attendees heading to Denver and St. Paul this summer. WSJ also covered them yesterday regarding "The Business of Politics". You can follow their Tweets here

Overall, I believe that they captured a pretty accurate glimpse of what a rapid-growth start-up looks like on the inside. Close attention was paid to our recent $13 million funding round, the deployment of a Fortune 50 customer, as well as a great many other (mis)adventures. If you’ve ever worked for a start up, the show gives a pretty decent glimpse of the ups and downs of that environment.

As a kick-off, several of the folks who are featured spent some time last week at the Microsoft Campuses in Redmond as well as Santa Clara for pre-screenings of the show, with a follow-on Q&A. The screening seemed to elicit laughter at the right moments and I think it will do well on MOJO HD considering it’s target audience. In any event, we had lot’s of fun making it and hopefully the world will receive it with open arms.

If you don’t have an HD TV or if you don’t get MOJO HD on your local HD Cable provider, you can watch the first episode here…

http://www.mojohd.com/video/?sid=22

Off to the east coast tomorrow for some much needed R&R!

I use Earth Class Mail exclusively to receive all of my postal mail, UPS FedEx packages, etc… I now have total peace of mind because I know my stuff is in a secure facility and one get sent to me when I know I’ll be home.

If you want to try it, visit their sign up page and use the coupon code earth#44 and we’ll both get a free month if you are still subscribed after 60 days!

Madison Murtishaw

8lbs, 9oz 20 1/2" long, born 2:05am 2/20/07

Chris Scott, one of the Coldspring framework developers, fields quations about his talk about Aspect oriented programming and use of the Coldspring framework for Coldfusion.

Nat Papovich discussing best practices for implementing CFC’s, Adobe Flex and the Fusebox Framework

Matt Woodward (blog), Principal Information Technology Specialist with the Office of the Sergeant at Arms of the United States Senate in
Washington, D.C talks about how Frameworks lend themselves to successful, sustainable software projects.

Software as an ecosystem as opposed to an architecture, software
projects evolve over time and a sustainable ecosystem is better than a
monolithic, architectural approach.

Characteristics

Characteristics of sustainable projects:
Principle not practices, Focus on goal not process, apps must adapt to change

Keys:
Working project at all times,
-Always be ready to ship

Continual refinement - don’t code then fix,
-Applies to code and process

fix then code (test driven),
-Don’t introduce bugs in the first place

uncompromising standards for code quality,

don’t over design,
zero tolerance for defects
Replan ofter (don;t hesitate to throw things out)

Where do frameworks fit?
Guidelines and standards, OO/MVC lends itself to sustainable development

Demonstration of how Mach-II supports this

Building a sustainable team culture