mediajunk

Nine and a half years ago, when I launched the online version of The Buzz magazine, a colleague of mine – the only Buzz colleague, in fact, who was interested enough to even *look* at the e-zine – got really excited. Sitting in the third floor office on Castle Street, Sligo, Ireland, he clicked from page to digital page, and made a statement I’ll never forget:

“You know Mikey,” he said, as a cartoon lightbulb hovered over his head, “if this internet thing ever takes off…”

I knew that the internet had already taken off. But even I am surprised at the speed with which this communications medium has made its impact across the world.

In North Carolina this week, two men are before the courts, facing up to twenty years in jail for a crime that the internet has made possible, and one of which every reader of this page, I am sure, has already been a “victim” – spam!

One of the men, Gaven Stubberfield, was described by Virginia Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore as “number eight on the top 10 worldwide spammer list”.

Cybercrimes are sure to increase in the future, as the internet continues to weave its way rapidly into the global socio-cultural fabric – faster even than television or radio did before it.

Perhaps I will be writing about online identity theft in a decade’s time?

By Michael Heraghty

(I am Michael Heraghty. Honest. Just ask Google.)

The way you write emails may contain clues about your personality. So says Alastair Gill, a 27 year-old PhD student at Edinburgh University.

In an interview for the BBC Scotland website, Alastair explains how people are good at guessing the personality types of email authors, even if they do not know them.

"For example, an extrovert tends to be more informal in his or her messages.

That can manifest itself through exclamation marks and multiple punctuation and the use of the word 'hi' rather than 'hello' and the expression 'take care'."

Alastair is working on software that, like a spell checker, will review emails and make suggestions for making them "sound extroverted, emotional or engage in tough-talking."

Sounds gimmicky, but who knows? Best of luck to him, I say...

A survey by DoubleClick on the effect of spam on email users has shown that women and men respond differently to spam. Women are more likely to read and respond, explains Usability News.

"Men and women have radically different ideas of what spam is and different purchasing behaviour related to spam. Women are more receptive to promotions and discounts and correspondingly more interested in and tolerant of marketing emails than men."

Other key points of the survey were:

• Frequency tolerance (i.e. the point at which a user says "this company is sending me marketing emails too often") varies dramatically from individual to individual.

• The main factor determining whether a user will open an email is whether he or she recognises the sender company.

• Many email users are availing of spam-management tools offered by their internet service providers.

My own experience is consistent with these findings. One of the reasons I direct all my email through to my Yahoo account is because of its regularly updated filtering service, which catches about 80% (at a guess) of incoming spam.

Nevertheless, I suspect that the spam wars are only beginning...

Some of you might get a bang out of this one. A couple of guys have set up a site that allows you to send a time-stamped email.

As they put it: "FutureMe.org is based on the principle that memories are less accurate than emails. we strive for accuracy."

Of course, you can configure your own email programme to send post-dated email (I sometimes send myself "reminders" of meetings or suchlike -- sad, I know).

But the fun thing about the FutureMe site is that many users choose to make their emails public, so you get to read what other people have sent to their future selves. Here's my favourite:

Dear FutureMe,

If you haven't gotten laid since the time I wrote this, what the hell have you been doing wrong?!

-Jason
(written Wed Sep 3, 2003, to be delivered Sat Sep 4, 2004)

I *hate* registration pages, but every now and then giving out my email address seems unavoidable.

Many registration pages collect email addresses simply to sell them to spammers. Even pages that claim "your email address will not be used other than for purposes of ..." cannot always be trusted.

My preferrred hack is to create a new address (on a domain that I’ve set aside entirely for this purpose) that will identify the site on which I'm registering.

Let's say I wanted to register on an e-card site called "Coolcards". I'd create an address called coolcards@mydomain.com and have it forwarded to my real address. This way, if I receive spam via coolcards@mydomain.com, I know who’s sold me out.

I've discovered that a lot of purportedly reputable sites pass my details to spammers. I even received spam after registering on a well-known, A-list blogger's site!

I don't want to name names ... but drop me a line if you'd like me to tattle ;)

*****

I was curious, then, to learn of a new service called Mailinator -- a registration email hack that anyone can use.

Here's the skinny: you register on a site, like Coolcards.com, and when you get to the part that asks for your email address, you pick a username (any username) and add "@mailinator.com" to it.

Let’s say that, on the Coolcards.com registration page, I claim that my email address is heraghty@mailinator.com. After registering, I would go to Mailinator.com and check incoming email for heraghty@mailinator.com. The account would be created as soon as the incoming mail arrives ... but I’d have to be quick, as accounts only last for a few hours.

Mailinator accounts don’t have passwords, so theoretically anyone could check if there’s email for heraghty@mailinator.com. But it’s unlikely that anyone would, certainly not within a couple of hours of my registration. (Of course, I wouldn’t have to pick a name that’s meaningful. I could say that my address is 2e90eWEI5@mailinator.com.)

If you don't get it, rest assured that I didn't either, until I read over Mailinator's FAQ a couple of times. I haven't tried it out yet but it seems like a great idea ... until the registration sites get wind of it, and disallow Mailinator addresses!

So what's in it for the guys behind Mailinator? That, I'm not sure -- which is why I wouldn't advise using this service if the registration process is likely to involve any information you don't want to share, like a password, or your credit card details. The site's FAQ says that anyone who uses Mailinator to exchange sensitive information is "a stupid-head".

You have been warned!

The effects of email on culture -- particularly office culture -- is one of the quiter, yet most transformative aspects of the internet revolution. I once worked on a huge web project (an internet bank), where 400 of us worked (to a tight deadline!) in three giant rooms. Most of the day, we sat looking at screens, pointing, clicking and typing: most of that time, we were turning our email around.

Who were we mailing? Each other, of course. Most of the emails I sent/received were to/from the colleague who sat nearest me!

Messages between us were often trivial, like leaving post-it notes. Among the wider community that evolved and disappeared in those months when the project went from scratch to launch, the most frequently sent message was the "blame mail": an ongoing record of "requests" -- i.e. who asked whom to do what. These requests would often generate unweildy list-mails, with the history of the request -- a long chain of messages -- attached to the bottom of the current message. Not all of these were to do with our IT project; the most trivial social matters ate up much of the system.

The subject of a "blame mail" might read: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Parking Spaces, followed by a message thread that would begin (at the bottom) with a complaint about someone parking in someone else's space and a request to provide a new space, followed by a list of arguments about whose responsibility it was, rebuttals, refusals, buck-passing, all of which was sneakly CC'd (or, even slyer, BCC'd) to "senior management".

There's probably a book or two to be written on how email has changed office culture. Hey, if you're thinking of writing one, an essay currently ranked high in Popdex, entitled The Tyranny of Email, is a good place to start. Just rememeber to credit me on the inside cover ;)