Jon Udell: "What would it be like to Google your email?" [Scripting News]

Some great points in this essay.  Here's one of my favorites:

We need to start to think of desktop applications not only as consumers of services, but also as producers of them.

6:35:48 PM   

"Anti-spammers have long sought to argue against those who would combine banner ads on Web pages and pop-ups into the spam problem," he said. "While most of those other technologies may be intrusive, they often help pay for the service you're using. Spam, by contrast, is deeply parasitic." [news.com]

Yes, if you are a company that buys pop-up ads, you don't want people calling your ads "spam".

But the fact is, that we don't have a term for the concept of "annoyance or intrusion in a communications medium".  If there were such a term, people would use that term appropriately to describe pop-up ads, marketing-oriented email, telemarketing phone calls, and other intrusions.  But because there is no term, people use the term they know that is closest to what they are trying to express.  That term is spam.  We can't dismiss the concept because we don't like the term.  Spam has come to take on the meaning of "annoyance or intrusion in a communications medium".

Anyone care to propose an alternative term, so that spam can revert back to its original meaning?

12:24:01 PM