January 21, 2003

Location Based SPAM

I read an article today by Rafe Needleman (Business 2.0) on the topic of location based content, right on the heels of an article from ZD Net about efforts to deal with the SPAM nightmare that we all manage daily. I started to think about the potential nightmare awaiting us. Location based SPAM!

My on-line life is beset with SPAM. Seriously, it has a negative impact on my life and it's destroying or at least damaging the overall usefulness of my favorite killer app; e-mail. I wouldn't survive the daily mail call without SPAM Assasin and Mail Washer; popular tools for filtering junk bits and bytes. Eventually, the government or an independent organization of men and women in black cloaks and food prep hairnets of some kind will step in and solve the problem but lets be careful about making an already bad problem worse by painting flashing targets on our backs. Can you imagine what it would be like if your PDA went nuts every time you drove past the local K-Mart? I can hear LIL PIM now (my Toshiba e740 PDA), "Blue-light special, exit at the next off-ramp to save on sanitary napkins." My god; marketing genius is going to be the end of the civilized world.

Read Rafe's informative article. The spotlight project, Arena; a program focused on providing sports fans with location based applications, has promise but I'm afraid it's going to lead to Taco Bell commercials on my cell phone as I drive through my small town home in the Pacific Northwest.

Related Links:
Business 2.0
Business 2.0: Beyond Location-Based Content
Spam Conference
Mail Washer
SPAM Assassin


Posted by Cale on Jan 21, 2003

Categories: tech.commentary, tech.commentary.web
Technorati Tags: SPAM MailWasher SPAMAssasin