Monday, June 20, 2005

Where'd My NYTimes Go?

Amy Gahran couldn't be more right about the complementary nature of RSS feeds to e-mail newsletters. Her point hits especially close to home as I am currently waging a vicious battle with my spam filter -- and losing miserably.

Recently, I've found about half of the lists I've opted into in my Yahoo! "Bulk Mail" folder, which operates seemingly independently of me and my wishes. Still, it lets through "Great Deals on All Adobe Produts!!!" Seriously, anything with more than one exclamation point should automatically be blocked into the "Stop This Madman" folder. [A teacher of mine once told me: "Use exclamation points as if you only have a dozen to use in your entire lifetime. That's how rare they should be." Needless to say, more than one in a sentence is a bit superfluous.]

I have a feeling that most of the e-mail I get from politicians or political causes go straight to "Bulk" and are shipped away each night to the netherlands of the Internet without me ever bothering to sift through the junk. In the end, I feel like a guy without his daily newspaper. Instead of assuming my neighbor stole it off your doorstep, I'm starting to assume my Bulk Mail folder ate my New York Times.

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