Prusak.com

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and have decided to finally write about it. This is basically an open letter to the people that write email clients and/or spam filtering services or software.

Spam is an issue that effects everyone I know – even my mom sometimes calls me and asks what to do with the emails that she doesn’t understand why she received.

I’ve been looking for a good spam solution for the past couple of years, but to be honest, I haven’t really found anything that I’m 100% happy with.

I think a big part of the problem is simply the fact that all email clients that I’m aware of define spam as black or white. While it’s usually obvious to a human eye if an email is spam, to a computer program, it’ll always be shades of grey.

What usually happens when a computer tries to determine if an email is spam is that it goes through a number of “tests”. Think of it as checklist that the computer is going through – like a 100 point inspection given to a used car (some questions are worth more than others). At the end of this process, the computer gives the the email a “spam score”.

Lets say a score of zero means that the email is for sure not spam and a score of 100 means the email is for sure spam. In reality, very few emails get a score of 100. Spammers are getting better at “passing the tests”. What happens is that the computer decides that if an email is above a certain threshold, lets say 80, then the email is flagged as spam and goes into your “spam box”.

Some of the better spam services do indeed allow you to define how aggressive you want them to be – in other words, what number to use for the threshold that splits between spam and non spam.

The problem is that if you aren’t aggressive enough, to many spam emails are not getting tagged as spam (called false negatives) and if you are to aggressive, you start tagging non spam emails as spam (false positives).

My proposal is to simply:

• Expose the internal spam score to the user.
• Be able to sort by the spam score column.

That way, if I receive 100 emails a day which the computer thinks is spam, I don’t really have to skim through all 100 to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I can just check the ones that are borderline and go ahead and delete the rest.

Of course, this does give spammers a tool which makes it easier for them to check how “spammy” an email is, but they’d be able to check in any case.

I was just thinking yesterday that I’m feeling unsatisfied and was trying to figure out what was missing. Then I realized – I need to write more.

I know a lot of stuff. I’m a very bright guy and I like to teach. The problem is that I think to much about what I’m going to do and how I’m going to do it, and I don’t spend enough time just doing it.

So I’m doing it now – I’m writing. I have tons of ideas what to write about.

Like for instance, spam. It’s a problem that effects everyone, and there is a fairly simple change that spam aware email clients can make that would help a lot. I’ll write more on this in a separate post.

Or the fact that most web sites are missing a big piece of the puzzle about how to create web sites that “get the job done”. I’m fortunate enough to have worked on all aspects of a web site to know how most people who work on a web site think.

The tech people are thinking about performance, security, scalability etc. The designers are thinking about does it look good, clean, etc. The biz dev / marketing people are usually thinking about what offers to make, copy-writing, messaging, branding etc.

What most web sites do not think about is conversion. Again, this is a subject that I’m sure I’ll write about in detail in a future post.

For now, I just want to keep on writing as I think without worrying to much about what I’m writing. In the past I used to write a line and then edit it to death and then write another line and then edit it again and so on. I guess I just need to write as my thoughts come to me and edit it all at the end.

Heck, I even bought a book called “How to write”. I think that’s the title, but instead of now going and finding the book and making sure this in indeed the correct title and thus loosing the momentum of writing, I’ll just keep on writing.

I must say, this is great. Just rambling along as the thoughts come to me.

Well, I guess that’s it for now. I’ll be sure to write some more soon, but I guess I should quite while I’m ahead.

I’m sure you’ll hear from me again soon,
Ophir

P.S.
I’ve read in several places that the best way to write online is that instead of trying to write to the “masses”, just try to imaging that you’re writing to one single person. I must say that this seems to be working for me.

P.S.S
If you have read this so far, It would be great if you sent me a note just letting me know:)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything really related to my work. I should try to update my blog more often, since in essence, it’s self marketing 🙂

Back in June MarketingSherpa.com did a case study on a project I’m in charge of at work – Email Marketing. http://www.marketingsherpa.com/barrier.cfm?ident=28523

 A few days later Anne posted an entry about how we use our forums – http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?ident=28524

I’ve been dealing with deliverability issues at Resperate.com for about a year now. I’m glad the hard work is now paying off 🙂

Just a short update.
I’ve upgraded to word press 2.0.3 and now use a new theme.

All to often, I read a question and feel like answering with “it depends”.

If you want a good answer, you need to ask a good question.

Here’s how to write a good question:
1. Explain your end goal – why you’re doing this

example:
I want my mother who lives out of state to see some videos of my daughter.

2. Provide detailed information:

ok: I have a digital camera that I’m using to take videos. It saves avi files.
better: I’m using a Canon SD500 to take videos at 640×480, 30fps. The videos are exported as avi files.
I prefer to use a digital camera for my videos (opposed to a camcorder) since I can carry it around with me at all times.

3. Discus the requirements of the solution, and why they are requirements.
Include both the positive requirements (it should be) and the negative requirements (it shouldn’t be)
This will limit answers you might get which won’t help you as well as allow for directions you might not have thought of,

My mom is using an old mac (model XX / OS 9 / quicktime version YY)
I cannot install a newer version of quicktime because ……
I would rather not install a different movie viewer because …
I am using a PC with windows XP.
I do not have access to a mac.
I’m tight on cash so I’d prefer a free solution, but if needed can spend up to $10
I’m not a technical guru so it needs to be a fairly simple solution.

4. State what you have done so far.
bad: I’ve looking into a few options. None were promising.
better: I tried using software ABC version 3.4 for the PC. It was not able to open my file. I also did some googling and found software X, Y and Z, but they are all beyond my budget.

5. General
Use unambiguous terminology:
Don’t use terms which are relative like fast, large or cheap.
Use specific terms.
bad: How much memory do I need to edit large image files?
better: I’m trying to edit a 325MB uncompressed tif file (14,500 by 8,000 / 24bit) in photoshop 6.
My pc is a p4 2.8GHZ with 512MB ram. It currently takes 30 seconds ever time I make any change to it.
How much memory should I have so simple changes will take less than 3 seconds?