Collaboration Technology 2.0

Talking to my colleague Gareth yesterday, we pondered over the volume of digital chaff that we were receiving at present due to our current activities. Gareth (as ever the practical one) bemoaned the fact we had not set up 'sacrificial email accounts'. So I went and looked up sacrifice.com hoping that it would not be too pornographic and that I would not be arrested by some over enthusiastic rozzer as I did my research. Amazing all I got was 'The site is being redeveloped please revisit in early 2004.'

It struck me that a pop3 only service that would simply allow you to create an account for (say) 3 months and come what may it would be deleted at that point would be a useful service. This would be a digitial 'poste restante' for the 21s century. 

I took a quick scoot around the net and could not find anything that meets my requirements so it looks like Gmail will have to do

Next time you need to set up a temporary subscription, recruit or apply for a job or have any shortish term project that you do not wish to be overwhelmed with spam, give it a go.

ps

for the uninitiated

rozzer = policeman (used on TV in the first episode of the latest series of Top Gear, not seen it in use for a while, very 50's_

An IT guy has been busted for insider trading after gaining info while snooping on an exec's email; see Financial Times web site. Insider trading is illegal but how confidential are emails.

Many organisations state in their policies that emails are not confidential. However, most people make the mistake of believing they are. Simple rule - if it's important encrypt it.

According to IBM Lotus blogger "The Turtle" all we need to move fully into the wonderful post-apocolypse post-Microsoft world is an alliance of

Google: with the reach
IBM: with the technology
Apple: with the marketing nounce

All this is true but like all wishful thinking won't come true because:

Google: thinks it has all the tech it needs
IBM: is an a federal business and thus finds it almost impossible to work in a unified manner
Apple: promotes a sort of 'we're upper class' and looks down on the rest of the world

For those of you who wonder what it is like to be upper class check this out