Yeah, that is bit harder to filter.

One other possibility. could you put your address with some extraneous stuff in the mailto?

hotpictureERASETHIS@myaddressDELETETHIS.com

with instructions. I imagine most people will be able to edit the "to" line in the email do change it to a valid address, and while some robots can too, not most.

I'm going to test the Gmail thing for a week or two, and if that doesn't pan out use the "delete me" in addition to some code obfuscation.

There has to be a point at which they don't care, right?

Pfft. Who am I kidding?

Re: The flash thing. I actually like the idea that somebody on AppleRumors came up with - one that's 32 GB of Flash, one that's a 160 GB 1.8" hard drive. Same price. Pick lighter, more durable, thinner, and better battery life, or pick much more space.

I'd be really, really torn. All my music fits fine on 32 GB of flash, but not much space for delicious video. I'd have to weight the options carefully.

ita - you could always set up an email form with a CAPTCHA thingie. You lose some of the simple, but you won't get any (or very little) spam.

I hate CAPTCHA. 1/3 of the time I seem to get it wrong myself.

I liked the idea of code that browsers rendered but had stray stuff in the HTML that'd misdirect bots. But I figure the next step in spam evolution is CSS2 compliance.

I lurve my gmail. Especially the part where I can chat with other gmailers while I'm at work. But aside from that I love how it remembers the email address of everyone I've ever emailed so if I can recall just a few letters in their addy it will give me a drop-down of choices. I love how I can search my mail or the web right from the home page and that it never permanently deletes anything. I love that my top few contacts are always in a list to the left so I can simply hover over their name and choose to email or (if they have gmail) chat with them.

But, but, integrated advertising! Lack of privacy! Just me, then?

Don't all free webmail accounts have advertising? Some in the email bodies too.

SMTP...well, it's more secure than posting in Bitches, but it's absolutely not secure. Any of the stops an email takes as it bounces from source to destination can be examined by someone with admin rights on that machine--as well as at either the source or the destination.

Just because it often goes straight to where it was sent doesn't mean you should think of it as not private--and the less money it's costing you the less private it is.

Honestly the only time I even notice the advertising in gmail is when it's funny in relation to content or a total non-sequitor. I hadn't thought about the privacy issue until you brought it up Liese, but ita makes a good point too.

eta: in fact this is pretty much the only ad I ever see:

Jack Bauers Watch on 24 - www.koboldwatch.com - The Kobold Phantom Chronograph. Worn by Kiefer Sutherland on "24."

because I almost always have something in my inbox titled "watch" on account of I copy and paste all the b.org youtube links into it to watch when I get home from work.

Don't all free webmail accounts have advertising?

Yeah, but not targeted, right? So my content isn't going into some database somewhere to aggregate?

You're right about smtp, though. I almost headed pgp territory, but I couldn't 'cause my sister was out of territory and in illegal export range. So it wasn't useful to me.