Phil’s Diary - [Blog @ http://www.philsdiary.net/]
For a good long while now I’ve been using some beta software called Spamnet, written by Cloudmark. It uses some filtering technique that no doubt uses some AI techniques, as well as being distributed (that is, spam classified by me, helps others recognise similar spam).
Its been working quite nicely, and as it was offered for free, hasn’t cost me a penny.
But now it’s out of beta, they’ve decided to start charging.
I’m not sure if this is cheeky or not. On the one hand they’ve been allowing people like me to use the software for nothing for a period of time while they shake the bugs out (perhaps because they felt bad about charging for buggy software).
On the other hand though, lots of people like me have allowed them to find and fix the bugs and refine the effectiveness of the software. Why should I start paying for something I contributed to?
Anyway, I think at the moment I won’t pay, and if the beta that I’ve got installed now stops working, I’ll find another way.
That said, if you’ve not come across it before, and are prepared to pay for it, the software always seemed pretty good to me. Not fantastic, not perfect, but pretty damn good.
Posted by Phil on May 22, 2003 06:56 PM | Categories: Technology