Wednesday, January 13, 2010

A Very Belated Epiphany

I have this Gmail account. As you may have noticed by looking in the left sidebar. And Gmail does this thing where there are advertisements at the top of the screen that pick up on keywords in your e-mail messages to specifically target the advertisements. So if you have an e-mail in there that talks about, say, your garden, the little message at the top might be touting weed killer or flower seeds or something. It's all very clever.

But it puzzled me that I kept getting advertisements for various Spam recipes. Yes. Spam. The stuff in a can. Spam is not something I regularly discuss in my e-mails, and I couldn't figure out why the hell I kept getting these ad messages almost every day. And then it FINALLY clicked: I got the Spam ads when I was in my spam folder.

Sometimes I'm so slow I frighten myself.
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8 comments:

  1. jeanJanuary 13, 2010 at 6:55 AM

    Hey, it's called "pregnancy brain". Or at least that was what I use to blame it on. Now I blame it on menopause.

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  2. AnonymousJanuary 13, 2010 at 7:23 AM

    Hey, look at it this way...you figured it out....now say if you were paris hilton....you wouldn't have .

    word verification -- preenses

    again paris hilton/royalty (in her mind) ...
    how did that happen I wasn't even in my spam folder? :)

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  3. sweetbirdJanuary 13, 2010 at 7:31 AM

    That's kind of creepy. Not the Spam part (though it is, in itself, kind of creepy), the part about gleaning keywords from your email.

    I realize it's all computerized, but doesn't it still feel like someone else is reading through your emails?


    Captcha: squicat...an evolutionary anomaly that merged a squid and a cat

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  4. Aunt KrissyJanuary 13, 2010 at 7:35 AM

    Hey now, don't be knocking spam. I had it for dinner last night and for breakfast this morning.

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  5. AnonymousJanuary 13, 2010 at 7:38 AM

    If you are running Fire Fox there is an add-on called Web Mail ad blocker that does away with those adds.

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  6. dognutmomJanuary 13, 2010 at 11:34 AM

    Huh, never noticed that. And I don't have the pregnancy brain excuse. "Going senile brain" maybe.

    or "Oblivious brain"

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  7. FinnyKnitsJanuary 13, 2010 at 2:09 PM

    Does this mean there won't be any Spam recipes on this blog?

    Disappointing, Kris. ;)

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  8. Oklahoma GrannyJanuary 19, 2010 at 12:30 PM

    Melinda (Mickey & Me) introduced me to your blog this morning and I'm so glad she did.

    I was reading down through your posts I thought how wonderful it is that you'll soon be welcoming a new little one into your lives. Such a wonderful time of your life.

    When I came to this post I had to comment. If you think you are slow my dear, you are not alone. I am just awful with acronyms. I knew what "TP-ing" a house involved but it didn't occur to me until my kids were teenagers that the letters stood for toilet paper. How slow is that?

    ReplyDelete