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Sometimes a problem is so bad, the worst thing you can do is talk about it.

Worse than that, however, is talking about a problem when you are completely uninformed on the topic.

While spam volumes are at historic lows, the amount of email that traverses the Internet that is unsolicited rubbish was still 68 percent at the end of 2011. But is anti-spam becoming more of a problem than a solution?

That’s what RedOrbit.com’s Peter Suciu thinks. First he assails what he calls “reactive filtering,” the time-honored DNSBL that keeps the worst spammers far, far from your inbox. In particular he calls out the spamcop.net service and errs in stating that the spamcop.net service sends the rejected sender an email; it is the actual server using the DNSBL that might issue such a warning. My hunch is that Mr. Suciu has never run a mail server.

So many have said it better than I, but truly: social media presents more opportunities to connect one-on-one—across cultures, communities and continents—more than any other medium before it.

Sometimes a bewildered friend or client will ask me, what good is this social media? What I hear is “what can it do for me.” Well, look at what it did for Rashid Temuri, a Chicago Cabbie. Definitely thinking outside the box!

So when I tweeted the Ars Technica story, I received a ping back from the subject of the story himself:

It’s a great and brave new world.

I recently brought this up with a client and their response was they found it ”refreshing.” That was good to hear, as on this end facing only 12 point Courier as you compose strips away the pretense and forces the sender to really concentrate on the words being used.

I have been a plaintext email advocate for years, so Adam Sherk’s post reciting best practices for Email Press Releases Do’s and Don’ts circa 1999 reminded me of some of the reasons I have remained an “undecorated” correspondent. In some respects Twitter was a welcome technological advance: where the web page/browser construct has a literally unlimited word count, a tweet, again, forces one to be concise. And in this content-laden world that is a very good thing.

Of course now press releases are tweeted, blogged and “liked,” not just emailed. In addition to Sherk’s excellent suggestions, which still hold true today (keep your email press releases short, properly formatted and relevant) I have a few other tips I would like to throw into the mix.

• Avoid the word “announces”
  Especially in the headline, this is an invitation to yawn. Dig deeper, and figure out why the announcement is important to the reader, your customer or a prospect.
• Avoid jargon
  Not everyone is in your industry, and press releases can go overboard with buzzwords. Tell the story simply and explain when necessary.
• Describe your offering precisely
  I am not sure when it happened, but if what you are offering is a ”solution” then you are in the legion of tech companies who don’t know what they are offering. If it’s software, call it software, if it’s a service call it a service and if it’s a platform call it a platform. I am quite sure more than 1,000 press releases were issued today describing a company’s “solution” or the equally tired “solution set.”

The ads are engaging and to the point. As Paul Venables told The Marin Independent Journal, the campaign is “not too lofty or serious… It doesn’t take itself too seriously. It identifies the organization as an education-based one. And it underscores the importance of the issues.”

Yet if engagement is the goal—and granted the agency did a lovingly great job with the creative—there is a long way to go. While the WordPress-based web site captures the essence of the effort, the Forum section (called “Debate” on the site), more than two months out from the date of the first post, has only one comment for the six posts there now.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser whimpers that Hawaiian musicians will now have to compete against American Indian, Cajun, zydeco and polka recordings in the newly created Regional Roots Music category. The Atlantic whines that the new structure pits the best male and female vocalists against each other now that Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance are boiled down to Best Pop Solo Performance. Cry Me a River… on one, two, three…

Perhaps this narrows the focus of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and, hence, the visibility of some genres suffer. Or perhaps it’s a branding opportunity for new and established music industry groups?

Who could possibly do a better job of promoting Native American Music? The Recording Academy or The Native American Music Awards? What prevents the Folk Alliance from owning the newly available Best Contemporary Folk category? Is the Recording Academy any more authoritative than the Blues Foundation when it comes to Contemporary Blues? To whom should true aficionados look to first?

One of the most compelling images was designed by Ng Vuong, revealing that the young Vietnamese creative may not be the “simple-minded adventurer” his blog tag line implies.

Thanks and a tip o’ the hat to my latest Twitter follower, David Everitt-Carlson of Infinite Wisdom Consulting.

Thanks to TechCrunch Europe.

In a clever bit of Flash coding you can browse Jon’s inbox, each message revealing amusing copy. But the most important message is the first: an auto-reply from Opera’s VP of communications Tor Odland, who is out of office because the entire Opera PR team is celebrating the 150-million user milestone (including both the mobile and desktop versions of Opera).

Back in the day, a usenet curmudgeon called it the FUSSP, as in “You have discovered the Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem” and therefore, you are an expert.

But that was never the case.

Unsubscribe.com believes it is possible, and they convinced venture capitalists to part with $2.1 million to make it so.

The technical hurdles to a universal unsubscribe are significant. For one thing, competent mailers don’t need it because they offer their own effective removal techniques. Criminal mail operations wouldn’t use it unless they can find a way to engineer it to build mailing lists or confirm live address.

How does one unsubscribe from some random message? How will they generate $2.1 million (plus) through an  annual $20 subscription? And, oh yeah… you have to download an executable to your computer to use it.

Riiight.