Do you have a GMail account?  Did you know that you can create multiple email addresses that all go to that same account?  How?  Well, GMail ignores “dots” in your email address.  For example the email address that I give to everyone is nathan.price@gmail.com.  But if you sent email to nathanprice@gmail.com I would also get it.  And if you sent it to nat.han.price@gmail.com I would also get it.  This gave me an idea…

In the olden days (yes, before I was born), there wasn’t a telephone or email system.  People had to send messages by telegraph or actually physically moving a letter from one place or the other.  Now the telegraph was a sort of binary system.  You could either turn on a signal or turn it off.  And some clever people decided that by using spaces, short on signals (dots), and longer on signals (dashes) that you could send messages.  There is one such scheme called Morse code.

Now combining the information about GMail ignoring dots, with the idea that dots could actually mean something gave me an idea.  You could increase the number of dots in your email to indicate a decrease in importance.  Lets say you fill out a survey that requires an email address.  I could put n.a.t.h.a.n.p.r.i.c.e@gmail.com  Now every time I get an email addressed this way, I know it is safe to ignore.  Also, I can see who this group has given my email address out to. 

Eliminate spam using a Morse code…