Alternatives to SMTP?

Events of the last week show what can happen as long as Outlook continues to infest desktops everywhere.

The World, which has been offering public 'Net access longer than anybody, recently started up a new messaging service to combat spam. Memo is basically a Web form that lets you send, well, memos, to World customers. By itself, that's hardly unique - even the White House uses Web forms these days. What's different, however, is that your messages will go through only if the respondent has already put you on a white list of approved senders (Note: I'm a World subscriber myself; looks easy enough to do, but where's the SSL encryption, guys?).

Adam Curry, though, has an even more radical idea: Ditch SMTP in favor of RSS. Yes, RSS, that little specification that used to be a way for Weblogs to exchange headlines.

In this essay, Curry notes that NewsGator, an RSS-reading plugin for Outlook, can be set to notify you (via your inbox) when you receive a new message in a particular RSS feed. So, Curry, reasons, if you set up a publish/subscribe system using RSS and NewsGator (or something analogous), you and all your friends could basically create a private, spam-free e-mail network. Security? That's what PGP is for, he writes. What about things like e-mail newsletters? Same thing - somebody publishes andRSS feed and you subscribe - without the spam.