A Brief History of Anti-Spam

In 1996-1997 Douglas Turner & I invented anti-spam software.

We started a company called Goo Software. Our first product was called Spamblaster.

Spamblaster pioneered the idea of dedicated software whose sole purpose was to detect

and delete spam. We were five years ahead of our time. We came up with this idea in 1996

five years before it caught on big sometime in 2001. It was a great experience. I wrote all

of the UI for the product, Doug wrote the networking layer built on top of Apple's Open

Transport, and we both designed the blacklist file format and spam-blasting logic. Looking

back, it was an experience I wouldn't have missed for the world. Luckily I saved some

photographs from that project. Here are some of them:

Mr. Doug Turner whom I met at Apple when I worked there in 1996-97.

We started a company called Goo Software.

Spamblaster was our first project.

We spent many a day at Starbucks and at various coffee

houses on Castro Street in Mountain View designing

Spamblaster.

We toiled away at both my house....

and his.

It took a lot of work to get the design right.....

Then we started coding.........

After seven months, Spamblaster was finished.

MacWeek Magazine announced the arrival of anti-spam to the world........

Then it was time to celebrate.......

A few screenshots from the original Spamblaster: