Re: Automatic Entry and Forms

On Thu, 22 Feb 1996, Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote:
> Here is a proposal on Automated Forms Filling

Funny thing is, I think this is solving the problem at the wrong 
place, mostly due I believe to an inadequate exploration of the problem 
before the solution was pursued.

The problem is that many content providers out there want a way to be able to
ask the user for information about themselves in ways that present fewer
obstacles than thowing up a blank form and even possibly creating an
email/password combo.  To many content providers, even if this information
isn't specific to the individual, it's still incredibly useful.  Dumb
marketers collect email addresses of visitors in the naive belief that
sending unsolicited email to this list of addresses is a good idea.  Smart
marketers are interested in finding out what the zip codes of the visitors to
their site are, in aggregate.  To marketers, information like that is as good
as gold.  SO - why not make collection of private information a part of the
payments and authentication mechanisms? 

Since this idea is involved much more heavily with HTTP authentication 
than with HTML, I will be continuing this thread on www-talk in a few 
minutes.  Those who don't want to subscribe to the list can follow the 
hypermail archive at <URL:http://www.eit.com/goodies/lists/www.lists/>.

	Brian

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brian@organic.com  brian@hyperreal.com  http://www.[hyperreal,organic].com/

Received on Wednesday, 28 February 1996 03:06:38 UTC