Apologies for the free beer
A council was left red-faced after people who had signed up for public consultations received details of a proposed free beer day.
Northampton County Council was responsible for this PR blunder when it created the spoof proposal during a training session in which staff were being instructed in how to use the online consultation system. The proposal suggested that each pub should have a designated day when it served free beer to locals. Somehow, it managed to publish it as if it was a real proposal and trigger the email alert system. Fortunately it quickly realised its mistake and sent another email explaining that the first mail was sent in error and there is no such thing as free beer.
On a more serious email-related note, Hewlett Packard has introduced a line of printers which have their own email addresses and in its marketing HP says that you could, for example, mail a copy of document or a photo direct to your printer and have it waiting ready for you when you got home. From a technical point of view this sounds like it gets around a lot of the printer-driver headaches, lets you use your printers with devices such as your smart phones which don't have their own printer support, and may be a better way of sharing office printers.
However, it is going to need a pretty sophisticated anti spam solution or you will soon end up spending a small fortune on paper and ink as your printer churns out the ads for viagra. Even without the spam, you are still liable to get sent documents such as minutes of meetings and copies of memos which the sender thinks you ought to print out. I used to think that the electronic office and the paperless office were synonymous, but now I'm not so sure.
28th June 2010