No spitting

After email "spam", the next plague coming to your computer soon is computer "spit", according to my colleagues on the New Scientist Invention blog. Now that internet phone calls are very popular, especially amongst those of us with family abroad or kids away at university, the next unwanted intrusion into your life will be internet telephony spam, or "spit".

Never fear, before we have even heard of spit, someone has already invented a remedy for it. The "Spit Filter" from Siemens will, as the name suggests, filter out blacklisted names or numbers and reject their incoming calls. That's all right then.