I was hammered here recently for a piece in which I warned of what I called RSS Spam. (The image is from the home page of Geekzone, and it's a Clue to what comes next.)

Well it's my own fault, I figured. I'm looking for everything on a specific keyword, and if some store is keyed to that word I'm going to get their stuff. Yes, a good RSS editor should be able to filter-out that stuff, allowing me to unsubscribe to anything that I don't like, but still...

But now that trend has taken another step, so I feel compelled to come back to the subject of my humiliation.

If you don't want to hear about it, don't click below:

Below is the full RSS feed of an item I got today from Geekzone, a New Zealand technology site:

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?ContentId=3718

The Bluetooth enabled mobile phone opens up to reveal a full keyboard and colour screen.

This free RSS entry is brought to you by Geekzone Software Store, where you can find more than 75,000 software titles for your PDA or smartphone.

Notice the last paragraph. That's an ad. It's below an editorial feature, but that's an ad, inserted automatically into the RSS feed by the site.

Now, how long before this "innovation" becomes a standard feature? Days? Weeks? Months?

We report, you deride.