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Santa, have I received m@il?
Nitya Varadarajan
Chennai, August 4: It's just perfect for Net potatoes. PPP Infotech Ltd, an Internet product company, has introduced a product for home users in the Europe and US which reads aloud your mail. For people who are too busy or disinclined to dial into the Internet and look into their mail at regular intervals, PPP Infotech's product called ``Mail Assistant'' overcomes the tedium. For the really effort-challenged (read: lazy) the software also has a scheduler and auto dialler that activates the Internet by itself at a time convenient for the user, checks for mail, downloads it and reads it out through an animated cartoon which pops onto the screen. While the user can have Santa Claus reading out to her during Christmas time, she can also opt to see her own picture on the screen reading aloud her mail.The software offers a morphing facility for the purpose. PPP is currently working on providing the user's own voice to her image, to complete the illusion of reading your own mail. The software also has an `indexing facility' which lists the mail the user has got, the size of the file and attachments. This also allows the user to `skip', `delete' or `forward' lengthy or unwanted mails so that the toon does not spend too much time reading. The software is sold for $20, only through the Net, and the company claims are already 200 users. There is also a plan to bundle the software with multimedia kits. Another Internet product `Get Again' resumes perusal of a file exactly at the point of disruption due to various reasons: power cut, systems failure, computer hanging on account of lines being choked, etc. Once again the product is sold online and claims to have found 120 buyers. The Internet Cop, just introduced is targeted at educational institutions. This software actually monitors the Internet time used by any student in a dynamic fashion. The product is a logical sequel to the first one that PPP introduced (which has more than 4,000 users including University of California, and Justice Department of US. This product enables several LAN (local area network) users to access the Internet simultaneously with one account and therefore just one bill. PPP has an arrangement with various authorised agencies of credit card suppliers who remit monthly cheques to the former consolidating online transactions. Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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