Nuggets: Pager that reads your email
Mini-Mail picks up Pop3
As useful as they are, pagers these days need to come up with something a little bit extra if they've any hope of capturing the imagination of the masses being tempted by ever cheaper mobile phones.
PageOne has come up with a neat little idea with its Mini-Mail e.four -- it receives emails as well as normal voice messages. Well, it doesn't actually receive them itself. What happens it that you set up a Mini-Mail email account and then anything sent to that address is forwarded onto your pager. You can also setup the service to pick up mail from any other accounts you've got, as long as they're POP3 compatible.
The sender's name, subject header and email message, up to 240 words worth, are all sent to your pager. In addition you can configure your account to forward only specific messages, such as those from certain people or those with certain subject lines. I've found this a suprisingly useful little gizmo. When I've been sat in front of a computer all day the next thing I want to be sat in front of is a bar -- not at my home PC checking my email. The beauty of this pager is that when you do eventually stumble home you already know if you've got any email worth firing up your computer for.
The whole package costs £99 and includes email notification for three months, after that the service costs £49.99 per year or £15 a quarter.