 |  |
Cat With Mouse
Check your e-mail any time, anywhere for free
June 12, 2007
In today's über connected society, there's almost no such thing as being out of touch. That said, there might come a time when you desperately need (or merely want) to access your e-mail, but you don't have your usual tools. No e-mail client. Perhaps you're on a shared computer and don't have access to your Web bookmarks. Or maybe you just have your cell phone or PDA.
You're jonesing for an e-mail fix, but it seems there's no way to get it.
What is such a message-deprived individual to do?
Get thee to mail2web.com.
Mail2web is a free (You know how I love free.) service that lets you check your e-mail from any computer with Internet access or even a Web-enabled cell phone or PDA. All you need is Internet access. The device doesn't matter.
You don't even have to register, although there are some benefits to be had there, but I'll get to those in a minute.
Let's start with the basic service. Pick up your e-mail. It works with almost any POP or IMAP4 server. All you do is type in your e-mail address and password; then click the "check mail" button. Boom! You're in.
Read, reply, delete, compose and send to your heart's content.
It's elegantly simple.
"That is really our goal," said Stephen Nichols of SoftCom Technology Consulting, Inc., the company behind mail2web. "We've tried to keep that mail2web page clean. We've tried to make it as straightforward as possible."
More than straightforward, which is no small thing, checking your e-mail via mail2web is anonymous and secure because mail2web does not store any of your information.
"We only use [your password] to access the e-mail server," Nichols explained "Once we've brought up your e-mail for you, we do not store your password at all."
Have more than one e-mail address? I do. This is where registration, still free, might come in handy. You can set up a personal mail2web home page and put all of those e-mail addresses right at your fingertips.
You can also create a contacts list and save links and newsgroups.
The registration process is simple. Select a username and password (for your mail2web account only, not any e-mail addresses you might be adding); then choose a reminder question.
The URL of your page will be mail2web.com/username.
Even with this personalized home page, e-mail account passwords are not stored. While that might seem inconvenient, it's actually for your security. It all goes back to privacy, something mail2web takes very seriously.
"We don't ever want to store anyone's password or risk anyone's privacy," Nichols said.
There will be ads on your personal home page. That's the price of free. They're not intrusive, however.
Also, the mail2web personal home pages are public. That's why the e-mail addresses you enter don't show up. They're listed by nicknames you designate, "friendly names."
In addition to having your e-mail accounts accessible from a single page, as well as links and newsgroups, you can also create an address book of up to 100 contacts. On the aesthetic front, you can tweak the color scheme of your personal page and even upload your own photo.
All of this is well and good if you have a computer at your disposal, but what if you have just your trusty cell phone? If it's Web-enabled, just point its little browser to mail2web.com/wap and you're in business.
By the way, that personal home page I talked you into signing up for? You can access it via cell phone and PDA, too.
There are other aspects of mail2web that make it more than simply an e-mail retrieval system.
Mail2web's chat service, for example, gives you easy access to all of your instant-messaging accounts in a single location. You can either download or install the program, or you can opt for the Web-based version.
I did not play too much with this element of mail2web as I don't IM too terribly much, and have only a single Yahoo Messenger account. (Ironic? Perhaps. But I'm more interested in the e-mail pickup and what's coming next. Keep reading.)
Also in mail2web's arsenal of free services is mail2web LIVE, which is based on the Microsoft Hosted Exchange Platform.
More than just picking up e-mail from accounts you already have, this one creates a new e-mail address -- username@mail2web.com. For free.
Like registering for a mail2web personal page, signing up for LIVE is simple, but you can't lollygag through the form. If you don't enter the security code within the allotted time, it errors out, erases your password and makes you enter another code.
One thing to remember when signing into your mail2web LIVE account -- and this is different from signing into your personal home page -- is that you have to enter the entire e-mail address (i.e. catwithmouse@mail2web.com), not just the username.
With mail2web LIVE, you get all the benefits of Outlook Web Access, a calendar, contacts and to-do list. And you can sync everything up with a mobile device, straight from the server.
Mail2web LIVE also has spam settings, which aren't available if you're simply picking up e-mail with the classic service.
In addition, there's an aggregator that lets you pick up e-mail from other accounts. If you're aggregating a POP3 account (That's what most of you will likely have.), the system will delete messages in that account and forward them to your mail2web LIVE address.
Need to change your settings? You can do it right from the Exchange interface. There's no need to open another browser window.
Oh, yeah, and you get 1 GB of storage space.
"It's a fully functional Exchange account," Nichols said. "Mail is stored on our servers. There's full integration with all the features of OWA [Outlook Web Access]. Users can create filtering and rules. Certainly, it's a very robust mail product."
But wait, there's more!
The newest hammers in the mail2web toolbox are the Desktop Gadgets. You can add Windows® Vista desktop and access your e-mail then and there. There's also the Google Gadget and the MySpace Gadget, which let you add mail2web to pretty much any Web page.
Where there are free services (the ones I so adore), there are also paid services.
If you want to use your BlackBerry with mail2web LIVE -- receive everything as it comes into your account on your BlackBerry -- it's $9.95 per month per user.
If you want to upgrade from mail2web LIVE to a Personal account, it's a quite affordable $1.99 per month.
"The real difference [between LIVE and Personal] is the ability to use your own e-mail address, the removal of the ads from the Web interface and the ability to access the e-mail from your desktop," Nichols said.
Mail2web also offers e-mail hosting and forwarding, as well as Web hosting.
The paid services, however, do not mean the demise of the free ones.
"As long as there's a need for it, it'll be around," Nichols said.
And did I mention the customer service? It's available to everybody -- paid customers and free customers alike -- 24/7 via e-mail.
This is one of those services that's endlessly useful. Just ask mail2web's 16 million users in 220 countries. (The mail2web classic interface is available in 16 languages.)
Online for a decade, mail2web has been able to grow to suit its customers' needs.
"We're one of the top 500 Alexa-rated Web sites," Nichols said. "More and more, people want their e-mail and contacts and information with them when they're not at their computers."
True now and probably more so in the future.
"The future is collaborative e-mail," Nichols said. "Most people have e-mail on an ISP (i.e. Cox or Earthlink). People will start having e-mail on their own domains. The line between instant messaging and e-mail is going to be blurred.
"People are going to want the ability to access their e-mail and contact information when they want, how they want, be it on a their desktop, a mobile device, or a different computer -- the same information already there, backed up and stored and searchable."
All that and easy to use, too?
"The whole mail2web brand is summed up with our logo, that little smiley face," Nichols said. "It's friendly and easy."
Bottom line: With mail2web, you will never be without your e-mail again. And that's a good thing, right?
Forums, Photos & More
Discuss: Talk about the latest headlines, celebrity gossip and Arizona life with our readers in our azfamily.com forums.
News in Your Inbox: Sign up for breaking news e-mails and dozens of other newsletters.
Catch up with 3TV: Miss yesterday's newscasts? Catch up in our online video section.
Have an idea for Cat With Mouse? E-mail Catherine Holland at catherine_holland@azfamily.com.
More Cat With Mouse
