A friend recently introduced me to Bigstring. He knew that I maintained a virtual fleet of email accounts, as well as sending and receiving hundreds of emails weekly. I had never heard of Bigstring, and I thought I was familiar with most of the 'players'.

After visiting their website and signing up for their free service, this is what I found out:

Bigstring was created after one of the founders accidently sent an email to a customer with the wrong pricing information. He immediately realized his mistake and wished his email had been attached to a 'big string' so he could reel it back in. Since most inventions are created out of necessity, the idea was planted and work began on a new form of email.

Imagine a web page. Imagine someone receiving an email from you, and once opened, it's as if the recipients were looking at a web page.. except it appeared identical to any other email. If this were possible, you could go into your control panel and change the content of your email at will. Actually, you could make your email disappear altogether if you wished.

Again, your recipients would only see what you wanted them to, when you wanted them to.

This is the idea behind Bigstring. Emails sent through Bigstring are dynamically generated and stored on Bigstrings servers. You maintain full control of the email even though it has been opened and read. Emails can be set to vanish after a set number of days, leaving the reader with a blank page. You are not actually going into their computer and changing anything. As the example above illustrates, you are only changing their 'view' of the email.

I recently sent some sensitive information to the wrong email address. Immediately, I wanted to recall the email and prevent anyone other than the intended recipient from viewing it, but it was too late. I could only hope that whoever received it wouldn't have a clue what they were reading and delete it. With Bigstring, I could have deleted it myself.

Recipients can also be prevented from printing out your email. Have you ever sent an email to someone in the office, only to find out later that it was circulating throughout the building? Or worse, quoted someone a price and realized that you left out a zero, and now they're wanting to hold you to your price, even though they too realize it was a mistake?

Make it go away..

Bigstring assures me that their emails are compatible with Outlook Express, Eudora, Microsoft Outlook, AOL, and Incredimail. Also, a 'when opened' report can be generated to let you know that your email was read.

New users can sign up for a free account which allows them to send up to twenty emails per month. For many readers, this may be all the protection you'll ever need. For 'power' users, a yearly charge of $17.95 entitles you to send up to 300 emails per month, and $29.95 a year provides you with unlimited usage.

My recommendation is this.. try the free version and see if it's something you can use. If not, you've ventured nothing and you're losses are zilch. Their web site advertises a 60 day money back guarantee if you're interested in a premium package.

I hope I've been informative enough to stir your creative interest in this unusual product. I honest feel there are many uses that have not crossed my mind. Write and let me know YOUR ideas.

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