From...

November 13, 1998
Web posted at: 1:45 PM EST

by Michael S. Lasky

(IDG) -- Want to enjoy the freedom of sending and receiving e-mail without being shackled to your desktop or weighed down by your notebook PC? Want to turn idle commuting time into productive computing time? Don't we all.

PC World tested two new services -- General Magic's Portico and Planetary Motion's CoolMail -- that claim to make e-mail as close as the nearest telephone. These are the first services to let you hear and respond to e-mail from a phone handset. Unfortunately, the voice-recognition and voice-synthesis technologies they rely on are a poor substitute for the vastly more dependable keyboard-and-display routine. An especially problematic shortcoming for business users is that both services work only with Internet-based e-mail: Neither Portico nor CoolMail can provide you with easy access to corporate, LAN-based e-mail. Portico does work with America Online mail; CoolMail says it will support AOL by year's end.

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Virtual assistant

Portico, which bills itself as a virtual personal assistant, is the more robust of these two services. It uses a voice interface: You talk, it responds. Besides deciphering your e-mail, it can read contact, calendar, and to-do­list information from such popular personal information managers as Microsoft Outlook. You can even introduce changes to your calendar and your to-do list over the phone.

Moreover, Portico offers an array of phone and voice mail features. The service assigns you your own personal toll-free number that accepts phone calls. Portico can forward calls to other locations -- your cell phone or hotel room, say. After the $50 setup fee, the basic monthly cost ranges from $20 to $150 or higher, depending on your overall connect time.

To handle e-mail chores, you call a toll-free number, enter your password, and then issue commands to a computerized "assistant." You can listen to messages, skip ahead, forward a message to a fax machine, and even send voice replies as .wav file attachments. Portico also permits you to filter e-mail by sender or keyword to spare you from having to wade through your in-box.

But caveats abound. First, the voice interface is far from perfect. You must memorize a list of navigational commands, which can be inconvenient for new or occasional users. Moreover, Portico misunderstood some commands from my occasionally static-ridden cell phone. And while the hands-free, all-voice interface is theoretically ideal for calling from a car, I found it dangerously distracting to use while driving.

And listening to the voice-synthesized e-mail quickly becomes tedious. Pronunciation was understandable most of the time, but Portico reads everything: On a forwarded message, it delivers the routing header -- one character at a time. Finally, though the assistant will inform you when an e-mail message has attachments, it can't read these over the phone. For that job, you have to download attachments from your Portico Web site.

Not-quite-free e-mail

CoolMail offers several levels of service: I tested the Bronze version, which is free. Here's how it works: Every time you call CoolMail and enter your password on the phone keypad, you hear a 10-second commercial, which I found no more annoying than listening to a standard voice mail message. To navigate the service, you enter commands on the phone keypad, a definite problem when driving. The free version of CoolMail doesn't forward e-mail to a fax machine. And as with Portico, you must download file attachments to your CoolMail Web site; CoolMail declines to read them to you over the phone.

CoolMail allows you to respond to e-mail in several ways: You can e-mail a voice reply as a .wav file attachment. You can choose from a limited selection of canned text replies, along the lines of "Thanks, got your note. Will be in touch." Or for 2 cents a word, you can dictate a phone reply that the service converts into text. The messages I dictated came through without any spelling errors, including the proper names.

Unfortunately, CoolMail Bronze also has hidden fees and limitations. Replies sent to non-CoolMail accounts cost 10 cents each. Though you get 60 minutes of toll-free access to CoolMail each month, calls beyond that run 10 cents per minute. And finally, message storage space is limited to 2MB; after that, messages bounce back to the sender.

As with Portico, I had trouble navigating. The keypad interface was usable, but when I pushed a wrong key, CoolMail stopped in its tracks. I had to call back and start over. Because of the attention CoolMail requires, I would recommend against using it on the highway. Signing up for CoolMail on the vendor's Web site is relatively painless, but it's unduly intrusive. You must supply three pages worth of personal information, including data on your age, employment, salary, and marital status. This demographic information is not sold or given out, but it determines which ads you'll hear.

In addition to Bronze service, CoolMail offers four fee-based packages. The top-of-the-line Platinum service costs $15 per month and includes message filtering, dictation for text replies, a personal toll-free number, 5MB of storage, as well as other phone and faxing features. (When you get this service, you buy your way out of the 10-second ads and the survey.)

Say what?

The technology behind these services, though in its early stages, is moving forward. Vendors are developing LAN-based products that better support corporate e-mail. In fact, CoolMail Corporate should be available by the time you read this.

For now, be aware of the limitations before you sign up. CoolMail Bronze's price is right for a trial run, but if you want advanced phone features, Portico may be a better bet. As for me, I plan to keep lugging around my trusty notebook for a while longer.