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As e-mail becomes ubiquitous, companies search for differentiation First it was a novelty, something to impress friends and co-workers. Then it developed into a work place tool for information exchange. Soon it became an intrusive, all-consuming nuisance - remaining an essential work place tool for information exchange and something to impress friends and co-workers.

In less than a decade, e-mail has climbed the ubiquity ladder nearly as fast as the cell phone. And, like the cell phone, it's continuing to evolve.

There are now companies whose business revolves around making sure e-mail is delivered no matter where the recipients reside - in front of TVs, on cell phones, in cars, at airport pay phones and, of course, when using increasingly ubiquitous and smaller computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs).

Differentiation comes with implementation.

One company aiming for differentiation is TrekMail. TrekMail uses MP3 technology to bundle spoken words with written words that are conveyed across the Internet to reception devices ranging from cell phones to PDAs. It solves the hassle of reading and dealing with text, said Brian McConnell, founder and chief technology officer of TrekMail.

"The problem with these [smaller portable] devices is [if] you want to send a message or reply to a message, the data entry procedure is so tedious it takes you forever to reply, to type one sentence," said McConnell.

A TrekMail user can dictate a message that is converted into an MP3 file that can be opened and played by an end user device containing reception equipment that can decode and play sound files.

"You just dial a phone number, record the message, select the recipient, and it either goes off to one person or it can go off to a whole list of e-mail addresses," said McConnell.

The technology has its kinks. The recipient must be able to open and listen to MP3 files. A minor detail, McConnell said. "MP3 is the closest thing there is now to a de facto standard for audio formats on the Internet."

WAV files, he added, are adequate for Windows, but a Macintosh or Linux machine or some sort of Internet appliance may not automatically support a WAV file. "All the media players... will play MP3 files," McConnell says. "You have a good combination of high sound quality, minimal degradation in the audio quality, minimal file size, and it's widely supported," he said. As long as the end device can open and play sound files.

"The service is really geared toward people who are on the road and are sending back messages to the office," McConnell said. "Most of those people are probably going to be at their desktop PC when they receive the message."

Mike Vacanti, vice president of sales and marketing for BridgeCom, also prefers audio files to deliver e-mail packets; he just likes WAV files better.

"We take e-mail and convert it text to speech and allow you to reply to that," said Vacanti. "The reply is a recorded WAV file that is attached to an e-mail and sent back to the original sender."

Vacanti likes the portability.

"Your car is a good example. I would rather have the e-mail read to me than trying to read on my lap screen while I'm trying to drive. It's just too dark and you're scrolling and driving and crashing," he said.

Nice scenario, but it could be worse as e-mail sinks its teeth into a public that seems to want no minute to pass unmentioned. "I was driving from a meeting today and it did tell me I have 50 e-mails," Vacanti recalled. "It made me drive faster."

It also gave him the peace of mind to be able to "listen to the headers" and respond to those that demanded close attention, he added.

It is, Vacanti said, part of the reason for his company's existence: to tap and satisfy the demand for instant communications and blend the methods by which that communication comes to the end user.

eVoice, too, is built around instant information. It just uses a different variation on the same new theme.

"We can deliver your voice mail attached to an e-mail," said Durk Stelter, eVoice's chief operating officer. "Real Audio pops up, and you play the voice mail. Or you can go on the Web anywhere in the world you have access to the Web, put in your [personal identification number] and account number and go into your own net page and see all your voice mails there in front of you."

Changing voice mail to e-mail, he said, adds a layer of convenience to the business of keeping in touch.

"Unlike typical voice mail, where you have to go through them one at a time, you can actually pick and choose because we show the caller ID of the person who called you. Then you can click on it and play your voice mail right there," he said.

This gives eVoice "greater functionality than the phone company has," Stelter said. "We're turning this around a little bit and we're coming back to voice mail, because people still use their home phones, their business phones and their cell phones for the second most personal meeting you can have."

eVoice never actually translates the voice mail it receives, so no one really reads the messages, Stelter said. "We just encode it and send it out," he said. "We can either send you an e-mail with a voice mail attached, or we can send you an e-mail notifying that you have voice mail and who it came from. Or I can send you an alphanumeric page, or I can send you a short message on a digital cell phone."

Vocalis, a U.K.-based company that's making its way into the U.S. market, converts the e-mail text messages to audio that can be retrieved via telephone dial-ins. "Anything that's text-based can be flipped over into speech using our engine," said Karl Trollinger, U.S. marketing manager for Vocalis.

On top of that, he said, Vocalis goes the extra mile and reads selected Web pages that callers can hear when they check their messages.

"It's really about saving time while you're commuting," Trollinger said.

With all this e-mail and voice mail with e-mail chasing people around the country, there are increasingly fewer places to hide and relax. Integra5 is plugging up one of them by putting the information on the television.

"[Our] product combines the ease of use and familiarity of the telephone with the great and best visual output, which is on the television," said Eyal Bartfeld, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Integra5. "You look at the television, you hold your telephone just like you're holding your remote control unit, you type the touch tone keys according to the instructions on the screen, and with this you can get all your e-mails, including audio attachments, text and voice attachments, video attachments."

"[I'm] watching a ballgame and I want to see if I got a message [so] I click over to the messaging channel and picture-in-picture. New e-mail's there and I can respond to it or not," said Ted Tokar, Integra5's chief operating officer. "It addresses a segment of the market."

All the developers do. They all charge differently for the service, use delivery mechanisms that range from ancient public network to advanced two-way interactive broadband systems, and all see a market of end users who can't live without being in constant touch with the world via the Internet, voice mail, e-mail and interactive television.

"This product is not to replace the computer," insists Ron Pitcock, Integra5's president. "This is a product that enhances the television set and the viewing of the TV set."

Integra5 depends on high-speed broadband networks as its connecting point. It comes packaged as yet another service - the message channel - delivered in a bundle of two-way digital channels. "Once you're a subscriber you have to have your data input so we know who you are and which e-mail addresses you want to use," said Pitcock. "You don't have to have just an Integra5 e-mail account to do this. It will check your AOL, your Yahoo, whatever e-mail."

In other words, wherever a message resides, the service will dredge it up and plop it down on the TV screen in the middle of "The West Wing," if that's what the subscriber wants.

The product is "for the people who want to participate but are afraid of computers and new technology. They'd rather sit in front of their TV set when they go home, lay back, drink beer and watch their shows," said Pitcock. "This way they could still get some e-mails and they don't have to type anything back. They can just reply by voice.

Deep in the recesses of their psyches, though, all these e-mail providers understand the service has to be a help, not an intrusion or another layer of communications bundled on top of the 17 that are already there.

"I really like to think of it as a simplification," said BridgeCom's Vacanti. "From the small business side, we're seeing it become a productivity tool because there's less time to go and check messages."