DMAIL TO FULFILL EMAIL'S BROKEN PROMISES?
By Michael Hardware and published in European Reseller magazine, Q3 2004.

Email has been with us for a decade or so. It has become a part of everyday life, both at home and at work, which none of us can do without. The significant downside is the increasing amounts of spam and the ever-growing threat of virus infection. Both have reached epidemic levels with simply the deleting of the spam taking increasing time out of the day.

The next evolutionary step for electronic communications is probably going to be digital mail. This is an alternative to email which can effectively eradicate the problems of spam and viral infection, and provides an exceptionally fast medium for accessing and exchanging large files such as music, images and video. It can be 'ringfenced' to provide a safe and secure platform which can not be penetrated by unwanted visitors or observers.

Digital mail is based upon html text and back-end SQL databases. Users do not actually download the messages, viewing them on the server itself. Even the attachments can be viewed or listened to from the server, but can subsequently be downloaded to the PC if the user wishes.

There are two brands about to come on to the market: gmail, being developed by Google, and dmail , being developed by a British company of that name. There are bound to be other entrants as the market develops.

gmail, which is currently being beta tested by a select few, does not appear to be true digital mail in that it will have an email interface, which somewhat diminished the spam and virual protection properties. dmail , however, does not have such an interface but this means a user can only communicate with another if they have a dmail account.

Both brands have the benefits of file exchange with both potentially offering each user 1Gb of space, although the similarity ends there. While gmail will be free, Google is quite open about saying that all user messages will be scanned and then targeted with advertising and links based on the key words identified. This is how it will make its money. dmail will not be scanning messages in this way, or targeting any advertising, but will be charging a nominal subscription for each address.

Digital mail has huge market potential, particularly in its purest form of dmail . Education and teenage markets suffer from significant commercial and criminal targeting both via email and in chat rooms. dmail can be isolated into school-sized, family-sized or circle-of-friends-sized groups, with no external visitors or observers able to penetrate without being specifically invited. School teachers and parents can be assured that their children are safe in that environment.

Similarly, an enterprise-wide group could be set up for a company, whether that be 200 employees in an office building in Brighton or 50,000 employees in multiple locations worldwide, with similar protection to communicate and exchange files and information securely.

Peter Jackson, the developer of dmail , said: "Email has now reached a turning point in its short history. People both at work and at home are sick and tired of spam and viruses, and seriously concerned about security and the increasing prevalence of criminal activity on the Internet, especially targeting children. The emergence of digital mail is in effect a response to all those concerns."

Digital mail is at the same stage as the telephone was when it was invented by Graham Bell, or as email was when it was introduced in the 1980s; there were not many who could use them, but both eventually took off. Time will tell whether digital mail will follow the same path.

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