Memory Lacking? E-Mail Service Offers Reminders

PHILADELPHIA —  A college student has created “Remind U-Mail,” a user-friendly service on the World Wide Web that sends the chronically forgetful an e-mail reminder of special events.

Using their own private password, users simply enter the day of an event and a brief description of it. Then, when the important day is near, the electronic calendar service sends them an e-mail reminder.

The events are displayed in calendar form, so the site can also double as an appointment book.

“You can type in an annual event once and be reminded of it every year, up until the year 2001,” said Blake David Mills IV, a 21-year-old computer science major at the University of Pennsylvania.

The 2-month-old free service has quite a following. So far, about 4,000 people from some 45 countries, including Egypt, Paraguay and Brazil, have registered.

Mills is not concerned that he is not getting paid to operate the popular service, which runs off a computer in a dormitory with a science and technology wing.

“Right now it’s on Penn’s network, which forbids any type of commercial activity,” he said.

Besides “the Internet is built on a community of cooperation and I’m just sort of playing my part,” he said. The university has given him permission to operate the service from its network until he graduates in May 1998.

Don’t worry though. “It will be around after May of 1998,” he said.

Dennis Grossman from Youngstown, Ohio, swears by the service.

“I use it constantly, and, believe me, it helps me big time,” said Grossman, a 37-year-old factory worker. “I put in appointments, birthdays, holidays and anything I can think of,” he said.

Several clients, however, have expressed concern that their privacy might be violated and have wondered who peeks at their calendars.

“Right now, I’m the only person who has access to the information,” said Mills, a Loveland, Colo., native.

“With 4,000 people--and me being a full-time student--there’s no time or need to browse through people’s calendars.”

The World Wide Web address for the free calendar service is: https://calendar.stwing.upenn.edu/