The eMailer was long after my time, and was trying to appeal to people
who:
Wanted to be able to send and receive a few emails, but without the
expense and complication of a PC.
Where it made sense to integrate the functionality with a phone.
Were happy to have the equipment subsidised by higher cost phone calls.
Didn't mind a few adverts as part of the subsidy.
And in later versions: wanted to be able to video calls to relatives.
This all sounds very much like a landline version of a contract
smartphone with Skype and paid-by-ads apps. But that didn't have a
critical mass of users.
I had some ideas (which I didn't follow through) about generating
affinity groups, larger than families, who might be interested in all
getting a phone to swap diaries, notes and other information. The result
would have been a bit like Facebook Groups (but before Facebook was
started).
--
Roland Perry
