For better or worse, e-mail has become a mainstay in most everyone’s life. Like the automobile and the telephone, people are finding out that e-mail is no longer considered a luxury, but a necessity. We use it to dash off a short note to a family member or friend, or send detailed instructions about the latest work project to our boss. It’s something most people can no longer live without.
Like the PC desktop, we’ve taken to customizing our e-mail to make it personal and give it a bit of our personality. We add background stationery, we change the font sizes and colors, we add smilies and emoticons and other graphics. We even access Web sites to send e-cards. But sometimes people want something a little different. For a short note that isn’t another run-of-the-mill message, or to send a message that you know won’t be ignored, you might want to try Monk-e-mail.
If you’ve accessed CareerBuilder.com at all, you’ve probably run across this entertaining product. Instead of text, your recipient gets an audio and video e-mail message from…a monkey. It’s different, it’s hilarious, and it’s free.
The program is certainly easy enough to use. You choose the primate you want to be your speaker (boss, co-worker, or receptionist). You select the hairstyle, clothing, accessories, and background in which your messenger will be featured. You then choose how you want to compose your message. You can select from a variety of pre-recorded messages, or record your own via your computer’s microphone or your telephone. But for me, the best option is the “Text-to-Speech" option. You type in the text of your message (it has to be short, as you can only enter 200 characters) and select a voice type. Then hit the “Speak" button to hear the monkey reading your message in the selected voice type. With two British accents and two American accents (one each for male and female), you can come up with some pretty comic combinations. They’re all the funnier because the sentences sometimes come out a little choppy, and there are some strange pronunciations for certain words. (If you’re a perfectionist and the speech quirks bother you, you can play with punctuation and type in words phonetically to see if that smooths things out a bit.) When you’re finished putting everything together, click the “Forward…" button to send your message out. You must have a valid e-mail address, but you can send the message to multiple recipients by putting commas between each one. Click “Send It!" and you’re done. What makes it fun is that your recipient, after seeing your message, can send a Monk-e-mail in reply. So if you’re going to dish it out to someone, be prepared to get back in kind!
Because this is a free service, there are limitations. You can’t send unlimited numbers of messages out, although it appears the count is reset each day. You are limited to 200 characters in a text-to-voice message, and your recorded messages are limited in length as well. But hey, it doesn’t cost anything, so why raise a fuss about it?
Monk-e-mail is obviously not designed for business purposes (unless your boss has a really good sense of humor!). But for a quick note to a friend, or to brighten someone’s day without resorting to an e-card, it’s the perfect solution. And there’s an added benefit: Once somebody receives a Monk-e-mail from you, they’ll never automatically delete your messages again!
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