E24/7 offers more virtual storage space

  E24/7 E24/7 isn’t just your average e-mail portal. This
e-mail service offers the ability to transfer larger files and
better file management.

By Barbara McGuire
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

With text messages being about the extent of options the UCLA
e-mail service has to offer, many students are forced to resort to
having multiple e-mail accounts from servers like Hotmail and
Yahoo.

E24/7 is a new, almost revolutionary, e-mail server that hopes
to blast systems like UCLA’s out of the water with the
ability to send large files, such as MP3s, as opposed to just photo
attachments, over the electronic highway.

Web users can sign up for a free e-mail account at www.e247.com
where they are given the option to choose any name they please, as
long as it is not already taken. With this e-mail address, however,
users are given options that surpass normal e-mail servers.

“What our service does is allow users to get e-mails with
large packages attached ““ things like MP3 files or group
projects that may have a lot of graphics, anything which requires
large storage space,” said Martin Bishop, the Chief Marketing
Officer of e24/7 who earned his MBA from the UCLA Anderson School
of Management.

“What it is, is a Web based e-mail service, a super
charged e-mail service you might say, because it provides Web space
for virtual storage,” he said.

Users of an e24/7 e-mail address are given 100MB of storage
space through the server, compared to an average e-mail server that
only allots 6MB, giving users the opportunity to to store MP3 files
that they will be able to listen to on any internet accessible
computer.

Besides offering an enormous amount of virtual storage space,
e24/7 has file streaming, which gives users the option of not
having to upload a file every time they want to access it.

  E24/7 Web surfers can check out www.e247.com to see the
new e-mail system, which features many options in addition to text
messages. The service also offers other e-mail organizing options
such as file sharing, file management, and mail management, which
allows users to consolidate up to 10 other e-mail accounts they
have through their e24/7 account.

File management seems exceptionally useful as users can store
music and video files in a special manager program as well as have
the ability to create personalized play lists. This option is
patent-pending, and is currently something that is only offered
through e24/7.

In addition to all these unique options, users are also provided
with the normal e-mail services such as bulk filtering, which
allows users to block e-mail from senders they do not wish to get
mail from.

Bishop said that another major plus of e24/7’s e-mail
server is the fact that it is accessible anywhere.

“Wherever you are, whether it be at college or at your
apartment or on holidays, you always can log onto e24/7 and listen
to MP3 files you have saved, anything,” he explained.
“And I think that’s also something that’s very
important to college students.”

E24/7 was founded by brothers Edward Yu and Irving Yu, the
latter who also received his MBA from the Anderson School of
Management.

Bishop said that the idea for the site came from Edward who was
a international traveling investment banker and liked to travel
light. Apparently, Edward couldn’t find an e-mail server that
would allow him to store adequate files via the Web so that he
wouldn’t have to carry around his laptop, files, presentation
and CDs. He told brother Irving about his issues, and the two came
up with the premise for e24/7.

E24/7 is currently focusing their marketing campaign on college
students, but Bishop said that anyone can access an e24/7 e-mail
address, and that the company even plans to expand their service
worldwide.

“We thought that college students would be the best people
to start with, mostly because they tend to be the early adopters of
technology,” Bishop said. “They like the
technology.”

“Students are very savvy, very aware of that,” he
continued.

One downfall of the system is that people without high speed
connections, such as ethernet or DSL, will be spending a long time
waiting to upload their e-mails.

“I think it depends on what service you are working with,
for how long it will take,” said Bishop. “What
we’ve found, is that college students usually have access to
high-speed connections, so that’s not usually a
problem.”