If you were wondering which hi-tech toy you'd waste five minutes on today, look no further.

Now you may know about this already but today was the first we'd heard of it. What are we on about? Sending an email message using your run-of-the-mill, industry-standard mobile phone. All of those that are now writing us an email to show how bloody clever you are, go away and look at some other stories.

Those left: here's how you do it.

Go to the messaging bit of your mobile. Right, go to 'new message' or whatever. Type a cap "M", then a space, then type the email address you want to send it to, then another space, then the email message.

Then the number you punch in depends on your mobile operator. The numbers are below:

BT-Cellnet - 07720 296 269
Orange - 07974 914 680
One-2-One - 07946 354 378
Vodafone - 07769 707 344

Hit 'Send' and away you go.

So what's the catch?
Well, this service is run by iobox (which has some other fancy stuff on its site). As such, you will get three free "m-Mails" - that's what they call them - to do with what you want. After that you'll have to register online to continue to use the service. From that point, your operator will charge you as if you sent a text message and iobox will charge 6p a message.

The thing is, this service was started up at the beginning of the year. So why haven't we heard of it? Because iobox has been concentrating (apparently exclusively) on corporates and big deals.

Here's our suggestion

Cheer yourself and others up. Treat this setup as if it were three wishes from a genie. You have the chance to send three emails, so use them well, use them when a moment of inspiration hits you. Don't pause but tap out an email and send it to the lucky fellow/lass. Now that should make this gloomy Monday go with a bit more of a bang. ®

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For any more information, look here. ®