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Wireless Hot Spot Directory Search for Wi-Fi hot spots near you: Go * Story Tools 22 Print story 23 E-mail story * See also * 24 It's a Virtual Revolution, People * 25 Peepcams? Not in My Backyard * There's no biz like 26 E-Biz * Discover more Net 27 Culture * Today's Top 5 Stories * 28 Playing With Sounds in Your Head * 29 Makeovers Dot-Com: Check It Out * 30 California Bans E-Vote Machines * 31 NZ Volcano Scarier Than Mt. Bases to End * 39 More Breaking News * 40 Wire Service Photo Gallery Tech Jobs Partner 41 Today's the Day. Subscribers to the "Love By Mail" service get to choose their girlfriend from a lineup of women that includes a bartender, a flight attendant, an office worker and a teacher. Once they've made a selection, they can begin to date the woman via e-mail. Those who promise too much or don't move fast enough won't impress their woman, and will get bitter e-mails in response. Likewise, those who attempt to talk about sports or offer excuses about needing to work too often will also get the cold shoulder from their new love. She would yell at me and ignore me the exact same way as all my other girlfriends have. Another Love By Mail user, who preferred not to give his name, had a more successful relationship with his bogus babe. In fact, their romance was so successful that he said the experience of dating a virtual girlfriend was almost like having a mistress. My grandfather had the geisha, my father had the bar hostesses and I have Love By Mail. The company says that more than 30,000 Japanese men have signed up for Love By Mail, available only to i-mode subscribers. I-mode is a mobile Internet service offered by NTT DoCoMo, available only in Japan. I-mode, which stands for "Information mode," gives subscribers across Japan always-on, inexpensive (about $5 a month for basic service), wireless access to the Internet. Sites developed for i-mode use cHTML (compact HTML), a subset of the HTML coding used to create typical Web pages. There are also special DoCoMo coding characters to create icons that represent concepts such as joy, kisses, sadness, hot spring baths, noodle shops, the Shinkansen train line and Japanese holidays. Story continued on 44 Page 2 45 Print story 46 E-mail story Page 1 of 2 47 next Related Stories 48 WAP or I-Mode: Which Is Better? Your use of this website constitutes acceptance of the Lycos 65 Privacy Policy and 66 Terms & Conditions Note: You are reading this message either because you can not see our css files (served from Akamai for performance reasons), or because you do not have a standards-compliant browser.
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