A couple years ago, Brandeis University computer scientist Jordan Pollack received an e-mail with a seven-megabyte file attached. Frustrated by how long it took to download the file, Pollack created a system to automatically strip attachments from e-mail and put the files on a Web site, replacing them with a Web link. This "thinned down" his e-mail inbox, so Pollack called his creation Thinmail. He liked the idea so much that, in 1999, he launched a company to bring it to market.

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