PostPet

Postpets are little creatures that live in an e-mail world where they liven up the contact between e-mail writers. Inspired by the Tamagotchi mania, the beasts are not passive slaves; they have a personality of their own and know what they want. If they are not well cared for, they tend to get rebellious. The 3D mail mites build their nest in your computer and wait for you to send a message. They only come back when they have had an answer. After a while they have learned so much that they can write their own messages - at first they are to you, but at a certain point they get sent straight to your friends. With his design for a first graphic e-mail environment in which artificially intelligent characters send the e-mail, Hachiya won the Prix Ars Electronica in 1998. About three hundred thousand Asians already use Hachiyas e-mail software.