A precious metals vendor in San Juan, Puerto Rico, plans to take the "e" out of "e-mail."

A company called Woomail has introduced what it calls a new form of online communication that operates in a closed Web-based environment, free of spam and viruses.

John Halloran, president of the Certified Gold Exchange, was inspired to form Woomail after his teenage daughter received a plethora of pornographic spam.

The company reported that humans will control the flow of mail (not e-mail) messages rather than servers. I'd be interested in learning what that means.

"Woomail is the universal answer to a universal problem," the company stated.

Now it's not clear from Woomail's site if the service involves sending messages from a traditional e-mail account or just from Woomail's site. And there are plenty of closed e-mail Web services out there.

So how is this one innovative? We'll give it a try and find out.