Toss your disappearing ink, and consider upgrading to VaporStream, a new product to be unveiled this week at DEMOfall in San Diego and ideal for the paranoid, and/or those who are simply sick of investing in tape backup. The gimmick is simple: users can send and receive web-based e-mail secure in the knowledge that all record of their communications will disappear from the Internet - and their computers - once their messages have been read.

Here's how VaporStream explains their notion of "recordless" messaging:

VaporStream has a feature that separates the header of the message, the who, what and where, from the body of the message. They never exist together and can never be seen together; there is no record connecting the VaporStream subscriber with the content of the message...You also cannot print, cut and paste, forward or save a stream. You can trust that once you read a message it is gone.

Interesting, but for whom? Writes The Boston Globe: "Shah and cofounder Joseph Collins Jr. hope that VaporStream's design and low cost, $40 per user annually, will attract companies swamped with the challenge of archiving business-critical e-mails and deleting those that are personal or inconsequential." Right, though, as The Globe points out, many companies are legally required to maintain records of their transactions. Just as Morgan Stanley who earlier this year had to cough up $15 million for failing to hand over archived emails to the SEC in the Commission's "IPO and Research Analyst" investigations. Still, nifty idea will likely find its own, small market.