On a typical morning, I wake up to more than 80 new e-mails in my in-box--and that doesn't even count the many more that are automatically filtered to several sub-folders, one of which receives around 70 messages per day alone.

Nor does that encompass the dozen or so messages sitting in my personal account. That's quite a lot of e-mail to sift through, especially for a person who cringes at the sight of unread messages in her in-box. But once I've marked them as read, it then becomes a chore to keep track of what needs a response and when. Incidentally, this is precisely the reason that NudgeMail caught my eye.

This handy service, developed by San Francisco-based consumer product experience firm Stage Two, is about as straightforward as they come, which is an integral part of its appeal (disclosure: Jeremy Toeman, a founding partner of Stage Two, is also a columnist for CNET). NudgeMail provides one feature: it turns any e-mail client into a reminder system. So say you receive a message that necessitates a reply, but not until Friday. Simply forward the e-mail to "friday@nudgemail.com" and, on Friday, the message will be sent back to you for response. You can also schedule items for particular dates' for example, for the 22nd of November, you would forward the message to "11222010@nudgemail.com."

A simple forward sent to thursday@nudgemail.com provides the above results.

It's really as simple as that. There are no registrations, no users, no widgets to toy with--just e-mail. And as many of us know, forwarding an e-mail is about the quickest and easiest process there is. Better yet, NudgeMail works from pretty much any platform--Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Yahoo, Outlook, Gmail...the list goes on and on. And it's completely free, at least for now. The service is currently in beta' once it goes live in prime time, the developer asserts that free users will still get a "limited but useful quantity of monthly nudges," while those who subscribe to the premium service will get unlimited nudges and extra features.