Last week it was brought to my attention that another Icelandic web site has begun providing an online SMS reminder service to help women remember to take their contraceptive pills, like I've been doing since last November.

I poked fun at them for being "copy-cats" and overcharging (IMO) for the service. After exchanging a few e-mails with their webmaster it turns out that they do admit they're copy-cats, but they aren't copying me - like the rest of their site, the reminder is modeled after a service available on netdoctor.co.uk. They launched their service last April.

After searching Google a bit I only managed to come up with one other online contraceptive reminder, which was launched last February. I also found a company which sends Muslims SMS reminders when it's time to pray - does that count as a contraceptive?

I wonder if there are any more? And I wonder what the odds are that I actually was the first person in the world to offer such a service to the public? I suppose there's no easy way to find out... but if anyone can find an older p-pill reminder service out there, please let me know - my inflated ego could use a reality check!

Of course, there are quite a few other generic SMS-reminder services, many of them health oriented. Most of those could probably be used as contraceptive reminders as well, although a system not specifically designed for the task probably won't be able to take a break (or modify the messages) during a woman's period like the specialized services (hopefully) do. I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of contraceptive reminders was simply due to the fact that for most of the world's population contraceptives are a touchy, highly political subject which most companies avoid like the plague...

Update: Oops, I wrote "free" when I meant "online" in the first paragraph. The Icelandic competition is definately not free! Fixed!