Push Email service now available for BA

[Guest boyo69]

i have been trying this now for a couple of months and i really like it

it's push email (similar to Blackberry) for the PPC

free trials at the moment

www.alwaysonmail.com

let's you pick up from IMAP or POP3 via push and also can be scheduled to switch off at night and save GPRS costs............speaking of which, i have seen a reduction in my GPRS costs as it only downloads when there is something to download....unlike the built in inbox which when set to poll every x mins will still use valuable kb just to check that nothing is there !!!!

give it a try, it's very good !

mark

[Guest fraser]

Sounds excellent! Do you have to give them your IMAP account details? I'm guessing so and that's something I'm not willing to do. :lol:

Would it be possible for me to forward a dummy message to a dummy POP box, in order to trigger a sync against my real mailbox?

[Guest boyo69]

Sounds excellent! Do you have to give them your IMAP account details? I'm guessing so and that's something I'm not willing to do.  :lol:

Would it be possible for me to forward a dummy message to a dummy POP box, in order to trigger a sync against my real mailbox?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

hhmmm, not sure, would suggest you auto forward your IMAP to a POP account and then collect from there.....yes you need to give them your details for collection but one really cool feature is that if you delete on the pda, you can have it delete from your pop inbox so that upon return home/office, you aren't staring at the same emails you have just checked....I know this is how IMAP works, but this is with POP !!!

I have an exchange / corporate account which i autoforward to a POP/ISP account (BTOpenworld) and then use Smartner to collect and push to my phone....anything rubbish or unwanted i delete on the pda and it then deletes on the POP inbox

emails take about 1 min to go from source, through my exchange at work, through to BTOpenworld and then pushed to my device.....all without any 'send and receive' commands from my pda !!!! very quick !!

there are security questions answered on their website though......

i would still try it!

[Guest lewis.curley]

I just signed up for this as it sounded excellent but i dont seem to be able to get it to work and there is no support forum on thier site.

I also have a BT Openworld Account and just wanted the email from that forwarded to my M2000

I signed up, installed and activated the client but although it says its connecting the the Alwaysonmail server nothing seems to happen, i have an always on mail account in messaging on the m2000 but it never has any mails in it. It does make the M2000 connect to gprs but as i said no mail ever gets pushed.

In the settings for alwaysonmail on the details page should my name and email address be in the Name and email fields as i just have unknown? Not sure if its properly installed but i have tried a reinstall twice and think i just need it to force alwaysonmail server to send the settings to my device.

Any help or a pointer to a support forum would be good

Thanks

[Guest boyo69]

I just signed up for this as it sounded excellent but i dont seem to be able to get it to work and there is no support forum on thier site.

I also have a BT Openworld Account and just wanted the email from that forwarded to my M2000

I signed up, installed and activated the client but although it says its connecting the the Alwaysonmail server nothing seems to happen, i have an always on mail account in messaging on the m2000 but it never has any mails in it. It does make the M2000 connect to gprs but as i said no mail ever gets pushed.

In the settings for alwaysonmail on the details page should my name and email address be in the Name and email fields as i just have unknown? Not sure if its properly installed but i  have tried a reinstall twice and think i just need it to force alwaysonmail server to send the settings to my device.

Any help or a pointer to a support forum would be good

Thanks

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

hi

if i'm right, you installed this during the night/early hours? judging by your post anyway!

i fell into the same trap 1st time....if you go into settings and look at the bottom tabs there's one called delivery...click on this and then you can alter the times that smartner will work....ie outside of these times, smartner will not collect or send......by default, it it 'never' over night which would explain your problem

hope this explains!

there will be a forum on their website soon, it's just still pretty new!

mark

[Guest lewis.curley]

That'll be it then, cheers looking forward to the forum and hopefully support for multiple accounts, i presume there will be some kind of suscribtion in place after the 2 months trial?

[Guest boyo69]

That'll be it then, cheers looking forward to the forum and hopefully support for multiple accounts, i presume there will be some kind of suscribtion in place after the 2 months trial?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

yes, i believe so, but it's rumoured to be about £6 p/mth which i think is pretty good!

[Guest fraser]

Wow, that's more expensive than I'd thought, bearing in mind what the service is, basically the following two scripts:

while(1) {

    if(check_for_new_mail())

         send_sms()

    delay()

}

and on your phone:

while(incomming_sms) {

     if(incoming_sms_is_push()) {

           outlook.exe -sync

           delete_sms()

     }

}

Admitedly, the incidental costs to them are the costs of each alert SMS to you. I'd much rather pay on a pay-as-you-go sliding scale. Folk that get one mail a week shouldn't charged the same as those who get 100 per day! :lol:

[Guest ichilton]

Admitedly, the incidental costs to them are the costs of each alert SMS to you.

SMS alert???

The one I tried from alwaysonemail.com has a client you install on the device which communicates with the server - there is no SMS involved.

The client is a bit buggy though - as someone already pointed out, some of the fields are set to unknown. My truncate size and mail age settings are different to the site - and the tray icon seems to screw up a bit - dissapear while still taking up space, then appear in another position.

£6/month sounds a lot!!! - it'd probably be cheaper to pay for more gprs to check your mail everytime you wanted to read it!

--ian

[Guest fraser]

You sure on that, ichilton? What you describe is not push mail, as the client is still polling a server.

Every push mail service I've seen in the past uses a special SMS (or other operator message) sent to the device. Software on the device parses incoming messages to see if they are the special ones. If so, the message is deleted and a sync is triggered. This is before it hits the inbox and the user is oblivious to how it works.

Does the client trigger a GPRS session now and then on it's own? If not; it works as I describe. If it is what you describe, I could download the SDK and write the same thing myself in a couple of hours. :lol:

[Guest ichilton]

You sure on that, ichilton? What you describe is not push mail, as the client is still polling a server.

Kind of - I assume the client just tells the server it's location - i.e that it's online at this ip. Any mail is then pushed from the server to the client.

Does the client trigger a GPRS session now and then on it's own? If not; it works as I describe.

Not sure - only tested it with wifi so far.

--ian

Edited February 16, 2005 by ichilton

[Guest fraser]

Kind of - I assume the client just tells the server it's location - i.e that it's online at this ip. Any mail is then pushed from the server to the client.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nah, that won't work then. With GPRS, then phone only has an IP when you have an active connection. Have you ever unlocked a Smartphone using Orange? What they do is send you an SMS that will trigger your phone to activate GPRS and connect to a site somewhere for the update.

Not sure - only tested it with wifi so far.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm getting mine tomorrow, so I'll give it a try. Once I get round to it that is, will have to get past the "new toy" bit first!

[Guest boyo69]

it is indeed a 'silent' sms trigger....when you 1st install the program, a 'text' is present in your text inbox advising of a change in your system settings.....therefore this has been sent via sms to your phone to prove that a connection exists between their server and your phone....

i only use on gprs and have noticed that if i switch off gprs, the unit will auto connect after a time via gprs.....when it does connect, i get an email notification noise which i take to mean that my phone received the 'silent' sms trigger, forced a dial up and sync'd my email.....

i have not had an auto dial up for no email so i donvt think it is a fancier version of the 'dial every x mins' inbox!

the £6 is just hearsay, it might be much less....who knows!

fraser - if you can write such an app, then i would! smartner is being taken up by nearly all the uk mobile carriers and o2 are recommending smartner because they haven't sorted blackberry yet on xda2s....

[Guest fraser]

Blackberry on xda2s, nice way to put it! Blackberry didn't invent it, like Apple didn't invent the mp3 player, and Hoover didn't invent the vacuum cleaner! :lol:

Smartner haven't got it all done tho. Push mail normally goes along with "presence". This is when the mail system knows where you are. So, at home it goes to your desktop email/phone gadget, on the road it goes to your mobile and at work, you get it to the work PC. It's kinda like a 24/7 MSN, but for email. Don't get me wrong, I already have all of this stuff via other means (an IMAP server I run at home on an old PC), but if you can package it for the masses, you'll make a killing. It's emails biggest downfall; it lacks instant notification. You wouldn't use it for anything time-critical.

Good news on the £6 being heresay. That's £72 per year, a hell of a lot for a few hundred text messages. I would definately like to see a sliding scale. What would be great is a credit system, where you pre-purchase say 100 notifications. When it gets down to 10, you get a reminder to purchase more. You could even sell these top-ups via text, allowing you to say "hit reply to add another 50 notifications to your acount". Very little operating fees.

[Guest lewis.curley]

Got to agree with everyone on the £6/month i like it and all but thats more than enough just for me to query my mailbox over gprs when i want to!

Well i guess we will have to wait and see

[Guest fraser]

To put the £6 in perspective, I poll my imap server every two hours 24/7 and it never goes over my £7 GPRS package. So, I wouldn't save anything, just reduce the length of time it takes for a mail to reach me.

[Guest ventmore]

To put the £6 in perspective, I poll my imap server every two hours 24/7 and it never goes over my £7 GPRS package. So, I wouldn't save anything, just reduce the length of time it takes for a mail to reach me.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Slightly off topic...but which client do you use on your handset to collect from your IMAP sever? I'm trying to use Pocket Otlook to connect to my 1and1 accounts IMAP server, but it imports so many headers then complains about the connection. Does it over GPRS and Wi-Fi. It appears that I'm not the only one either. There seems to be a lot of people complaining about Pocket Outlook with IMAP.

Cheers

Ventmore

[Guest fraser]

I'm still on the original retro SPV, not seen any problems in two years. I've got it set up to get the last 7 days of headers only, which might be something you are looking to try out. I never delete mails, diskspace is less valuable than my time.

You can't delete mails on the phone at all (they come back next sync), but I've gotten used to that.

[Guest ventmore]

I'm still on the original retro SPV, not seen any problems in two years. I've got it set up to get the last 7 days of headers only, which might be something you are looking to try out. I never delete mails, diskspace is less valuable than my time.

You can't delete mails on the phone at all (they come back next sync), but I've gotten used to that.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry, I thought you had an M2000. Maybe it's a problem with the newest version then.

No matter what you set it to receive in terms of days, it still trys to pull all of the headers in. This seems to be a known problem also.

I would like to find a client that works properly with IMAP, as it is much better than POP. All of my accounts are now forwarded to my 1and1 account, and for 69p/month, they are giving me IMAP access, and a 1Gb mailbox.

Cheers

Ventmore

[Guest fraser]

Bummer. I run my own server, so it's free and it's an unlimited mailbox. OK, so the drive is 160 gig, but that's not going to fill up!

I've got several thousand messages in some folders; that could be really nasty. I guess I could fix it by writing an auto-archive script on the server, to move them into weekly folders, but that just sucks.

Setting up mail will be one of the first things I do, so I'll post back results. Where are you reading about the problem? I've not heard of it at all.

[Guest ventmore]

Bummer. I run my own server, so it's free and it's an unlimited mailbox. OK, so the drive is 160 gig, but that's not going to fill up!

I've got several thousand messages in some folders; that could be really nasty. I guess I could fix it by writing an auto-archive script on the server, to move them into weekly folders, but that just sucks.

Setting up mail will be one of the first things I do, so I'll post back results. Where are you reading about the problem? I've not heard of it at all.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I went googling for an answer to the problem, and it came up with plenty of other people experiencing it.

I also have a fair few emails...2 years worth to be exact...and I'm thinking of maybe using some rules in outlook to move some of the older emails to a different folder.

Keep us posted on how you go with it :lol:

Cheers

Ventmore

[Guest boyo69]

Hi All

Smartner are now re-launching as www.alwaysonmail.com and i have been told that the service will be $49.95USD per year....

so, that's actually about £27 a year...........

i think that's pretty reasonable.....

[Guest Wozbacca]

sounds pretty good, £27 per year.

i assume the mail is downloaded via gprs so will we then be billed for the gprs data usage ontop of the push-to-client service?

it could all add up.

[Guest fraser]

Yeah, that's right Wozbacca. However, I (like others) have my mail sent to sync every couple of hours. That's 12 a day. Say you only get 10 mails that day, this service saves you money AND gets the mail onto your device quickly.

For £27 quid per year, I'll be signing up!

[Guest Wozbacca]

do we know how much data is used on a standard send and recieve with no email going either way?