Treo 600 for POP3 user/push emails, suggestions?

**bendernyc** · 02/08/2004, 04:17 PM

Hey guys, I have a client who just set up shop out of her house and I set her up for pop email to retrieve every one min off of her desktop outlook. Is it possible for her to have push email without an exchange server? What is the best way to do it? She currently wants to get an AT&T one but is willing to switch providers, any help would be appreciated, thanks... - Chris

**lgreenberg** · 02/08/2004, 04:22 PM

She could use Snapper and set it up to fetch her e-mail automatically at any time interval of her choosing. It's as close to "push" e-mail as you can get.

**Trez** · 02/08/2004, 04:50 PM

This is what I do to get "blackberry" type push email. I've got both Snappermail and Chatter installed. Chatter works for email, in addition to IM, but I really like Snappermail for full email. Anyway, I've entered my email server (IMAP) into Chatter. Whenever the server gets an email, it pushes it out to Chatter, then Chatter vibrates and/or sounds an alert. I can then read it in Chatter and also send off a quick reply OR I can tell Snappermail to do a POP3 fetch. Chatter does NOT poll and IMAP "pushes" are pretty fast. Before Chatter, I used to have Snappermail do a POP3 fetch every half hour.

PS - Although Chatter implies IM, it can be used for either IM or IMAP email or both. A great product!

**Trez** · 02/08/2004, 04:53 PM

One other thing. If your own email server does NOT support IMAP, you can try out www.fastmail.fm. If you don't want to switch email addresses, you can look at www.mailblocks.com. Although MailBlocks is billed as a spamkiller (and it is 100% effective), it also provides its own POP3 and IMAP servers AND also let you continue to use your own existing email address if you have a paid account ($10/year for basic, $25/year for premium). The entry level account is free, but you're stuck with their domain addresses. I use Mailblocks myself since the SprintPCS IMAP server is inadequate and doesn't work so hot with Chatter.

**bertopl** · 02/08/2004, 11:29 PM

or you can use snappermail / treohelper (free) to do push mail using sms alerts. works great!! email is automatically retrieved within a few seconds of it arriving in my inbox. lotsa people are using this combination, but one advantage I haven't seen mentioned too much is that since triggering happens with sms, a constant network connection isn't necessary if you want to save a little battery life...

**Rob600** · 02/08/2004, 11:52 PM

Treohelper + Snapper is the best IMHO. I do the same as many others and have a SMS dispatched to my phone when an email arrives at my server. Treohelper then fires up Snapper and it retrieves the email. Total time is normally around 30sec.

-Rob

**DuncIT** · 02/09/2004, 07:43 AM

What's TreoHelper, and how does that combination work? Do I need to run something on my server to fire off an SMS with each email receipt?

Dunc

**jfmcdowell357** · 02/09/2004, 08:44 AM

Do a google search for the third program in this combination called Email Notify. It's free.
You set it up to poll your mail box at the interval you wish. When a email hits your box then email notify sends you a SMS. You set treohelper to trigger for say the subject of the sms which is by default New Email <Subject>. So I personally have it set so that treohelper launches snappermail when I recieve a SMS with the words New Email.
After the trigger is recognized, it causes Snappermail to fetch. You can expect about 30 sec for the sms to be recieved, the trigger to be recognized, snappermail to fetch, and your email to be recieved on the treo 600. Of course, I have three email accounts so maybe it might take you say 10 or 15 for all of this to happen.
I hope this is clear and helps.

**dspires** · 02/09/2004, 10:16 AM

I've set up My T-Mobile to send me an alert (SMS) when an e-mail (not a t-mobile e-mail address, btw) arrives. I then run SnapperMail to download. If you have T-Mobile, you can set it up to check multiple e-mail accounts.

**Bob-C** · 02/09/2004, 10:24 AM

if Email Notify has to pull at intervals, how is that any different than just using Snappermail to poll?

I would like to push too but I don't see any options in my bdumail account to send an SMS when a new mail comes in. I'm guessing only certain pop3 sites have that feature.

**jfmcdowell357** · 02/09/2004, 04:22 PM

Yes that's correct, certain sites have that feature.
The difference in having email notify poll your server is that
I have it set for once a minute. You could make it poll once every 2nd if you wanted too, though thats a bit much I'd say.
Email notify requires a computer that is constantly on the net and powered up. Thats usually the case for me.
With Email Notify polling the server instead of the treo it preserves battery life because Snapper doesn't have to do it. It also reduces the chance that you will miss a call due to an active data connection. Snapper now only fetches when it is necessary. It's not true push email but it is so darned close that I can live with the slight delay

**blockburner2700** · 02/09/2004, 06:52 PM

What if I were to use Mailblocks with Sprint BC? How reliable is BC and wouldn't Mailblocks automatically push to BC on my handheld? Just inquiring.

**jfmcdowell357** · 02/09/2004, 10:10 PM

I am not familliar with Mailblocks and I think Sprint BC is not worth the gum on the bottom of my shoe.
But I'll take a look at mailblacks and report my humble opinion

**Rob600** · 02/09/2004, 10:36 PM

Personally, I use a quick procmail recipie to fire off the SMS which means the SMS is outbound as soon as a mail arrives.

**dbouchon** · 02/10/2004, 05:33 PM

On their site, this is really unclear...

Otherwise, do you guys know some e-mail site like fastmail supporting SMS notification? (Sprint mail is to small / bad)

**NJ Dog Doc** · 02/10/2004, 08:43 PM

Does anyone know the settings to download my filtered Mailblocks mail into Snappermail? Can't figure out the incoming server.

Thanks,
Dave

**hlhall** · 02/10/2004, 09:14 PM

Rob600 -- can you post the procmail script you referred to? It sounds really useful...

**Trez** · 02/10/2004, 09:26 PM

Here you go NJ Dog Doc, setup instructions for MailBlocks:

http://support.mailblocks.com/tab_ho...c_clients.aspx

You can hit their POP or IMAP servers and SMTP servers. I'm using Chatter (www.imchatter.com) to get push notifications from the IMAP server. I tried TreoHelper without MailBlocks for a while using the SMS technique, but was getting way alerted via SMS by too many SPAM messages. I'm back to Chatter now since these SPAMs were draining my Treo battery with each SMS alert triggering a SnapperMail fetch for ... Spam!

**Trez** · 02/10/2004, 09:30 PM

One more note. The format of the email server follows this pattern:

app.mailblocks.com (where app is replaced by the subdomain that your account is assigned to)

For instance, if you are inside your Mailblocks inbox, look up at your address bar. It will look something like:

http://app12.mailblocks.com/MessageList.aspx

You are on the app12 subdomain, so your email server is app12.mailblocks.com

You can also click the Options tab from within the Mailblocks web interface to take you to the Email Clients link. That link will open a page that displays all of your server settings. (PS - I'm not sure if the free account gives you this. I have the $10/year account and all the servers are available).

**Rob600** · 02/10/2004, 09:35 PM

Originally posted by hlhall
Rob600 -- can you post the procmail script you referred to? It sounds really useful...

Sure. Keep in mind that I have SUBJECT and FROM sent even though they don't need to be there...mostly leftover from initial debugging. I key treohelper to pickup on something unique to the SMS...in my case it's based on source hostname which appears in the SMS.

Anyways, here it is:

Code:

:0 c
|egrep -i -e '^(Subject|From): '|mail 1112223333@messaging.sprintpcs.com

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