Elliot Foster wrote:
Of course it's an ancient idea, but that doesn't mean it's not a good
idea. Biff/comsat were local notification or notification via
hostname. Local notification of mail delivery is easy. All modern
biff replacements that I know of function by polling a mailbox
(POP/IMAP) every N seconds/minutes. This is not efficient/practical
for a cell phone.
The closest thing to push mail as a semi-standard protocol is IMAP's
IDLE extension, or Exchange's proprietary protocols. Both of which
require a persistent connection. Again, not practical/efficient for a
cell phone.
It's an old idea, but it's still very much a good idea with no clear
solution in the mobile space, and Michel came up with a very good idea
for notifying the device. It's an obvious need and it would be great
if we could fill it.
I'm not sure what you were trying to add by saying it's an ancient
idea. Care to explain further?
Sure :)
It's a great idea, never thought otherwise. My comment should be taken
to mean, don't reinvent the wheel, take the existing wheel, sand it down
like new, and refinish it so it's all bright and shiny again.
As in, there is already a well established network service designed to
do this, let's not be mucking around with making new scripts and
patching servers to execute scripts. Let's simply re-awaken the use of
comsat/biff and update that software to modern needs - i.e. SMS on
receipt of new mail that pushes the notification to the handheld and
then the handheld can immediately respond as the user wants. That
prevents the need of having an established IDLE connection all the time
that needs to periodically poll. (mobile phones need to poll even in
IDLE because more often than not they are behind a NAT gateway which
will drop idle connections)
This is what "push" email does w/ exchange when you configure your phone
to ask for SMS for email notification.
-david
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