.KEYWORD internet0501
.FLYINGHEAD THE INTERNET IN YOUR PALM DEVICE
.TITLE Email solutions, from simple to sophisticated
.DEPT
.SUMMARY In last month’s issue of PalmPower’s Enterprise Edition, we surveyed the wide variety of wireless email software available for your Palm device. This month, in his "The Internet In Your Palm Device" column, Michael Connick provides a reviewer’s perspective on three of these extremely useful solutions. He’ll also provide you with some tips for wirelessly accessing SSL mail servers.
.AUTHOR Michael Connick
This month’s article is going to be about the function most used by Internet users: email. Palm devices offer a variety of email solutions to their users. Some are classically small, simple Palm applications, while others provide large, sophisticated applications with functionality close to that available on a PC. I’m also going to talk about some tricks that can enhance the power of Palm-based email.
There are actually quite a few email solutions now available for Palm devices. They range in complexity from the built-in Mail program all the way up to MultiMail Pro. In this article, I’m going to cover three of these programs: the built-in Mail program, ProxiMail, and MultiMail Pro. Other email programs certainly exist, such as HandMail (at http://www.widget.co.uk/show.php3?prodnumber=60) and OneTouchMail (at http://www.jpmobile.com/otm.asp), but this article is going to be limited to covering the very low and very high-ends of email functionality. In my opinion, you should either choose a small and simple email program or go for the richest possible functionality.
.H1 The built-in Mail program
Every Palm device comes with the built-in Mail program. This program offers the very simplest of email functionality. The Mail application can only send and receive mail by performing a HotSync operation with a PC. It can’t use the PalmModem or a wireless hookup. Palm Mail only works in conjunction with the following PC-based email packages: Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, and Lotus Notes. It’s pictured in Figure A.
.FIG A Every Palm device comes with the built-in Mail program.
In addition to needing a PC to send and receive email, it has other limitations. It can’t transfer a message of more than 8K in size between the PC and Palm device. Messages longer than that are truncated at 8K. The entire original message still resides on the PC, so no information is irretrievably lost. You just can’t see all of it on your Palm device.
.H2 Email attachments
The built-in Mail program can’t handle email attachments. Any email message on your PC that has a file attached to it will only have the message body transferred to the Palm device during a HotSync. The attachment won’t be sent along with it. All that will appear on your Palm unit is a message in the body of the email stating something like, "There are 1 file(s) attached to this message on your Desktop."
There’s an easy solution to this problem if you own the Dataviz Documents To Go program. This solution is DataViz Mail. It’s available for free to Documents To Go users by downloading it from http://www.dataviz.com. It’ll automatically transfer Microsoft Word and Excel email file attachments to your Palm device and allow you to view them using Documents To Go.
.H1 ProxiMail
The next step up from the built-in Mail application is ProxiMail. Remember, the built-in Mail application can only send and receive mail by performing a HotSync operation with a PC. ProxiMail, pictured in Figure B, extends that limited capability.
.FIG B ProxiMail allows you to send and receive email directly over the Internet.
It allows you to send and receive email directly over the Internet and then access this email by using the built-in Mail application. ProxiMail works great with the PalmModem, a wireless modem, or a cell phone.
ProxiMail is elegantly simple and straightforward to use, but it doesn’t support attachments. Since I rarely need to receive attachments on my Palm device, this program works just fine for my use.
In addition to enabling the direct sending and receiving of Mail messages via a modem or cell phone, ProxiMail also increases the maximum email message size that can be viewed by the built-in Mail program up to 32K. The ProxiMail application itself only takes up 41K of memory on your Palm device.
ProxiMail supports the POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) email protocols used by most email servers. Maximum message size is configurable between 512 bytes and 32K in size. Any message received will be truncated if the message size setting is exceeded. It allows you to retrieve just the very beginning of your email messages for review and then decide whether you want to download the entire message to your Palm device or not. Finally, ProxiMail supports up to five different email accounts.
Alas, shortly after this article was written, Pumatech (at http://www.pumatech.com) removed ProxiMail from their Web site. So far, they have not posted information on the future availability of this package. In the meantime, you can download the precursor to this program, Top Gun Postman, from http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/pilot/TGpostman/. It’s very close in functionality to ProxiMail. If I receive any information on the availability of ProxiMail, I’ll let you all know about it in a future column.
.H1 MulitMail Pro
At the top end of Palm email packages is MultiMail Pro. It’s available from http://www.actualsoft.com. MultiMail Pro, pictured in Figure C, provides just about every email function you’d want on a Palm device and has functionality that rivals that found on some PC-based email packages.
.FIG C MultiMail Pro provides just about every email function you’d want on a Palm device.
It’s a completely stand-alone package that doesn’t require the built-in Mail application. It also works with the PalmModem or any wireless solution for Internet access.
MultiMail Pro also supports a wide variety of possible email attachment types. It has a unique architecture that enables developers to create MultiMail plug-ins that allow different attachment formats to be downloadable and readable on a Palm device. It supports receiving and viewing Microsoft Word documents, Quicksheet spreadsheets, CSV (Comma Separated Value) files, and the extraction of Zip file archives. Additional plug-ins are available for handling such attachment types as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) files, PRC/PDB (Palm Resource File/Palm Database) files (even allowing them to be installed on your Palm device), and WAV files that can be played on your Palm computer.
In addition to POP3 and SMTP, MultiMail Pro supports IMAP4 (Internet Message Access Protocol 4). It also supports reading and posting to Usenet newsgroups using NNTP (Network News Transport Protocol). Email messages and attachments can be up to 2MB in size.
Message headers can be previewed to allow you to select which messages you want to download to your Palm device. It also has a filtering function that allows you to automatically file incoming messages into folders of your choosing. MultiMail Pro supports up to eight different email accounts.
On the downside, MultiMail Pro costs $39.95 and takes up 200K of memory on your Palm device. However, given all the functionality this program provides, it’s quite reasonably priced!
.H1 Accessing SSL mail servers
One problem you may run into when using any Palm-based email package is the inability of any of them to access mail servers using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) for security. Right now, there’s not a single Palm email package I know of that will allow you to do so. Since many businesses are now utilizing SSL, this can be a real problem for the Palm computer user trying to access his or her business email. My company, for one, uses SSL on their email server. So how can I access my business email on my Palm device?
There are a couple of tricks I’ve discovered that allow me to access my business email on my Palm unit when I travel. Both of these tricks rely on my home PC to act as a relay system between my Palm device and my business’ email server.
.H2 Auto-forwarding email
The first trick involves using Microsoft Outlook and its Rules Wizard to auto-forward your business email to my Palm device. If you use Outlook as your email package for accessing all your business email, it will have no problem handling SSL email security.
When you’re traveling and want to access your business email from your Palm device, first make sure that your home PC system is set up to automatically start up Outlook when it boots up. That way, when your spouse fires up the PC in the morning, Outlook will automatically start running and retrieving any business email for you. The next thing you do is enable a rule that you created using Outlook’s Rules Wizard. This simple rule automatically forwards a copy of any business email message you receive to your personal ISP (Internet Service Provider) email account.
Since your personal ISP probably doesn’t utilize SSL, you can retrieve any of the messages that are forwarded to it by using ProxiMail on your Palm device. Of course, you won’t able to handle attachments, but, if you’re like me, this probably won’t be an issue for you when you’re traveling. The original message, complete with its attachment, will be on your home PC when you return from your business trip.
.H2 Performing a remote HotSync
A second trick allows you to retrieve SSL-based email complete with attachments! To do this, you simply utilize a remote HotSync operation along with a PC-based relay system that has an email package like Outlook or Outlook Express running on it.
Now this trick is more complicated than the first and requires a few conditions be true. First of all, you’re going to need to have your home PC connected to the Internet via a cable modem or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). It won’t work if you utilize dial-up access through a modem for retrieving email. The reason for this is that you can’t have the HotSync program set up to support modem access and use the same modem to dial out to access your email. Once you set up the HotSync program to use your modem, any other program attempting to access the modem will receive a "modem in use" error.
The next condition is that you have a HotSync conduit available to you that will allow your Palm email program to synchronize with your PC’s email package. This isn’t a problem with built-in Mail users, and there’s a conduit available for MultiMail Pro.
Finally, your email program needs to support attachments. Again, if you’re a built-in Mail user, you can use the free Dataviz Mail program if you own the Documents To Go program (at http://www.dataviz.com). It’ll allow you to access Word and Excel attachments. MultiMail Pro users will have no problem with Word attachments, as well as all of the other attachment types mentioned above.
Assuming all of these conditions are met, getting the email and attachments is very easy. Just have your PC set up to be running your email program and do a remote HotSync operation with it whenever you want to retrieve your email and attachments. The email program conduit will automatically transfer all your new email messages and any attachments to your Palm device during every HotSync operation. It will even handle any outgoing email from your Palm device automatically.
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.H1 Summary
There are a wide variety of email solutions for Palm device users. If, like me, you prefer to use a very simple approach to email that requires little in the way of Palm resources, then you should give ProxiMail serious consideration. If you decide you’d rather have a full-featured email package, MultiMail Pro should meet all your needs. Finally, if you need to access SSL-based email, there are a couple of devious approaches to accomplishing this by utilizing a PC to relay email to your Palm device.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Documents To Go, visit http://www.dataviz.com.
For more information on ProxiMail and Top Gun Postman, visit http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/pilot/TGpostman/.
For more information on PumaTech visit http://www.pumatech.com.
For more information on MultiMail Pro, visit http://www.actualsoft.com.
For more information on HandMail, visit http://www.widget.co.uk/show.php3?prodnumber=60.
For more information on OneTouchMail, visit http://www.jpmobile.com/otm.asp.
For more information about Palm computers, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6f3c2
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