.KEYWORD internet0801
.FLYINGHEAD THE INTERNET IN YOUR PALM HANDHELD
.TITLE Pushing enterprise information using mailing lists
.DEPT
.SUMMARY Mailing lists are a valuable piece of push technology that’s been around for a long time. In this month’s "The Internet in your Palm handheld" column, Michael Connick will show you how you can use mailing lists to push enterprise information onto your Palm handheld.
.AUTHOR Michael Connick
Internet "push" technology was all the rage about ten years ago. It was supposed to completely replace Web browsers. Well that didn’t happen, but a simple form of push technology is alive and well on the Internet: the mailing list. This month I’m going to talk about using mailing lists to push enterprise information onto your Palm handheld.
.H1 What is push technology?
It’s probably easiest to define push technology by first talking about the most common form of Internet pull technology: the Web browser. When you use a Web browser for accessing information on the Internet, you need to explicitly navigate to the Web site containing the information you want and then select the page that contains it. In effect, you’re pulling the information you want from the Internet. For example, if you want to find out the latest news about your enterprise, you’ll likely need to fire up a Web browser, navigate to your enterprise’s Web site, and select its news page in order to see this information.
Push technology takes a very different approach to disseminating information. It asks: if you want to check on enterprise news every day, why should you have to manually pull it from the Internet? Why couldn’t you just indicate an interest in subscribing to the information and have it automatically sent, or pushed, onto your computer, Palm handheld, or cell phone?
.H1 What is an example of Internet push technology?
The Internet push technology that most Palm handheld owners are probably familiar with is AvantGo (at http://www.avantgo.com). It’s a classic push service: you subscribe to channels of information in which you’re interested, and whenever you synchronize with the AvantGo service, these channels are automatically pushed onto your Palm handheld. What could be easier for obtaining information you regularly want to see? More information on AvantGo can be obtained in my article, "Be enterprising, use AvantGo for offline browsing" in the June 2001 issue of PalmPower’s Enterprise Edition at http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200106/internet0601001.html.
.H1 What are mailing lists?
The mailing list is a push technology that has been around since before the Internet even existed. It’s built on top of existing email technology and provides a way of distributing information to groups of interested people. In spite of the old age of this technology, it’s just as useful today as it was over 20 years ago.
The plain text email used by the mailing lists is arguably the most powerful publishing tool of the last few decades. That’s because whether a single person creates it or a media conglomerate produces it, the results look the same. This puts the emphasis back on the content itself, rather than the style in which it’s presented.
Mailing lists differ from most other push technologies, such as AvantGo, in a couple of other important ways.
First, mailing lists can be set up to be either uni-directional or bi-directional in operation. Not only can information simply be pushed out to subscribers, but the subscribers themselves can also be allowed to post information to a mailing list. This posting operation simply involves sending a message to a special email address associated with the mailing list. Any information posted by an individual subscriber will then be pushed out to all other subscribers. This bi-directional capability can turn a mailing list from simple information delivery mechanism into a virtual communications forum for its subscribers.
Second, mailing lists don’t require any special software to use them. They’ll work with any device that supports email. If you want to participate in a mailing list with your Palm handheld, all you need is the standard built-in Mail program. If you’ve got a fancier email program that allows you to directly access the Internet through a modem or wireless connection, so much the better.
.H1 How can my enterprise use mailing lists?
Mailing lists can have many uses in the enterprise. Anytime there’s a need to share information with a group of people, a mailing list can be used.
Uni-directional mailing lists can be used to pass along important information to employees from management. Examples of uni-directional mailing lists include daily enterprise news items, new product announcements, new human resource policies, etc. You can also use uni-directional mailing lists to distribute information to the customers of your enterprise.
Bi-directional mailing lists can be used as a way of getting employees to share information with each other. They can provide an electronic bulletin board service for employees to post requests for information or to share acquired knowledge with one another. Sales people can ask other sales people for contact information or share thoughts on how to most effectively sell an organization’s new product or service. Technical staff members can ask questions of one another and share experiences in how particular problems were solved.
In the end, the use of mailing lists by an enterprise is limited only by its imagination!
An example mailing list message is displayed in Figure A.
.FIG A Here’s an example of a mailing list message.
.H1 What does an enterprise need to do to set up a mailing list?
There are two primary ways of creating mailing lists: setting up a listserver program on one of your enterprise’s internal computer systems or using an external service to host a mailing list. Many of the mailing list hosting services are free of charge.
Since a discussion of setting up listserver software on Windows 2000, NT, or UNIX systems is well beyond the scope of this article, let me simply say that it’s not a big job for the typical enterprise IT staff. Available Listserver software is either in the public domain or quite inexpensive. It typically works in conjunction with a standard enterprise email system and scans incoming mail for email addressed to the mailing list. Any such email is then copied and distributed to all subscribers of the mailing list.
If you’re unable to set up such software in your enterprise, you can still utilize mailing lists through an external hosting service. For example, ZATZ, publishers of PalmPower’s Enterprise Edition, sends out millions of opt-in email messages a month. If you’d like to outsource mailing list management (complete with automated opt-in and fail-safe unsubscribe), you can email Theo Durst at theo_durst@ZATZ.com or call 609-497-4501.
.H1 How else can I use mailing lists?
You don’t even have to set up a mailing list to take advantage of this technology. For example, Yahoo Groups (at http://groups.yahoo.com) has hundreds of thousands of already existing mailing lists, most of which are accessible by anyone. They contain a vast amount of information that may be of great interest to you and other members of your enterprise. In addition, Yahoo Groups is just one of a number of public mailing list hosts. A little poking around on the Web will reveal many others. Finally, there are thousands of other mailing lists that are available to the public but are hosted on enterprise systems or personal PCs.
One good example of the type of information that can be found in public mailing lists is information on the Palm handheld. For example, there are well over 100 mailing lists on Yahoo Groups devoted to discussing various aspects of the Palm handheld. And, of course, you can sign up for the PalmPower Magazine Enterprise Edition weekly tip mailing at http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com.
.H1 Conclusion
Although the mailing list is an ancient technology when compared to more advanced information distribution products like AvantGo, it can still be very effectively used to push information out to an enterprise’s stakeholders. It can be an extremely cost-effective communications tool for any enterprise.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on AvantGo, visit http://www.avantgo.com.
For more information on outsourcing mailing list management (complete with automated opt-in and fail-safe unsubscribe) to ZATZ, you can email Theo Durst at theo_durst@ZATZ.com or call 609-497-4501.
For more information on Yahoo Groups, visit http://groups.yahoo.com.
Sign up for the PalmPower Magazine Enterprise Edition weekly tip mailing at http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com.
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 Michael Connick is a Senior Project Manager at BusinessEdge Solutions, Inc. He can be reached at mconnick@monmouth.com. You can also visit his Palm handheld oriented Web site at http://www.monmouth.com/~mconnick/palm.htm.
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6f710
