.KEYWORD internet1001
.FLYINGHEAD THE INTERNET ON YOUR PALM HANDHELD
.TITLE Surf the Web using email
.DEPT
.SUMMARY In this month’s "The Internet in your Palm handheld" column, Michael Connick will introduce you to Web-to-email Servers, an alternative way to get Web-based information onto your Palm handheld. It’s a simple, easy, and quick way to get the information your enterprise needs without the overhead of utilizing a Web browser.
.AUTHOR Michael Connick
In August, I talked about using email technology to push Internet data onto your Palm handheld. This month I’m going to show you how to use email to retrieve Web pages.
.H1 Why would I want to access Web pages using email?
There are a couple of good reasons for wanting to access the Web using something other than a browser program on your Palm handheld. First of all, you may not have any kind of browser on your Palm handheld. Second, even if you have Web browser software on your Palm handheld, you’re likely to find it very slow going compared to using a PC-based browser. The ability to just send an email message to retrieve a Web page for you is a very easy way of getting the information you need from the Web.
.H1 How can I fetch a Web page using email?
You retrieve a Web page by sending an email message to something called a "Web-to-email Server". There are actually quite a few of these servers available, and they are all completely free of charge. Some of them have limits on how often you can use them, but the volume of data the typical Palm handheld user will be requesting shouldn’t be a problem with any of them.
.H1 What Web-to-email server should I use?
The Web-to-email Server I’ve had the most success with is www4mail@collabrium.org. This server actually offers a plethora of services and will even allow you to retrieve binary data from the Web. Of course Palm handheld owners are going to want the simplest service from this server: the retrieval of text data and links from a Web page returned in the body of an email message. Any graphics contained on the Web page will be removed.
In addition to the www4mail server, there are Agora servers (like agora@kamakura.mss.co.jp) and GetWeb servers (like page@grabpage.com). All of these services work slightly differently, but all of them allow you to retrieve data from Web pages via email. If you’re interested in receiving more information about these servers, send an email message to the above mentioned email addresses with just the word "help" (without the quotes) in the body of the message.
.H1 How do I use the www4mail server?
What you do is compose an email message to www4mail@collabrium.org. You can put anything you want, including nothing at all, in the Subject of the message. However, you need to put the following command in the body of the email message:
.BEGIN_CODE
GET URL
.END_CODE
For URL, substitute the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the site from which you want to retrieve text. For example, if you’d like to retrieve the text contained in my Palm OS-oriented Web page, you would put the following in the body of your email message:
.BEGIN_CODE
GET http:\//www.monmouth.com/~mconnick/palm.htm
.END_CODE
Just send this email message to the www4mail server, and you’ll retrieve the text contents of my Web page.
.H1 What happens after I send my email?
Like any email message, you’ll have to wait for a reply. Usually the reply will come back within a couple of minutes, although it may take longer or even shorter depending on the load on the Web-to-email server. To account for this delay and minimize the number of times you need to dial out from your Palm handheld, you can use the following strategy.
First, compose the Web-to-email message on your Palm handheld. Then connect to your ISP (Internet Service Provider) using a modem or cell phone. Send the Web-to-email message and retrieve any email waiting for on the mail server. This can take a couple of minutes if you get a measurable amount of email. Try again to retrieve email to see if the response has come back yet. If not, hang up and try connecting again later.
.H1 What do you get back?
You’ll get back a single email message in response to your request. The first part will contain some usage statistics and general server information. It will look something like this:
.BEGIN_CODE
Dear User,
Statistics of your (per week) usage of this service
===================================================
Remaining Quota : 199 request(s) or 15728640 (bytes)
Used Quota : 1 requests(s) or 0 (bytes)
Last access :
Details for Current Page
————————
URL : http:\//www.monmouth.com/~mconnick/palm.htm
Mail Received : Mon Aug 13 10:39:37 2001
Request Process : Mon Aug 13 10:39:40 2001
Delivery Time : Mon Aug 13 10:39:44 2001
HELP TIP: Try our new help system send the command “help index”
WEB <-> E-mail Service by www4mail version: 2.4p1 running on
collaborium.org
WWW4MAIL Version 2.4p1: For more information send HELP INFO
Notice: All requests to this service are stored in log files.
Disclaimer: The provider of this service cannot be held responsible for the
contents, presentation or mis-presentation of documents.
.END_CODE
Immediately after this will be the text contents of the page you requested. Below is an example of what this looks like:
.BEGIN_CODE
Links To My PalmPower Enterprise Edition Articles
One source of information I think you may find of use are the articles
I’ve written for the Web-based PalmPower Magazine Enterprise Edition.
I hope you will find the following links to these articles helpful for
making fuller use of your Palm handheld.
[1]Be enterprising in real-time, use AvantGo Wireless
[2]Be enterprising, use AvantGo for offline browsing
[3]email solutions, from simple to sophisticated
.END_CODE
Note the numbers above that are surrounded by square brackets, (i.e., [1], [2], [3]). These indicate hypertext links that are stored on the page you requested. At the bottom of the email message, you’ll see the URLs referenced in these links in the following format:
.BEGIN_CODE
1. http:\//www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issuesprint/issue200107/internet0701.html
2. http:\//www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200106/internet0601001.html
3. http:\//www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200105/internet0501001.html
.END_CODE
If you’re interested in following any of the links, you can copy and paste them into new requests you email to the Web-to-email server.
.H1 Conclusion
Web-to-email Servers can provide an alternative way of getting Web-based information onto your Palm handheld. It’s a simple, easy, and quick way to get the information your enterprise needs without the overhead of utilizing a Web browser.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on the Web-to-email servers www4mail@collabrium.org, agora@kamakura.mss.co.jp, and page@grabpage.com, send an email to these addresses with the word "help" in the body of the message.
For more information on Michael Connick’s Palm OS-oriented Web site, visit http://www.monmouth.com/~mconnick/palm.htm.
For more information about Palm computers, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Easy, flexible article reprints
ZATZ now offers a quick, easy, flexible and inexpensive way to use article reprints in your marketing and promotion efforts. You can now get article reprints for a one-time fee of only $200. For details, visit http://mediakit.zatz.com/reprints.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6f94a
