Wireless Email etc.
[Keywords: SMS, MMS, Email, Outlook, Push]
[I just thought to start using keywords in my headers to make it easier for the reader - please be patient if this is not the proper way to add keywords]
At Xsonic, we just finished our SMS visual design product - DataNow - for accessing databases, so I am busy writing a new spec for the next product, which this time is going to be a desktop "mass-consumption" type product. Guess what? I have included some features for wireless blogging. My interest is more in communal blogging - getting several people to blog in the same place via wireless, trying to leverage the text messaging phenomenon we've seen here in the UK. So far I'm including a standalone blogging feature as well as an interface into Userland's Radio.
I've included a few features to make wireless email easier, but in my thought processes I became very frustrated by how inefficient current email protocols are for taking into account mobility. The main issue is duplication and unnecessary shifting of data in cyberspace and across the Ether to give the illusion of a single inbox. Solutions like Infowave's SymmetryPro and, of course, the infamous Blackberry basically rely upon copying your email and sending copies to your device. They then allow a return path so that you can send email via your Exchange account, either accessed by a server (Blackberry) or via an adjunct to your Outlook program (Symmetry). This solves part of the problem, namely not having to maintain more than one Inbox, like a simple email forwarding to a wireless account would present. HOwever, both these solutions grew out of a two-way paging environment and so include, in effect, a concept of data caching on the device to speed things up. This results in needless sending of data to the device that may not get read, or the need to set up filters on the "forwarding" process.
In the "new era" of wireless we can take a different view, or should I say the 3G era? Depends what that means of course, noting that it used to mean UMTS but now means anything new so that marketing guys can get off the technology step-function hyperbole that has killed them in the past. There is no need to push data to devices, only a service indication (SI) that something has happened. This works as those who are into Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) already know. MMS works by pushing out an SI which contains an encoded URL where the device can go download the picture message (MIME encapsulated). Interestingly enough, the message may well have arrived at the server via SMTP and so it is just like email. The analogy in the actual email world would be to imagine a webmail account where the URL of each message gets pushed out to your device. Of course, you could push out SI's to as many places as you like, including your home PC, office PC and so on.
Seems to me then that with high-speed wireless data (WAN I mean, not WiFi LAN stuff) the SI approach is the one to take, leaving all the mail on the server. Alongside broadband access at home/office, this solutions works. Obviously you don't really need the SI to a desktop, but you might need it to a PDA/WiFi bundle in your home/office to save battery life from any polling that you may otherwise have to do. What I like about the SI approach is that you can run different filters on the destination device rather than the "push server". This means I can have a filter on my WiFi-PDA whilst sitting in a meeting that says "just tell me about messages from Fred". You simply ditch all SIs from anyone but Fred. It doesn't affect accessing those actual email messages as you can still go surf for them of course.
Anyway, lots of things we could think about with this approach, so I'm off to think about them - particularly the security implications and possible solutions. I fancy setting up such a system as a test.
11:26:47 AM 
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