Related
This may be old news to some but new news to others.
As you may know your WM5 and WM6 device can do a wireless sync with Exchange and offers blackberry style 'push' email.
To do this you need a configured Exchange server and for most this can be expensive or impossible to do yourself.
But there is hope, and its free.
www.mail2web.com offers FREE hosted exchange email. The only thing is you get a little add banner along the top but apart from that its corporate style exchange for free. Whats more it comes with OWA enabled also free of charge.
You can even set it to pull email from other POP3 email accounts.
You can access your mail via the web or POP3/IMAP4 clients.
For around 80p a month you can upgrade to their Plus service, this allows you to have the outgoing FROM: address to be your own. For me I use it to send mail from my personal domain.
So the upgrade is well worth it given the other extra features you get.
But take a look at the free service. I first switched a while ago as ntlworld.com has really crap webmail. So got a free account and just forwarded it all to mail2web.com for full outlook wonder.
I think this is a useful tip as I couldnt find anyone else offering free push enabed services.
alternative
Since this service is goint to cost next month, does anyone have a alternative?
I tried windows live, but it doesnt push emails instantly nor does ita have calender and contacts synchronisation :/
I've been trying to find a good new solution as well.
I'm currently trying out emoze, which is an app that allows you to configure push email (with certain service providers). It WORKS, but it doesn't allow full folder sync with gmail, so it's not quite as useful as true push from my IMAP gmail account would be.
seven is another.
I tried mail2web and was unimpressed though all our domains are there now. It wouldn't push html email.
I'd search out a provider that offers IMAP idle but Flexmail is the only app on the WM side to support it.
Hello,
I am a PocketPC user, and I want to completely reorganize the way I am using my private emails, contact & calendar !
I would like to manipulate my data (email, contact & calendar), on the PocketPC AND online on the Web.
Which solution email/contact/calendar solution do you recommend me ?
I have listed these solutions (do you know other possibilities ?):
- Google and Zoho PIM suite: The good, it is online and free. The bad is that there is no way to sync them with the PocketPC.
- Microsoft Exchange: The good, it is on the Pocket PC. The bad, it is costs money.
chris
I use Yahoo. Sync device with Outlook; Outlook and device always the same. Outlook syncs with Yahoo contacts, calendar, etc via Intellisync. So I have a nice backup of everything on Yahoo, can still access things on Yahoo mobile or Yahoo full web.
Outlook on Desktop.
pOutlook on Device.
Yahoo Intellisync to sync Yahoo and Outlook.
Sync Device to Outlook, Outlook to Yahoo.
However this takes mental energy to remember which will be the home to the 'correct' info. So if you edit things in Yahoo, on your phone and in Outlook without first syncing everythign, you can run into issues.
I recently moved to a Service Desk software for my business. It is a served application and I just go to the WWW address to get all the info. Interent dependent though...and web browsing is slow when under the gun...
I also know that if you use the Yahoo mobile plugin system that you pretty much just work from within that shell. Its good for some. I guess it is called Y! Go. I had it on my 8125 and it worked well, a bit slow on the 8125.
I didn't know about this Yahoo sync system. I will have a look at it.
If I understand your feedback, what you are missing is: the need to sync your contacts/calendar directly online from your PocketPC. That's right ?
I do agree with you, the best solution would be to be able to sync online all your applications, that ís the application on the PocketPC (POutlook) and the application on the PC (Outlook).
As far as I know, only Microsoft Exchange is offering this possibility. But it costs quite a lot..
Chris
Google Apps and mail2web
I really like googlemail, and actually use google apps for domains to manage a couple of domain names. I've set up Outlook using IMAP to connect to these accounts but do not schedule mail download. This allows me to easily send emails from my account.
I've then set up mail forwarding within googlemail to a free mail2web account, that is in effect Exchange. This is set up as a push account within Outlook(works really well). Within googlemail I have a rule setup to archive mails once they are forwarded, this gives me a clean inbox should I wish to bring up the IMAP connection to view archived mail.
Could anyone using MS Exchange, give a feedback about this solution ?
Nick, why don't you just use your MS Exchange account (mail2web) ? it seems to me that you don't need to have a gmail account.
Chris
With Mail2web I can only reply and send mails as [email protected]
If I want to send an email from my own domain I need to do it through my Google Apps for Domains setup.
If mail2web could handle personal domains it would be fine. Google do a really good job of this with regard to MX records and reverse dns lookups.
Hosted Exchange would be a nice solution: admitted it costs a few euros per month (6 here) but you get a mailbox which WinMo directly syncs with (without any dirty hacks, plugins and stuff) plus a quite nice webmail/calendaring/collaboration environment (Outlook Web Access).
According to your post, it seems that MS Exchange is actually the only "clean" (=acceptable) way to have the possibility to have your email/contact/calendar on your PocketPC and online.
So, I definitely need to have a look at the offers to see how much it is. Do you know a comparison table of the different companies offering Exchange hosting ?
Nick, i understand now why you still use Google. I do think you can use your own domain with Exchange thought. Maybe not with mail2web.com , but other competitors probably offer this.
How much do you pay for your hosted Exchange ?
spone1, I agree with your conclusion. Which Exchange hosting provider do you use ?
Chris
Mail2web is free!! You may as well sign-up just to see how Push/Active Sync works.
So 95% of the benefits of Exchange (active sync, Outlook Web access etc.) but just no domain hosting. I don't have that many mails that I need to reply to from my domain when I am out and about, so it's really not that big a deal for me to quickly switch accounts when I need to. I'm sure I could get hosted Exchange including a domain or two, but I'd expect it would be between £50 and £100 pounds a year, and wouldn't really give me that much benefit.
But the benefit of having push email is great. ActiveSync does seem to occassional have trouble connecting if my connection type changes through the day. Eg, I connect via WIFI at home, then in the car the phone will pick up 3G, thn by the time I'm at work I'm down to GPRS, at some locations in work I can pick up WIFI again and then for the return journey etc. It can be fixed be manually synchronising to get things running again, but that does kind of defeats the object of push email.
Another alternative is to run your own mail server. It doesn't have to be MS Exchange, there are other that are compatible. But this seems a little like too much hard work without much benefit.
Don't forget that you can use Google with any domain by using Google Apps.
They currently handle MX records for my Domain.
Yeah, Google apps is great, and would be perfect for me if it could handle push email. IMAP isn't the end of the World, just not as slick.
Google apps is my primary mail handler. In effect all mail2web is doing for me is adding push capability
Cloud winmo now
I have a setup that works great for me.
I use a beta (free) service mobipush for push gmail. http://www.mobipush.com/
I use remember the milk for tasks that can be a plugin in google calendar and sync wirelessly with your outlook mobile tasks.
https://www.rememberthemilk.com/
(there is a gadget to add RTM to your gmail screen and intergrated into google calendar.)
I use ogg sync for syncing contacts and calendar.
http://oggsync.com/
Something extra!!!
I also us Jott to add via voice tasks and calendar events to remember the milk and google calendar when I can't type. i.e. when driving.
http://jott.com
This system gives me the cloud experiance of a google phone with the power of a winmo device
I used 4smartphone.net hosted Exchange and before that I'd been using Intellisync for over-the-air sync with Lotus Domino. Intellisync solution was a good one as it provided rather comprehensive sync options. However, I'd been using it few years ago, so I don't really know whether this solution is still available (looks like Nokia had bought Intellisync).
Exchange solution is great for its native support, but lacks few features (like separate folders support and OTA sync for notes).
I think that hosted Exchange 2007 is the preferred option.
Nick-- said:
With Mail2web I can only reply and send mails as [email protected]
If I want to send an email from my own domain I need to do it through my Google Apps for Domains setup.
If mail2web could handle personal domains it would be fine. Google do a really good job of this with regard to MX records and reverse dns lookups.
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I have my personal domain stuza.com pointing to my mail2web.com account and I love it. Works superbly. I can edit calender/contacts and it changes automaticaly on the mail2web server. Also saves a bucketload of time should you decide to flash your phone - you simply give it your email address and it goes away and autoconfigures the exchange settings and then pulls all your contacts/schedule data down. All my mail comes into [email protected] and goes out from [email protected] .... frickin sweet.
I will never live again without an exchange solution.
edit: dont know if it makes a diference but i have a paid mail2web account
Has anybody tried funambol.com? It is an open source project that I recently found. I haven't tested it with the exception of email but it does have contacts and calendar components. I hope it works for you!
gottago
Sprint Touch w/ WM 6.1
windows live mail
windows live mail works just like exchange, syncing calendar, mail, contacts...etc
Push mail works easily and without any setup. Usually it comes with wm6 phones, but you can also install the cab found on the forum.
Xilicon said:
windows live mail works just like exchange, syncing calendar, mail, contacts...etc
Push mail works easily and without any setup. Usually it comes with wm6 phones, but you can also install the cab found on the forum.
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Okay my age is probably getting in the way, but don't you have to use Outlook to synch calendar? Has there been an upgrade to Windows Live Mail or something else I may be missing?
gottago
Sprint Touch w/ WM 6.1
gottago said:
Has anybody tried funambol.com? It is an open source project that I recently found. I haven't tested it with the exception of email but it does have contacts and calendar components. I hope it works for you!
gottago
Sprint Touch w/ WM 6.1
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Further on funambol.com and to the original poster's request. Funambol has it's own web site that will serve to pull/push email and contacts with GMail. I don't use the calendar on Gmail so I can not address that but Funambol provides you a myfunambol web page that will consolidate your email/contacts as well as any calendar/tasks/notes/briefcase on your PPC. So, in effect, you can go to your myfunambol page and see your email, contacts, calendar, etc. all in one place on the web as well as on your PPC. Funambol provides flexibility as to what it actually synchs so you remain in control. While you can schedule your synch times, it also has the option of synching on a 'push' basis. I will admit that this capability is not necessarily perfect at this point but it is clearly being worked on.
This is a great solution for me as I do not use Outlook (too cheap to buy) or Internet Explorer on my PC. I use Thunderbird/Lightning and Firefox. There is a Funambol plugin for Thunderbird that works well.
NOTE: I have no affiliation with Funambol other than as a user of this one product.
gottago
Sprint Touch w/WM 6.1
I did a search and didn't find the software anywhere on XDA -
For those who don't know - you can have your exchange account synced with your G1 in real time.
The only catch, the software is $50/year - a bit expensive but I'm sure something will come out open source eventually.
The software basically grabs all your outlook data for your exchange account and syncs it into gmail contacts/calendar/mail - folders work and using googles send as 2nd email address - you can send mails via the G1 as the email address you use with exchange. It's really a pretty flawless integration of all your exchange data, quite impressive.
I've been using it for a few days and it works flawlessly - they have a free trial too if you aren't sure.
The software is called MailShadowG and can be downloaded from - www.cemaphore.com
Their support is really good too if you require it.
Sorry if this is has been mentioned before, I couldn't find it on search anywhere and wanted to share the info with others who may not have known this was here.
if all you need is the exchange calendar, then u can use google's calendar sync application to sync between google's calendar and the exchange calendar.
Hmmm. This program seems odd. I'm going to stick with TouchDown. www.nitrodesk.com
Mi|enko said:
Hmmm. This program seems odd. I'm going to stick with TouchDown. www.nitrodesk.com
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I didn't even know TouchDown existed.
A few issues I see with touchdown though - it only gives you the calendar events for one single day, and there is no real-time updating, you have to manually go in and refresh to get new email.
One thing I like about MailShadowG - is that, essentially, you are getting all the real-time push and same features of having your exchange with outlook on a Win Mo phone. Full calendar, contacts, and email in real time synced with your exchange.
Even touchdown admits to all these faults, MailShadow does virtually all these -
* Exchange 2003 support has some limitations
* Does not push email (but we're pulling hard for it)
* You have to poll periodically (please dont do it too frequently 3G downloads are rather drain'y on the battery)
* Calendar shows just one day of events (today)
* You have to refresh the calendar yourself. (the only time the calendar refreshes itself if you made a change to a non-recurring event ocurring on the same day)
* You cannot add bcc to email
* You cannot create or edit appointments
aardvark is working on exchange with full push capabilities.
Anyone offering anything that doesn't do real push email, is not worth bothering with IMO.
Push is crucial.
MailShadowG DOES do real push - since your G1 already does push with the Gmail contacts/calendar/gmail.
aad4321-
You might be out of luck then for now, just have to wait for Aardvark. MailShadow is an outlook add-on, roughly. So your PC must be on with outlook running. You must have Exchange Caching enabled as well as the ability to open imap.gmail.com to port 993 - if you can do these things you should have no problem getting it to work.
Do you get exchange at home as well on your outlook?
I was skeptical of MailShadowG at first so I used the trial, but it works extremely well, everything is near instantaneous - it syncs with the phones contacts/calendar/mail and feels just like real-time exchange like I had on my 8525.
However, due to their stupid 1 year license and rather expensive price - I'm banking on there being a cheaper/free exchange solution within the next year or so. Although I do love having all my exchange data backed up in my gmail which is kind of cool.
vr24 said:
MailShadowG DOES do real push - since your G1 already does push with the Gmail contacts/calendar/gmail.
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I don't use Gmail. I use exchange 2003
Henchman said:
I don't use Gmail. I use exchange 2003
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The program sync's your exchange data into gmail and makes it accessible via the G1 - you are still using exchange - in fact, the email you send on your G1 will be sent via your exchange email address. A major benefit to this setup is that all your exchange data is backed up on gmail servers as well. Plus, if exchange should go down, you can send via gmail (setting in the mailshadow config).
vr24 said:
The program sync's your exchange data into gmail and makes it accessible via the G1 - you are still using exchange - in fact, the email you send on your G1 will be sent via your exchange email address.
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Greta, so now I have duplicate emails everywhere, that I then need to delete form my original exchange mailbox.
No thanks.
Henchman said:
Greta, so now I have duplicate emails everywhere, that I then need to delete form my original exchange mailbox.
No thanks.
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Why such negativity? It's like you just want to hate a nice piece of software.
Your only duplicate is a BACKUP.. If you delete a message in gmail (on your G1) then that message is deleted in outlook/exchange. Heck, if you READ a message on your G1 in gmail, it will instantly show up in outlook as read. And vice versa. If you move a file to a different folder on your phone, it moves that file in outlook/exchange as well.
This truly is a pretty all-encompassing exchange solution for the G1. I use it for my business and work email that's on exchange and it works really well.
aad4321 said:
I can only access my webmail client outside of work
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Well your work sucks. Lol. Guess you'll have to keep using the Wing for now until Aardvark is finished - and that is considering Aardvark even works.
It's a shame the company won't let you sync gmail with exchange.
vr24 said:
Why such negativity? It's like you just want to hate a nice piece of software.
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No, but if they're going to charge $50,- A YEAR, then I expect a proper working App, that syncs to Exchange dureclty using proper push, and not same half baked hacked together workaround using ANOTHER email client.
I think that's a pretty reasonable expectation.
If they were offering it for free, it would be an acceptable compromise for now.
Henchman said:
No, but if they're going to charge $50,- A YEAR, then I expect a proper working App, that syncs to Exchange dureclty using proper push, and not same half baked hacked together workaround using ANOTHER email client.
I think that's a pretty reasonable expectation.
If they were offering it for free, it would be an acceptable compromise for now.
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But thats the thing, it's really not "half baked" - I would prefer a one time license fee and also believe it's a bit expensive for what the program does... but they are the ONLY company with a real exchange solution right now. And at the end of the day, my contacts/calendar/email is sync'd with my exchange account 100% with a backup on gmail.
I think it's overpriced but I have to have my exchange on my phone so I don't have a choice. Because of their pricing, as soon as exchange support is released I will be dumping MailShadow - if it was fairly priced, I'd probably actually keep it over a true exchange support due to the backup and gmail integration.
I would rather pay (and I did) $19 for a license from Touchdown and have my phone poll and look actually work like a real program than what this program does for $50/year. If Touchdown doesnt get some things resolved like push (most important) or the options to see or open attachments/embedded jpg's, I will hope that Aardvark comes in where Touchdown falters. But as of now, I am happy with Touchdown until something better comes along....and MailShadow is not it.
somebody7 said:
I would rather pay (and I did) $19 for a license from Touchdown and have my phone poll and look actually work like a real program than what this program does for $50/year. If Touchdown doesnt get some things resolved like push (most important) or the options to see or open attachments/embedded jpg's, I will hope that Aardvark comes in where Touchdown falters. But as of now, I am happy with Touchdown until something better comes along....and MailShadow is not it.
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I've actually been using TouchDown and it's not that bad. I just set it to pull data every hour. One thing I'll warn you about is that it only pulls down data that hits the server after the initial connection and refresh. So, any back email you might have in your box won't be downloaded. Personally, at work I have everything on a 3 day archive, so my mailbox in 3 days won't have anything I received today, which makes it a non problem for me. But I have a feeling they'll probably fix it in the future anyway.
vr24 said:
But thats the thing, it's really not "half baked" - I would prefer a one time license fee and also believe it's a bit expensive for what the program does... but they are the ONLY company with a real exchange solution right now. And at the end of the day, my contacts/calendar/email is sync'd with my exchange account 100% with a backup on gmail.
I think it's overpriced but I have to have my exchange on my phone so I don't have a choice. Because of their pricing, as soon as exchange support is released I will be dumping MailShadow - if it was fairly priced, I'd probably actually keep it over a true exchange support due to the backup and gmail integration.
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It may not be "half baked" but a user agent that dumps the exchange data to gmail is not a "real exchange solution." This thing would get you all sorts of static from a corporate IT department!
If it works for you, great, but it's definitely not an ideal workaround by any stretch.
It is a real exchange solution. It may not be a real exchange solution for every company - but it is for others.
For me, it actually turned my G1 into a phone that has all my exchange data in real-time push. To me, that is a solution
somebody7 said:
I would rather pay (and I did) $19 for a license from Touchdown and have my phone poll and look actually work like a real program than what this program does for $50/year. If Touchdown doesnt get some things resolved like push (most important) or the options to see or open attachments/embedded jpg's, I will hope that Aardvark comes in where Touchdown falters. But as of now, I am happy with Touchdown until something better comes along....and MailShadow is not it.
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Touchdown is extremely limited with no push, whereas MailShadow gives you all your exchange data - both in AND out of the phone in real time. To me, that seems like a pretty ideal solution.
Considering you are using gmail/calendar/contacts - you are definitely getting a "real" program with MailShadow.
I think MailShadow is expensive, but you definitely get what they say you do, and that is ALL your exchange features you are used to, in real-time push - on the G1. You can set appointments on the calendar, get multiple days, instant notification of new emails, integrates with your phones contacts, etc.
Thats true that it doesnt have any push. But at the same time, I wont get in trouble w/my supervisors. Im in IT and we dont allow any corporate email to be forwarded anywhere (especially gmail). I work for a pharmaceutical company so obviously all email has to be secure. Company email going to Gmail is a really big concern for any big corporation, especially in the healthcare field. While I think its a good idea if its a small company or a company that doesnt care about security, it wont cut it for the others. That, on top of a 1 time fee as opposed to a yearly fee....its a no brainer. I change my polling to change by how often I need my email. If Im stepping away from my office, I have it polling every minute. If Im in the office and on my computer, I dont really need for it to be checked, so I can change it to every 5 or 10 minutes. I just hope that either they or Aardvark roll out push Exchange soon, in the meantime, I will continue to use Touchdown.
Yup, hopefully Aardvark comes out soon with a sweet Exchange solution soon.
Hi,
I am currently with a company that has an exchange server and I use it to sync with my phone. However, I am moving to another company that doesn't. I am therefore forwarding email into a gmail account until I sort myself out and can filter my email into another account for mobile use.
I am after software that allows me to sync in a exchange kind of way. I don't mind paying for the software, but I do not really wish to pay a service charge as they usually seem a little expensive imho.
I have looked at windows live (10.6.0034.0800), but the contacts and calendar don't seem to sync properly, so I might as well use imap to collect email, and Google doesn't currently seem to have a WM client.
Any ideas or suggestions welcome.
Cavey
It's not software per se but check out mail2web, they will offer you the full ActiveSync OTA experience for free. Just forward everything to this account and they push it to the phone. Sign up for the free live account. This will give you OTA sync of mail, contacts, calendars and tasks.
IMO, what's really needed for these phones, and might even be on the cards with Google's licensing of the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, is a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server)-like relay package.
A piece of software that sits on a computer or server (or the server) in the office, and stays logged into each of your user's Exchange mailboxes via MAPI, then syncs messages, calendar, contacts etc. realtime to the Google Mail / Gmail account.
Shouldn't be very hard to create, especially for those who have written apps like GsyncIT.
I believe there already is one such package, I found it a few days ago, can't remember the name - it has an M in it ( ), but it looked a bit pricey and like it was intended to do more than just Exchange -> Gmail (was a generic Cloud-sync package).
A fairly simple extension of something like GsyncIT I should think. The Exchange Information Store ACLs would be modified so that user "GoogleSyncAdmin" has Full Mailbox access to the mailboxes concerned, and the users would be mapped to GoogleMail accounts. Job done, proper push synchronisation on Android. The handsets would just be registered to a Gmail account.
The alternative, which may also be on the cards for the same reason, is that Google develop a BIS (Blackberry Internet Service)-like extension to Gmail, whereby Gmail stays logged into your Exchange Account via ExchangeActiveSync, and pulls changes down. This would require working EAS on the user's Exchange Server, and would require providing Exchange credentials to Gmail. I guess it'd be just like their current POP-downloading facility, but for Exchange, and hopefully including Calendar & Contacts sync.
I prefer the BES-like solution personally. No ports need to be opened on the user's Exchange server, you could run multiple Exchange servers behind a no-inbound firewall, and it's probably less troublesome overall. The BES-like package could also inject hidden instruction-messages that control features of the handset, IT policy, block downloads, wipe data etc.
Doing exchange->[beslike software]->gmail->phone would mean that any messages sent from the device would come from your gmail account though, not your exchange account.
Much better to have a true exchange client on the device, then it works both ways.
Deicist said:
Doing exchange->[beslike software]->gmail->phone would mean that any messages sent from the device would come from your gmail account though, not your exchange account.
Much better to have a true exchange client on the device, then it works both ways.
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No, they would just allow you to set Reply-To/From: just like they do with your other existing emails addresses at the moment.
I think this device rapidly needs Exchange/Activesync support, Office Documents and USB internet sharing for free and quick.
I am testing this device for our company and unless it can do these well and ideally free then its a non-starter for us.
This is the product I had seen: http://www.cemaphore.com/index.html
Lowest pricing is $325/yr for 5 users with the online service, which isn't so expensive, but annual pricing is a pain, and can't buy less than 5 users.
cemaphore is buggy.
Their client crashes constantly, and says mail is sent that never really was. Avoid or wait till it's more stable in later versions.