Everyone’s got push e-mail fever these days. Intellisync, Blackberry, GoodLink, Seven, Exchange Direct Push, you name it, someone’s got a solution. But, did you know you may already have everything you need to get the job done?

Do you use IMAP to get your mail? Check out the capabilities of the server. Does it support the IMAP IDLE command? Chances are that if your IMAP software is recent, it does. Here’s an example:

# telnet localhost 143
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK Dovecot ready.
001 capability
* CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT LITERAL+ 
IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE LOGIN-REFERRALS STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN
001 OK Capability completed.

See that IDLE in the capability string? That means this server supports IMAP IDLE. Ok, great, so what the heck does IDLE do? It’s all about pushing new messages out to clients. Here’s how it works.

1. Client makes a connection to the server, does it’s login, looks for new messages, all the usual stuff
2. Client sends the IDLE command to the server
3. Client leaves the connection open, server waits
4. New message shows up at the server
5. Server sends client a response to the IDLE command, informing it of the new message(s) waiting
6. Client picks up the message(s)

Ok, so the messages themselves aren’t getting pushed to the client, but a notification to pick them up is, so that’s the next best thing. In fact, most of the leading commercial “push” solutions work in pretty much the same way. Client opens a connection, leaves it open, server says, “hey, there’s stuff here for you”, client picks it up.

I’ve been using IDLE on my Nokia N73 for about a week now, and it works very well. The only thing to bear in mind is the IMAP operation interval. The IMAP protocol provides for a 30-minute timeout. Some buggy clients, like Outlook Express will allow the clock to expire, and then sit there, wondering why no new messages ever show up. Nice job Microsoft. So how does one keep a connection active if there’s nothing to do? NOOP. What’s that? NOOP == no operation. That is, do nothing.

What does this leave out? OTA sync of data like calendar and contacts. For business customers, those are the real magic. Email’s great, but what’s the use if you can’t use it to its full potential because you either lack access to your address book, or need to use more software that requires a connection to a computer to sync the other bits of data you need. For just folks, isync, nokia pc suite, activesync, or whatever will fit the bill just fine.

Bottom line? Leave the expensive solutions like Blackberry and friends to business users. This will serve you just fine & dandy..

This morning, Heather told me of the emails going around on her Mom’s group email list. Seems that common sense is in short supply these days. At least that’s the impression I got from the emails she read to me.

First up, Purell. It seems that Purell is now the devil. Some parent didn’t heed the warning on the package to “Keep out of reach of children”, and put it on the edge of the bathroom sink. What did her curious toddler do? Same thing any other one would — took a drink. The kid’s ok, didn’t die, but now some of the Moms are on a campaign to rid the world of Purell. Don’t get me wrong, I think Purell is far over-used in our culture. We’re building stronger germs over time because of it. However, I think it’s a wonderful thing when you need to quickly sanitize your hands and for whatever reason, washing your hands isn’t an option.

Next, Magnetix, a toy for older kids that I’ve never heard of. Seems that back in late 2005, a toddler swallowed a couple of magnets from his older brother’s Magnetix toys. The magnets wended their way through the child’s intestines, eventually attracting the attention of each other, twisting the child’s small intestines around to the point of killing the child. This tragedy, while terrible, could have been avoided by not putting the child in a position to eat the magnets in the first place. Even if the bits weren’t magnets, they’re still a choking hazard, are they not? If they’re a choking hazard, they shouldn’t be within the reach of a toddler like that either, now should they?

Parents, let’s all whip out our common sense and band together against reactionary fury over such easily avoidable problems. Here’s a set of basic rules to follow:

1. If it says “Keep out of reach of children”, then do it.
2. If it’s small enough for a toddler to choke on, keep it away from the toddler
3. If it’s probably going to hurt the child when he/she is unsupervised, find somewhere else to put it.

As parents, we need to realize that we’re the responsible ones. So, go be responsible already.

Update: It seems I’m not the only one to point out some of these things… To the guy who pointed out the Slashdot story about this, thanks.. Honestly, I don’t read /. regularly any more…

I’ve spent a couple of weeks now with Windows Vista running on a test laptop. So, for that time, I’ve been using 4 operating systems, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Mac OS X 10.4.8 and various forms of Linux (Ubuntu, primarily). Overall, Vista is certainly a bit more easy on the eyes than XP is. But then again, we said the same thing a few years back when we compared 2000 and XP. Did Microsoft simply move a bunch of stuff around, or did they make substantive, useful changes to Windows?

Let’s look at a few examples…

Changes to the Display

For about forever and a day now, you right-click on your desktop, choose properties, and you can change all sorts of stuff, ranging from wallpaper to screen resolution and color depth to desktop icons. Now, with Vista, you right click on the desktop and you get to “Personalize”. What the heck? I don’t know about you all, but when you think about changing your screen resolution, does that make you think “Personalize”? I certainly don’t.

Annoying Measures that Don’t Help

User Account Control, or UAC has to be the single most annoying feature in Vista. The only good thing I can say about it is that it’s certainly a good thing you can disable this annoyance, err… I mean feature. What good does UAC do? If you ask Microsoft, they’ll tell you it prevents bad things from happening to a PC. If you look at reality, all it does is introduce extra clicks that don’t serve any useful purpose. We all already know that users don’t read dialog boxes. They blindly click whatever button that looks like it will get them past the dialog and back to whatever they were doing. Buttons that say “OK” or “Continue” get clicked almost immediately with no attention paid to what question was raised by the dialog.

So what was Microsoft trying to accomplish with UAC? The same thing that Mac OS X does with their authentication dialogs for processes that require root priviliges, or Linux programs like gksudo or kdesu. The problem? UAC is not an authentication system. UAC is all about approving an action. Like I said, it’s certainly a good thing that UAC can be deactivated.

Inconsistent UI

In Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs is gone. Now it’s “Programs and Features”. What possible reason was the change needed? Mouse settings, where you go to do things like change cursors, which sounds a lot like Personalization, now doesn’t it? Doh! There’s a completely different control panel for mouse settings.

Other “minor” things like Vista’s lack of clear differentiation between foreground and background Windows just makes the UI worse.

So, Is Vista a better choice than XP? In a very limited number of ways, yes. Otherwise, it just feels like XP thrown in a blender and cast back into a new mold.

Recently, I spent a bit of time with the Cingular 8125 (aka HTC Wizard) and the 8525 (aka HTC TyTN). Both of these devices are Pocket PC phones, running Windows Mobile 5. The 8125 came first, and just recently the 8525 showed up on the scene, stealing the 8125’s thunder, unseating it as the top dog Pocket PC phone at Cingular.

First, let’s be clear. These devices are PDAs first and phones second. Don’t get me wrong, they’re very good PDAs, and offer excellent wireless capabilities. The 8525 carries with it a laundry list of radio types and frequencies supported. Does all this connectivity make for the perfect mobile device? Perhaps, or perhaps not.

Cingular started selling the 8125 just about this time last year, and continues to sell it today. This is despite the fact that late last year, they started selling the newer, cooler, faster cousin, the 8525. These facts aside, the 8125 has a pretty impressive feature set:

• Ti OMAP 195 Mhz CPU
• 240×320 color screen, 64k colors
• GSM 850/900/1800/1900
• EDGE Class 10
• 802.11b
• Bluetooth 1.2
• Slide-out keyboard
• 1.3 MP digital camera
• MiniSD expansion slot

(more…)

So recently, Heather’s RAZR started acting up. Ok, not so much the phone as the battery. I was quite satisfied with my Nokia E50, so thought about looking into one of the new Black Metal edition E50s for myself, at which point I’d pass on my existing E50 to Heather. Well, the only places I could find them was at various European stores that I’d never heard of before.

So, I went off in search of a new phone for myself. Having recently had occasion to take quite a few pictures with my phone, I decided that something with a nice camera would fit the bill nicely. I wound up settling on the Nokia N73 Music Edition. Why the Music Edition? It was only a few bucks more than the standard N73, except it came in black and with a 2GB MiniSD card in the box. I was sold. The N73 Music Edition would soon be mine.

First impressions? The packaging was classic Nokia, very well done. In the box, as expected was the handset, a battery (BP-6M), charger, data cable (standard CA-53 pop-port) and a nifty clip-on remote control that has a 3.5mm headphone jack on it. Pretty much standard fare, for a phone like this. (more…)

Yesterday, Ken Fisher wrote an excellent piece on Hollywood’s true motives behind DRM. I saw a link to the article on Digg, thanks Kevin Rose.

Ken hits the nail squarely on the noggin in his piece. All the DRM we’re currently enduring, and worse, yet to come, is not about pounding a stake into the heart of piracy. Pirates will always be around. Eh? What about all of this stuff with HDMI and HDCP controlling what content can and can’t be displayed? There are plenty of HDMI devices out there that support, but do not honor HDCP restrictions, for instance. These devices are already in the wild, how will the MPAA & friends stop them? Answer: they can’t.

DRM, as Ken points out, is 100% about you, the consumer. With the DMCA, it’s illegal for you to enjoy fair-use rights that you’ve enjoyed for years. Take that Pirates of the Caribbean DVD you bought. You want to watch that on your iPod? Buy it again, sucker. Oh, you believed them when you saw that commercial for the DVD that said, “Own it today!”??? You know what you own? A plastic case, and the DVD media, not what’s on the DVD. According to the letter of the law, it’s actually illegal for you to invite friends over to watch a movie, since that constitutes a showing of the DVD. Our pals across the pond in the UK can’t legally rip a CD into iTunes either. In short, DRM gives the content provider all of the “rights”. DRM should really stand for “Digital give up all your Rights Management.”

Curiously enough, the VCR was going to destroy the entertainment industry. Funny how that never happened. Also funny is how the studios manage to stay in business with such staggering losses, all due to DVD piracy.

It’s madness I tell you. Just plain madness.

Rise up, don’t buy the lie. Don’t put money in the pockets of greedy individuals. I’m not advocating law-breaking, merely not patronizing a pox on humanity.

Currently playing in iTunes: Crazy by Gnarls Barkley

How appropriate, eh?

Ever get on the phone with a tech support department, only to find you know a lot more about the product or service than the person on the other end of the phone? That’s been my day.

All day today, Cingular GPRS works, then doesn’t work, works again, then goes dark once more. All. Day. Long.

The entire time, nothing but excellent GSM signal. Full bars, or all but 1 bar the entire time. GPRS yo-yo all day long. I’ve had to endure such insightful questions, as “Can you make and receive calls? If you can do that, GPRS is working.” Nevermind the distinction between packet-switched and circuit-switched connections. “It must be a SIM card or a handset issue.” Uh, on 3 different SIM cards, all tried in 5 different devices? I don’t think so. Oh yeah, and this all worked 100% last night before I went to bed.

I did finally get to talk to a guy who seemed to understand the problem I’ve been seeing. It seems that I’m more well-versed in how GPRS works than the majority Cingular’s “tech support”. If one of you is out there reading this, email me, convince me that you’re not all a gang of idiots (save the one clue-filled guy I spoke to, you know who you are – the guy who knew the answer to “life, the universe and everything”).

Thankfully, Intellisync also works over Wifi. So, my E70 has stayed connected all day today, at least while I was in the house.

Currently playing in iTunes: (Nothing But) Flowers by Talking Heads

Seen on a blog discussion thread today…

He’s been trying for ages to clean up his name since he’s matured since then and is not a homophone anymore.

The context? The commenter was talking about a pal of his that used to post some pretty nasty gay-bashing stuff to Usenet way back in the day.

Unfortunately for the commenter, the b and n keys are next to each other.

The retort?

So, what, he’s spelled differently now?

Thank you,thank you. I’ll be here all week.

Ok, so it’s not the funniest thing you’ve read this week, but come on, it’s Friday, laugh. No really, laugh.

Currently playing in iTunes: Prayer for the Dying by Seal

I’d previously read (and even enjoyed) stuff from Roughly Drafted, mostly about the Zune. This time, RD has gone way back into deep left field. RD’s post about Ten Myths of the Apple iPhone has some interesting perspective, some of which is flat-out nuts.

Let’s examine these “Myths”. I’m only going to bother with the two wacko ones.

1. Missing EVDO, HSDPA, or whatever

Yes, the device needs HSDPA. EVDO isn’t even an option, since this isn’t a CDMA device we’re talking about here. The post would have you believe that high-speed wireless data is a niche product that nobody uses. Tell that to anyone that works at a carrier. They’ll talk to you about rising ARPU. Why is ARPU rising? Data. People want high-speed data. HSDPA is the answer to that problem. EDGE, while a step in the right direction, isn’t the answer. And to the fruitcakes who go on about how WiFi is everywhere and 3G networks will be dead in a year, wha???? Do you live in a Starbucks or something?

(more…)

Jhimm just commented to me that he saw a guy where he works wearing a tshirt that says…

C:DOS
run DOS
run DOS run

hehe.