Mobile Jaw» Email

Windows Phone, Why You Block my HTML Emails?

Mike Temporale — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:30:44 +0000

The “why” part is actually pretty easy to understand, and in case you don’t know, Windows Phone tells you right at the top of the email. Simply tap on the “Read about privacy” and you have the reason – shown in the picture and in the quoted text below.

“Downloading information can verify your email address to a junk mail sender. Help Avoid junk mail by only downloading pictures and messages from senders you trust.”

Seems to make sense, and I fully agree with their stance on this being the default behaviour for emails. The real question, is how do I go about telling Windows Phone that this email is from someone I trust and I actually want to see these pictures. The logical step for me was to add the persons email address to my contacts. Seems to make sense, right? If you trust them, add them to your contacts, then Windows Phone should see them in the contacts and allow me to download the pictures. Guess what? That didn’t work.

The answer is actually really easy and it’s staring you in the face. Perhaps everyone has already figured this out and it’s just me that didn’t clue into it. I don’t know why I didn’t notice this before, but all you have to do is tap on the missing picture and it will download. Further, tapping on any one of the missing images will download all of the missing images in that email.

Windows Phone Team Looks at Conversation View and Unified Inbox in Mango on YouTube

Mike Temporale — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 17:30:00 +0000

Microsoft has posted a couple video’s on YouTube that focus on the new features in Mango and how they work. The first two video’s that I want to bring to your attention are in regards to email. For those that may not be aware, Microsoft has added a conversation view in the Windows Phone Mango release. This feature groups all your emails in a given conversation together for easier reading. This feature has made a huge difference in how I read and manage email on the go. It’s so much easier to catch up on email when you can zip through the whole conversation without having to bounce in and out of messages up and down the inbox. The second video talks about inbox linking – this provides the ability for multiple inboxes to be merged together into one view. While this isn’t something I’m interested in, I know a lot of people like the idea of a unified inbox, so I thought it would be worth while to add it here. The video’s are clearly a little ‘staged’, but they still offer good value in seeing the feature and understanding how it works.

The current rumor is that Windows Phone Mango will be officially released on September 1st with updates to existing devices coming some time after that as carriers and partners finish their testing and release the update. If you haven’t had a chance to check out Mango, these video’s are a great place to start and learn about what you can expect on your Windows Phone in the not too distant future.

Conversation View:

Watch this video on YouTube.

Unified Inbox:

Watch this video on YouTube.

Mobile Wars: Managing Your Email On The Go

Mike Temporale — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:30:00 +0000

Email is one of the more popular features on today’s phones. If you’re not doing push email, then chances are you’re heavy into texting. Staying connecting with work, friends and family while on the go is what a lot of smartphone users are looking to do. When it comes to work, there is no question that Exchange is the dominate email server. And because of that, any serious mobile OS needs to have some sort of Exchange supported backed it.

There’s no question that Microsoft has spent a considerable amount of time building up the Exchange connectivity on their Windows Phone devices. From remote wipe of the phone, to looking up contacts in the Global Address Book, Windows Phones have just about everything you could ask for when it comes to messaging. The biggest feature that Microsoft has yet to add is support for multiple Exchange accounts. Support for this is starting to show up in other platforms. Microsoft needs to keep their mobile messaging experience as the best on the block and the one to beat. If they want to stay in this game, of course.

So how does Google’s Android measure up when it comes to email? From my experience, it doesn’t even come close to Microsoft in this area. There are a number of shortcomings and issues. The first thing you’ll find is that you have a different email application depending on where the email is coming from. There’s one application for Gmail, another application for POP and IMAP accounts, and a third application for SMS/Text messages. On Windows Phones, you have 1 application called Messaging or Email (depending on the manufacturer and version of the OS). That application allows you to add multiple email accounts from various sources with quick and easy navigation between accounts. Under the hood, you’ll find that the SMS engine is actually a different application that can vary based on the carrier. But that’s transparent to the user.

For those of you that may not know, Google has a controlling interest in Gmail. As such, they have included a very nice Gmail client that supports push email, so the device is always up to date with the server. In my tests, it worked quickly at delivering email to my device. Although not as quickly as to my web browser. The Gmail client supports some of the more common Gmail features like Starring emails, and threaded view. However, it doesn’t support more fundamental feature of calendar invites. If I receive an calendar invite, I can read the email and see all the details, but I don’t have the ability to accept the request. I have to go back to my computer, and open the email from the web interface or from some other application like Outlook. To me, that’s something that should be in every mobile email client from the start. How is this device going to help me manage my life if it can’t do something as simple as accepting calendar invitations?

Another big missing feature is support for Exchange. As I mentioned earlier, Exchange is the server choice when it comes to enterprise email. Some companies are using Unix based solutions like Sendmail, but the dominate email server is Exchange and a mobile solution needs to support that. Android has some support, but you’ll find out pretty quickly that it doesn’t stack up. Now, there are third party solutions that will get you almost everything you could imagine when it comes to Exchange support, including enforcing PIN policies. However, you shouldn’t have to purchase or install more applications just to get that basic level of functionality.

There are a number of other things that are missing or wrong when it comes to email on the Android device. I won’t go into any more, as I think you get the picture. This is one area where Microsoft is the clear leader. They need to keep moving and add features that the consumers are asking for if they want to remain in the lead. And Google needs to get the basic functionality integrated if they want to be taken seriously in the enterprise and with the power users.

Roaming Data Only Matters with Email?

Mike Temporale — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:02:50 +0000

Windows Mobile 6 introduced this concept of data roaming when it comes to email. Basically it warns you that you are about to send/receive email and since you are roaming, it may cost you more for that data. Why they didn’t connect this alert to your carriers settings I will never understand. Anyway, the alert is a handy feature when you are actually roaming. For whatever reason, my phone thinks I’m roaming all the time. I know I’m not and my monthly bill reflects that. As such, I find this warning very very annoying. Thankfully Microsoft thought of this and has provided an option that allows you to turn this warning off. The problem I’m having is that I can’t turn this warning off unless I set the account to automatically send/receive email on a given schedule. If the account is set to manual, then I’m stuck with this warning message. :-S

Great feature Microsoft, but to really make this work, take it out of Outlook Mobile and put it into the carrier settings. That way I have one spot to go and disable the warning instead of changing the setting for each of my email accounts. It also allows you to have a different setting for different connections. Perhaps I have a second account that’s cheaper on roaming data, so I don’t want to see the warning when I’m on that network, but I do if I’m on the other network. That seems to make the most sense to me.

Managing Mobile Email with Exchange ActiveSync – Suggestions on Hosting Companies?

Mike Temporale — Sat, 31 May 2008 00:00:33 +0000

Mobile email on a Windows Mobile device really needs an Exchange backend to make it shine. Sure, you can sync mail from your desktop Outlook via ActiveSync and then reply and compose messages from the device, but you have to wait until the next time you connect to that computer before the message actually get sent. So that’s not really useful. There’s another option of setting up the account to connect directly from the device over the air to a backend server. This is a pretty nice solution, but it doesn’t sync contacts or calendar. It’s only good for sending and receiving email. Exchange is the only solution that provides access to email over the air and will sync your contacts and calendar at the same time. So your desktop is the same as your phone – all the time.

For the longest time I have been using the second option – syncing email directly from the device against a backend mail server. The reason I’ve been using this option is partly due to the fact that I can only have one Exchange account per device and I have a couple accounts that I check from my phone making it hard to pick which account is the most important and needs the direct push / always on functionality offered by Exchange. The other reason I haven’t been using Exchange is that I’ve been planning to setup my own server and go the do-it-yourself route. That’s been the plan for a couple years now. Unfortunately, there’s always something that got in the way and I’m still no where near ready to setup and manage my own server. Enough is enough – it’s time to get on the Exchange wagon.

So now the question becomes which hosting provider should I go with? There’s a number of companies offering hosted Exchange service for a small monthly fee. Perhaps on of the more popular companies is 4Smartphone, but there are plenty of others like 1and1, Exchange Mail Hosting, SherWeb, Mail2Web, and so many more. With so many providers, it’s hard to get a good idea of which one has the best offering and the best service. Does anyone have any recommendations on which provider to go with, or which one to avoid?