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Do It Yourself Push E-mail?

Wed, 02/28/2007 - 19:10 — Joel

Initially, the cost of wireless data plans was almost prohibitive, but this is changing quickly. Wireless data plans are becoming quite affordable. Considering I have no reason to have either a land phone or cable service, the cost of having a high speed internet connection at home becomes rather ridiculous. Also, spending a large amount of time on the road due to work, training and competing, it would be nice to have an internet connection wherever I travel.

After dropping my phone a couple of weeks ago and the screen going haywire on me, I started exploring the alternatives, especially in the realm of smartphones. After looking at quite a few friends' different units, I settled on the Blackjack. Not eligible for an upgrade, it was eBay to the rescue. Interestingly enough, by monitoring auctions for a few days, I found one for less than Cingular would have charged.

Researching the alternatives for email, by far the coolest solution is push email. However, push email requires a server to monitor my email account, then "push" the messages to my new smartphone. The server monitors my email account. When a new message arrives, the server shoots this email out to my phone. If the phone is not available, it waits until I am again in range, then gives me all my messages and syncs up.

Exploring my options, I wanted something allowing me to be untethered, to have the server somewhere else. There are commercial options available, where my email would be available through a push service. However, this is quite expensive. Stumbling over Funambol, I was intrigued. This may be the answer.

Funambol v3.0 offers

  • Push email: This is what initially made me interested
  • PIM synchronization: Personal information manger synchronization, this includes everything else stored in outlook which is not email. This includes contacts, calendar events, and tasks.

    • Since I already have a linux virtual private server running, installing and getting Funambol running may be a very viable solution for what I am attempting to accomplish. We shall see...