Push Email Without Exchange? Sure!

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?ContentId=5993' target='_blank'>http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.a...?ContentId=5993</a><br /><br /></div><i>"A clever piece of software allows Pocket PC Phone Edition devices to receive notifications of new e-mails via SMS and then pull them off of an e-mail server. PushMail was written to allow users to be able to receive e-mails over the air, even without a more sophisticated infrastructure provided by a Microsoft Exchange Server. The software relies on the user mailbox's ability to send or forward a message to a SMS gateway when a new e-mail arrives."</i><br /><br /><img src=http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/PushMailSMS.png><br /><br />For those of you who do not have the enjoyable experience (or infinite pain at times) of using an exchange server for your mail, here is a nice piece of freeware that will trigger your device to Activesync when it receives SMS messages indicating new mail. The setup is pretty straightforward, although you'll probably want a plan that includes free incoming SMS messages or an unlimited bucket.

[Paladin27]

This sounds intriguing, but how does it work exactly? I read all the info on the site and (unless I'm ignorant) I don't see how the SMS is triggered from your carrier that their is new mail in some random POP account?

[gorgoroth]

of course, you get a sms when you get mail in your carrier inbox. THe trick is to set your mail account to forward to the carrier mailbox, to get the SMS trigger (free for the maker's carrier for example). You can choose to download the original mailbox instead of the carrier one, if you prefer.

[BevHoward]

With outlook and other email clients which support "rules" you can set up an Outlook account which leaves the mail on the server and forwards incoming messages to your sms address.

_Most_ sms gateways simply truncate the forwarded message, so, you get the sender's address and subject... and then the front of the "stock" outlook forward message.

I have done this in the past and used a subject line string to have the rule only forward those emails which contain specific strings to avoid a huge sms bill... other parameters could be used as well such as the sender id.