Push email - Help, Hype or Hindrance?
Published by Steve Litchfield at 10:53 GMT, December 6th 2006
I'm sorry, I just can't help it. It's 'The Emperor's New Clothes' all over again. But.... "What's the fuss all about?" Push email. The term has become a tick box feature that every new smartphone HAS to have before it's taken seriously. No push email? No good for a professional then. What rubbish. Read on, and then have your say in the comments!
The idea is that whenever a new email comes in, you'll see it immediately on your smartphone without having to lift a finger to 'check' for email. And, while I salute the idea as being generally a good thing, there are a number of points which are often overlooked about 'push'.
Now, all modern S60 and UIQ 3 smartphones already contain very sophisticated functions for collecting your email automatically, it's all built into Messaging. So every 30 minutes or so (typically), on the days you specify, during the hours you specify, your emails (or just headers, or messages under a certain size) will all be grabbed for you. So Messaging will stay (almost) up to date. And for free, it's all built-in.
Ah, but the devotees of push email say, but your emails might be as much as 30 minutes out of date! Err.... we're talking about email here, the original time-independent communications medium. An email might take hours to get from A to B, depending on what's happening around the Internet. And the whole point of email is that you want the person to get it but it's not critical exactly when it's read. Certainly not to within a few minutes, anyway. After all, if the message was that important, you'd have telephoned and spoken in person.
Another issue is that push email very often isn't true push email at all. OK, if you're part of a big company set up, with an expensive Microsoft Exchange or Blackberry server, then perhaps your push email really is pushed out within seconds of it arriving. But many so-called push systems are piggybacked onto existing POP3 and IMAP mailboxes, each of which has to be polled every 10 or 15 minutes for new messages, before these then get sent out to your smartphone. So there's still a delay, just as if you'd gone with the built-in S60/UIQ solutions in the first place - except that there's now one more thing to go wrong.
Most of all though, and assuming the technology is working OK in the first place, there's the issue of whether you and I really need push email. The term 'Crackberry' has worked its way into popular culture, describing someone who's so addicted to viewing and replying to emails the instant they're received, that they respond on the toilet, during mealtimes, in the middle of the night, etc. Again, email is supposed to be time-independent, i.e. it's not suppose to interrupt whatever the recipient is doing. If it does interrupt, as it does with a Crackberry, then you might as well have phoned them in the first place.
Surely checking email should be done when it's convenient to you, in the same way as you'd check what's come through the letter box in the front door, only a little more often? While out and about, every hour or so I glance at my S60 smartphone's Messaging application. It'll show me a little icon if emails have been retrieved and I can instantly see what they are and open and respond to them. All in my own time and when convenient, fitting email handling in around other, more important things in life.
The thought of being beeped or flashed every 2 minutes just because another mailing list reminder, shopping follow-up or Viagra sales pitch has entered one of my online mailboxes would, quite literally, drive me up the wall.
What do YOU think of push email and the hype behind it? Comments welcome!
Steve Litchfield, 6 Dec 2006
Categories: Miscellaneous, Editorial Thoughts
Platforms: General, S60 3rd Edition, UIQ 3
News Discussion
For the rest people the solution is stupid and useless...
Any e-mail consultant will tell you that the key to managing e-mail is exactly that - managing it, not letting it manage you!
Pick your time, they tell you, to check your e-mails and not reply to everything that just drops into your Inbox as soon as it does so.
My 9300i handles my e-mail just fine with the built in software, thank you very much! Anyone who wants me urgently can call the very mobile I am using to check e-mail!
Hype, hype, hype...
...but very good for Blackberry et al. profits no doubt!
However, the bit you are missing is push-synch. For a couple of quid a month you can subscribe to a hosted exchange account where, not only your mail, but your calendar, contacts and notes are all hosted. You can then set up push to your moble device as well as your home PC. So, any change to your Outlook at all, automatically appears on your mobile and vice versa (or, at least, this is the case for WM5, not used a symbian device in the last year so not sure).
This has the (dubious) advantage that you don't have to plug your phone in to you PC occasionaly to keep it and your PC in synch all the time (not THAT much effort for most of us). However, it has the huge advantage that someone at home (e.g. my wife) can update my calendar, add things to the Outlook note that forms my shopping list, see that I've just been called into a meeting so I'll be home late etc. etc. etc. It is THE single most useful feature of my entire smartphone and I love it. Push mail is handy, but it's all the other bits that come with it that make it a killer app and all for £3 or £4 a month!
I'd be quite happy with my Nokia E61's imap-client polling my mailbox but I just LOVE MailForExchange! It does several things that basic mail-client doesn't. It syncs not only my mail but my calendar and contacts over the air. I have had my E61 for about 6 months now and have not synced it once locally with my computer. I don't have to do anything manually and MfE keeps my mobile allways synced with my hosted Exchange.
Second thing that built in imap-client doesn't do but MfE (and ProfiMail if you prefer IMAP) does is uploading sent messages to server. I find it a very welcome feature that I can later see what I have sent.
MailForExchange is not perfect. The current version doesn't sync tasks (to-dos) and the only folder that it can see in the Exchange server is Inbox but still I like it a lot. I can allways use OutlookWebAccess or OutlookMobileAccess to see in all mail folders.
=)juha
edit: Ok, Bassey was just a couple of minutes faster than I. I can however confirm that Nokia's ActiveSync-client works quite the same as in WindowsMobile devices.
A journalist might well want a piece of information that relates to a breaking news story delivered to them straight away, and they'd also probably have access to a proper push-email system too, so they're going to genuinely depend on the technology.
The problem is when they start to think that the technology is vital for ordinary people, but it almost always isn't. The vast majority of people only need email as and when we check it, which has been possible on smartphones (and even some non-smart phones) for years before push-email became this big new thing.
Very very few people need or want email the moment it appears on their mail server, yet they're being conned into thinking their email will somehow be better if it's delivered through push-email (or pseudo-push-email) in the same way that people with a single desktop PC at home are being conned into getting wi-fi. If someone needs to reach me straight away they'll phone me or text me, and that's the way most people operate in the real world. Journalists don't seem to spend enough time in the real world but live in some get-it-before-it-happens media circus where information has to be delivered within milliseconds of it being created.
I don't agree that mail is not an instant medium - it may not have been in the past - but it is now. If I send an email it usually arrives within a couple of minutes anywhere in the world. This is a could thing and does allow synchronous use.
It is adictive getting mail pushed - in part because peope equate their value to themselves or company through the need to always be in touch (sad maybe). However - when you're waiting on an important piece of information it's reassuring to know it will arrive - once you're back in coverage if necessary (just like SMS) - and can be as long as you'd like.
I think that once mail is used by everyone, and HTML is used as the main format, MMS will die. It does nothing push mail can't do - and push mail does it much better.
regards,
Slart.
> is used as the main format, MMS will die.
MMS is still alive?!!!
;)
Mark
OK, I'm biased because my company doesn't use Push mail, but I'd hate to become the slave of my boss, or anyway to have one more chain between him and myself!
IMHO it's good that this technology exists, but there's way too much hype on this particular subject. The E61, for instance is push-mail compatible, so it does qualify for a "business" use, doesn't it? Well, not really, the address book doesn't even let your perform a search on a company name (if you've entered both a family name and company name in your contacts, anyway)... How are you supposed to handle those big business address books, then, with a so-called business smartphone? ;)
|
Originally Posted by Bassey
> I think that once mail is used by everyone, and HTML
> is used as the main format, MMS will die. MMS is still alive?!!! |
Perhaps its just a cultural difference, but I know that to a lot of young corporate Americans, the ability to get that email quicker is something they want. I know plenty of people who have bought their own Blackberry's or Treo's because the company did not issue them one.
This is of course all work related because for personal use push email is a waste of time, there is SMS for that.
I set my phone (N73) to pull emails between 8am and 6pm every 30 minutes and that does the job for me.
More to see if my forum posts have been answered than anything else!
| Any e-mail consultant will tell you that the key to managing e-mail is exactly that - managing it, not letting it manage you! |
In theory, but in practice email frequently doesn't arrive at all. The huge rise in spam has meant a huge rise in overactive spam filters, and lots of email never makes it to the recipient's inbox, even when the mail is from a non-spamming source with its own domain name.
Time after time I've failed to get an important email only to find it somewhere in the spam box, and people I know have failed to receive my emails because they've also been treated as spam.
I would NOT rely on normal email alone for transmitting important information, and would always contact the recipient by phone to make sure the message has arrived.
ceo
Steve
You forget about IMAP IDLE - it's built-in to the E-Series and N-Series Messaging client and offers true push at no extra subscription cost (providing that your IMAP server supports IDLE).
True, some corporates might feel their executives need to stay connected as and when its required but thats where laptops and vpn access comes into picture.
I feel the PR team at blackberry deserves a round of applause for creating a demand for a product, people can actually live without but feel they need it.
Maybe it's only me, but I find the idea of an"e-mail consultant" slightly scary... (unquote)
Sadly, I have attended a seminar on more efficient use of e-mail with an e-mail consultant - it was actually very good, but the main thrust of it was that you have to learn to manage your e-mail and not be slaved to it.
One of the main tenets is that you choose a time to deal with e-mail and not respond straightaway as other forms of communciation are more suitable for this. This involves turning off audible and visible reminders that e-mail has arrived.
The whole ethos of push e-mail is the reverse of that and will just lead to more stressed people. So "Push off, push e-mail!"
Anyone care to elaborate.
Boom
My personal experience has shown it can be very useful to receive updated documents or presentations (things that can't be done with a phone call) moments before going into a meeting etc.
Quite agree that on a personal level it's not needed though and polling is plenty frequent enough. But that's just maybe because the environement/ messages we recieve aren't as pressured or time dependant? :tongue:
Bassey - I'm currently on WM5 - can you tell me what synch service you use?
Thanks
Jago
To the best of my knowledge Blackberry and the various other solutions are not true push as there is no permanant connection made to the device, though I don't know the technical ins and outs. However, I do know that they are so fast that it really doesn't matter either way.