Apps Android Mail Server?

[ezzieyguywuf]

Would it be hard to develop a mail server that runs on my home computer, maybe even thunderbird, that talks to android?This way, on the G1, we could have the server do all the checking, and then it communicates with the handheld when there are new messages. This SHOULD save battery life since the phone won't be checking every 5 minutes or w/e you have it set to. Possibly, you could even set up filters on the server that your only notified of certain messages, maybe those that are from people in your address book etc. Its just an idea right now. I have python programming experience, albeit not much, but if anyone wants to provide some guidance I'd be willing to take it on. Or criticism if its a bad idea. Let me know!
ezziey

 

[Dustin]

Well, it wouldn't really be a mail server, per se. You can probably do what you're thinking with current Thunderbird (or perhaps an extension on it).

I'd think the best way to notify the mobile is with an SMS message. Since that comes over the cellular connection (not WiFi). You would just have to setup some added functionality to the T-bird filter parsing that allows it to send out an email when certain rules are matched.

Personally, I'd rather my G1 jsut recieve the messages. In most cases, you'd get a notification, but then wonder what the email is, etc etc. And by that time, you might as well have jsut recieved the whole email

Not a bad idea, just giving my opinions.

 

[ezzieyguywuf]

Yea thanks for your comments! Maybe I wasn't clear. What I intend is to preserve battery life by not having the G1 continuously check for emails. Instead, the "server" on my stationary machine monitors for new messages, then communicates with the G1 when there is one. This way, the G1 only checks for messages when it knows that there are messages. In other words, here is the original:
1) set up emails on G1
2) set up frequency to check (higher frequency=more battery drainage)
3) receive email and view on phone

This is what I want
1) set up emails on G1
2) set up thunderbird extension (shouldn't be hard to add functionality, no?)
3) DON'T set up frequency to check. instead, activate communication with thunderbird. This is passive. It waits for a message from thunderbird.
4) When the G1 recieves a message from thunderbird (preferably kept in the background), the G1 email client goes ahead and checks for an email, which it will find.

Does this make a little more sense?

 

[Dustin]

Ahhhh, much.

Yes, ok that would be handy. The trick would be the communication with the G1. I'd still think SMS would be the way to go. Trick would be intercepting it so that it's seemless to the user. You don't want the G1 to beep and say "Hey! you got an SMS" then beep and say "You got mail" ya know?

 

[ezzieyguywuf]

Yea, I agree completely. So, we need a t-bird dev to write the extension for us (might not be too hard to write ourselves actually) and then an android dev to write the front end. As far as the communication, I think your right about SMS being the best way, since its over the air (how would t-bird send an sms?). Prob the only way to make it seemless is the hack the current SMS notifier to not notify on certain messages, i.e if they are "tagged" in a specific way. We would then tag all our t-bird SMSes accordingly and viola, done.

For some reason, that seems like it'd present some sort of security issue...

 

[ezzieyguywuf]

So this thunderbird extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/3448) seems to do half of what we need. It already communicates with thunderbird to find when there are new messages. All that would be needed would be to modify it to send an sms instead of using Growl to notify the desktop user that they have a message. Then, its a simple matter of doing things on the android end. I don't have any experience developing in mozzilla, so it'd be great if someone else could take the lead on that. I'm gonna try and see if I can get into this android stuff though.

 

[ezzieyguywuf]

This link seems to provide some very useful information for the app that I am proposing. Please note that I am not a very skilled programmer, otherwise I'd probably be halfway done with this thing by now. As it stands, I'm on my way to learning java in order to try to do this. I am posting these links here with the express hope that one of you devs will pick it up and write it Also, if anyone would like to help me learn java that'd be great. I know FORTRAN and python. I am currently learning C because I was very confused trying to learn java, and the java syntax looked similar to C (with the curly braces and whatnot).