Pseudo Push FastMail for iPhone

FN49 · 27th June 2009, 01:53 AM

In regard to FastMail's blog post about using the currently free msgpush.com service to sort of fake an email push experience to an iPhone, I've been using it and can offer the following observations if anyone's interested:

Setting the service up for use with FastMail creates a new email account on your iPhone where brief notifications are pushed using Exchange server protocols. Msgpush.com says they don't actually use an Exchange server to do this... they fake it. Your actual emails on FastMail are not read by msgpush.com and they can't be viewed through your msgpush.com account. Your msgpush.com account only sends you a temporary notice that you have new email present over in your FastMail account. It's worth pointing out that you don't even need to bother reading the notices sent to you on your msgpush.com account, because just the mere fact that you received one lets you know you have new email on FastMail! When you actually go open an email on your FastMail account, msgpush.com sees this and automatically deletes the notices it sent you on the msgpush.com account.

To save iPhone battery power and avoid the redundancy of being alerted twice for each email message you receive in your FastMail account (once instantly from msgpush.com and then again later when your iPhone polls your FastMail account), I've found the most effective way to manage message polling and notification is to turn off all automatic message polling for the FastMail account. This is done on the following iPhone menus:

Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data -> Advanced.

Once there, set your FastMail.com account from "Fetch" to "Manual" (if it isn't already). This stops the iPhone from automatically checking for new emails on your FastMail account until you actually open it (in order to read your mail after you've received a notification of new email from msgpush.com). Also, for the msgpush.com account to push properly, make sure you have "Push" turned on the following iPhone menus:

Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data

I hope this helps someone.

John

nighthawk700 · 27th June 2009, 05:42 AM

Does it do notification in folders as well?

beq · 27th June 2009, 05:46 AM

Thanks for the helpful info. A downside to Exchange is that only one account/profile can be used at a time.

I assume that msgpush.com licensed the EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) protocol from Microsoft for the push email support. It's ironic that the msgpush.com founders claim to have derived their motivation from being Gmail users themselves, since Google has already licensed EAS to (initially) support Google Calendar and Contacts push to Windows Mobile and the iPhone, with push email for Gmail/Google Apps via EAS to be added by Google later. When this happens, Google mobile users will have a complete push PIM solution (instead of having to choose between the msgpush.com Exchange account for push email vs the Google Exchange account for push calendar/contacts).

On the client side, Apple also licensed EAS for the iPhone and Snow Leopard to support email/calendar/contacts push from Exchange accounts, as Palm did for the Pre and webOS (although Palm is still working on implementing EAS remote wipe and other features).

BTW I'm curious if the iPhone's Yahoo push email is really done via IMAP IDLE, or via Yahoo's web API? If the former, why would Apple restrict it only for Yahoo? But if the latter, why is push not also supported for Yahoo Calendar and Address Book? As it stands, the iPhone can only sync Yahoo Address Book via iTunes on the desktop, but at least iPhone OS 3.0 now supports CalDAV for over-the-air calendar sync (although it's not push). CalDAV works with Yahoo Calendar (at least the new beta based on Zimbra), as well as Google Calendar (as an alternative to Google's EAS push solution on the iPhone).

FYI Yahoo provides IMAP access (presumably with IDLE) for specially authenticated clients such as Zimbra Desktop, and supposedly the iPhone. Others such as YippieMove apparently have been able to emulate one of these clients in order to gain IMAP access to Yahoo as well.

beq · 27th June 2009, 08:03 AM

I forgot that this thread is in the FM forum, sorry for all the discussion on non-FM services...

Quote:

Originally Posted by nighthawk700

Does it do notification in folders as well?

I doubt it, since IMAP IDLE only monitors one folder per connection/session. I would expect msgpush.com to only handle the main Inbox. Perhaps FN49 can verify?

FN49 · 28th June 2009, 02:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beq

I would expect msgpush.com to only handle the main Inbox. Perhaps FN49 can verify?

To the best of my knowledge, that's correct... msgpush.com only looks at the IMAP inbox and pushes alerts to the iPhone for that.

John

FN49 · 28th June 2009, 02:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beq

I assume that msgpush.com licensed the EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) protocol from Microsoft for the push email support.

Interestingly, msgpush.com seems to have suddenly ceased working for me sometime last night. It's been working great, but inexplicably has stopped pushing message alerts. Hmmmm...

I can't complain... it's free and it's beta after all.

John

FN49 · 29th June 2009, 02:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FN49

Interestingly, msgpush.com seems to have suddenly ceased working for me sometime last night. It's been working great, but inexplicably has stopped pushing message alerts. Hmmmm...

I can't complain... it's free and it's beta after all.

John

Update: I emailed msgpush.com about their service seemly working only intermittently on my iPhone, and I got a quick reply back indicating they're having a reliability issue with a subset of their users... of which I'm one. They're aware of it and working on a fix. The service has been working on and off, but more "on" during the day and "off" during the night.

Regards,

John

DougDoug · 29th June 2009, 11:49 AM

Seems like msgpush only notifies you of new e-mail and does not actually push the new e-mail to the phone. So, new e-mail still needs to be fetched manually or on a schedule. Is that right?

FN49 · 29th June 2009, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DougDoug

Seems like msgpush only notifies you of new e-mail and does not actually push the new e-mail to the phone. So, new e-mail still needs to be fetched manually or on a schedule. Is that right?

That's correct... it's only a message notification service sent via push.

John

michaelab · 29th June 2009, 11:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beq

A downside to Exchange is that only one account/profile can be used at a time.

That's a VERY serious downside. Enough to make msgpush useless for me. I already have my work e-mail configured on my iPhone as an Exchange account which means I can't set up any other Exchange accounts, so msgpush is a non-starter for me and, I imagine, many other people who use Exchange at work and something else for private e-mail.

Michael.

aagarcia · 5th July 2009, 11:35 PM

Just FYI: NuevaSync (http://www.nuevasync.com) has very recently started offering a similar IMAP/ActiveSync service. They've been offering a Google Contacts&Calendar/ActiveSync service for several months now, and I've been happily using that, and they have recently added the mail functionality to this combination. I have not yet tried this service, and don't know if I will, because for me, "push" mail on the iPhone is of limited utility since there is no visual notification of new mail on the lock screen. I've just been using a filter in my FastMail account to send myself an SMS with the sender and subject of any new e-mail that arrives.

mayzie · 10th July 2009, 02:41 AM

To the best of my knowledge, that's correct... msgpush.com only looks at the IMAP inbox and pushes alerts to the iPhone for that.

Yeah, so that makes it useless for me, too.

In general, I'm not sure if the iPhone polls other folders on an IMAP account. When I go into my FM account on the iPhone, it only shows the number of new unread items for the Inbox. I don't get the number of unread items for other folders until I go into them (similar to the "sent" folder in other accounts).

In general, that makes FM and iPhone an unuseful combination for me. I've set up filters to send everything to a Yahoo account for pushing on the iPhone. The SMS filter someone else mentioned also sounds like a good workaround.

I love IMAP folders for use with Outlook on my main computer but it really sets up a lot of barriers with mobile data.

DougDoug · 11th July 2009, 11:16 AM

Can Fastmail send an instant message when an e-mail is received in the in box? (Ideally, an instant message with the subject and/or sender in the body of the IM.) This would provide a great way to offer instant notification of new e-mail messages on an iPhone.

eggman · 12th July 2009, 04:44 PM

you could forward a "squeezed" summary to an account that does suppport push email or just forward to an sms...

beq · 13th July 2009, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DougDoug

Can Fastmail send an instant message when an e-mail is received in the in box? (Ideally, an instant message with the subject and/or sender in the body of the IM.) This would provide a great way to offer instant notification of new e-mail messages on an iPhone.

Not a bad idea. Could brong add such a feature when he starts integrating the webmail with FM's XMPP/Jabber federated IM service? With a nice iPhone IM app like Beejive to maintain your IM presence even when it's not running (via their background connection), this would be a useful push notification solution that doesn't require SMS -- which AT&T charges extra for on top of the iPhone's mandatory unlimited Internet package.

27th June 2009, 01:53 AM	#1
FN49 Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Seattle, WA Posts: 6	Pseudo Push FastMail for iPhone In regard to FastMail's blog post about using the currently free msgpush.com service to sort of fake an email push experience to an iPhone, I've been using it and can offer the following observations if anyone's interested: Setting the service up for use with FastMail creates a new email account on your iPhone where brief notifications are pushed using Exchange server protocols. Msgpush.com says they don't actually use an Exchange server to do this... they fake it. Your actual emails on FastMail are not read by msgpush.com and they can't be viewed through your msgpush.com account. Your msgpush.com account only sends you a temporary notice that you have new email present over in your FastMail account. It's worth pointing out that you don't even need to bother reading the notices sent to you on your msgpush.com account, because just the mere fact that you received one lets you know you have new email on FastMail! When you actually go open an email on your FastMail account, msgpush.com sees this and automatically deletes the notices it sent you on the msgpush.com account. To save iPhone battery power and avoid the redundancy of being alerted twice for each email message you receive in your FastMail account (once instantly from msgpush.com and then again later when your iPhone polls your FastMail account), I've found the most effective way to manage message polling and notification is to turn off all automatic message polling for the FastMail account. This is done on the following iPhone menus: Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data -> Advanced. Once there, set your FastMail.com account from "Fetch" to "Manual" (if it isn't already). This stops the iPhone from automatically checking for new emails on your FastMail account until you actually open it (in order to read your mail after you've received a notification of new email from msgpush.com). Also, for the msgpush.com account to push properly, make sure you have "Push" turned on the following iPhone menus: Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data I hope this helps someone. John

11th July 2009, 11:16 AM	#13
DougDoug Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 9	IM when e-mail received? Can Fastmail send an instant message when an e-mail is received in the in box? (Ideally, an instant message with the subject and/or sender in the body of the IM.) This would provide a great way to offer instant notification of new e-mail messages on an iPhone.

27th June 2009, 05:42 AM	#2
nighthawk700 Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Wash, DC Suburbs Posts: 127	Does it do notification in folders as well?

27th June 2009, 05:46 AM	#3
beq Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: USA Posts: 891	Thanks for the helpful info. A downside to Exchange is that only one account/profile can be used at a time. I assume that msgpush.com licensed the EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) protocol from Microsoft for the push email support. It's ironic that the msgpush.com founders claim to have derived their motivation from being Gmail users themselves, since Google has already licensed EAS to (initially) support Google Calendar and Contacts push to Windows Mobile and the iPhone, with push email for Gmail/Google Apps via EAS to be added by Google later. When this happens, Google mobile users will have a complete push PIM solution (instead of having to choose between the msgpush.com Exchange account for push email vs the Google Exchange account for push calendar/contacts). On the client side, Apple also licensed EAS for the iPhone and Snow Leopard to support email/calendar/contacts push from Exchange accounts, as Palm did for the Pre and webOS (although Palm is still working on implementing EAS remote wipe and other features). BTW I'm curious if the iPhone's Yahoo push email is really done via IMAP IDLE, or via Yahoo's web API? If the former, why would Apple restrict it only for Yahoo? But if the latter, why is push not also supported for Yahoo Calendar and Address Book? As it stands, the iPhone can only sync Yahoo Address Book via iTunes on the desktop, but at least iPhone OS 3.0 now supports CalDAV for over-the-air calendar sync (although it's not push). CalDAV works with Yahoo Calendar (at least the new beta based on Zimbra), as well as Google Calendar (as an alternative to Google's EAS push solution on the iPhone). FYI Yahoo provides IMAP access (presumably with IDLE) for specially authenticated clients such as Zimbra Desktop, and supposedly the iPhone. Others such as YippieMove apparently have been able to emulate one of these clients in order to gain IMAP access to Yahoo as well.

29th June 2009, 11:49 AM	#8
DougDoug Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 9	Seems like msgpush only notifies you of new e-mail and does not actually push the new e-mail to the phone. So, new e-mail still needs to be fetched manually or on a schedule. Is that right?

5th July 2009, 11:35 PM	#11
aagarcia Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 1	Just FYI: NuevaSync (http://www.nuevasync.com) has very recently started offering a similar IMAP/ActiveSync service. They've been offering a Google Contacts&Calendar/ActiveSync service for several months now, and I've been happily using that, and they have recently added the mail functionality to this combination. I have not yet tried this service, and don't know if I will, because for me, "push" mail on the iPhone is of limited utility since there is no visual notification of new mail on the lock screen. I've just been using a filter in my FastMail account to send myself an SMS with the sender and subject of any new e-mail that arrives.

10th July 2009, 02:41 AM	#12
mayzie Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 2	To the best of my knowledge, that's correct... msgpush.com only looks at the IMAP inbox and pushes alerts to the iPhone for that. Yeah, so that makes it useless for me, too. In general, I'm not sure if the iPhone polls other folders on an IMAP account. When I go into my FM account on the iPhone, it only shows the number of new unread items for the Inbox. I don't get the number of unread items for other folders until I go into them (similar to the "sent" folder in other accounts). In general, that makes FM and iPhone an unuseful combination for me. I've set up filters to send everything to a Yahoo account for pushing on the iPhone. The SMS filter someone else mentioned also sounds like a good workaround. I love IMAP folders for use with Outlook on my main computer but it really sets up a lot of barriers with mobile data.

12th July 2009, 04:44 PM	#14
eggman Essential Contributor Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: AU Posts: 465	you could forward a "squeezed" summary to an account that does suppport push email or just forward to an sms...