|
|
|
Prompt mails
The value of time has gained a new meaning in today’s hectic world. Checking emails takes quite a bit of time of corporate employees. But, more often it is the personal web-based email accounts that require more time to check as compared to the intranet-based office email systems, for obvious reasons.
Using an email client like Outlook and Eudora provide considerable ease, simplicity and offline mail creation and reading. But since web-based mail services rely on advertisements, they usually do not support mail clients. That is, they do not provide POP3 and SMTP server access in order to make it mandatory for their users to visit their sites or portals.
But ePrompter changes all this in an efficient way. This is a free utility that lets you configure web-based email accounts of all the popular services like Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and Lycos, including standard POP3 option.
After the installation, you first have to set up the connection and create accounts. Connection wizard will ask for the type of connection. In case of dial-up, there is an option of automatic dialing so you do not have to manually connect to the internet first.
This means that considerable time is saved as dialing and loading of the mail site saps up a lot of online time. The second connectivity option applicable in Pakistan is “always connected” (cable/DSL). In configuring this type, do not forget to select correct proxy settings — the same that is used by your internet browser. Once this is done, Go to Menu > New Account for account creation. Enter the email address.
Depending upon the domain, mail service provider is automatically assumed, but can be changed too. Enter the password twice and the setup is done. A rectangular box is added in the ePrompter main interface. Note that only 16 accounts can be added at max, until a workaround available at ePrompter site is applied that allows unlimited accounts.
One of the useful options is the availability of generic SMTP. In case a user does not have access to its own SMTP (in case of POP configuration), he may use this free but limited one. It’s limited in the sense that a number of messages over a period of time are restricted to guard against misuse.
Uses and related issues
Although Hotmail can be “POPed”, but this cannot be done in a standard way. Only Microsoft mail clients provide the facility to download mails directly in the inbox. The other option is to use Gmail, which provides free POP and SMTP access, which means you do not have to visit the website.
Again, this functionality can be harnessed only when the user’s computer has direct access to the internet, like at home. In most of the offices, employees are behind some kind of firewall or proxy so their only route to the internet is a web-proxy address which is saved in the browser’s connection settings to allow surfing.
In such scenarios, ePrompter can be quite useful as it communicates through web. Using custom proxy settings under Connection, one can specify IP and port of HTTP and Secure mode separately, as well as authentication information, in addition to the option of using browser settings.
But the most obvious utility of this tool is that all the web mails can be downloaded for offline viewing, and replies can also be composed in offline mode using Outbox. This speeds up the long procedure of online mail viewing and composing that require multiple browser window opening.
Security conscious users will probably have a few questions here. Firstly, the password has to be saved in order for ePrompter to work. Definitely, it is being kept on the user’s own system — though the encryption system used is not known.
Other technicalities to keep in mind is high frequency account updates. Yahoo is known to temporarily ban the IP if the account is checked very often, say in every 5 minutes. So it is always safe to keep the frequency around 15 minutes. And at times, checking Yahoo mail may not work since the website requires confirmation code before proceeding. However, these glitches are temporary.
Secondly, the number of emails shown in ePrompter inbox depends upon the per page mailview set in the web-based service. It is also important to know a major limiting factor of ePrompter. HTML viewing and attachments are not supported. Developers claim that it’s basically scripting and attachments which are responsible for spreading worms and viruses — so all that ePrompter supports is plain text email.
All in all, ePrompter is a nice little tool that can save a lot of time and hassle associated with browser, window, page and ad loading overheads.
|
|
|
|
