Tag: Email »

The long awaited Gmail Push Notification Service is not coming from the search engine giant and creator of Gmail, Google, but from Tiverias Apps: a non-related company specializing in productivity enhancing applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Tiverias Apps have released a statement saying that "GPush is the missing link between GMail and the iPhone. For the first time, receive instant Gmail message notifications". The application was released on the App Store earlier this month but was taken down just hours after its release due to server complications. Tiverias have subsequently fixed the problem and have used this downtime to address other issues and concerns with the application. The downtime serves as both a fix and an update.

In essence, the application will mimic what it is like to receive a text message, where a user is alerted and a notification is shown on the front screen displaying what the message says. Several applications already take advantage of push notifications, but none have been posted to the App Store that allow push notifications of incoming mail.

Users should see signs of increased battery life as well, as data will be pushed instead of pulled. Under the current system, the Mail application operates under "Fetch", a feature that pulls data to the iPhone at specified intervals (usually every 15 minutes). With the arrival of push notifications, data can now be pushed to a phone from external servers as opposed to be being pulled by phone:

Fetch (Data Pulling)
iPhone --> Talks to servers --> Pulls any data from servers

Push (Data Pushing)
Servers talk to Apple --> Apple Push Notification Service --> iPhone

As you can see, in the former (fetch) it is the iPhone that does all the work. With push, it's the third party servers.

We'll have a review of GPush up within a few days of its release. Check back soon!

6.00AM PST
9.00AM EST
14.00PM GMT

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Email n' Walk is exactly that. How many times do you type on the go... walking to your next meeting while simultaneously trying to type on your phone and watch where you are going. I think a huge number of us have, heck I'd be willing to make up a statistic on the spot, let's assume 78.4% of us have tried it at some point. Well, what this app essentially does is, where there normally is a white background to your email as you compose them, there is now a screen that takes the image from your inbuilt camera to show you where you are walking.

Having precious little time between classes, I tend to walk and email often. I have had colleagues over the years with interesting definitions of funny who scare me because I never watch where I am going. Well now they can't scare me because I can finally see in front of me. I can almost liken this app to a spy tool. You can be staring at the phone in front of you 'concentrating' and yet actually be watching what is going on in the outside world. The developers do warn you on iTunes that they "...can not be responsible for your stupidity..." and advise against walking in traffic, which is always good advice.

You use the app by clicking the icon which launches a simple screen to compose your email. In this screen, all you have to do is enter text into the subject field and then your message. The frustrating thing here is that there is no return key as it is replaced with the send button. This can sometimes be a bit irritating if you use the return key often, because you will habitually hit it a few times writing some emails. Anyway, once your email is composed you hit send, which launches you straight into the email client so you can now choose who you are sending it to. From there, you just send it as usual.

The developer may possibly want to consider if it would be possible to have the entire screen as the camera area. The keyboard still obscures half the screen, but this is probably an Apple limitation. Other than that, I like the idea of this app a lot, there really is so much potential. Now that I have seen 'the future' I want this concept implemented more! I tweet a fair bit and would love for one of the twitter programs I use to implement this feature.

Don't get me wrong, the concept is still in it's early phase, so there is plenty of work to do to make it really fantastic, but just think about the potential. I'm really excited about this and I can't wait to see it implemented into other programs.

I have shown this app to a number of people and almost all of them have exclaimed "No Way!" when using it, as well as walking away with my iPhone. For the price, the app is definitely worth buying. It may be that with further updates they will inflate the price due to added usefulness, so I would advise you lovely readers to grab this one while its only $0.99. Have fun showing this one off to your friends.

An odd thing happened last night. Our list of New App Store Applications picked up 5 applications, all nearly the same, all approved at the same time. These apps had been waiting in queue for a while -- some as far back as 8/25.

Sideways - $1.99 - 8/27 - http://148apps.com/app/289146621
Lettera - $1.99 - 8/25 - http://148apps.com/app/289247074
Wide Email - $1.99 - 8/25 - http://148apps.com/app/289274499
Touch Type (Landscape Email) - $0.99 - 9/4 - http://148apps.com/app/288916937
Compose - $4.99 - 9/11 - http://148apps.com/app/290987348

It looks like someone at Apple made the decision, finally, that these applications were OK and didn't duplicate the functionality of Apple apps.