Kai Mai's Blog - Take Back the Web - Nodes for email

Gmail Becomes a Flawed App Platform - Google Adds OAuth to IMAP - Need Access Control By Filters

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:38:54 -0700

I wrote about Email as a platform one year ago. Now Gmail has finally allowed OAuth on IMAP which means you don't need to reveal your password to any app that accesses your emails through IMAP on your behalf.

Why would you want an app to access and act your emails? Because your email box is so overflowed. Here are a couple of uses:

get alerts on important emails
have an app scan through your order confirmation emails and keep a history of your purchases(this is how Blippy got your Amazon purchase history. I know Blippy sounds crazy. I don't think it'll ever succeed in consumer space. But for business users, there's a business case for auto-parsing out email order receipts and filling out expense reports.)

Tags: application platform email gmail oauth imap

How not to contact potential customers for business development/sales?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:43:39 -0800

Recently, there have been a couple of companies(primarily based in China) emailing me about having existing Android mobile apps list on their app stores.

Their proposals are that I submit free apps to their app stores, they'd localize them for free and distribute to millions of users so that I can make a lot of money. Sounds fishy? There are also to other fishy things:

Use CC instead of BCC in email - so everyone knows who else is being contacted(or spammed).
Claim to represent a legit and well-known company, but use an Gmail address to send the email. This is so unprofessional. Then I emailed back and asked why they'd use Gmail. Their response is that they have problems with their email system. Oh, good. If you can't ensure that your corporate email to work properly, how am I going to trust your app store?

Tags: email android professionalism sales

The Next Battle Field between Yahoo & Google & Microsoft: Email 2.0

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:14:24 -0700

Yahoo has already been working on Yahoo Mail Platform to allow 3rd-party developers to write applications enhance Yahoo Mail experience.

Xobni has been enhancing the Outlook experience. I don't know what's the reason of MS not buying Xobni. But Xobni has everything that Outlook and email services ought to have.

Today, Google rolled out new Gmail Lab features to allow preview of youtube, flickr, picasa, Yelp contents whenever they detect relevant links in your emails.

Tags: application api platform email gmail yahoo_mail xobni

How to Set Up DomainKeys to Successfully Deliver Emails to Yahoo and MSN(Hotmail/Live)

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:26:38 -0800

Long gone is the day where your server program can just send emails to anyone without getting rejected or filtered as spam.

This is especially true with email to Yahoo users. It appears that Yahoo just out-right dismisses any email that's not signed with DomainKeys. Your non-DomainKeys-signed emails will not even appear in a Yahoo user's spam box.

In my testing, hotmail/live mail puts non-DomainKeys-signed emails into spam box. Even though GMail checks DomainKeys and SPF record, it is most liberal in letting emails through even when emails doesn't have DomainKeys signing or SPF record.

Tags: yahoo email delivery anti-spam gmail hotmail live.com aol domainkeys dkim

How to Set Up SPF to Successfully Deliver Emails to GMail, MSN(Hotmail/Live), AOL

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:18:55 -0800

The day where your server program can just send emails to anyone without getting rejected or filtered as spam is long gone because of the exploiting email spamming program.

In order to ensure successful email delivery to GMail, MSN(Hotmail/Live), AOL email addresses, you need to use SPF(Sender Policy Framework)

Make sure your mail server is not openly relaying emails.
Gather the list of IPs where your server program(s) will send emails from for your domain.
Set up reverse DNS to associate your domain name with the IPs.
Use Sender ID Framework SPF Record Wizard or The SPF Setup Wizard to generate SPF record.

Tags: email delivery anti-spam spf gmail hotmail live.com aol