We had a meeting the other day where a new product / feature was discussed. One of the issues was naming: should we go with a technical acronym that has some buzz but might be scary to people whose lives don't revolve around computers, or should we use a broader term that is an imperfect but more understandable metaphor?

We decided on the user-friendly version.

But one interesting side-discussion was about whether people know or care about POP & IMAP. I'm of the opinion that most people want their technology tools to work without any particular modification needed. I wish more tools were clever enough to be simple. In email, there are decent defaults, but sometimes people need something a little different.

POP and IMAP
Some good definitions can be found here. Here's a short version:

Most email uses the Post Office Protocol, or POP, to download email from a server and store it on a user's computer. By default anyway, messages are removed from the server when they have been downloaded to the user. This is good for saving space on the server, makes all email available even when your Internet connect is down or when you have a laptop away from a wireless network, and makes searching emails faster.

Some people prefer Internet Message Access Protocol, or IMAP. By default, messages are stored on the email server. Folders can be created and used to organize messages, even though the messages still reside on the server. This is good if more than one computer is used to access the same email account and you want your email organization to follow you everywhere.

The Path Less Traveled: Changing Defaults
Alternative POP settings: most email clients will let you keep a copy of your messages on the server. In Outlook, find Tools, Accounts, and look at the properties of the account you wish to change. Use the advanced tab or button to find the box to save messages on the server. A compromise is to leave the messages on the server for an extra few days before removing server-side copies (a week is usually enough for me). When I've done this in the past, I tended to also use the setting to delete messages from the server when I deleted them from my email program.

You'll have to be careful to do this same sort of setting for other computers you might use to get POP email access-- otherwise you'll end up with no messages left on the server.

Alternative IMAP settings: some email programs (not Outlook 2000, which I have on my laptop) will let you download full copies of your messages into your email program. That way, you can look at all of your email offline if need be. In Thunderbird, click Tools, Account Settings, then look at Offline & Disk Space to change settings. I check the top two boxes for keeping my Inbox and any new folders automatically stored on my computer for offline use. If I was low on disk space, I would check the box to not download messages larger than 50KB.

So...POPish IMAP or IMAPish POP
By changing some settings, POP can act more like IMAP or vice-versa.

I should point out that our webmail client uses IMAP to view messages and manage folders on backend mailbox servers. Default configs for most of our customers put messages flagged as spam by our anti-spam systems into a spam folder. This folder is only viewable using the webmail client or when using IMAP-- of course, most folks don't need to look here often, if ever.

A customer wrote in today and asked if our email hosting service worked with Blackberry, i.e., "can I use Blackberry to check my email?" I wrote her a pretty thorough response and thought it would make sense to blog my answer as well. So here goes:

Yes, our email service is compatible with Blackberry. But let me explain the way it works:

Once you get your Blackberry set up, you'll get a Blackberry email address, like: first.last@vzw.blackberry.net. Then, what you.ll do is go into webmail, set your mail forwarding to that email address and you.ll most likely want to check the box for: Save a Copy of Forwarded Email.

Now, you need to understand what this is going to do for you. First, email will still be delivered to wherever you normally check it if you Save a Copy of Forwarded Email (which I recommend because the Blackberry email interface isn.t great and that isn.t where you want important emails to be stored). But it will also forward to your Blackberry so if you.re on the go, you can get your email, respond, etc. It.s really convenient in that way. What I don't like personally is how you have to go and manually turn mail forwarding on and off. It.s kind of a pain because for example, when I'm sitting in front of my computer I don.t want to get email on my Blackberry (but if I.m in front of my computer, I can at least log into webmail and turn it off). However, when I.m trying to sleep at night, my phone constantly buzzes (and I.m not in front of my computer to turn it off). I guess that I could turn it on silent, but I haven.t figured out how to make the email silent and allow the phone or a text message to still buzz me (most likely those are going to be more important, at least theoretically). I.m not sure most people realize that once you set your Blackberry to receive mail, the mail comes one at a time. There is no .check mail. button. When someone hits .Send. you.re going to get the email right away. That.s the unique Blackberry feature, but that feature can also drive you nuts after a while.

One other thing I haven.t been able to figure out yet is how to set my .Reply-To Address. on my Blackberry. So, for example, if I get an email to my regular address, read and respond on my Blackberry, the person who I.m trading emails with ends up sending the emails to my Blackberry email address (because they just hit reply and the .Reply-To. is set first.last@vzw.blackberry.net).

A couple of futuristic ideas we want to pursue are:

1. More advanced settings for mail forwarding, i.e. the ability to tell the system to stop forwarding at 2AM (like when I go to bed) or something like that. And the ability to store email addresses that are frequently used for forwarding. Since my Blackberry email address is long and clunky, it.s a pain to have to remember it.

2. Deeper integration with the Blackberry API. I don.t know much about what that will do for us Blackberry users but I know there are more capabilities out there.

...and in the coming weeks we should have Blackberry documentation online. I.m hoping that some of our gurus help us sort out some of the issues I mentioned above (like how to get a different ring or buzz when you can an email vs. a text message vs. a phone call as well as the .Reply-To. issue). I know we.re working on all of this but I.m not sure where it falls on the current priority list.

I hope this helps.

-- Pat

PS... Blackberry takes a while to get used to. I was really frustrated with it at first, but now I love it. I.ve turned into one of those crackberry addicts that is checking mail in restaurants, meetings, and probably most annoyingly, when people are trying to talk to me. :-)

In addition to the new online help that Steve blogged about, we also have printable help documents available for download. Here are the new administrator guides we added this week:

Domain Hosting Setup Guide (PDF, 95 KB)
When you sign up for our email hosting services, and you already own a domain, this document will walk you step-by-step through the process of changing your MX Records, requesting DNS hosting, or transferring your domain.

Control Panel User Guide (PDF, 1.0 MB)
This guide will help administrators create new email addresses and aliases, set up email forwarding, manage vacation messages, adjust spam filtering preferences, and view statistics about their company.s email usage.

Private Label Webmail (PDF, 420 KB)
With our optional Private Label Webmail feature, you can customize the webmail interface to match your company.s style. This document explains how to change the colors and fonts, customize the headers and footers, add taglines to outgoing email messages, and create webmail signup and login pages.

Also, I want to point out our Email Client Setup page. Here you can find step-by-step directions for setting up Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Thunderbird, Netscape Mail, etc. We.re adding new documents to the collection every few weeks, and I.ll blog about them when they become available. Working on some wireless email clients this month . . .

We hope you.ll find these resources helpful.

--Nell-Marie