Friday, May 30, 2003
It seems that the web address http://sms.vgsmail.com causes problems for a few people using bizarre web caches. Therefore, feel free to use http://www.vgsmail.com for the web or wap interface.
Thursday, May 29, 2003
A couple of improvements to the WML interface:
A very rudimentary version of the 'Account History' page on the web interface is now available for you to check the delivery status of messages. I know it needs to be significantly improved, but at least you can check whether a message you sent has been delivered.
The 'alias' box has been replaced with a menu taken from your alias database: I've got no idea why I didn't do this originally, as it's obvious really... I hope it doesn't break any browsers: let me know if it does!
As someone pointed out to me recently: although I cannot provide free delivery reports to SMS, if you do have a free email-to-mobile facility (such as orange.net) to allow emails to be sent to your phone directly, you can always enable the email delivery reports on vgsmail and change your email address accordingly.
A very rudimentary version of the 'Account History' page on the web interface is now available for you to check the delivery status of messages. I know it needs to be significantly improved, but at least you can check whether a message you sent has been delivered.
The 'alias' box has been replaced with a menu taken from your alias database: I've got no idea why I didn't do this originally, as it's obvious really... I hope it doesn't break any browsers: let me know if it does!
As someone pointed out to me recently: although I cannot provide free delivery reports to SMS, if you do have a free email-to-mobile facility (such as orange.net) to allow emails to be sent to your phone directly, you can always enable the email delivery reports on vgsmail and change your email address accordingly.
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
I've had several requests for delivery reports by SMS. Unfortunately I can not provide free delivery reports to a mobile phone (as do some networks) as I am charged for each message I send out. However, if you wish to pay to receive delivery reports, the functionality is now there (just got to your 'account setup').
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
The drop-down box in the 'Send SMS' page (web interface only at the moment, although I guess there is no reason this shouldn't appear on the wap interface very shortly) has been changed slightly. It now contains a) all your aliases, and b) any other numbers you have used previously as recipients for messages.
Unfortunately I overlooked the (lack of) capabilities of the POP protocol and when I intended to provide a new mail notification facility for both IMAP and POP clients, I assumed that the POP protocol provided the ability to determine the difference between 'read' and 'unread' mail on the server. In the general case, this isn't possible, and the only work-around would be to use specific facilities available to some servers and not to others: I don't really want to do this, and so (for the time-being) I am not going to be providing email notifications for users with POP accounts. If you don't have IMAP, please shout at your system administrator, because it's far superior and you'll really appreciate it in the long run. Alternatively, I strongly recommend fastmail as a mail provider. The good news on this front is that I've had this service running flawlessly for a while now and am pretty happy with the performance.
Unfortunately I overlooked the (lack of) capabilities of the POP protocol and when I intended to provide a new mail notification facility for both IMAP and POP clients, I assumed that the POP protocol provided the ability to determine the difference between 'read' and 'unread' mail on the server. In the general case, this isn't possible, and the only work-around would be to use specific facilities available to some servers and not to others: I don't really want to do this, and so (for the time-being) I am not going to be providing email notifications for users with POP accounts. If you don't have IMAP, please shout at your system administrator, because it's far superior and you'll really appreciate it in the long run. Alternatively, I strongly recommend fastmail as a mail provider. The good news on this front is that I've had this service running flawlessly for a while now and am pretty happy with the performance.
Monday, May 26, 2003
Now that delivery reports seem to be working relatively well, you can select to have them sent to your email address (go to 'account setup' on the web-interface). At present this is a global setting and you'll receive a delivery report for each and every message sent from your account. Please note, however, that the lack of a delivery report does not mean that your message has now been delivered: some providers seem to be a bit slow at sending me delivery reports, even though delivery of messages is pretty good. On the other hand, as far as I am aware, receipt of a delivery report DOES confirm that the message was successfully delivered to the recipient's mobile.
