Email2MMS

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Lars Nielsen, MobileNation ApS - Denmark
New member
Username: Larsmservice

Post Number: 98
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Monday, January 03, 2005 - 11:45 pm:   

Hi Bryce.

I have created a service where i can send mms messages from an emailaccount. I have done just like you have described in this forum and it is working fine.
So now i am building a webservice/webmail around this. As long as i am testing, i use the MailBee Webmail system available in a 30 day test. Link: http://mailbee.iforum.com/products/webmail/

For that to work i had to create a pop3 (dummy)account on my mailserver, and set the SMTP to my nowsms server. That made me think a bit.;-)
If nowsms had a (dummy)pop3 service that just answered back if the username exists in nowsms, i would not need my mailserver for this to run smooth. So i got an even better idea.
If i, in nowsms, could set a flag on the user that a pop3 account existed on eg. mail.mymailserver.com, nowsms could email reports, account status, etc. to that user.
That would be great.
When creating a service like Email2mms or email2sms it is (naturally) being done from an emailprogram. In nowsms i am allready using this emailaddress as the username. So if nowsms knew the pop3 mailserver address it could easily send notifications to this emailaddress.
The user would be able to: Send mms messages through the emailprogram, and receive notifications, reports, etc. from nowsms.

Was my writing hard to undestand. Am i making it clear/simple ? ;-)

Hopefully. else please write back. I could set you up in my testapp. so you could see what i mean, or i could call you to show you what i mean.

Best
Lars
Lars Nielsen, MobileNation ApS - Denmark
New member
Username: Larsmservice

Post Number: 99
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Thursday, January 06, 2005 - 03:24 pm:   

Hi Bryce.
Part II.

More questions for you, and after that you must read next thread. it's a great story that'l make ya happy ;-)

Here goes:
I have become so happy for the Email2mms system i have built up via nowsms and a GPRS modem. You must read the next thread to see how my customers are using/testing it. There are limitations in email2mms. There are things i cannot set as default, or can i ? I would like to set things like: Delivery Report(y/n), Read Report(y/n), Prioritym, Forward lock. Is it possible ?

And the last question.
As the operators have firewalled their MMSC's, i have to send all MMS through a MM! connection through a GPRS modem. It works perfectly. But is there a way to change the FROM field from being the modems phonenumber, to something of my own descission ? If yes, can i set that in the email ?

That's about it.
PS: the story will come later. Have to eat now ;-)


Best.
Lars
Lars Nielsen, MobileNation ApS - Denmark
New member
Username: Larsmservice

Post Number: 100
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Thursday, January 06, 2005 - 08:14 pm:   

Ok here's the story.
Actually it happened today. We tested a bit yesterday and did it today.

A person from SonyErr. called me and asked me if i could send mms messages to some employees that would be in Las Vegas this week. 10 to be exact. he needed to send mms messages to these 10 persons many times during the day. Each message should be different with different content.
At first i thought that i could not deliver such a service. Then i thought of how easy my tests had been going sending mms through smtp to Nowsms. So i told him if we could test a bit. He gave me some numbers to send to and everything worked smoothly.
So this morning i gave him access to my beta of a hotmail-like service where you can log in and send emails, sms, and mms messages. I did not expect anykind of response from this guy. He is quite high in the SonyEr. hierachy, and i thought that he would have seen better things. Apparently he had not. He was totally blown away of how easy it was to use this system, and how well it worked. Actually he showed it to a lot of people, and i had to work very hard to keep up. My beta is very beta'ish, and i was only running on one modem. But everything went fine and everybody had a good experience using my system. Actually they asked me to see if i could think of any ideas using this in the Mobile Marketing business.

That's my little bedtime story for you guys at NowSms.
I bet you had not thought of the email2mms you developed to be important, but i think you guys has just been the eyeopener that showed a lot of important people that mms does not have to be hard to use or expendsive to set up. That's the problem wih mms. Everybody thinks that it tricky, hard to use, and that nobody uses it. The reason for noone using it, is that the people that are pulling strings in this business thinks of mms the wrong way.
When you guys get some sparetime, please upgrade this part of Nowsms. It's absolutely "fab"(as we say in Europe).


All the best
Lars S. Nielsen
Mobilenation, Denmark
Mathew A.
New member
Username: Mathew

Post Number: 11
Registered: 12-2004
Posted on Saturday, January 08, 2005 - 02:12 pm:   

Lars, how is your system different from the facility in NowSMS whereby a user can login via SMTP and then submit SMS or MMS to any mobile by addressing it to phone@mmsdomain or phone@smsdomain?
The only difference I see is that you have created pop3users in your mail program, which authenticates via smtp to NowSMS to submit messages for the pop3 users. Right?
Are there no such similar services existing which enable users to send email2mms? email2sms is very common as I see
Lars Nielsen, MobileNation ApS - Denmark
New member
Username: Larsmservice

Post Number: 101
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 09:07 am:   

Hi Mathew.

My system is not very different from your description. I just built up a hotmail like thing for my customers.
Yes i have created pop3 mails on my mailserver. Thesmart thing would be if nowsms could send delivery notifications to the sender.
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Bryce

Post Number: 3884
Registered: 10-2002
Posted on Monday, January 17, 2005 - 07:12 pm:   

Hi Lars,

A few thoughts as I get caught back up on things ...

The POP3 server concept is something that we have been seriously considering. In fact, we'd like to be able to route received SMS/MMS into the POP3 mailbox, so the user could just interact for sending/receiving messages with an e-mail client.

I think that makes a lot of sense, but it does bring up some other issues.

The inability to override the message sender address when sending via a modem is the most frustrating of these, as that prevents the replies from getting back to the correct sender.

However ... hmm ... I just got an idea of how we could handle this for MMS messages.

Hmm ...

We can't get around the issue of not being able to override the sender address.

However, for identification purposes, we could insert the original sender's e-mail at the top of the MMS content.

And I've got an idea for a technique that we could use to correlate any replies that come back to the modem over MMS, so that the reply could get routed back to the correct e-mail address.

Now that would be fab.

I've got to think about this some more. But I think it's doable.

The POP3 server bit is still somewhat involved. But I'm thinking just about improving the following for MMS over GPRS modem configurations:

1.) Insert e-mail sender address into the text of the MMS message. (For when sender is lost because MMS is sent via GPRS modem.)

2.) Tag the MMS message so that we can identify inbound MMS messages that are in reply to that particular message and route the replies to the original e-mail sender.

3.) Handling delivery reports/read reports, would be another plus, but potentially more involved.

As you say, part of the problem with MMS is that it has this perception of being difficult to use and setup (mostly well deserved because of inter-carrier interoperability issues). But if the above issues could be addressed, it could be relatively simple.

Hmm...
Lars Nielsen, MobileNation ApS - Denmark
New member
Username: Larsmservice

Post Number: 107
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Monday, January 17, 2005 - 08:40 pm:   

See that's the real meaning of having a forum. Exchaning ideas. A good product rarely comes from one mind alone. This is creativity at it's best ;-)
Keep on Bryce, i see where you're going and i like it ;-).
A MMS/SMS-Hotmail. My concern right now is delivering delivery reports back to the sender. I see it this way. I can sell a solution where the customer can log into a Hotmail like service, and send out MMS mesages to lots of people. Now the customer would like somekind of gurantee that the messages were actually sent out and received. Delivery reports must be the solution. But how i get the right delivery reports to the right customer i dont know, but it seems you got an idea on that.

This leads me to another question impossible to answer. What telecompany in Europe has the most mms-interconnect deals so that i can deliver to as many countries as possible. My guess for Europe is Vodafone or T-mobile but i dont know.


Keep on Bryce, you're in the right direction ;)

Hmm...
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Bryce

Post Number: 3921
Registered: 10-2002
Posted on Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 09:52 pm:   

Yeah, I discussed the idea some more in the office today.

This kind of capability would open up a lot more possibilities for corporate use. The key is really the simplicity.

We're a bit overloaded right now, getting ready for the 3GSM and CTIA shows ... and development work that is already in the pipeline.

But I'm wondering if something can be kludged together quickly. Hmm...

Delivery reports are only a pain because right now we don't have a conversion from the MMS delivery report format to e-mail. (Well, I guess we do, but not when the report comes in over a modem, so we'd have to adapt that somehow.)

Let me talk it around some more, and see what the easiest way would be for us to implement.

-bn