"ReMail has just released its application on the App Store, and it’s bringing full text Email search to the iPhone. The application is currently free during its Beta period, and you can grab it here. ... Spotlight omits the actual Email message, which accounts for a sizable chunk of an Email’s content. ... It works exactly as it should, offering suggestions as you type your query and presenting matches as threads so you can see the context that a result was found in. If you search for “Jason inbox”, it knows that you’re looking for a person named Jason in the folder “inbox”. While the application requires internet connectivity if you want to search through your whole inbox, for most queries you won’t need a connection. ReMail has built in smart caching that locally stores all messages from the last two weeks, as well as any messages you’ve previously searched for (people often search for the same messages multiple times to look up things like phone numbers).
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
I've been waiting for this forever, but it strikes me as something that Apple will eventually include in the builtin mail client.
- Ray Cromwell
There's a server component as well, which is a bigger problem for Apple. I agree though that the product will have to continue improving, which is their plan.
- Paul Buchheit
I'm not quite clear why the server component is required. IMAP supports full body message search already. Did they just build an IMAP proxy server which tries to implement SEARCH BODY/TEXT more efficiently than some older servers, or is it a proprietary extension? Paul, might I suggest that they take a look at the IETF Lemonade Profile for mobile IMAP and implement many of the...
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- Ray Cromwell
Ray - thanks for your questions. IMAP servers today typically don't have fast full-text search. Interestingly, even Gmail's SEARCH BODY implementation is dog slow. reMail also has a component that the article touched on only briefly: The server in between figures out which emails you're likely to search for and syncs those to the iPhone, thus allowing good offline search, and not just of the most recent 25-50 messages that the iPhone caches. Lastly, can you send me a link to the IETF Lemonade Profile info?
- Gabor Cselle
I agree, some of them are slow, but the privacy issues scare me, and if I were an enterprise, I'd be more interested in buying the ReMail proxy and hosting it myself rather than hosting it in the cloud, it might even be possible to target it at Sarbanes-Oxley compliance somehow, just an idea. Would it be possible to have an option in the client to not use the proxy if you have a fast IMAP server?
- Ray Cromwell
As an aside, I worked on Push-IMAP/Lemonade at Oracle (proxy approach too), and there are a number of nice things that would be good for iPhone clients: Server-side attachment conversion (IMAP CONVERT), IMAP COMPRESS, server-side forwarding (CATENATE/BURL), quick-resync with CONDSTORE, more efficient search with NOTIFY/CONTEXT, named searches (virtual folders) through FILTER. I always wished someone would pick these up and implement them.
- Ray Cromwell
Wait, you can't currently search your email on an iPhone?? - signed, non-iPhone user
- Jennie Lin
hehe, you have to use Safari + Gmail :) Actually, I'm surprised ReMail is allowed by Apple. There was some previous guy who did an IMAP client, and Apple rejected it because they apparently didn't want people competing with the builtin apps.
- Ray Cromwell
paying 4 bucks a month for email search? well I guess I'll continue using gmail's search :)
- Michael Kamleitner
from Alert Thingy
Ray - good idea, we're actually thinking about licensing the reMail server to companies. :-) As for your other comment, reMail on the phone is not an IMAP client ... the reMail Server is. That's why Apple let us in the App Store IMHO.
- Gabor Cselle
I think you are supposed to be able to search the email server with the new Spotlight in iPhone 3.0 (as well as the 50 or so downloaded ones). I seem to remember someone specifying this.
- Thomas Bøhm
from BuddyFeed
@Gabor, ahh, I see, nice hack around the AppStore. Is it as simple as that? If you tunnel say, IMAP-style commands over your own custom HTTP/XML/JSON protocol, Apple won't bother you? Good luck on ReMail, hope it takes off!
- Ray Cromwell
Talking about emailing, it'd nice to see Friendfeed importing my inbox also. Then, I really dont have to visit another web page.
- Burcu Dogan
I like having each service as an individual contact. Much easier. Can we see the same for Pownce?
- Chris Nixon
Well, IMified has taken bot to a next level.. I even created a customized option to check my google calendar appointments for today (a quick schedule for today) by interacting with bot! Not sure, if they have one for Pownce..
- Jigar Mehta
from bTT
One year later. Just bumping this because it's the one year anniversary of the only item on FriendFeed to get more than 400 likes. (452 at the moment)
- Ken Sheppardson
@Mark thank you for posting something that doesn't make me want to puke
- Pete Delucchi
@Pete I'll try to post less vomit-inducing stuff from now on.
- Mark Wilson
don't stop posting that stuff on my account; it's funny, popular, and although totally nauseating, still somewhat impossible to avert my gaze from...
- Pete Delucchi
Seriously, LOL again. This pic is SO perfect!
- Josh Haley
Ahem. Where's the "@Joanmarie I'll try to post less vomit-inducing stuff"? Huh?? ;-) (This picture is awesome though.)
- Joanmarie
@Mona N. That kids looks determined and pissed. You look startled to see your own fist. I suspect you're too nice to pull off "pissed".
- Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)
This TV $7,000 65-inch uses lazers instead of expensive light bulbs. Much better color and far fewer artifacts. Mitsubishi Electric. Uses 1/4 the power of same sized plasma. Andrew Eisner of consumer electronics search engine http://www.Retrevo.com says it is the first DLP screen that doesn't suck in his opinion.
- Robert Scoble
from email
Anthony: Yup... my 62" Sammie LED DLP is running right in front of me, and is one of my best purchases this decade. 1080p, great black levels, and hella cheaper than the flat-panel alternatives.
- Roger Benningfield
Yeah, cool. Its not quite a Death Star, but its close enough.
- Roberto Bonini
Good discussion of our pessimistic future, but I have to say the major counterpoint to all this is that online advertising is the most measurable way to spend ad dollars. You can't measure ROI on TV, radio, or magazine ads as well as you can with online clicks
- Matt Haughey
The line between the two has been blurred out. Technology "blogs" like Engadget and Gizmodo are perfect examples wanting to break the news 'first'
- Bhavishya Kanjhan
The main attribute of all of the blogs I read regularly is the distinctive personality of their authors.
- Bret Taylor
Was that before blogs started taking on ad dollars like the traditional media?
- Shawn Farner
+1 Bret - the voice is what forms the elusive context to all this random data flow.
- Micah Wittman
IMO there are new breeds -- Online "journals" like Arstechnica, Engadget, etc. that almost function like online "newspapers" in the traditional sense. Then there are "blogs" like Scoble or Andrew Sullivan which are distinctive authors whose opinions you are collecting as well as information. I apologize for the gratuitous use of quotes... The English language is ill suited for these types of distinctions =)
- Mark Philpot
Tech embargoes many times are for promotions, not news. You often get information spoon fed (screenshots and other product promises & descriptions) which turns out to be advertisement, not fact, and basing an article on that instead of a real-live product review (which finds bugs, quirks etc. a press release would never list) can turn out to be misleading to readers.
- Philipp Lenssen
The most valuable blogs are the sources, the platforms of people reporters go to (or should go to) for the facts and expertise that forms their reporting.
- Dave Winer
Blogging *is* about news, in the first person.
- Dave Winer
@brett - I agree. it is about people writing about stuff they cared about. @Dave Winer... you are right about it being news. but it wasn't news as how we knew it. it was different. it was about finding and sharing things. reporters who cared. not press releases.
- Om Malik
Bhavishya Kanjhan... I agree. Anyway it has been good to get off the embargo bandwagon for me personally. nearly four months and well the only thing i can say - i am glad i take my time writing something.
- Om Malik
Simple: they are not blogs, they are news sites.
- eparody
bloggers when they want to do whatever they want, journalists when they want to be taken seriously.
- Allen Stern
Allen, I've seen you make that comment a bunch of times. Let's see if I understand what you're saying. You think we're all hypocrites. Did I get it right?
- Dave Winer
What happened was that blogging became part of the news when it became widespread. PR folks cannot ignore the bloggers because they make a difference. And that's a good thing for us bloggers.
- James Kendrick
So there is a definition? Are we all now supposed to jump in a a box and say this is blogging and that is not. And the plain belly sneetches had none upon thars...
- Stephan Miller
from Posty
The whole piece wreaks of a slow news day and self-promotion. There's really very little new here (and, in classic TechCrunch fashion, it apparently worked?!)
- Charlie Anzman
BBC News is following a container around world for a year to tell stories of globalisation and the world economy - track the BBC Box on a live updating map as it travels the globe.
- Paul Bradshaw
I think some of it isn't malicious, just laziness. If a bigger blog follows you and doesn't link, the next one to post will cite the bigger one. Happens to me all the time.
- Louis Gray
I've asked nicely a few times when I was sure they knew about my article to link to it, and usually they oblige. You just have to be careful about it.
- Jesse Stay
It's the bigger blogger who doesn't link out at all who screws everyone else. I'm still pissed this morning. Jesse, the blog at this top of this mess has done this as long as I've been working as a tech blogger. I'm even more PO'd at the others who should have seen that even the first pingback to the "source" was classy enough to note mine. This is the main reason I'm happy to not have to cover 2.0 all the time. It's a bunch of backstabbing narcissists.
- Cyndy
Cyndy, I have noticed on the three "big" 2.0 sites (TC, RWW, Mashable) that the linking out highly depends on who is writing. That stands for any blog as well, even the B-listers have a problem with that. I have written things on my blog, then someone writes a very similar post with no reference whatsoever.
- Rob Diana