Flow - e-mail based messaging application on your desktop!

[kala-kas]

Hey

I'm sure most of you know what is Microsoft Send - the e-mail based micro messaging application for iOS (codenamed Flow in development). If not, you can look it up. Ever since first leaks about the application I've come to like the idea somehow (though I know, a lot disagree). I'm not a social network preson, I dont own Facebook etc... but I have quite a few buddies that I e-mail with, kind of like a letter buddies. So I like the idea, and I decided to create an application for desktop, that would be 100% email based. (IMAP and SMTP). Only the conversations started in Flow will appear in the application, not all e-mail. There will be option to send full messaging conversation to e-mail as a single message if user should want so and so on...

So I've been working on it, from time to time, a little at a time, but today I managed to get my underlying code to work. No 3rd party libraries are used for IMAP and SMTP, and heres what I've come up with:

My challenges:

Figuring out how I would get the SMTP/IMAP server host name and port for every e-mail provider out there. One idea would be to start off with supporting a few and then build some sort of database from different known providers as time goes on, however I'd love it to be as seamless as possible.

If a Neowin member feels like designing a UI for this, go ahead! Will be credited if I like the idea and implement it. As of now it is just Consoleapplication, to test the things out. Of course in the end product you can have many conversations at the same time, same application window, kind of like Skype

Tell me what you think of it, any critisism is good and will be taken into account. Ideas are also welcome!

Keep you posted,

K

[Royalty]

I like the idea. Is this by any chance open source?

[lj300]

I see Visual Studio on your taskbar.

Is it C#? VB?

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

This reminds me a little bit of Tribal Voice's PowWow instant messenger client, which allowed users to send each other "answering machine" messages when they were offline using email. 

When the recipient of an IM was offline, there was an option to click on their name and send them an "answering machine" message, which was a short (255 characters, if I remember correctly) message.  PowWow used the user's email address as their IM address, so the email addresses were already known to the IM client, and there was a list of popular SMTP/POP3 addresses in the software to configure sending and receiving for popular ISPs and webmail accounts around the world.

The emails were sent with custom Subject: and X-Header: fields ("PowWow Answering Machine" and "X-Application-PowWow:" if memory serves), which allowed them to be easily identified and fetched when the PowWow IM client started up and checked for new offline messages.

Sorry I cannot provide more details, but this was fifteen years ago so I don't recall all the exact details, but hopefully it gives you some ideas.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[kala-kas]

  On 05/10/2015 at 23:14, Royalty said:

I like the idea. Is this by any chance open source?

Expand  

Open source, of course, once I actually have good enough codebase to start with  Havent worked on it for a while, having few off weeks from school, trying to pick up the idea again.

  On 05/10/2015 at 23:28, lj300 said:

I see Visual Studio on your taskbar.

Is it C#? VB?

Expand  

It is in C# as of now, although I'm not quite keen to being stuck with .NET Framework, might move to C++ or C, at least for the very core elements.

  On 06/10/2015 at 20:43, goretsky said:

Hello,

This reminds me a little bit of Tribal Voice's PowWow instant messenger client, which allowed users to send each other "answering machine" messages when they were offline using email. 

When the recipient of an IM was offline, there was an option to click on their name and send them an "answering machine" message, which was a short (255 characters, if I remember correctly) message.  PowWow used the user's email address as their IM address, so the email addresses were already known to the IM client, and there was a list of popular SMTP/POP3 addresses in the software to configure sending and receiving for popular ISPs and webmail accounts around the world.

The emails were sent with custom Subject: and X-Header: fields ("PowWow Answering Machine" and "X-Application-PowWow:" if memory serves), which allowed them to be easily identified and fetched when the PowWow IM client started up and checked for new offline messages.

Sorry I cannot provide more details, but this was fifteen years ago so I don't recall all the exact details, but hopefully it gives you some ideas.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Expand  

Interesting, did a little bit research on that, gave me few extra ideas.

 

Moving to POP3 from IMAP, since its a much more simpler protocol to implement, especially since I'm not using any third party email libraries and have built all the communication myself.

 

There is a problem I see though: I'm not entirely sure, but there is a limit of how many emails you can send in 24h? I'm wondering if it is somethng that is made by ISP-s and only on SMTP port 25 or is it by email providers and also on port 465 (SSL, TLS authentication ports that are used)? The idea of that limit is to prevent the spam. Maybe anyone knows?

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

Rate limiting is decided by each mail provider.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky