reMail Blog
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reMail is now Open Source
Posted by Gabor on March 5th 2010 18:12
Last month, we announced reMail's acquisition by Google. Since we'll be focusing on other projects at Google, we also decided to remove reMail from the App Store. Existing users were able to keep using it because reMail is a client-only application. Our announcement caused a lot of interest in reMail's product, and we looked at a number of options to make it available in some form. We decided that the best option was to open source the code, which is now available on Google Code as remail-iphone under the Apache 2.0 License.
As someone who is passionate about mobile email, my hope is that developers interested in making email-related apps can use reMail code as a starting point. Part of the reason email apps are hard is because you have to pay the tax of figuring out how to download email via IMAP, parse MIME messages, handle attachments, and store data. reMail has already solved these problems. If you have a great mobile email idea, I hope you will find reMail's source code helpful in your quest.
I put some effort into documenting the source code so you can get started on your ideas quickly. If you like reMail and want to improve it, I have also listed some potential projects with implementation tips. Most of these projects are features that users have requested in the past. I encourage you to contribute improvements back to the project. I've also created the group remail-iphone on Google Groups, which is a great place to ask questions. Best of luck with your projects!
View CommentsreMail Acquired by Google
Posted by Gabor on February 17th 2010 21:37
I'm thrilled to announce that Google has acquired reMail! I will be joining Google in Mountain View as a Product Manager on the Gmail team.
Gmail is where my obsession with email started as an engineering intern back in 2004, and I'm thrilled to be coming back to a place with so many familiar faces. reMail's goal was reimagine mobile email, and I'm proud we have built a product that so many users find useful. Still, I feel like we've only seen the beginning of what's possible. Google is the best place in the world to improve the status quo on how people communicate and share information. If you have what it takes to make these changes happen, I encourage you to reach out and come join me.
You might be wondering what will happen with reMail's product. Google and reMail have decided to discontinue reMail's iPhone application, and we have removed it from the App Store. reMail is an application on your phone. If you already have reMail, it will continue to work. We'll even provide support for you until the end of March, and we've enabled all paid reMail features for you: You can activate these by clicking "Restore Purchases" inside the app. reMail downloads email directly from your email provider to your phone, and your personal information, passwords, and email are never sent to or stored on our servers.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the people that helped make reMail a success. Fabian Siegel, Einar Vollset, Sridhar Srinivasan, Paul Bohm, Marissa Coughlin, Erol Koc, Matt Ronge, and Stefano Barbato have all contributed to building a great product. Our investors saw the potential in improving mobile email and took a bet on reMail in the darkest days of the recession. I couldn't be more grateful to YCombinator: Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Kate Courteau, and Trevor Blackwell all have provided invaluable guidance. Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh endured my slide deck on our multi-step plan for global email domination, and pointed out that instead I should build something small, simple, and useful. It worked.
View CommentsreMail 2.11 is Out!
Posted by Gabor on February 3rd 2010 19:50
Please update via the "App Store" app on your iPhone. reMail 2.11 has a couple of bugfixes, and one cool new feature: The view of folder contents is now updated instantly as reMail downloads mails. A lot of users have requested this, and it's finally in the product.
We're also updating all users of reMail for Gmail to a new version that supports multiple accounts and all the good stuff since 2.4 - we found out that a lot of users are still on reMail for Gmail and we thought they'd probably enjoy a long-due update.
View CommentsHow Friends Use reMail
Posted by Gabor on January 21st 2010 23:15
I'm always happy to get feedback from my friends on reMail and get a sense of how they use the product. While they're likely not representative of the whole userbase, their input is still valuable, and I can actually watch them use the product and find bottlenecks. Here are two examples:
- I have an Indian-American friend who flies back to India once a year for a multi-week trip. Since he's worried about AT&T overcharging him, he switches the phone to airplane mode for the entire trip. He uses reMail to find all the addresses and travel plans he needs, and occasionally downloads the newest emails over Wifi. He's been asking for HTML support in reMail, which is definitely on my list of things to do next.
- My friend Axel lives in Germany and uses an old Nokia as his cell phone, because it's small and the battery lasts forever. He also has an iPod Touch which he's primarily used for gaming and listening to music. Since he doesn't have email access on his Nokia, and his iPod Touch doesn't have GSM, he uses reMail to have access to his email archives when he's not at home or at school.
Have a reMail story to share? Use the "Support/Feedback" button in reMail to send it straight to me!
View CommentsreMail 2.11 Submitted for App Store Review
Posted by Gabor on January 19th 2010 22:34
I just submitted reMail V2.11 for App Store review.
It has one pretty cool feature: The view of folder contents is now updated instantly as reMail downloads mails. A lot of users have requested this, and it's finally in the product.
reMail 2.11 should be on the App Store soon.
View CommentsFCC Chairman (Jokingly) Endorses reMail
Posted by Gabor on January 7th 2010 18:44
GigaOm kindly invited me to a GigaOm session yesterday with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski yesterday. In the discussion, Genachowski discussed issues around net neutrality and the looming constraint on wireless spectrum.
At the start of the event, the Chairman joked about how he had mentioned his fascination with an iPhone App at a conference, only to find that company come back to him and ask for an official endorsement, which as an impartial government agency the FCC can't give.
When the time arrived for the Q&A session, I stood up to ask a question about FCC's involvement in regulating the mobile app stores. Here's what happened. You can see this exchange at time index 44:45 (displayed in the player as -18:10):
Gabor: Hi this is Gabor from reMail, we develop iPhone applications. So ...
Genachowski: [jokingly] I endorse your company.
[laughter]
Audience member: Sit down, you're done!
Gabor: Um - I'm going to keep standing and ask the following question ...
Genachowski: Am I in trouble now?
Gabor: I'll put that on our website this afternoon.
And here's the post, as promised. If this post gets taken down, you'll know why it happened.
If you can't see the player, click here.
reMail 2.8 on the App Store
Posted by Gabor on December 31st 2009 10:17
reMail 2.8 was approved by Apple right after Christmas, while I was out snowboarding in the Swiss Alps. It's a minor bugfix release, so it's not imperative that you upgrade.
We added a workaround for GMX users who were experiencing Protocol Errors caused by GMX's IMAP implementation. We also improved the speed of the "Status" screen which used to take several seconds to appear for people with tens of thousands of emails. It should now appear instantly.
View CommentsreMail 2.8 Submitted to App Store
Posted by Gabor on December 21st 2009 23:24
We just submitted reMail 2.8 to the App Store. It will be a small update with some UI speedups and a bugfix for users with GMX accounts. (It turns out GMX doesn't completely follow the IMAP protocol specifications. There's now a workaround in reMail to deal with their server.)
Until then: Happy Holidays from the reMail team!
View Comments"Search All Your Rackspace Email on Your iPhone with reMail"
Posted by Gabor on December 17th 2009 02:25
Here's what Rackspace writes about reMail:
You know this situation: You’re traveling and you need to look up your flight confirmation, meeting time, or hotel reservation. All this information is in your email. We partnered up with the team at reMail to offer Rackspace Email customers a solution to this problem — and get a great deal at the same time!
We're offering Rackspace Email customers a reduced price on reMail functionality. Read all about it here.
View CommentsreMail hearts Rackspace
Posted by Gabor on December 16th 2009 21:48
We've partnered up with Rackspace to bring their 1.5 million email hosting customers a more integrated, cheaper version of reMail: You can connect any number of Rackspace email accounts to your reMail for $0.99, instead of the $4.99 we charge for any IMAP account.
This feature is available in reMail 276, which is now available in the App Store. This new version brings a bunch of new stuff: Person searches are now faster, the UI is smoother, and you can set up Push notifications to remind you to download your latest email.
We've also changed reMail to be a free download. You can then buy support for other types of accounts via In-App purchase. We believe that this is a better model than charging the entire amount upfront. This way you can test drive reMail and see how useful it is!
Existing customers get reMail 2.7 for free. All the In-App purchase options will be marked as purchased (if this doesn't happen, please drop us a line in Settings > Feedback). We're phasing out reMail for Gmail in favor of a single edition of reMail: If you've used reMail for Gmail in the past, please download reMail.
Read more about this on the Rackspace Apps Blog!
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