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AOL Mail To Be Accessible Via IMAP
jfruhlinger writes "News.com.com is reporting that AOL's e-mail service, long accessible only via AOL's proprietary, monolithic app, will be available via IMAP starting Thursday. The story notes that this is part of a series of initiatives from AOL to move content beyond its walled garden and into standards-based formats such as HTML and IMAP that any Internet app can access. Supposedly a 'a dramatically different direction' for Netscape is in the works, too."
Now I can delete the 99% spam I get in my AOL inbox faster!
This is one less reason to make fun of aol users :)
I'd love AIM to be opened up, but I'm not holding my breath. Mail is a commodity now, and there is no obvious benefit in walling it up any more. But IM is dominated by the big three: AOL+ICQ, MSN and Yahoo. AOL has too much to lose by letting go, especially since its craptacular IM client is likely to be beaten hands down by Gaim or MSN Messenger.
Good news for spam prevention measures..
Mozilla Thunderbird. They've even recently added IMAP IDLE support! (It's in the nightlies.)
The lightning speed with which AOL makes new technology available to their users has always amazed me !
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This is great news for AOL people, but there is one important issue to worry about...
Will they still be able to hear the nice person's voice say, "You've Got Mail"?
Wow. It's like they want to be a real ISP or something.
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Accessing the AOL Mail System using
IMAP & Authenticated SMTP
An Unofficial Guide
no. In fact, when I was working for ATTBI a while back, people would get broadband just so that they could use AOL over it...
AOL email is currently accessable via the web and their client (either dialup or broadband).
If AOL keeps this up, they might actually be taken seriously.
This seems to go hand-in-hand with the release of their AOL Communicator application... anything to save a sinking ship, I suppose.
I wonder what the new direction for Netscape is... how many people still trust the Netscape brand enough for them to get any legs out of it?
"You've got standards-based mail!"
Trolling is a art,
Only email.
The "core" of AOL is the content that is inside of AOL. In that regard, AOL is not fundamentally different than it was 15 years ago (or so).
Now, allowing email via IMAP is pretty significant, but the community of AOL will still remain.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Too bad that most people who would understand how to setup an IMAP account on Outlook quit AOL years ago.
AOL is usually pretty realiable for dial up.
They've dropped the requirement of the browser. Maybe if they drop:
-The fee thats atleast $10 more than everyone else
-The buggy browser by default
-The advertisements (haven't used it for a while, does it still advertise when you sign on?)
More people will find it appealing, and the people who already use it will be happier
Help Fight SPAM today!
Well,
;-)
This goes to show that they could do this all along. They just needed a little nudge by Google's gmail. Competition always encourages innovation
Just Me
Any Hacker that's been unfortuneate enough to get stuck using free trials of AOL has know that AOL was accessable by an off-branded-sort of IMAP for years, at least 8 years in fact. The fact that they're telling people this, is Good I suppose, but You can connect via Oulook, If you want, but I'm not sure why this is really valueable to anyone, since IMAP isn't the easiest thing to setup, and if someone is using AOL. . . .
As Far as I know, I have possitive Carma, mod me down if you must
Can I be a Luddite too?
1) Geeks who know WTF IMAP is don't use AOL
2) People who use AOL don't really care how they get their mail as long as the nice man says "You've got mail!" and reminds them of that charming Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks flick
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
When I was developing a patient community for a cancer treatment facility, I had a wav that, upon login, played "You've got cancer!"
My boss thought it was hilarious. Good thing we remembered to take it out before the client saw it!
This reminds me of a funny thing a commentator on NPR said a few years ago, "Having aol.com in your email address is the online equivalent of wearing a Members Only jacket."
What really makes me cringe is when I see an AOL address on the website of someone who owns his or her own domain name. Why can't you just use your domain name email? Why would you admit that you're an AOL subscriber? my brain screams.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
I'm not sure how this is going to help AOL in the ongoing battle between ISPs. Although this is a nice initiative for their customers, I don't think it's going to attract more punters on the sole basis of standards compatibility.
Besides, most of their ads bring the proprietary content forward as the added value. What will they use in the future ? Will they just become a plain vanilla ISP ?
No, I ahve a friend that's supported thier "product for years" and there's specific thing built into AOL's Custom TCP/IP / PPP protocol stack that differ from the standard protocol versions, and the network drivers that AOL installs so it can do this also don't work with any of the standard TCP clients, so AOL has to negotiate the connection via their software. Also, AOL uses it's own modem drivers, which allows them to modify the actual handshake. Besides, the point of AOL is the software.
Can I be a Luddite too?
Supposedly a 'a dramatically different direction' for Netscape is in the works, too.
Woo Hoo!
Any new direction is better than their current direction: down.
I think this is at least partly being driven by Google's GMail. My parents used AOL long after they changes ISPs because of email access. I'mn betting there are plenty of AOL customers waiting to jump ship at the promise of a gig of mail space without the popups.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
If you claim that nobody who knows about IMAP would use America Online, then what about those few geeks who live where AOL has a monopoly on Internet access, such as municipalities that have granted a monopoly to Time Warner cable or remote areas where AOL is the only dial-up that's not a long distance call?
And did the rehash of The Shop Around the Corner starring the Sleepless in Seattle leads have any scenes about spam?
And they still do. It costs (AFAIK) (for cable) about $5 more than RoadRunner. It's the same basic service, but without the RoadRunner brand and with a cheaper version of AOL's BYOI (Bring Your Own ISP) service (which costs about $7/mo, IIRC).
Didn't know that AOL's IP stack was drastically different to those of the rest of the world.
Presumably they've overcome this if they're opening up their core content to users of other ISPs via their Bring-Your-Own-Access scheme.
both netscape and walmart (and probably some others) have AOL linked/styled/ whatever you want to call it dial-up service for 10 clams a month. I was going to get it, instead of the 20$/month I have now from a mom and pop local ISP, but upon inspection you HAD to use their crappy interface and browser to get an account and surf through them, at least near as I could figure out. If anyone knows a way around that I would be interested. 10 bucks is ten bucks. 120 a year savings would buy me some more RAM for instance. I'm in a rural area that has few local number dial in options (2 actually, the walmart number and the local mom and pop), and forget broadband. You take what you can get. I'd love to get like-say- speakeasy dsl, or T mobile wireless unlimited data, but neither is in my locale, and any sort of new extended covereage wi-fi is still a ways off. Until then, dial up is a lot better than nuthin....
Just not published:
imap.uk.aol.com
supports SSL/TSL and everything
This is what AOL does best. It provides a really stellar GUI for the people who are uneasy working with computers. I have watched these same consumers get visably shaken even venturing into Outlook Express. They want the AOL look and feel. Although I think it is progressive of AOL to offer the other email clients to their customers, I doubt if many of the committed AOL users will take advantage of this.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
There are apparently people out there who can get things out of file cabinet DBs, but they charge money to do it. If anybody knows of publically available documentation for that damn database file format, please post a link to it.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
From the summary: "AOL's e-mail service, long accessible only via AOL's proprietary, monolithic app." However, AOL's mail has been avilable form the web for a long time (albeit using a Java app, as I recall.) http://webmail.aol.com
Stupid like a fox!
Active development?
...AOL's e-mail service, long accessible only via AOL's proprietary, monolithic app...
AOL Mail has been available online via HTTP for quite some time.
Um, nobody's suggesting your dad stop reading Email sent to his AOL address.
If your dad has a vanity domain such as www.blugu64sdad.com he could easily have all mail sent to Dad@blugu64sdad.com automagically forwarded to his AOL account.
Then his business card would be much more impressive to anyone reading it, "Wow! He's internet-savvy, he has his own domain!" or "Wow! He's successful, he has an IT department to set up and run a domain for him!" instead of "Gee, he's got a lowbrow email addie, he must be technically incompetent".
Sorry to say but the real world actually does work like that. I know of several cases where vendors lost a sale simply for having an AOL or HotMail address.
AOL's e-mail service, long accessible only via AOL's proprietary, monolithic app, will be available via IMAP starting Thursday.
Just for the record, it's already available and I've been using it for a couple of weeks now. There's an unofficial Web site describing it at AdamKB's site.
There are a few quirks I've noticed... AOL auto-deletes older mail that you've read unless you move it into the Saved Mail folder (max. 20 MB, I believe). Unfortunately, users of AOL's Mac client or the Web mail interface don't have a Saved Mail folder... that's created by the AOL 9 for Windows software only. AOL's IMAP implementation doesn't allow creating folders, so I have to find a Windows machine with AOL 9 installed to create this.
Also, there are some people who have had problems sending through AOL's authenticated SMTP server using Apple's Mail.app client, but that's probably an Apple bug, not AOL.
This is definitely a great move... I've been using Claris Emailer for years because it was the only authorized third-party AOL mail client, so now I have alternatives. And I've had my AOL address since 1990, so I'm reluctant to give it up.
This is NOT news. AOL's been allowing this for at least a year or so. Just via a weird port (587?). I set it up on my Mac a month ago after reading about it on dealmac. Even sets up a nice little "SPAM" folder so I don't have to carefully save and pore over those letters from that poor Nigerian guy who is lost in space.