On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Bill Volk wrote:
> Yes, it appears we would have to create a new 'public' email address for
> the user ... and forward 'verified' emails to the iMode address.
I assume by 'public' you mean an address that does delivers to some mail
server other than Docomo's (i.e., not docomo.ne.jp). There are a bunch of
issues to keep in mind when you do this.
1. You lose e-moji when a Docomo user sends mail off-network. How
annoying this is depends on how much you like e-moji, but I suspect
for a reasonable number of consumers it would be an issue. I even know
a couple of people who switched to AU, and then rapidly switched back
to Docomo when they found out their e-moji (when exchanging with their
Docomo-using friends) was broken.
2. Some i-Mode service providers (providing services across the i-Mode
web interface) force you to register a docomo.ne.jp e-mail address when
you sign up. (Hi Jurgen, Tom! :-)) This may or may not be an issue
depending not only on the user, but on the service.
3. If a user sets the service center to block e-mail from certain
parties, they may end up blocking e-mail you are forwarding from
non-blocked parties. E.g., they block e-mail from all but mobile phones,
and your service, forwarding a message from another mobile phone, now
makes it appear as if it's not from a mobile phone.
4. It appears that Docomo may occasionally block specific IP addresses,
based on traffic volume or other criteria, and your service might be
sending enough e-mail that it even looks like a spammer to Docomo, thus
causing them to block all mail from your mail servers. They certainly do
have special procedures and costs if you want to deliver a lot of mail
to Docomo users and want to guarantee that it gets there.
There are more issues, actually, but even thinking about it this far
has pretty much convinced me I would not invest money in such a service
unless it had some sort of official relationship to Docomo (probably
being a client of that dedicated-line/packet-service thing I previously
described) that would solve most or all of these problems.
Doing it the "external" way is all right for a hacker like me, but it's
not very user-friendly, and my extremely low volume (basically, just my
own personal e-mail) greatly reduces the risk that other things might
break.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.NetBSD.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
Received on Sat Nov 22 04:20:57 2003