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Yahoo Mail - Defer this! %#$^@$

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

yahoo-mail.gif I’m getting mighty ticked off with Yahoo! Mail lately. I have industry contacts, family, and friends that use yahoo.com email accounts and I’ve been getting this “defer″ messages lately. Yahoo is using an anti-spam tactic where they “defer″ the message from your SMTP server. It’s also known as “greylisting”.

Yahoo mail denies the first delivery attempt of an email (421 Message temporarily deferred). Yahoo assumes that spammers don’t try sending the same email twice, so they put the IP address of that email server in a list and then if the delivery is retried within a short amount of time, they assume that it is a good email and “accept” the SMTP connection for mail delivery. It’s too resource intensive for spammers to retry emails, which is why spammers mass blast programs give up after one try.

The SMTP protocol, configured on valid email servers, was designed such that it will retry to send an email several times before failing. Unfortunately, Yahoo’s greylisting has gotten super aggressive, often deferring tmcnet.com emails to yahoo.com email addresses so many times that eventually our email server gives up.

Even worse, often times 24 hours goes by before I get an email undeliverable message! I had an important email that I assumed was delivered and I didn’t know until a day later that it bounced!

Here’s an example:

This message could not be delivered. The TMC I.C.E. Box will not make any further attempts to deliver the message.

A record of the delivery attempts made follows:

We were unable to connect to the destination server(s):
On Thu Nov 13 at 14:51 EST, Message exceeded queue lifetime. Bouncing.
On Thu Nov 13 at 14:51 EST, Connected to 216.39.53.2 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Thu Nov 13 at 11:38 EST, 68.142.202.247 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 451 Message temporarily deferred - [70] On Thu Nov 13 at 08:38 EST, Connected to 66.196.82.7 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Thu Nov 13 at 05:51 EST, Connected to 206.190.53.191 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Thu Nov 13 at 03:18 EST, 209.191.88.247 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 451 Message temporarily deferred - [70] On Thu Nov 13 at 00:58 EST, Connected to 209.191.118.103 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Wed Nov 12 at 22:51 EST, Connected to 216.39.53.1 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Wed Nov 12 at 20:58 EST, Connected to 66.196.97.250 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Wed Nov 12 at 19:18 EST, Connected to 216.39.53.3 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Wed Nov 12 at 17:51 EST, Connected to 66.196.97.250 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Wed Nov 12 at 16:38 EST, Connected to 67.195.168.31 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Wed Nov 12 at 15:38 EST, Connected to 209.191.118.103 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Wed Nov 12 at 14:51 EST, 66.196.82.7 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 421 Message temporarily deferred - 4.16.51. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Wed Nov 12 at 14:18 EST, Connected to 209.191.118.103 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Wed Nov 12 at 13:58 EST, Connected to 209.191.88.247 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
On Wed Nov 12 at 13:51 EST, Connected to 209.191.118.103 but greeting failed. Remote host said: 421 Message from (206.252.203.30) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html

You’ll notice that the IP addresses are all different, since Yahoo has tons of email servers. TMC uses a similar greylisting feature from Sendio’s anti-spam appliance, but I have it set to “permissive” and not “aggressive”. Were I to set it to “aggresive”, then if an email came in from a different IP address, our Sendio appliance would defer the message again even if the email was previously deferred from a different IP address. By setting it to “permissive” it allows the same domain email to come in via different IP addresses.

My guess is Yahoo has their email servers set to “aggresive″ and they don′t have a centralized “defer” database. So when I send an email to a Yahoo address, it’s going to be pure luck if I hit the same server again after being deferred. Thus, this will result in bouncebacks after being deferred ad infinitum.

Check out Yahoo’s own Q&A, which essentially puts the onus on the “sender” and places no blame on themselves for failed email delivery :

421 Message temporarily deferred - [numeric code]

If you are seeing the error “421 Message temporarily deferred - [numeric code]”, where “[numeric code]” shows a specific diagnostic code (e.g., “4.16.51″, “4.16.52″) in your SMTP logs, this indicates that:

  1. the message you attempted to send exhibited characteristics indicative of spam,and/or
  2. emails from your network have been generating complaints from Yahoo! Mail users.

This is a temporary error and your mail server may automatically re-try sending emails at a later time. However, we do encourage you to examine your outbound queues to ensure that spammers are not abusing your mail server.

Are you seeing the same error consistently over an extended period of time? If so, we encourage you to provide us with detailed information, including the error and diagnostic code(s) you see in your logs, so that we can help diagnose your problem.

For bulk mailers, please visit this page to review our best practice recommendations and request assistance.

If your mail server does not primarily send bulk mailings (e.g., you run a personal, corporate, educational, or ISP mail server), please fill out this form instead.

If you’re not the administrator of the mail server in question, please contact the administrator directly with the error message you’re receiving.

This question/answer wasn’t very helpful either:

Q: As a sender, how can I ensure uninterrupted SMTP access and prioritized delivery?

A: Yahoo! Mail has become more aggressive in its acceptance of SMTP connections and denies connections by IP address when these connections do not conform to Internet standard practices. To continue uninterrupted access and prioritized delivery, you should ensure that your email address lists are well maintained. If you are conforming to these standards, then these policies should only affect you positively. We anticipate improvements in delivery times and in available connections.

If you consistently see 451 SMTP error codes you should review your email practices and policies, especially the following:

  • Remove email addresses that bounce. Bounces are an indication that the mail could not be delivered because the user does not exist, no longer exists, or is unable to accept your email. List managers should remove addresses that generate bounces. A particularly popular technique for managing bounces is to use VERP to identify the recipient address that has failed.
  • Examine your retry policies. Messages that receive permanent errors, such as emails sent to accounts that do not exist or are over quota, should not be retried. Permanent errors that are retried increase the likelihood that delivery will not receive the priority it deserves.
  • Pay attention to the responses from our SMTP servers.The SMTP protocol defines response codes that tell your server what to do next. In particular, our server will send “500″ SMTP response codes to indicate problems that you need to investigate. For example, if an email is sent to an invalid recipient, our servers will respond with a “500″ range SMTP code, indicating a permanent error. Large numbers of emails sent to non-existant accounts may be indicative of a systemic problem. Many companies following best email list practices treat email addresses that have received a “500″ range SMTP codes specially. For instance, many companies place these addresses into a special queue that tests for continued bounces after longer and longer periods of time. This helps them maximize delivery to email addresses that exist and minimize wasted bandwidth costs.
  • Don’t send unsolicited email. Make sure that all email addresses are confirmed with an opt-in process that ensures the recipient wants to receive your mail. Obtaining permission from a third party to send an email does not ensure the email is solicited. Probably the best way to confirm an email addresses before adding them to a mailing list is by using closed-loop confirmation (sometimes referred to as “full confirmation,” “full verification,” “confirmed voluntary subscription,” or “double opt-in”). In this process, after you receive a subscription request, you send a confirmation email to that address which requires some affirmative action before that email address is added to the mailing list. Since only the true owner of that email address can respond, you will know that the true owner has truly intended to subscribe and that the address is valid.
  • Provide a method of unsubscribing from your list in each mail you send.
  • Ensure that your mail servers are not open relays, and that your servers attempt to detect and deny connections to open proxies. At a minimum, your SMTP servers should identify the originating IP addresses that of the email and indicate this in the email headers to help you diagnose spam problems. There are a variety of open relay testers available.

If you conform to the above practices and are still seeing delivery problems, please fill out this form so that we can help you diagnose your problem. Please do not use this form to report spam

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Original post by nafiz

Posted in temporarily deferred, Yahoo Mail, message temporarily, please refer, deferred please, defer defer, Yahoo, Sendio, email, Internet, spam, 421 defer, greylisting, defer, TMCnet | No Comments »

No ♥ for High-end Mobile Apps

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Thought I’d share this interesting report from Accenture about mobile phone app utilization that claims higher-end applications remain vastly under-used by U.S. consumers. Funny, I think Apple iPhone users might disagree. The report found that 88 percent of U.S. consumers said they never use their mobile phones or other mobile devices to watch videos. That is high, but expected since most mobile phones can’t even play videos. My main phone, a Windows Mobile 6.1 smart phone doesn’t even natively support Youtube Flash videos using Pocket Internet Explorer. I did install Skyfire though, which adds pretty respectable video performance. I was able to watch Youtube videos on my Windows Mobile with pretty decent video quality, but of course I’m not the ‘typical′ mobile phone user.

The report adds that 84 percent said they never use their mobile phones or mobile devices to send email. Say what? Email is only 4 pts better than video? I would have expected email penetration to be much better, especially with all the Blackberry phones. People want email access on their phone more than any other app, but maybe that’s just my opinion. Further, the report says 79 percent said they never employ them to play games on the go. So more people played games on their phone than sent email? You’ve got to be kidding me. How is that possible? I suppose many phones come with cheezy built-in games, which might skew the results.

Anyway, read the report for yourself…

Continue reading No ♥ for High-end Mobile Apps…

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Original post by nafiz

Posted in , , , , , , , , EasyBloom, email, iPhone, mobile, TMCnet, Apple, phone, Technology and Science, Mobile Phones, Wireless | No Comments »

No ♥ for High-end Mobile Apps

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Thought I’d share this interesting report from Accenture about mobile phone app utilization that claims higher-end applications remain vastly under-used by U.S. consumers. Funny, I think Apple iPhone users might disagree. The report found that 88 percent of U.S. consumers said they never use their mobile phones or other mobile devices to watch videos. That is high, but expected since most mobile phones can’t even play videos. My main phone, a Windows Mobile 6.1 smart phone doesn’t even natively support Youtube Flash videos using Pocket Internet Explorer. I did install Skyfire though, which adds pretty respectable video performance. I was able to watch Youtube videos on my Windows Mobile with pretty decent video quality, but of course I’m not the ‘typical′ mobile phone user.

The report adds that 84 percent said they never use their mobile phones or mobile devices to send email. Say what? Email is only 4 pts better than video? I would have expected email penetration to be much better, especially with all the Blackberry phones. People want email access on their phone more than any other app, but maybe that’s just my opinion. Further, the report says 79 percent said they never employ them to play games on the go. So more people played games on their phone than sent email? You’ve got to be kidding me. How is that possible? I suppose many phones come with cheezy built-in games, which might skew the results.

Anyway, read the report for yourself…

Continue reading No ♥ for High-end Mobile Apps…

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Original post by nafiz

Posted in ipod touch, dat, blue man group, macbook, netbook, portable, ultra, ultra portable, blu-spec, email, iPhone, mobile, TMCnet, Apple, phone, Technology and Science, Mobile Phones, Wireless | No Comments »

No ♥ for High-end Mobile Apps

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Thought I′d share this interesting report from Accenture about mobile phone app utilization that claims higher-end applications remain vastly under-used by U.S. consumers. Funny, I think Apple iPhone users might disagree. The report found that 88 percent of U.S. consumers said they never use their mobile phones or other mobile devices to watch videos. That is high, but expected since most mobile phones can’t even play videos. My main phone, a Windows Mobile 6.1 smart phone doesn’t even natively support Youtube Flash videos using Pocket Internet Explorer. I did install Skyfire though, which adds pretty respectable video performance. I was able to watch Youtube videos on my Windows Mobile with pretty decent video quality, but of course I’m not the ‘typical’ mobile phone user.

The report adds that 84 percent said they never use their mobile phones or mobile devices to send email. Say what? Email is only 4 pts better than video? I would have expected email penetration to be much better, especially with all the Blackberry phones. People want email access on their phone more than any other app, but maybe that’s just my opinion. Further, the report says 79 percent said they never employ them to play games on the go. So more people played games on their phone than sent email? You’ve got to be kidding me. How is that possible? I suppose many phones come with cheezy built-in games, which might skew the results.

Anyway, read the report for yourself…

Continue reading No ♥ for High-end Mobile Apps…

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Original post by nafiz

Posted in ipod touch, dat, blue man group, macbook, netbook, portable, ultra, ultra portable, blu-spec, email, iPhone, mobile, TMCnet, Apple, phone, Technology and Science, Mobile Phones, Wireless | No Comments »

Vonage Email Phishing Scam

Monday, October 13th, 2008

Look at this email phishing scam purportedly coming from Vonage. You know Vonage has hit the big time when scammers starts targeting them. Unfortunately, the scammers, like many scammers, have poor English skills making their poorly written emails a dead giveaway.

Let me give the scammers some tips for the future:

  1. Spell October correctly. It’s not Octomber
  2. This is not grammatically correct (wrong tense) - “You did not accessed your account for more than a month.”
  3. Sorry, but ‘confront′ is a poor word choice - ‘compare′ is what you meant. I think your English thesaurus or translator got you. “We will check your IP address, time zone, and confront it with our database logs.”

Now here’s what I′m trying to figure out. Even if someone logs onto someone’s Vonage account, I′m not sure what information they′d have access to. As a former Vonage customer myself, if I recall, the web interface doesn’t display your credit card information. So the online web interface would give them access to your voicemail, which could contain some confidential info, but typically people don’t leave confidential financial info in their voicemail.

Maybe the web interface does display credit card info, social security, or some other info that a credit card or identity thief can use? Any Vonage customers out there care to pipe in?

Here’s the scam email.
Warning: The links go to www.angeltrans.kr not vonage.com. I didn’t click through. You never know what untrustworthy sites have viruses, buffer overflow exploits, etc. I suggest you not click through either.

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:”";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt
font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

From: Vonage Marketing [mailto:service@vonage.com]
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2008 7:59 AM
Subject: Message from Vonage, Customer Service
Importance: High

Dear Vonage Member,

 Your Vonage Account will expire in: Octomber, 10

 This might have happened due to the following reasons:
- You did not accessed your account for more than a month.
- You have dynamic IP address and due to that our system might have interpretated it as a hacking attempt.
- You entered a wrong password 3 times when you tried to connect to your Vonage Account.

 To avoid an account suspension, please click here or the link below:

https://secure.vonage.com/vonage-web/public/login.htm

*We will check your IP address, time zone, and confront it with our database logs.

 We are very sorry if this affects you in any way but our client’s security is a top priority for Vonage Inc.

Regards,
Vonage Security Team.

© 2001-2008 Vonage Marketing, Inc., All Rights Reserved

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Original post by nafiz

Posted in , , , , electronic-paper, VoIP, email, MuniFi, TMCnet | No Comments »

Poll: Is iPhone firmware 2.1 breaking fetch for email accounts?

Monday, October 6th, 2008

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Just when you think you’ve escaped the darkened woods of firmware 2.0.2 and previous ilk, along comes 2.1, wrapped in faster-loading-contacts-finery to convince you all is well in the iPhone world. That isn’t entirely the case, it seems, if you’re user of POP or IMAP mail accounts which are set to fetch messages. Apparently, a maddening bug exists in the new software which — in the interest of battery power conservation, we assume — stops the device from pulling down new emails while sleeping… unless the phone happens to be plugged in and charging. An ever-growing thread on Apple’s support forums has been barraged with reports of the problem, and editors here at Engadget have certainly felt the burn. So we’re putting the question to you, dear readers (and hoping the folks in Cupertino are paying attention). Are you noticing email issues with firmware 2.1? Let us know in the poll below!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

View Poll

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Posted in , , , , , , , , email, Apple, MP3 players, 8869, 269, iPhone | No Comments »

Sarah Palin email hacked, posted to Wikileaks & Wikileaks goes down

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

sarah-palin.jpgIn case you haven’t heard, some hackers hacked into Governor Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! email account. Some of the emails were posted to Wikileaks.org, a site that posts leaked information. Well, apparently the popularity of Sarah Palin must have brought down Wikileaks, since I can’t get to their website.

I’m guessing all the media coverage and pointing to the Wikileaks site must have overwhelmed their website with too much traffic. The Palin Phenomenon continues! Whether you love or hate Sarah, there is no doubt that she has changed the political landscape for this election cycle and perhaps forever. It’s quite apparent that conservative women can now also make the national spotlight previously held only by moderate to liberal women (aka Democrats).

here’s the URL if you want to be a voyeur and read Sarah’s emails. (when the site comes back up that is)

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_account_2008

Of course, if you’re a conspiracy theorist then President George Bush, the CIA, or the FBI shut down Wikileaks.

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Original post by nafiz

Posted in , , , , , , , Internet, News, email, 1080p, , TMCnet | No Comments »

Sarah Palin email hacked, posted to Wikileaks & Wikileaks goes down

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

sarah-palin.jpgIn case you haven’t heard, some hackers hacked into Governor Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! email account. Some of the emails were posted to Wikileaks.org, a site that posts leaked information. Well, apparently the popularity of Sarah Palin must have brought down Wikileaks, since I can’t get to their website.

I’m guessing all the media coverage and pointing to the Wikileaks site must have overwhelmed their website with too much traffic. The Palin Phenomenon continues! Whether you love or hate Sarah, there is no doubt that she has changed the political landscape for this election cycle and perhaps forever. It’s quite apparent that conservative women can now also make the national spotlight previously held only by moderate to liberal women (aka Democrats).

here′s the URL if you want to be a voyeur and read Sarah’s emails. (when the site comes back up that is)

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_account_2008

Of course, if you’re a conspiracy theorist then President George Bush, the CIA, or the FBI shut down Wikileaks.

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Comments on this Entry:

(foo bard on
Sep 18, 2008 12:02 AM)

gawker.com has the pix still. was also on 4chan for a bit. numerous private mirrors of the emails still abound.

yahoo deleted the emails for her upon request, which may be destruction of evidence in the current ongoing investigations into her actions as governor. pretty convenient!

the CIA requested copies of the emails from Associated Press, and they declined (like, duh? get your own copies off the internets?)

madprops to Anonymous.

(Anonymous on
Sep 18, 2008 6:36 AM)

Anonymous is not a group of hackers - it’s a leaderless collective of like-minded individuals, from all walks of life.

http://www.enturbulation.org/press-media/faq

(soma451 on
Sep 18, 2008 7:46 AM)

wikileaks has been taken down according to wikipedia.

(http://openid.aol.com/Reedie591 on
Sep 18, 2008 2:15 PM)

This is Bull SH_T, What happen to Freedom of Speech. This is what we will get if the McCain and Palin WIN on Nov 4, censorship……………… Wake up America

Palin tried to censor the book in the library of her hometown. What will be censor next

(anon i mouse on
Sep 18, 2008 3:57 PM)

You can get a zip file here
http://cryptome.org/

or if you’re in the US, the wikileaks site is blocked but this will work instead.
http://www.wikileaks.org.nyud.net/wiki/Wikileaks

(david on
Sep 18, 2008 4:31 PM)

You can get to the wikileaks page (and documents) here:

http://www.wikileaks.org.nyud.net/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008

(John H on
Sep 18, 2008 5:59 PM)

>This is Bull SH_T, What happen to Freedom of Speech.

Yeah, free to steal people’s emails and post them online. Why not copy/paste Harry Potter books online? Freedom of speech my ass!

>This is what we will get if the McCain and Palin WIN on Nov 4, censorship……………… Wake up America

Better than a tax-increasing, flip-flopping, anti-American, anti-military, terrorist-associating, Black theology toting, sitting 20 years in a racist church, and being the most left-wing member of the U.S. Senate! Screw NObama! I have more experience that he does.

Obama is an empty suit. All talk and no experience.

>Palin tried to censor the book in the library of her hometown. What will be censor next

Wrong on the facts idiot. It’s been proven Palin did NOT censor books. Gets your facts straight!

read this:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html

Original post by nafiz

Posted in Senate, robocalls, McCain, 2012, Ericsson, RNC, Republican National Committee, Internet, News, email, Meghan McCain, Michael Dinan, TMCnet | No Comments »

Phonevite API released at ITEXPO

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

Phonevite-logo.png At ITEXPO I met with John Nahm, CEO and co-founder of Phonevite, an intriguing VoIP-enabled one-to-many broadcasting service that takes the concept of the popular Evite email-centric invitations service and extends it to the phone world.

Calvin Kim is the other co-founder and he actually founded Dialpad, one of the pioneers of VoIP with their Java-based click-to-call application. Dialpad was later sold to Yahoo. Calvin is now the CTO of Phonevite.

John explained he wants Phonevite to be like Evite but for the phone. Phonevite was incorporated in January of last year and has reached profitability with their premium customers. They offer a free service with the only limitation that you can only blast a maximum of 25 phone numbers/contacts.

John explained that the largest users of his service includes lots of schools, Boy Scouts, soccer / little leagues, emergency rescue teams, and emergency management teams. The most important feature of Phonevite is that it trumps email when it is a time-critical matter and users don’t check email regularly. Or even if they do check email, John explained what if each of the soccer team’s parents are on the way to practice, it starts raining and the coach wants to cancel. They will most likely not be email accessible while driving. Using Phonevite you can blast the entire team’s mobile phone list announcing that practice has been canceled.

John pointed out that SMS is an alternative, but it has a limit to how many people you can SMS and it is difficult to describe situation in the 150 character SMS limit. The premium service offers a tiered bonus structure for tiered VoIP calling rates. Also, schools and non-profits get a discount.

At ITEXPO Phonevite is announcing their API. This will enable websites such as
freeconferencing.com, Evite,  socializr, pinger, etc. to directly tie into Phonevite’s service.

Interestingly, the back-end doesn′t use Asterisk, the open-source PBX platform. John told me they developer the back-end VoIP calling interface themselves. They do leverage other open source software though, such as MySQL.

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Original post by nafiz

Posted in , , , , , , , Triple Play, phone, VoIP, email, mccolo, ebook reader, TMCnet | No Comments »

Peek email-only handheld now available for pre-order, in stores Monday

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Filed under:

Man, the Peek email-only handheld must really be, uh, piquing people’s interest — it just went up for pre-orders and two of the three colors are already backordered a week. The $100 device should also be showing up in Targets nationwide Monday, so if you’re as curious as we are they′ll be easy to impulse purchase in person as well. Too bad that you’re locked into that $19.95/mo data plan as your only option, though — if we could somehow use our existing data plan or even pay a flat fee upfront for lifetime service we’d be way more likely to snag one. Anyone else picking one up?

[Via Silicon Alley Insider]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Posted in Ribbit, Salesforce.com, Sylantro Systems, developers, BroadSoft, Samsung SH-S223Q, Motoring, email | No Comments »

Peek email-only handheld gets reviewed

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

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For some reason, we’re quite taken with the Peek email-only handheld, and Gadling’s followup review of the love-it-or-hate-it device mostly reinforces that positive impression. The squared-off, Ideo-designed unit did its one task admirably well, sending and receiving emails using T-Mobile’s network with only slight delay, and the OS is minimal and easy to use. Sure, at $99 and $20/mo it’s still way too expensive for the typical gadget nerd who’s already packing a phone data plan and maybe a data card as well, but if you’re trying to keep things on the prepaid tip or looking to get a Luddite friend or relative on the mobile email bandwagon, the Peek is certainly worth a second, uh, peek.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

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Freak Peek sneak peek leaks, piques curiosity

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

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For many of us, the mere thought of toting yet another device in our pocket, purse, or belt holster is truly disgusting, particularly when said device resembles a primitive BlackBerry hewn from solid stone and does literally nothing but send and receive email for twenty bucks a month. For others, though, the Peek might be just what the doctor ordered. Laptop Magazine took a quick look at the $100 email-only brick, declaring it “dead simple” to use — a good thing, considering its target demo — and finding its expansive soft-touch keyboard easy on the fingers. As ugly as it might be, it′ll be easy enough to hide; Laptop says users will have no issues tucking it into a pocket, owing in no small part to the fact that it’s a full 30 percent thinner than the iPhone 3G. Still, we’re going to like ‘em ten times better when they’re hacked to run Android, Doom, Maemo, or pretty much anything else that ends in “ux.”

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

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Peek: the handheld that does e-mail, and only e-mail

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

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Ready for some excitement in the form of watching a startup squirm as it waits for its product to gain traction? Take a glance at Peek, which is churning out a dedicated handheld that handles e-mail, a few chain forwards, and more e-mails when you′re done with that. At first glance, one may consider such a one-trick-pony quite ridiculous, but it’s hard to say what will end up catching on these days. The biggest problem facing Peek is the pricing: it’ll be $99.95 up front when it lands in Target next month, plus $19.95 per month to send unlimited e-mails over T-Mobile’s network. Of course, if anyone figures out how to load Opera Mini up here, the Bulls-eye Shop won’t be able to keep the shelves stocked.

[Via Silicon Alley Insider]

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Original post by Darren Murph

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Astricon, Win $100, and Party Hardy at ITEXPO