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Friday, November 10, 2006

Accessing Hotmail on a Blackberry, TREO, or other smartphones.

MSN Hotmail does not use a standard POP3 platform like most webmails do. Because of this, it doesn't function in outlook or other email obtaining programs like most other webmails would.

HotmailPLUS (a premium service) works with Outlook as long as you have WebDAV, which is wholly unimportant as far as most handheld devices go. However, the premium hotmail services have the ability to forward themselves to other email addresses.

If you have a premium Hotmail account you can tell it to forward any new messages to another email service such as Gmail. Because Gmail is a POP email service, you can set your handheld to access it's email, and through forwarding, your hotmail.

What if I don't want to pay for premium hotmail?

MSN also offers a mobile html page that will allow you to login to hotmail without all the extra script. Your email will appear as standard html hyperlinks and images will show the url, not the image, BUT you will be able to read your hotmail this way. Downside? You choose when to check your email; it isn't retrieved and notified in your smartphone, rather you view it through your browser just the same as if you were accessing it via the web.

If you want to try this FREE way to get hotmail on your Treo or Blackberry, go to this link while using your phone. http://mobile.msn.com/hm/folder.aspx

How do I get hotmail on my smartphone in "real time"?

WARNING: The following section is untried by any of ISCG's staff. These instructions require a more than intermediate understanding of computers, mail protocol, and internet in order to use them correctly and minimize the risk of "breaking" your current email setup. If you consider yourself a "techie" read on.

As I get a chance to apply the following info and find out about all the quirks I'll update this blog entry with any tips and solutions I find. As I have said before; use this at your own risk. The freeware linked here is in no way associated with ISCGonline and is merely linked as a convience to our customers. ISCG is not responsible for any results of using the following information.

Legal jargon aside; here is what I have found.

A program exists that operates on your tool bar in Windows that goes out, reads your email, can mark it either "read" or "deleted" and forward those emails to an email address of your choice.

This program is called GetMail and can be found at Getmail.

If you do not have a premium Hotmail service you will need a program called FreePOPs. This essentially allows your hotmail to function as a POP service however, I have not had the chance to try this out.

On both of these programs you will need to read the online manuals carefully and look online for FAQ's on utilizing them. Once you have hotmail scripting through FreePOPs, you should be able to have GetMail set up on a timer to access your hotmail and forward it to your POP3 email address. With your smartphone configured to go out and check your POP3 mail account, you now have Hotmail on your phone.

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