* Good morning MrPostman
Webmail is, without doubt, one of the most useful tools allowing you to send and receive e-mail from anywhere. The problem is that if you usually use an e-mail client on your PC, integrating a Webmail service with the client is often not possible. Sure, Hotmail integrates with Outlook but Eudora doesn’t.
Here’s a solution: MrPostman (see editorial links below), a Sourceforge project written in Java that allows you to access Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and other Webmail services directly from an e-mail client.
It works by converting Web pages on a Webmail service into regular e-mail format and provides a POP interface for a mail client.
Released under the terms of the GNU Public License, MrPostman is free.
Currently the following Webmail providers are supported: Hotmail, mail.com, Yahoo, Gmail, indiatimes.com, juno, rediffmail, Gossamer mail, Outlook Web Access (Exchange 5.5), and Outlook Web Access 2003.
If your Webmail provider isn’t one of those listed writing a script to enable it isn’t hard – the project site claims that a new provider can usually be supported in around 50 lines of code.
Essentially, MrPostman logs on to the Webmail service, grabs the returned page contents and navigates to each message page where it extracts the field data, reformats it in e-mail format which is then made available via a POP3 server.
What’s interesting is that the same technology can also be used to interface to RSS feeds. The MrPostman RSS script is very powerful as it also downloads the full feed item text as well as any included pictures.
Why stop with RSS feeds? It should be possible to access and reformat any HTML or XML content. Lots of possibilities here – let me know what you come up with.
