john jones my world

Apple mobile me mail working sometimes

john.jones.name — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:26:37 +0000

I originally wrote this post on the 7th of july 2008 and updated it in September.
Apple have updated their alias’s so that all the smtp traffic you send to me.com get’s routed to the correct inbox so you can email username@me.com
they completly failed in their migrations prompting a letter from CEO to all the subscribers of the service things like the sent items folder not being properly restored to the correct IMAP path for me personally and host of problems plagued the system but on with the show so \
now the server address’s are
SMTP server = smtp.me.com
IMAP server = mail.me.com

these are both run by Sun iPlanet mail servers what is interesting is that they still have a different incoming MX IP address’s although they reach the same hosts in the apple cluster

What will be interesting is what servers they are using for the push email (I still dont know) and if they will stick to the iPlanet servers (that frankly have far better throughput than others) or upgrade to their own implementation or a stable third party such as exchange. There would be a irony mac.com running Microsoft Exchange servers… I still dont know I will try and do a http dump of some iPhone traffic and post it here

Username does not work with email

john.jones.name — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:41:48 +0000

More often usernames are the email address so djames is a unix user and has email address but because companies have not typically held onto the unix name schema and people have tried to avoid spam and so on it has become a mess (Leave your comments below) with goverment bodies such as LEA’s not being able to correctly address users, even to the point of naming the server host for example username@blueserver.domain.edu there seems to be no RFC. if you know of one please leave your comments below

Setup Apple Mail with Google Email (GMail)

john.jones.name — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:50:21 +0000

With Google finally dragging the large providers into the world of IMAP there are setup Problems, the most comman of these is seeing a completely different view in your email client (MUA) to the view presented in webmail interface, this ocurs because google seems to not properly announce the IMAP4 Namespace that would allow them to declare the prefix (very few people do this anyway), howto fix apple mail with gmail ?

simple solution within apple mail is to setup correct folders to use for the given Sent, Drafts, Junk and importantly Trash (deleted)
see the picture below

GCHQ monitors Email

john.jones.name — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 22:16:27 +0000

Recently MI5 issued a warning to UK business leaders about the risk to national Infrastructure that Email with attachments of Trojan horse like programs can have (also the problem will have other attack vectors), What is interesting is that while GCHQ obviously monitors government communication the need to alert business to problems raises the issue of how the signatures of Trojan’s are distributed ? IP address reputation should be of National Importance then maybe the government would like to provide that to us with this data, is that not exactly what CPNI is for and if tax money is paying for signatures why are they I presume only distributed to antivirus companies who I am forced to pay money for information that I in turn funded ! I would like to participate in testing myself and welcome anyone who wish’s to give me access. GCHQ sources also would be interesting because they would have to access a stream of information and how exactly that was done would have to be declared I have seen no declaration of Email Monitoring although its clear that they do so otherwise they would not be able to provide this information.

Mulberry Mail client is now Open Source

john.jones.name — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 01:51:34 +0000

This Email client was born in cambridge and thanks to Cyrus Daboo’s ability to stick to the standards makes a great Mail User Agent. I was excited to see that even the mainstream press have mentions this and kindly provided a non-biased users review (although why that one I am unsure) you can obtain the code now. My main use for Mulberry has been to use the calendaring functions because it so neatly use’s the CALDAV standard. One intresting point at least for me was the use of the libJX I am currently unsure of where they came from what was metrowerks codewarrior ? investigations will have to be done for now I am happy we have another CalDAV client that under Apache license Apple nor anyone else can control !

uk NIC publishes a statistical review

john.jones.name — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 02:46:11 +0000

I noticed that the uk NIC (nominet) has published a report detailing some very interesting things regarding domain registration. the report makes intresting reading and show data such as the top 20 GDP List compared to the Domain Names registered (sweden is a long way back due to regulations which in IMHO is a good thing in part of a TLD) another thing that was interesting was the number of the country code top level domains (ccTLD) registry size 1st place is Germany 2nd China 3rd UK 4th Netherlands but Switzerland is the same size and japan which was surprising since both have non english speakers. You too can be amazed simple download and amaze your friends with new knowledge

Request for Comments: 5068

john.jones.name — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:03:01 +0000

I would encourage everyone who administers a server that exchanges Email with the outside to read

Email Submission Operations: Access and Accountability Requirements

It simply and concisely sum’s up what we should be doing and clearly are not. I also am rather a fan of Mr Tony Finch who co authored the document. I know that at work we do not by default startup a SMTP transmission on port 587 I personally think this is primarily because of the inability of Microsoft to correctly use the port within it’s products. Hopefully this will change with many ISP’s blocking the port and installing better relay facilities. rfc5068