Update 15th June '07

BlackBerrySmart Email Viewer has GONE GOLD!!!!

Well, I promised a surprise didn't I?

Head to the following store to pick up a trial version & purchase a copy!

BlackBerrySmart Email Viewer - MobiHand Software

Or, if you prefer another site, you can also head to:
BlackBerrySmart Email Viewer
or
BlackBerrySmart Email Viewer - Blackberry

Thanks all for your tremendous support during this whole process. You guys have been amazing. We never expected to receive a response like this!

We hope you all enjoy using this program as much as we here have enjoyed creating it. But we are not resting! Expect more amazing things up and coming with future releases and other products from BlackBerrySmart!

Beta testers who provided feedback, I'll be getting back in touch with you over the next day or so to set you up with your free full copies as promised! If you haven't emailed me yet, please do so.

Have a great day all. It's midnight here in Australia, but I think it's time to party!

Cheers,
eZainny



Update 14th June '07

BlackBerrySmart Email Viewer is set for release for this coming Monday! Mark it in your calendar!


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- No setup fuss. No pain. It Just Works.
- Tired of cluttered, ugly, unreadable emails? See emails the way the way they are supposed to be seen. Never miss an important detail!
- Improve the look & readability of ALL your emails
- Complete integration with the existing email program.


PM me to participate in the limited trial for this application - Starting soon

Don't know what you're missing out on? Check out the before and after images...

1) BEFORE
1) AFTER

2) BEFORE
2) AFTER

3) BEFORE
3) AFTER

4) BEFORE
4) AFTER

5) BEFORE
5) AFTER

6) ATTACHMENTS

7) BEFORE
7) AFTER


Coming Soon...

I am interested to participate in the trial. pm sent.

Hi Guys,

I've been inundated with PM's Thanks for your support!

Just to clarify also, this is in beta at the moment so you'll be signing up for a beta trial.

As an added bonus, I'll be giving everyone who provides feedback a free full copy when I do finally release it (soon, I promise).

I've already had a large number of people interested so I'll close off accepting any more testers when the number of people hits the magic number in my head. I'll let you all know when I'm not accepting any more.

Again, thanks for your interest. Made my day

Cheers,
Zainny.

pm sent =)

Hi All,


Alright, I've received an amazing number of PMs over the last couple of hours and I think I've probably got enough trials now so I'll have to close it.

Sorry if you missed out, but don't worry, the full version will be out on the market soon so you can pick it up then! I'll let you all know when it hits the market.

In the meantime, feel free to ask me any questions you may have regarding the app, etc.

Cheers,
Zainny.

I would like to try it out also.

Rats, missed it by a few hours

Always too late....

Wow, 1/3rd or the way there. I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating, if you had a seemless, run-in-the-background type program that gave you a preview pane, HTML (sending and receiving, if possible), AND folders (to segregate BES/BIS email from one another as well as the other different types), I'm telling you, people would line up around the block, and I'd be at the front of the line!

Can't wait to give this a go when it comes out!

--Mav

To lucky beta-testers: Make it QUICK!! Ha!

I am interested to participate in the trial. pm sent.

I cant wait for this to come out thanks for the PM

so is this program legit>? when will a trial be out?

can i just tryout and not receive a full copy when its ready? free beta testing from me? if its a good prog i will shell out the money for it when its complete.

Oh yeah, you'll definitely be able to use the trial version when it is released. On all the sites I'm going to be listing on (anticipating handango, crackberry, pinstack, allblackberry, etc.) they'll be a trial version available for you to play with to see if you like it.

As I mentioned however over the last couple of days I've been inundated with requests from people to beta test. I absolutely appreciate this and am a bit humbled by it actually. However, there have been so many, taking on everyone might become a bit difficult for me to manage so I cut it off early.

I'm anticipating releasing it very soon if beta testing goes well so don't worry, you'll be able to check it out soon

PM Sent.. I can't wait

Hi All,

I just wanted to clear up a misunderstanding some people may have about how my program works.

This is not a HTML email viewer. I know that seems like a bit of a let down, but in my opinion this is actually not so bad...Read on and I'll explain why.


Firstly, I'll lay this out on the table: The BlackBerry cannot (through standard email) receive HTML email. Before your BlackBerry even gets its hands on your email it passes through RIMs servers which detect HTML email and strip it all out. A sad state of affairs in my opinion.

What you do get left with however is image links, html links and otherwise something that looks like a bit of a train wreck.

A couple of years ago a company called Reqwireless came out with a full HTML email viewer for the BlackBerry. The way this worked was to have your email actually redirected through to their servers and then your email is downloaded.

This is bad (and dangerous in my opinion) for the following reasons:
1) Security. Your potentially sensitive business email is forwarded to an unknown third-party server with who knows what kind of security in place. I know I wouldn't want that happening to my sensitive emails.

2) Painful setup for the user. To get this to work, the user would have to setup forwarding of all their emails to Reqwireless' server.

3) Support. Reqwireless found this one out the hard way. Managing everyone's unique email requirements is an extremely hard thing to do. They eventually took their product off the market because the support costs involved became too prohibitive.

4) When it's gone, it's GONE. Because your email is going through their server, if their server is down, no email for you.

5) It didn't integrate with the default email program.

The above is my understanding of how Reqwireless' product worked. If anyone wants to correct me feel free to jump in.




So what does my product do?

It works with what it is given. In general, my aim was to make email reading a good experience not the pain it is now:

- When it detects image links in the email, it goes off and retrieves those images (completely configurable too - you can turn images on and off, etc.). And it caches them for instant viewing later, etc.

- It cleans up email addresses and hyperlinks so they are still usable, but short, concise, pleasant to look at.

- It tries to detect replied to parts in an email (not an exact science) and handle them nicely.

- It makes the email look good (nice anti-aliased fonts, etc) not the ugly chunk of text it looks like now.

- It integrates with the existing email viewer


So not only does my program fix emails which were once HTML, it improves the look and feel of ALL of your emails.

Once I did this, I was amazed by how dramatic the change in appearance was (and how much easier it was to read email!) that I forgot all about this HTML business


Pretty nifty in my opinion

Finally, another teaser screenshot

Teaser

Cheers,
Zainny.

Oh and if I haven't replied to your PM yet, Sorry! I'm working my way through them as fast as I can

You guys/girls have a very vibrant community here

Sounds good, can't wait for the release to try it out.

No kidding. Talk about a teaser, this is almost as bad as waiting for the darn 8830 itself.

Very nice and we have a ton of clients that would be interested in this.

Please keep us update on your progress, and feel free to email us and touchbase with us for possible opportunities to offer this to our clients.

Our email addy is

Thanks,
TheBlackBerryGuy Team

this app is pretty cool....but i think RIM is headed in that direction anyway. doing the HTML thing in email is a security problem, so that is why it's not available on BBs courtesy of RIM. Something i'm willing to deal with so that I don't worry about problems later on.

i bet maybe a generation down the road (next years' phones), BBs will already be doing this out of the box. but for now one of the problems i can see is bandwidth issues when everyone and their mothers start getting HTML content displayed on their phones, it will cause severe bottle-necks all over the place.

when 3G is officially rolled out by the major carriers who aren't quite there yet, this would not be a problem anymore.....

I dont agree. Security is hardly an issue as these are cell phones not PC's. I also see no difference with people browsing the web for hours a day, downloading games and tones and html email.

90+ % email is next to useless on a BB as it is now.

This seems like a great way to clean up the look of e-mails sent as HTML without the aforementioned issues with BB's receiving true HTML e-mail. I will look forward to testing this out and likely purchasing it for my BB.

just like PCs, phones will eventually get targeted too. did you think a bb is 'immune' or something ?

adding HTML capability or the ability to download additional email content will take up a large chunk of resources, as you said 90% + of emails are useless on a bb because they are HTML, so that's 90% + of email content that will be added to a given cell phone tower's workload. you are underestimating the problem.

Is this gonna be a fresh app or work in conjuction with the existing Blackberry Mail client and just to present the mail beatifully?

Oh my! Most of us thought it was HTML. Anyway, thanks for clearing the doubts.

Hi sakman74,

Have a read of my post above. This is not an HTML email viewer. In fact, the only additional retrieval of content my program does is to pull down images it detects in the email - and you can turn that off.

I don't have confidence in RIM releasing something that does this anytime soon. This would require a massive infrastructure change since most of the work happens at the server not on the BlackBerry - so everyone will have to upgrade their BESs, companies will need to upgrade their systems, new OS, new devices, etc. That's a massive effort, in total.

In short, don't expect to see HTML email native on the BlackBerry anytime soon from RIM...

Thanks for your interest!

Cheers,
Zainny.

While you have a great product that has a mass market appeal, as seen by the number of replies and PMs, where do you see it in the market place when RIM *does* offer HTML viewing functionality natively within the Messages application? This functionality is rumored (discussed VERY briefly at WES) to have an introduction before the end of the year, FWIW.

Hi jibi, that's a fair question.

Firstly, I don't think RIM have a chance of getting anything like this out for a long time. As I said earlier, viewing HTML email natively is not just "a simple app. upgrade for the BlackBerry" - it's an upgrade to a whole enterprise system in use right around the world.

_Every_ BES will need to be upgraded to support this functionality. If your BES doesn't support it, you won't get it. And in turn, every user will probably need the latest OS to have this feature. Got an old BlackBerry? Probably too bad for you. Just a regular business user that doesn't want to go to the pain of upgrading your OS? (I was amazed at how you have to install something on your PC to upgrade your BB). Again, you won't see it.

So my point number 1 in reply would be while RIM internally could do HTML email viewing by the end of this year, it's going to be another 2 years at least (I believe) before you see this functionality supported for you, the end user. We're talking about a worldwide rollout here which not only involves RIM but tons of other big network providers - these guys don't act quick.

Point number 2 in reply is that this isn't a HTML email viewer. It improves ALL your emails (HTML or not). Even regular emails benefit amazingly from this product.

I'm a couple of hours off leaking another teaser which will demonstrate this even more so Stay tuned...

Wirelessly posted (8703e Sprint: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8703e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/104)

Just my $.02, but 99% of the problems with security issues and viruses associated with HTML email are directed at Microsoft OS/Products.

I am sure that anything is possible, but last time I checked no one is targeting Java based devices for DOS/virus/other attacks.

The OS on the BB just does not work that way...

Can't wait until the release to the general public.

I want it now now now!!!! I had been a heavy Pocket PC user must of my life. LAST WM5 phone was the Jammin and your could use Profimail and see full email Now I am a certified Crackhead with my 8800, but I want full email with pictures and colors and all wonderfull things in life.

I want it now now now!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You and the rest of us...

Beta is out now Beta Testers All the instructions you need are in your PM Inbox. Hope you like it!

If you didn't make it into the beta, sorry I had to keep the numbers down so it was manageable. But don't worry, if beta testing goes well you should hopefully see it out on the market soon where there will be a trial available for you to play with.

Cheers,
eZainny.

Why you tricky little ..... I happend to get a PM from you but not with the beta information ;) My hopes and dreams were destroyed

what??? scam

Install went well on a 7130e from Verizon. So far I am impressed with the program.
Jimbo

i sent you some feedback already

Sorry someonexh, as I mentioned, I wanted to keep the number of beta testers to a manageable level and you came in a bit too late

The beta testers have already given me some awesome feedback and I'm going to work very hard to put their suggestions into effect. The benefit of all this of course is that by the time you see it, it should be more polished and you'll have a more pleasant experience

Not long to wait, I promise

Hey Zainy......do you want us to just send you the feedback or post it here for an open dicsussion?


LOVE the software so far.....got a few things to report (sending message now)

another feedback email sent =)