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Using cell phones and PDAs with RULink

I'm putting the URLs at the beginning, to make it easy to try them on a cell phone, without wading through the whole page. See below for explanations.

Calendar

Mail

The URLs with NETID and PASSWORD in them won't work as is, but since typing on a cell phone is painful, you may find it easier to click on them and then edit the URL.

Contents

This pages documents two tools for small screens: calendar and mail interfaces.

For older cell phones, both tools are likely to be useful.

For cell phones (including the iPhone) and PDAs with their own mail and calendar applications, it is probably better to use those applications, with one exception noted in the next paragraph. For PalmOS and Microsoft calendar support, see the sync tool documentation. For iPhone, you will sync your calendar through iTunes. It uses either Outlook or iCal. See documentation on the Outlook Connector or Macintosh iCal.

However the small screen calendar application may still be useful: most PDAs (including iPhone) sychronize the calendar to your computer when you're in the office. When you're in the field, you may need to see a more up to date copy of your calendar. You may also prefer to add an appointment immediately, rather than waiting until you get back to a location where you can do a sync. The small screen calendar application will work through your web browser to give immediate access to your calendar.

This note has four parts:

Cell Phone / PDA Web Services in RULink

This page describes web-based tools, for situations where PDA sync tools aren't appropriate, or there is no builtin mail program. E.g. this page would be good for

This page describes web applications whose display is designed for a very small screen.

Blackberry

For Blackberrys, there are two approaches. Both require you to use Blackberry's own mail service.

For the moment it appears that the only option for calendar service would be to use the Blackberry's web brower with the calendar interface described below. This calendar interface is optimized for cell phones, and is clearly not up to the quality of Blackberry's or Palm's calendar program.

These Blackberry instructions are an experiment. I'd be interested in talking with users, at hedrick@rutgers.edu.

Calendar

The entry point is https://rulink.rutgers.edu/cal/show.php3 That URL will display a login screen, on which you enter username (netid) and password.

You may prefer to put your username and password in the URL. That will avoid a login screen, which may be hard to deal with on a cell phone. To do this, use a URL like this: https://rulink.rutgers.edu/cal/show.php3?uname=NETID&pwd=PASSWORD where NETID and PASSWORD represent your netid and password.

You'll find a link at the top of this page labelled "Generate Cell Phone URL." That link will give you a login screen and will then generate a URL of the correct form. You can click on it and then bookmark the page.

The application should be self-explanatory. In the "add event" section, "Start" and "End" should be times using a 24-hour clock. There are two fields for each, hour and minute. On some cell phones, these may show on separate lines. If you don't fill in the minutes, 0 is assumed.

Mail

This section describes a web-based mail client that is optimized for very small screens. If your device has a mail program, you are probably better off to use it instead.

The entry point is https://rulink.rutgers.edu/wapreader.php That URL will display a login screen, on which you enter username (netid) and password.

You may prefer to put your username and password in the URL. That will avoid a login screen, which may be hard to deal with on a cell phone. To do this, use a URL like this: https://rulink.rutgers.edu/wapreader.php?login=NETID&password=PASSWORD where NETID and PASSWORD represent your netid and password.

This program puts backward links at the bottom of the screen. If you want to sent a new message, the link is at the bottom of the page with the folder list, i.e. the top-level page. It defaults the From address to username@localhost. @localhost will turn into @rutgers.edu when the mail is sent, so it's normally OK.

The mail client uses WAP, a protocol intended specifically for cell phones.

Normal web browsers often do not understand WAP. If not, you can add an argument mode=html. E.g. https://rulink.rutgers.edu/wapreader.php?mode=html Note that mode=html may not work on all browsers, because it requires them to support XML. However simple tests work with Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox.

The mail client works quite nicely on my Palm web browser (without mode=html). On my LG cell phone it is acceptable, but quotes tend to display as ", or something like that. On all platforms I have problems entering a password with a special character in it in the password box. However entering it with the "password=" option in the URL works fine.

Text messages

The major cell phone providers give you a way to send text messages by email. This raises the possibility of redirecting critical email to your cell phone. Note that long messages will not work well this way, but you may still see enough to get an idea of what the message is about. You can then go to the mail reader to see the whole thing and deal with it.

Normally you simply send email to an address like 1234567890@messaging.sprintpcs.com, where 1234567890 is your phone number. Here's a list of addresses I believe will work:

[Original source: http://www.tech-recipes.com/instant_messaging_tips939.html]

In rulink you can redirect certain email to these address by using a rule. These rules can be set from http://rulink.rutgers.edu/admin, using a "mail filter". From the login page, choose "Spam control". I recommend using "add filters" "other filter".

The screen for generating a filter will let you choose messages based on various criteria. For the moment I don't have special support for redirecting email, so you'll need to use "Put in folder." The folder name is a hack based on what is actually a bug in my code. Here's what mine looks like:

INBOX"; redirect "111111111@messaging.sprintpcs.com
What this does is deliver the mail to my normal inbox and also send it to my cell phone. (No my number isn't really 1111111111.) Make sure you put the quotes exactly as shown. If you prefer, you could use a separate folder, replacing INBOX with some other folder name.
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