wbsurfver / yahoo.com wrote:
>  I have an idea on how to read email from my cell phone, I want to do
> this from my main email which doesn't have a mobile portal. There is a
> portal for yahoo mail, but the idea is, suppose I go out to lunch for
> a couple of hours, I want to check my main email to see if anyone has
> sent me any important messages and if I need to hurry back to my
> computer etc.
>
> Here's sort of what I came up with:
>
> 1. first of all, the ruby version between my laptop and my host can
> vary, so I don't think I can use drb.
>
> 2. Also, I don't think I want to store the password to my main email
> anyplace on my hosted site.
>
>
> Given that, when I go out to lunch, I would start up a process on my
> laptop that reads my email using ruby net::pop
> class and then opens something like a socket to my hosted site, then
> it sends the emails and as long as the socket remains open, it allows
> them to be access through a cell phone browser.
>
>  That would mean my emails are visible (read only) for a short time
> until I shut down the socket connection.
>
>  I would also password protect the access through a simple 4 digit
> password, assuming I can get sessions to work with my cell phone, if
> not I could possibly figure out a scheme of generating keys and
> storing them in the rendered pages or something a bit complex.
>
>  Let me know if there might be a better approach.
>
>   

I did something like this a while back, but without the 2nd requirement 
because I just hosted it on my home computer. I think it might be 
simpler if you can use IMAP, however.

What I did was use the Ruby IMAP library and coded up some rhtml pages 
to use with eruby. That was about all I needed to be able to read and 
delete mail from my cell phone. But then I got a new phone which had 
built-in email functionality so I stopped working on it. If you would 
like to take a look at it, I can send you the code in its current state. 
I stored the passwords, but you could just add a form to send it from 
your cell phone instead.

-Justin