Proxy servers, PDAs, and Synchronization

In between helping Holly (our daughter) get out a prayer letter, I had a chance to tinker a bit with several things yesterday.  

 

I've got about 75% of the coding done on the routines to allow unlimited e-mail addresses (and perhaps alternate phone numbers).  It requires a number of changes in several places in the program, but it's going pretty well.  It seems that many people have many e-mail addresses (hey - I've got 6 of my own), so hopefully it will prove handy.

 

I'm continuing to look for a way to build bulk email sending into the program.  Doing straight text messages is no problem at all, and I may go ahead and implement that pretty soon.  Even the personalization is not difficult.  Now, HTML email is the challenge!  We'll see how that goes.

 

I've been using the Infacta Group Mail program for sending mass e-mails and find it quite nice.  It takes a little learning, but it's pretty easy to use.

 

I ran into an interesting problem yesterday getting the DM "live update" routine (new in 5.25) working behind a proxy server.  When an app starts talking to the internet, firewalls and proxy servers kick in and do their thing (as they should).  So, I'm getting a quick education on that kind of stuff thanks to some extremely helpful people both at WGM headquarters and at JAARS.  I still don't have all of the kinks out of that system yet.

 

I got some sample code sent to me the other day that holds great promise for putting in true 2 way synchonization.  I'll probably put it into the "Pack and Go" routine first, then tackle the whole "2 way Synch with Outlook" issue next.  If I can get the Synch with Outlook issue solved, then I have a natural pipeline for synching with PDAs.   

 

I continue to be amazed at the tremendous willingness to help that I find in the computer commmunity as well as within the misisonary community.  It's truly a joy to be able to contribute and to receive the contributions of others.