beyond push notification
September 13, 2010 12:36 PM   Subscribe

Is there some way to ring my cell phone or trigger an alarm on my iphone when an email comes through?

I need to be notified whenever an email from a certain address comes through. The current method I'm using is a gmail filter to forward all incoming email from the sender to another email address, and then using GPush to notify me by pop-up.

However, the emails are very time sensitive and I've already missed a few, so I'm looking for something more aggressive. I'm wondering if there is any way that the emails can trigger a phone call or alarm that will continue to go off until I respond.
posted by jsmith78 to Technology (11 answers total)
 
Set up a Gmail filter to forward the appropriate emails to [YOURPHONE#]@mms.att.net.

(This assumes you're on AT&T, but most carriers have a similar email-to-sms gateway)
posted by mkultra at 12:42 PM on September 13, 2010


Response by poster: @mkultra - I was hoping to find a method that isn't simply a text message or push notification since sometimes I am asleep when the email comes in.
posted by jsmith78 at 12:49 PM on September 13, 2010


No experience with them, but there exist email-to-phone services (e.g.).
posted by misterbrandt at 1:08 PM on September 13, 2010


If you can get the mail into a text message as per mkultra's suggestion, can't you set up your phone so that it rings loudly when a text message comes in? My phone is able to set a special ringtone for text messages and repeats every x minutes if the text isn't answered.
posted by flipper at 1:49 PM on September 13, 2010


Response by poster: hmmm, I tried to have gmail forward it to the mms.att.net, but received an error message saying that the address was unable to auto-forward. mkultra, have you tried using gmail filters to forward to your att account before, and if so, do you know what I might be doing wrong?
posted by jsmith78 at 2:16 PM on September 13, 2010


If I understand GPush correctly, you don't actually need it. You can use Google's Google Sync (which basically means, "Set up a special Exchange account with certain settings). When you have such an account, Google will push email to your phone, no third party app required. And you don't have to give your account info to a third party, though it's a bit late for that.

I don't know if the latency is being caused by GPush or not, but it's a good bet since a service like that is likely having to poll your gmail inbox, causing delays.

Forwarding email also causes delays. But since you imply that you're forwarding between two Gmail accounts it's possible/likely that this forwarding might happen via a faster backend. If Gmail were checking a non-gmail account for you, I know for sure that happens on a slowish schedule. But the forward might be fine.
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 2:42 PM on September 13, 2010


Oh, and text messages can also lag. In my experience, text messages are more likely to get lost or delayed than emails, but emails can certainly be delayed also. I just think in practice the email is likely to be better. If you want more certainty, you're probably going to use a technology that is designed not to silently, occasionally, delay messages.
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 2:51 PM on September 13, 2010


I use what @mkultra uses for notifications of "first-come, first-served" catering gig leads. They don't offer a SMS notification, so i just re-route the e-mail through gmail, which pings my phone. works like a charm through verizon. Won a lot of gigs this way!
posted by ChefJoAnna at 2:56 PM on September 13, 2010


Set up a Gmail filter to forward the appropriate emails to [YOURPHONE#]@mms.att.net.

Be aware that the forwarding gateways offer no guarantees on timeliness, and AT&T's MMS gateway is worse about it than SMS. That's why I changed our Nagios routing to use the SMS gateway. When we had a glut of messages, the MMS gateway would sometimes delay messages by days. Using [number]@mobile.mycingular.com gives you a consistent from address, whereas txt.att.net will give you a unique return address every time that you can reply to. I prefer the former so I can assign a special ringtone.
posted by kmz at 3:08 PM on September 13, 2010


If you have access to an Android phone, there are several apps that can do this.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:29 PM on September 13, 2010


Oh, yet another addition. The official Google app can now apparently use push notification to alert you of new mail (Gmail required, naturally). This does not appear to require setting up an Exchange account a la Google sync.
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 1:12 PM on September 14, 2010


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