Disqus - Latest Comments for Dave Cridland

Re: An Introduction To IMAP IDLE: Why Yahoo!’s iPhone Push System Isn’t Working So Well

Dave Cridland — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:41:13 -0000

The 3-minute timeout on IDLE is probably due to a more broken than usual NAT system on your mobile network. A good network shouldn't be timing out connections, and even a poor one should manage more than three minutes.

And P-IMAP is a dead I-D, pushed by Oracle, which ended up being cherry-picked for value for Lemonade, which does use IDLE, and is deployed, as well as being an IETF Proposed Standard.

Now. Your article suggests that IDLE is inherently un-robust - not true. The issue is that with a NAT in the way, a TCP connection may be severed for no good reason. TCP survives the lower layer dropping out just fine. From a technical standpoint, then, a TCP connection running dormant is the ideal solution. There's nothing magical about using TCP and IDLE to provision push notifications, as compared to some other method.

Microsoft's solution relies on repetitive HTTP queries, which cost battery power, and, for many users, actual real money. It's still client provisioned, it's just much worse.

Re: Why Identi.ca is important

Dave Cridland — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:43:22 -0000

Microblogging isn't important, but that belies the point. It's also not "better" than IRC, or XMPP - I've argued that microblogging and XMPP should converge for some time, and I think that they probably will.

But then, I've also argued that microblogging is simply the latest incarnation of the telnet talkers of old - and those were powerful communities, too. These are not "change the world" technologies, and anyone arguing that is probably somewhat deluded - but they are pleasant, and occasionally useful.

Dave.

Re: An Introduction To IMAP IDLE: Why Yahoo!’s iPhone Push System Isn’t Working So Well

Dave Cridland — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:41:13 -0000