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Ginbox

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Google's Gmail service is web mail with a difference: about 2GB's worth. A clean interface, uncluttered adverts and free POP3 access also add to its value. Unfortunately, its POP3 interface suffers from two main problems:

  1. You get all messages received and sent since you last connected over POP3.
  2. You can't limit the messages received to a single folder, unread messages, unprocessed mail or unarchived mail.

Ginbox is an open source program (under the Artistic Licence which attempts to address these points.

It proxies Gmail, providing a standard POP3 interface to your Gmail account. However, in addition to removing the requirement for an SSL connection (which some PDAs - for example, EPOC-running Psions - don't support), it also provides access only to a label of your choice.

Use

Connect to a server running Ginbox by configuring your mail client to access it as a POP3 server. Note that Ginbox doesn't provide any SMTP gateway to allow you to send email: for that you will have to find other means.

Options can be passed, for example: which label to access and (in future) what should be done to messages moved out of your POP3 account. By default, Gmail's Inbox is retrieved, and "deleted" messages are archived.

To specify the label, specify them after your username; for example:

myusername@gmail.com#label=MyLabel

Ginbox servers

In order to allow you to use Ginbox without having to run your own server with the required Perl modules & patches, the Ginbox-servers below are available for your use.

Simply point your POP3 client at:

mail.bleb.org (the port is the standard POP3 port, 110).

Your username should be your full Gmail email address (ie. myusername@gmail.com. Your password should be your Gmail password. PLEASE NOTE: whomever is running the server on which Ginbox is running can read both your username & password and any email which you download. Also, since the connection between your computer and the server running Ginbox is also unencrypted, it is possible that anyone on the Internet (with the appropriate skills and inclination) could read your email.

Download

If you wish to run your own Ginbox server, whether for you or anyone else, the source can be downloaded below. However, there are changes which need to be made to LWP/UserAgent.pm, Mail/Webmail/Gmail.pm and Net/Server/POP3.pm. If you are not comfortable making these changes, do not attempt to do so; and don't email me with questions about it.

The requisite libraries can are Mail::Webmail::Gmail and Net::Server::POP3.

The changes which need making (based on this post) are straightforward. In LWP/UserAgent.pm, change $referral->remove_header('Host', 'Cookie'); to:

$referral->remove_header('Host');

This patch needs applying to Mail/Webmail/Gmail.pm, and - to add UIDL support to Net::Server::POP3 - this patch needs applying to Net/Server/POP3.pm.

ginbox.pl
[ view the source ]