NextAlarm eNotify doesn't work on my cell

[WayneW]

Does anybody else have issues with NextAlarm's email notification service on a cell phone or PDA? I get the notifications, but I cannot read/open the body of the message. The messages look fine in Outlook. NextAlarm's test messages work fine.

From what I can tell, I am guessing the problem is that the actual notification messages use a multipart format and the test messages do not.

Should my cell phone be able to handle multipart messages? It is a Boost/Motorola/Nextel i855. Do I need a new phone? Should I request that NextAlarm switch to simple text emails instead of multipart?

Or might there be some other reason I cannot open the body? It kinds of defeats the purpose to get an email from your alarm system and then not know if it is good or bad news. h34r:

Samples from the "bad" message:

Content-Type: multipart/related;
boundary="----=_Part_3213_21570996.1187628960070"


------=_Part_3213_21570996.1187628960070
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Authorized Arm by Wayne<br>

------=_Part_3213_21570996.1187628960070--

EDIT: 09/09/2007 This is now irrelevant since the phone died. I hope/assume my replacement phone will work fine.

 

[rfdesq]

My messages come through just fine. They are sent as email to the cell phone number @ provideremail.com (whatever your specific phone email is) and are only two lines long. On my girlfriends account the other night I got her prefix with a Telco Fault and then a few minutes later I got a Telco Restored message.

 

[IVB]

yep, works fine for me too. I also have it sent to cell#@provider.com.

 

[Boomer]

Notifications work very reliably for me too. Here is a link to a list of no charge SMS services for use with cell phones.


(Edit)
No Charge SMS Gateways

 

[WayneW]

I get the messages, but I cannot read the body of the message. I assume it is a shortcoming in my phone. Does anybody else use eNotify with a Boost/Motorola/Nextel phone? Is there any way to use Outlook or OutlookExpress to force it to send a message as "multipart" and not "regular" so I can prove my theory that the phone doesn't handle multipart messages?

It does seem sort of silly for NextAlarm to send a one line email as a multipart message, but I am no email expert.

 

[CollinR]

You may have a text only email client on the phone, can't handle HTML messages. I actually force my email client (thunderbird) into this mode as I don't care for all the graphics and it will convert URLs to hyperlinks on the fly if I desire to click something.


Anyway multipart is to my knowledge sending the same message in multiple formats, plain text/HTML in the hopes that the client can decifer which format is acceptable and use it.

I would think you may need to specify plain text when sending to that phone.

 

[WayneW]

I would think you may need to specify plain text when sending to that phone.

But I am not sending to the phone, NextAlarm is! NextAlarm gives me no control over the email format. Messages I send from my email client, either text or HTML all work. But I don't know how to create an email in multipart format.

 

[CollinR]

You might try forwarding it from your SMTP server you normally use, then you should be able to have some control over the content.

If the example above is the full header of the email it is claiming to be multipart but in reality isn't. It is only text/html; charset=us-ascii.


Ot test the phone you should be able to get the source code from any website and paste it into the body of an email message. Then send that to the phone, if that fails too you'll know you have a client that only supports text.


EDIT: In Thunderbird it will be under send options, send in both plain text and HTML. It's under something about sending to a list where some can recieve HTML and some cannot. You also have the option to prompt.