[651] in magellan
Status Report on Web Mail Discovery as of 6/6/01
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matt Brody)
Wed Jun 6 14:34:45 2001
Message-ID: <3B1E784A.CD37A5EB@mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2001 14:36:58 -0400
From: Matt Brody <mbrody@MIT.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Magellan Mailing List <magellan@mit.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Project Name: Web Mail
Project Leader: Matt Brody
Report Date: 6/6/01
Submitted by: Matt Brody
URL: http://web.mit.edu/is/discovery/webmail/index.html
Accomplishments past period:
- Took an initial look at the upcoming version of IMP (v.2.3) which is
available for access via a demo server but has not yet been released.
Instructions to access the demo were provided to members of the web mail
project team. This new version offers signifcant enhancements to the
user interface and user preferences and appears to resolve several
specific problems that we encountered during our testing of v.2.2.4.
- Matt Brody met with our project sponsor (Jeff Schiller) and reviewed
our progress to date regarding IMP as well as Silky Mail and EMU Mail.
Briefed him on three potential avenues to proceed: a) add one or more
additional web mail solutions for testing as a basis of comparison to
IMP; b) proceed in recommending and delivering the current version of
IMP (v.2.2.4) as our web mail solution; c) closely track and then
implement, when released, the upcoming version of IMP (v.2.3) which
fixes several of the issues identified in our testing of IMP v.2.2.4.
Our sponsor has taken these recommendations under consideration and a
follow-up meeting is scheduled for the week of June 11th to continue
discussions.
- Contact was made with one of the key Horde/IMP developers. He lives
and works in the Boston area and arrangements were made to meet with him
during the week of June 11th to discuss issues we have identified in the
current release of IMP as well as to get a sense of a timeframe for the
release of the upcoming version (v.2.3). Another objective of this
meeting it to help identify local technical expertise that might be able
to assist any IMP Delivery effort at MIT should our sponsor decide on
this option.
Goals for the coming period:
- Conduct follow-up meeting with our sponsor.
- Convene the web mail project team to discuss latest developments and
possible options.
- Meet with one of the IMP developers for technical guidance and
assistance.
Issues:
- Determining how an impending, but not released, version of IMP should
influence our present decision making.
Key learnings:
- There is nothing lost with sending e-mail to a potentially key contact
(in this case one of the architects of the IMP solution) and seeking
their technical assistance. Sometimes they won't respond or will be too
busy and other times they could develop into an important source of
assistance. It never hurts to try. In this case, it yielded an
unexpected but valuable source of input to our project.
Team dynamics:
- Fine.
Additional comments:
- None.
--
**************************************
Matthew S. Brody
Sr. Project Manager
I/T Discovery
MIT Information Systems
mbrody@mit.edu
617.253.4011
**************************************
