Newsletter #18 - July 1999

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1. NEWS: Mark/Space at Macworld Expo, NYC, July 21-23
2. NEWS: PageNOW! eGate 1.0 to ship at Macworld (Order now, 20% off!)
3. UPDATE: Online 1.2 (PalmOS) Public Beta
4. UPDATE: Price Lists Now Available Online (PDF Format)
5. UPDATE: PalmCentral now carries Online and PageNOW! (PalmOS)
6. SURVEY: PageNOW! 2.0 - Help us select new features
7. TIP: Sending to GTE PCS Phones
8. TIP: Sending to Nextel Phones

New York City is the place to be for Mac and Palm OS fans this July 21-23. With an expected crowd of 40-50,000 people, Apple and Palm will be showing off their latest developments along with hundreds of other developers.

Representatives from Mark/Space will be attending the show, and would love to have the chance to meet with you. We will be staying at the New Yorker, conveniently located within walking distance of the convention center. To arrange a meeting, just email

Due to reduced staffing, telephone technical support will be on a limited basis from July 19-23. If at all possible, please consult our online FAQS (frequently asked questions) documents at the web site, our various product related discussion lists, and the product documentation.

Our order/sales (800-799-1718) line will be available as usual (8-5 CA time) for the placement of orders, questions related to shipping and invoices, and general pre-sales questions.

Please direct any support issues during this week to support@markspace.com, or leave a voice mail at 408-293-7299 and we will return your call as soon as possible (usually within 1 business day).

The PageNOW! E-Mail Gateway for MacOS is nearly complete, and will ship at Macworld Expo later this month. And as an extra bonus, if you order now, (up until the end of the Expo), you can receive your license key via email (which will work with the current beta as well as the final version) and take 20% off!

The gateway can be used in many ways! Just two examples are:

1) Use the gateway to check existing accounts for email (myname@isp.com), and send just part of the message (such as sender and subject), and leave the mail on the server for later retrieval.

2) Create pager-specific accounts that are meant to send the entire message directly to the pager. Create accounts such as page_linda@company.com or linda@pagers.company.com to make it easy for people to remember how to reach you.

The MacOS version includes all of the same features of the Windows version:

• Works with all POP3 accounts
• Accounts can be on local/corporate email server, or ISP
• Control what parts of the email message are sent (Banner, From, Subject, Date, Contents of message, etc.)
• Indicate the size limit for each message
• Review how a sample message will be displayed for each user, based on the property settings that you control
• Determine how often the gateway will check for email messages to be paged
• Control the hours during which pager/digital phone messages will be accepted and sent. (24 X7, or 9 am - 5 pm, or whatever time period meets the needs of your organization.)
• Maintain privacy--pager IDs, paging service phone numbers, etc., are seen only by the system administrator.
• Provide clients, vendors, patients, customers, in-house, or field personnel with one, easy-to remember email address for sending pages from anywhere to anyone, anywhere, who is listed in your PageNOW! Email Gateway.

Additionally, the gateway makes use of the appearance manager for a contemporary user interface (appearance manager is included with OS 8.0 and later, or can be installed for System 7.x) and is multi-threaded for optimum performance.

The Mac OS version requires System 8 or later (System 7.x supported if appearance manager installed) and is available in a 5-address license pack starting at $199. (See web page for full price lists).

SAVE!!! Until the end of Macworld Expo (July 23) you can order a copy of the PageNOW! eGate at a 20% discount! When you order you will receive a license key allowing you to run the public beta immediately, as well as the 1.0 final version with when completed.

Online v1.2d1 is available for public beta. It includes a few minor bug fixes as well as some handy new features related to the "Send Memo" feature. Send Memo will now interpret special characters in memo pad records, making memo pad records an excellent way to send "extra long macros".

For a complete list of changes, see "Release Notes.doc", included with the beta distribution.

Version 1.2 will be a free update - just use the serial number you received with version 1.1 (version 1.0 customers can request a free 1.1 serial number by sending hotsync name in a message to sales@markspace.com).

Our price lists have recently been updated to include the MacOS version of the E-Mail Gateway as well as our new prices for PalmOS/Newton versions of PageNOW! - and the best part is that they are now in PDF format for cross-platform online viewing.

You can find the latest version of the Direct Discount Order Form at:

Resellers/VARS please request the updated PDF version of our Reseller Order Form via email to

PalmCentral now joins PilotGear HQ as an online reseller of our PalmOS products. You can download the latest versions and order copies online for electronic delivery.

Once we wrap up the Mac E-Mail Gateway, we are going full steam into finishing the work we have already begun on PageNOW! 2.0 for MacOS.

Please take a moment to complete our survey and let us know what new features you would like to see most. (If you are a PageNOW! for Windows customer, please take the survey as well, but indicate that your feedback applies to the PC version. We will have a separate PC survey up for the next newsletter for PC and Windows CE).

Our current plans call for adding direct support for SMS via GSM phones as well as support for SMTP (e-mail) and SNPP (TCP) based paging.

GTE PCS phones now have TAP access, if setup of course. Modem number is 800-864-9499, for pager ID just use area code + phone number (ie, "4085551212").

We'll be adding this number to our services list so it will come pre-configured in the future.

Nextel phones now have TAP access. Modem number is 913-927-6683, for pager ID just use 1 + area code + phone number (ie, "14085551212").

If you happen to come across a nationwide (800/888/877) number, please let us know.

For the upcoming PageNOW! 2.0 releases (for Palm, Mac, Windows, in that order), you will be able to send messages using the SNPP protocol and the following information:

server address: pecos.nextel.com
port: 444

We're excited about support for TCP based paging (SNPP) and will be talking about it further in the next issue of the Mark/Space News in conjunction with the release of PageNOW! 2.0 for PalmOS.