Have you heard of the IMAP idle command? I hadn’t either, until I discovered that when Sony-Ericsson say their new phones (and, indeed, my new phone) have “push email support” this is what they mean.

Basically, it keeps some kind of terse, low-bandwidth connection going pretty much constantly between the mail client and the server, which allows new mail to be downloaded very quickly after it is received (though not instantly, it can take up to a minute).

So… what?

Basically, it’s email without the lag. And your phone maybe supports it (mine does). And your email provider maybe already supports it too? Dreamhost’s mail servers do, as do those of the university of Nottingham’s computer science department.

Gmail doesn’t support it though, since they only offer POP3. Their forwarding is also kind of manky too, it seems to take about an hour for email to arrive at its destination, even though it’s moved to gmail’s archive immediately.

Also: I sold six macs yesterday, pretty good for my first full day in the showroom. I didn’t get them to buy as many peripherals as is preferred though, which is where the real money is made.