Re: Mail Server

From: da (da_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 08/21/04 

Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 16:46:11 GMT

> >
> > How does a user know when their content is ready?
>
> By visiting the site or by having their own personal robot download the
new
> document (or alert the user) when the target document's date changes. This
> is why they call it a "computer".
>

Physicians and health care workers have very limited time, and they won't
stop to "surf the net" to determine whether a particular patients readings
have gone out of range - if they are going to be convinced to use a system
at all, they will want the system to *tell them* when someone interesting
has occured. They will want it to nofity *them*.

(Remember "publish and subscribe" from computing 101? That's the software
design pattern employed for this kind of scenario.)

And they're *not* going to use a "personal robot" - that's an absurd notion.
And it is not likely that there is a lot of leaway as to what can be
installed on the computers in their offices, so relying on something like
this to put a seamless solution in place is a non-starter.

Email notifications, on the other hand, are (fairly close to being) perfect
for this.

-- da