Gmail enables OAuth, Syphir for iPhone already using it

Google has introduced OAuth authorization for Gmail, meaning that approved applications can access your Gmail account without you giving them access to your Gmail username and password.

OAuth has been used as Flickr and Twitter for some time, but is a new development for Google.

Previously, if you wanted to get push notifications on your iPhone when you received a message at Gmail, you had two options: trust a third-party application with your username and password, or automatically forward a copy of all of your email to a different email address and trust that they would not save a copy of your email. As you can imagine, neither of those made security-conscious users very comfortable.

There is already an iPhone app available which uses OAuth, SmartPush ($2.99) by Syphir promises to give you finer control over notifications from Gmail on your iPhone. We hope to have a review of SmartPush here on TUAW in the near future, so stay tuned for that.

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Source: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/03/oauth-access-to-imaps…

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Google has introduced OAuth authorization for Gmail, meaning that approved applications can access your Gmail account without you giving...

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nachX

I kinda hate the push notifications. The pop-ups are intrusive, annoying and, frankly, uglier than the system of, say, Web OS.

That said, i'm ok with push mail and push calendar on the "Exchange" server of Google (m.google.com). It works great BTW.

April 01 2010 at 12:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David S

Actually, push support for gmail has existed for a while. Google sync provides an exchange server which will do push email and calendar and contacts sync. No giving login information to anyone.

http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/

April 01 2010 at 10:46 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to David S's comment

jesus torres

Works beautifully - enough to ween anyone off MobileMe, even.

April 01 2010 at 10:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

TJ Luoma

Sorry to be unclear. By "push notifications" I did not mean the same thing as "push email" but rather those little "alert box" notifications that Apple has suggested that people use (most often in lieu of background processes).

See apps such as Mail Notifier(1), Push for Gmail(2), and PushGmail(3)

(1) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mail-notifier/id331620555?mt=8

(2) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/push-for-gmail/id343029704?mt=8

(3) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pushgmail/id329711198?mt=8

April 01 2010 at 11:06 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply