Ask HN: Uses for a scalable Google IMAP/contact sync server w/FTS?

2 points by fjabre ↗ HN
We have developed and tested an IMAP/contact sync server for Gmail and Google Apps. It was originally built for a CRM but due to time contraints we had to shutdown that project. We were using it to keep emails and contacts in sync between us and Google/Gmail. Specifically we displayed a list of the user's Google contacts in the CRM and when a particular contact was clicked the full list of emails exchanged with that contact were displayed.

The server is capable of syncing thousands of emails/contacts from any Gmail or Google apps account in seconds and storing them in Redis or Membase with possible future support for other DBs. It supports fast full text search over all contacts and email content. It can also extract message content from emails with attachments without having to download the full message - allowing you to save bandwidth and download email attachments on demand instead of having to download the full message with attachment everytime, the default in IMAP.

Does anyone have use for something like this for any projects they're working on? We were thinking of selling this to other devs working in the email/contacts space or possibly doing something else with it that has less time contraints on us..

It was built in python.

Any suggestions/feedback would be great. Thanks.

1 comment

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I am interested. Please get in touch or let me know how to get in touch with you. Thx B