ThinPrint started its activities in the mobile industry offering enterprise tools to print documents from handheld devices in 2000. Cortado, a division of ThinPrint, now offers those features, along with a wide range of other mobile productivity services, to small companies and individuals. I explore the services with Dirk Löwenberg, Business Director Cortado Services at ThinPrint.
About two years ago ThinPrint realized that there was an increasing demand for its printing solution from small enterprises and individuals. ThinPrint's technology was at that time exclusively the domain of enterprises. As a result ThinPrint set up a hosted service offering printing, faxing, and PC based viewing of emails, email attachments, and files resident on a mobile device.
With the hosted environment in place ThinPrint realized it had the opportunity to host other services. "We could see that our printing technology was being used heavily to print emails and email attachments," says Dirk. "So hosting an email service seemed a natural step."
To differentiate the mobile products from the printing infrastructure solutions, the new hosted services along with the established enterprise solutions were moved to a separate brand - Cortado - with infrastructure solutions remaining under the ThinPrint brand.
Cortado offers email hosting in two distinct versions. A free email service offers user either Web based access to emails or the ability to upload email to their device using POP3 or IMAP Idle. Users select their own address on the @cortado.com domain. For devices with the ability to use IMAP Idle the free service offers a basic push capability. Users can continue to use an existing email address in conjunction with Cortado Free, as a polling option can collect email from one existing POP3 address. Alternatively users could also forward email to their Cortado address, if their current email provider offers this option. To further protect the investment in an existing email address, Cortado Free can send email marked with an alternative reply address. To prevent spoofing this feature requires the use of an activation code.
With many ISPs and some Webmail providers offering IMAP Idle features Dirk sees Cortado Free serving two purposes. "First, unlike many ISPs, we highlight Cortado Free as a mobile email service," says Dirk. "In addition, we feel it is a great way to introduce users to our premium services for mobile faxing and printing as well as our fee based hosted Microsoft Exchange service."
The Exchange based service offers user the ability to use ActiveSync. Principally marketed to users with S60 devices from Nokia (in addition to Palm and Windows Mobile users) it provides full push of email, contacts, calendar, and tasks through Nokia's Mail for Exchange client. In addition, it works equally well with Exchange ActiveSync (from DataViz) provided with the Sony Ericsson P1i (although on UIQ devices users cannot get the premium printing services.)
The hosted Exchange email can also be accessed via POP3 or IMAP Idle for devices without ActiveSync clients. However, for those devices Cortado offers Intellisync as an alternative push email option. The option to use Intellisync is also a potential alternative to the ActiveSync client on S60 devices as it provides users with advanced device management features, such as remote device wiping, in addition to PIM synchronization and push email.
Email services started as a way to add additional value to the hosting service that was principally designed to provide mobile printing solutions. It is not therefore surprising to find that these printing services are now also an option for the hosted Exchange services.
The printing service started life as just that, a way to send emails, email attachments, or documents stored elsewhere on a device to an Infrared or Bluetooth capable printer. "Customer feedback soon told us that printing was only one of the features our users needed," says Dirk. "So we added the ability to send documents via Fax, create short fax messages, and a print-to-screen mechanism that allows documents to be beamed to a laptop PC and viewed on screen."
These services are offered through an S60 application, but with each feature (print, fax, and print-to screen) charged for on a monthly basis. An additional print client is required on any PC used for the print-to-screen function. Combining the print services with a paid Cortado email account offers additional features, including the ability to preview email attachments without downloading the original file. This view feature requires less data to download the viewable file than the original and enable the viewing of files with no associated viewing or editing application on the mobile device.
In the future Dirk expects Cortado to offer additional free services supported by advertising. Also the Cortado Enterprise products have recently added the ability to browse corporate file systems or a hosted Web file storage service. Browsed file can then be forward files via email or fax without first downloading them to a mobile device. Dirk indicated that this service would probably be made available as a hosted service: allowing individuals and small businesses to access and forward files stored on third party web storage services.
Cortado Free is (unsurprisingly) available free of charge. The hosted Exchange service is available in four options ranging in price from $5.98 to $11.98 per month. A free 30 day trail is available for all hosted Exchange services. The print, fax, and print-to-screen services are available for $8.98 per month each. A free 10 day trial is available for all S60 devices from Nokia except the Nokia E90 for which a 60 day trial is available.
For more information on Cortado email and premium printing services visit www.cortado.com.
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