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A few issues I can see (from personal experience) which you might have to look into (perhaps you already have):
- Message structrures are an issue. Even just text becomes a drag, as the standard states that quotes are placed above the message and the message ends with -- and the signature. But nearly all emails I've ever encountered have been where the message (and its signature) is above the quote instead.
- Then of course you still have those formats like HTML and RTF (though RTF seems to have died out with Outlook 2007) to contend with. Not to mention most messages would contain at least standard text in addition to one of these as a mime attachment.
- Attachments are "by standard" using mime types. But nearly all attachments through all versions of Outlook use a proprietary WinMail.dat format. And then you still get some "idiotically" old email clients using stuff like uuencode. I know many email clients (including GMail, Thunderbird, KMail, etc.) have huge issues when they've received such non-standard attachment format. And unfortunately this non-standard (at least Outlook's) has become the "de-facto" standard simply because of Outlook volumes - so you can't just say: "It's not standard, therefore I won't support it."
- You'll need to be able to import from various mail storage formats, not just using IMAP. Many users have POP accounts with local stores. So you'd need to extract historical mails from PST files, but perhaps also MailDir / MBox (depending on which other programs you're attempting to replace)
- Your local storage needs to be something easily indexable, yet also easy to archive incrementally. I.e. no single file for entire account or even entire inbox (like Outlook / Thunderbird does). You may want to try using some indexed variant of MailDir instead (something where small messages are kept in central file while large messages are saved to their own file).
- You'll need an export function, preferably catering for several formats. Though (from a previous post) I can't see CSV working well for messages (unless it's just exporting something like a message listing). For contacts / events / tasks CSV is a much used interchange format.
- Better yet would be to allow for various local storage formats instead of exporting. That way users could have live views of messages / calendar / tasks / contacts / etc. Though this is a very complicated issue - as you start entering into "client-server-db" design with such a system.
- For contacts I'd advise you look into vCard files - there's yet more issues with non-standard stuff. Some clients use custom fields or allow multi-lined fields. While others use multiple fields for stuff like multi-line addresses. I've run into this scenario before due to google's gmail contacts having their own particular flavour of vCard.
- Calendar is yet more of an issue. Yes I agree iCal is probably your best bet (though there are some others like CalDav which you might have to cater for as well). But you're going to have to make sure you understand how each format handles time zones. Some of them convert everything to UTF, while others only list what the original time zone was.
- Meeting requests and responses are also not always "standard". Especially when looking at Outlook's requests and responses. You'll have to do some trail and error on these
- Are you going to differentiate events and tasks? Or are you going to include to-do items inside the calendar? Both options have their weak and strong points.
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I must be missing something, because I didn't even smile! What is funny about it?
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Some people think they should laugh every time Jack Black opens his mouth 
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Nope, sorry, didn't laugh your asss off... 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
Me, all the time
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I found nothing to laugh there.
Programmer : A machine that converts coffee into code !
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I laughed more when my cat died.
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Yes, but the way it fell into that threshing machine which sprayed it out in front of that marching band who all slipped on the remains, falling over in a cacophany of noise culminating in that fella falling through the large drum and smashing his head into the symbol was very, very funny.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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I also laughed when your pussy got shafted
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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I don't know why they are all slagging you slacker.
The harmony was nice, but......, I didn't laugh either.
I want what you had.
"Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." Frank Zappa 1980
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Nice to finish my day off with a read like that. Thanks for posting this. 
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Some time ago I wrote an iOS app which makes some data available from Codeproject on an iPhone/iPod
You can see the article here: iCPVanity: CP Vanity for iOS 7
I have updated it to have more or less the same functionality as the Xamarin based one, of which I wrote here
I am now considering making it available in the app store but am looking for beta-testers
So, if you are interested you can apply
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Thanks, i've copied it overthere
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So i had this old Youtube account and wanted to log in but as you know Youtube makes you use Google gmail and google then pops up a message saying that for my protection they need to send me a SMS to my phone just to ensure its me.
Are you stupid or something.
Google is not getting my phone number for any price since they have spy scripts (Often Hidden in SSL) on just about ever web-site in the world and they still want more blood.
I went to create a new YT account and opted out of receiving a SMS text message by linking to an old email address and as soon as i went to use the account, youtube asked for my phone number again.
Don't be fooled people, it's not for your protection but so the nanny state can pay google/YT to spy on you and know ever word you post on the internet.
Who's internet, Our internet so get lost Google
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Anytime google has asked for my phone number there has always been a Skip link.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Yes skip worked but like i said as soon as i went to post anything or upload then up popped the message again.
My old YT account is now dead because they thought i would give them what they wanted if they hijacked my account, they were wrong.
You can set up an SMS on-line service to fool them but i just told the misses to pick up a 99p G3 sim card so it will be used once and then thrown in the bin.
Twatter also tried the trick of making me give them a valid email address after i forgot the one used to create the account so they can full my real account with spam. I refused and lots of other people too because some months later they dropped it and let me back in without having to replay to an email that of course, was sent for my protection.
Twiiter is full of adverts and spam bots, takes one to know one if anyone needs a twitter bot
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Seems like they're getting more persistent all the time. I don't give out my phone number to just anyone...what kind of guy do you think I am?
New version: WinHeist Version 2.1.1 new web site.
I know the voices in my head are not real but damn they come up with some good ideas!
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I thought we were just haggling over the price!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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I had the same thing a few weeks back, with IMDB, but they gave me the choice of phone or credit-card number.
There is no good reason to give either to a web-site in any on-the-verge-of-totalitarianism country, so I deleted my account.
It's a bit more of a wrench deleting an e-mail account, but it's the advisable course of action.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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"on-the-verge-of-totalitarianism country"
Yes thats a man that gets it.
Google started with free canndy, level playing field and now look at it !
Don't put google spyware all over the site and your site, no matter how good ends up on the back pages and they even try to tell us how we should write HTML and not to put javascript redirect on A-Tags and yet Google is the worlds worse at that one.
Personlized search results is just another way of saying censorship and thats comeing form the bigest monoply known to man.
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there's a very good reason: it helps keep people from hacking into your account(s).
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