Providing access to a plurality of e-mail and voice message accounts from a single web-based interface

Abstract

Consider a user who has three different types of email account. Previously, in order to access those different email accounts the user has had a terminal with three desktop applications, one for accessing each type of email account. The user has been unable to access all of his or her email accounts simultaneously. Instead, the user has had to connect, for example, using a RAS connection, to one of the email accounts and then terminate that RAS connection before initiating a new RAS connection to the next type of email account. This is time consuming and problematic for users, particularly those who travel frequently. Another problem is that the user must maintain software applications on his or her terminal, one for each of the different types of message account. This takes up valuable memory and processing capacity on the user terminal. The present invention removes these problems by providing a single web based interface that gives the user access to a plurality of different message accounts on different message servers. In addition, logon times and network bandwidth requirements are reduced by storing retrieved message information in a cookie on the user's terminal.