How to send email using SharePoint's Silverlight Client Object Model and avoid creating a web service?

Question

I am developing a Silverlight application that is supposed to send an email to a particular SharePoint user. I need two things:

1. I need to get the email address associated with the SharePoint user
2. BUT MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY, I need to be able to send the actual email.

Since there is no System.Net.Mail class for Silverlight, it appears that I am condemned to create my own web service that is going to be in charge of sending emails. I am trying to avoid this, and I was wondering if there is a way to send an email to the SharePoint user using SharePoint's Silverlight Client Object Model? Thanks for clarification!

Answer 1

You could have a webpage that the user hits (possibly silently) rather than a web service, but at some point you're going to need to send a request that gets you to the server because this isn't an operation that can be done via the client.