Slashdot Mirror
Google's Gmail Goes Into Beta for Blogger Users
deadpixel writes "Gmail, the 1gb webmail service offered
by Google, has gone into beta. Blogger
(owned by google) users have first crack at the service. Besides the massive
storage, the free service boasts a sophisticated spam filter, no
pop-ups/banners, and gives you search results relevant to the emails you receive
automatically. Bring on those attachments!"
Is Google contacting Blogger users, or are all Blogger users eligible to be beta testers? I have a Blogger account and I can't log in to GMail..
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Don't get too excited and go run and create a blogger account to get in. It seems that it only works for those that are currently "active" blogger users already. (Though nobody really knows what defines active.)
You need to be an active blogger to get access to GMail. I have multiple Blogger accounts. But they gave me access only in those accounts where I have been active lately.
"1 000 megabytes = 0.9765625 gigabytes"
says google.
This is being blown so far out of proportion. Seriously. As countless others have said, our email is scanned all the time by third parties for spam and viruses.
If you have concerns about Google scanning your email to place unobstrusive, sometimes-actually-useful text advertisements next to your email, then there is a solution. DON'T FLIPPING USE IT! That's all there is too it!
The thing that I'M concerned about is if they pull a similar move that Apple did with mac.com accounts. "Oh yah they'll be free forever", then two years later, once everyone is hooked on free @mac.com email addresses, they turn around and say they're going to charge $99 dollars per year. Excuse me? I dont think so. My mac.com email was my main email for nearly two years and as soon as they pulled that shit, I cancelled my account, bought my own domain, and now have free email for life. Apple was hoping that users would pay because they had been using that email address as their main email and wouldnt want to switch. Well it didnt work on me and yo should have read the mac message boards when this happened. People were pissed!
I do think Gmail is a cool idea. Being able to store a gig of email so you (as an average user anyways) never have to delete email and have the best search engine in the world to search through old emails is awesome. But what if their idea is to get you hooked so you wont ever want to give it up, then start charging a fee for it? Even though it is worth probably $100/year, I would tell them to shove their bill up their ass and move on. This is why I won't use Gmail.
So Google is going to show me penis enlargement and nude cheerleader search links every time I receive spam?
1 gigabyte = 1 024 megabytes
:) I suppose its how you ask the question :)
Bang on and correct
Cheers,
rob.
Yesterday I signed in to BlogSpot just to check for this, and when you log in to the main page, on the right hand side there is a GMail ad.
Click yes, answer yes to all of the questions that follow, and you have your very own GMail account.
I have had this for what, 24 hours now I guess, and GMail is the best webmail interface I've ever seen.
The one thing I don't like so far is that links, elinks, or links2 don't work with it. They do support javascript AFAIK which is what GMail is basically comprised of, but that's my only gripe.
Can't wait for POP or, preferably, IMAP access. Even more preferably, IMAP over SSL.
Gmail really hits the Gspot. All you virgins can just look confused and mod me down.
I signed up for it,but I am not sure who I want to use it with. Maybe all those businesses who want an e-mail address? Let's find out if they REALLY mean they won't sell my address to spammers!!!
I am curious to learn more about what users of blogger.com they are offering this to. Seems pointless to me, they would have been better off having a sign-up to be a beta tester. I am sure that a lot of people who use blogger excessively and got an account wont do to well in beta-testing it for bugs. A handfull of them probably will not even use it. Is this even official? Where exactly was this information posted so blogger users that actually got an account know about it?
They'll *have* to charge for it, eventually.
The "evil empire" Microsoft has kept hotmail running for free for ages. Yahoo, I'm sure it's some sort of evil empire, has kept their free mail running for ages too. I could also list many other sites that give out free email addresses such as myownemail.com. I doubt Google would go and charge for gmail, although they might turn that 1gb file storage way down you'll probably still have your gmail address if you want it - just with more like 50mb space or what have you.
Friends of people who work for Google had first crack about two weeks ago. Just in case anybody wants to be jealous.
So far the only perk I've heard is 1GB storage. My computer has that, and when my broadband goes down, I can still access my stored mail. I'm getting by fine with the <1GB storage my existing free web mail account offers.
What other perks? Ads inserted into e-mails? No thanks. I don't need that intrusion.
Can a beta tester please tell if the sending of very large attachments from one Gmail account to another is reasonably fast? Also, what is the maximum attachment size?
I don't think anyone knows yet what Google does with a new account that holds a single mail with a very large, PGP-encrypted attachment that curiously is accessed and downloaded from a wide range of different IPs, but if so, please tell.
blow your mind already
How to get them?
I've got a gmail account (thanks to Blogger), and also have a Google AdWords account.
I've been sending mail to my gmail account from another account, and including things that I thought *should* trigger a Google text ad - one of mine, no less and keywords that certainly do trigger a text ad from the main Google search page - dont. I haven't seen one yet.
During the Beta are they inhibiting the textads?
Anyone see an ad in the wild yet?
A message from our sponsor
I set up one Gig accounts on both Gmail and SpyMac that I've had people sending attachments and emails to to see how they hadnle reaching a GIG. so far, Gmail is only up to 127MB and SpyMac is only at 27MB (but their servers would seem to be a day behind on listing my new email). So far, I have discovered that Gmail's spam filter has caught one actual spam message, and suddenly blocked 5 of 15 messages from one person with no clear reason why. Also, the ad bots only scan the body text of the emails, as all attachment only emails have been ad free. cksampleiii@gmail.com and cksample3@spymac.com if you are interested in contributing to the experiment.
http://www.sampletheweb.com
There's an image header - http://blogger.com/g-logo.gif
As an active Blogger user, we would like to invite you to be one of the first to try out Google's new email service, Gmail.
Would you like to give it a whirl? YES / NO
The YES link opens up this page
The NO links pops an alert box saying 'Okay, this notice will be here for a few more days, should you change your mind.' or similar.
Because:
"When Google has its IPO it officially becomes evil. Very few corporations adhere to their founding values when they must answer to shareholders. Google should just remain private."
Ranting about how money is evil is troll-like.
And I'm sure more than a few moderators are offended by the viewpoint that no one should ever make money, and everyone should give everything away for free. That's not how the world works.
evil adrian
And while it states that they will can your account for sending and using your address to receive illicit information in one form or another, I'm tempted to push the envelope (since I dont need the account, I've got an edu account which is better for me).
/. is the wrong place to ask. ;-p) The reason is, whats stopping people from using this for legal functions, but not the intended storage purpose as originally "intended".
As much as P2P has been demonized, there is one content that I can think of that is legal, and distrabution is encouraged, and thats concert recordings of bands that allow taping (see etree.org for more info). Each show typically runs between 700MB-> 1.5GB since its done in a lossless compressiong scheme.
So whats stopping me from having people get GMail accounts and then doing a CC to everyone who wants a show and doing a mass mailing (even if its broken into chunks).
I'm not looking for a technical answer, I'm curious about a legal one. (and thus,
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
Can anyone explain to me why people are not going to use GMail to distribute 1GB warez or media files? Just email a 1GB attachment to a list of GMail users and you'll get to use Google's excellent connection to distribute whatever you want. How can they crack down on it without jepardizing the key feature of GMail: massive storage. If there was a 600MB transfer limit or something, how would I get my 1GB of mail on there in the first place?
So what if moderators are offended by my viewpoint? Disagreement = invalid? It's an abuse of the moderation system to mod people down simply because you disagree.
Yeah, I know, there is another... duh
Bite my shiny metal... oops... Nevermind!
doesnt present any ads to you if the content of your email is a PGP encrypted message.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
Whatever size they set it at, you just send RARs of that size. The key is that your mailbox can hold 1GB of them.
wtf is your problem you Anonymous Coward.
Never thought of splitting files, have you? It's OK. Lots of other people on the Internet are mentally challenged, too.
How large message bodies can be I'm not sure, but I would assume they're also 10 mb. Perhaps the message total (text + attachment) is 10 mb.
-
Saw the ad while logging to a blog I contribute in a few days ago, but only last friday had the time to actually try it out. First surprise: MacOS9 users need not apply. All supported browsers' versions need OSX. Working on a place where 9.2 is still entrenched for the long haul, this wasn't nice. Oh well, tried in on Panther at home: no Safari. Mmhh. Tried it on Netscape. Like the interface but haven't found any specifications on file attachments size.
but not on every message. Interestingly, messages that once have had ads usually always will so its not like they come and go. But other messages don't trigger them.
Using the text of an entire message for ads requires a bit more computing than just a search query, so maybe they're trying to keep those down while in beta.
They're about as good as the ones for the regular search engine. I'm looking at a conversation i'd been having about jobs and internships and the ads it displayed were related to those.
-
The best you have seen?
Having the reply window on the screen is retarded. The address book is awful. Google mail feels very amateurish compared to the other webmail sites/packages out there. Perhaps this is one instance where they took simple too far.
Interesting, GMail currently does not support Safari. https://gmail.google.com/gmail/browser_requirement s.html
You get a message on the sign in box saying that you can log in anyway, but your browser is not supported.
I said "IPO" not "money."
Arguing semantics doesn't fundamentally change the meaning of what you wrote.
This is not a new concept, and is a belief held by many people.
People may hold the view that IPO's are not a good idea. However, I am going to argue that most people do not hold your view that IPOs are "evil". Use of the word "evil" in pretty much ANY context (especially on Slashdot) borders on ridiculous, and is fair game for ridicule -- and hence, moderation downward.
Being a public company means you answer to shareholders and give up a good measure of your independence.
Not true, at all. For example, if I offer 1% of my company publicly and retain the other 99%, why do I have to answer to the 1%? I have a controlling interest, they don't, and if the other 1% doesn't like what I do, they can SELL.
World Wrestling Entertainment, as an example, operates this way. Vince McMahon (chairman) has said on numerous occasions that if you buy WWE stock, you are buying into HIS vision, and there is no room to try to impose YOUR vision on his company.
So what if moderators are offended by my viewpoint?
That's basically the point of Troll (-1) is to stop offensive (or offensively lame) posts...
Disagreement = invalid? It's an abuse of the moderation system to mod people down simply because you disagree.
That makes no sense -- following that logic, modding someone UP because you AGREE with them would also be an abuse of the moderation system. Yet, you have to agree with someone to find their thoughts Insightful or even Interesting.
evil adrian
With all these dam Google stories I'm starting to wonder if someone at Slashdot has a vested interest in Google.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
If it's possible to set up a seperate pwd for GMail and Blogger then I'll take any spare accounts going.
shaun.lownes(a)lycos.co.uk
Thanking You
Shaun.
i got it a few days ago. It is a cool service, but is it the best thing since sliced bread? nope.
I don't see why people think gmail's spam filter is all that great - so far (and this may be due to beta issues, a lack of training etc) its allowed about 50% of spam to my account through. I've got a couple spam infested accounts forwarding to gmail to test this out.
as for the ads, on most messages they're not even there and when they are they're very small and placed to the side of the page like google's search engine text ads. I don't even notice them. So its not like they're inserted into your mail really. And at least google doesn't attach "get your hotmail address now!" to the bottom of every outgoing email.
So while it is cool (the best feature is the seamless conversations), it's not going to be for everyone, or cause a mass exodus from existing mail services.
-
Thanks for making that! They will probably fix this soon thought, but get to it while you can!
My impression thus far: very sweet.
I tried registering some short usernames, the username has to be 6 characters or longer.
So I have a leet 6-character name@gmail.com.
Transit time for sent and recived mail is near-instantaneous.
The interface is trademark google utilitarian. Two thumbs up.
I sent some test spam from my spam folder, they got into my inbox (and not to my 'spam'
folder on gmail). So they have some tweaking to do there.
Inbox
Example message w/ text ads present
The only thing different is the "@gmail.com" e-mail addy at the top...I cut mine out just to avoid any potential issues...sorry.
"This food is problematic."
google is going to make it yet another expansion of the active X crap that is the main reason there's so much worm and virus activity? Man, I hope that's not the case, that's all we need, googles mega monster servers being activeXly used to make that stuff worse on the net. and I sure ain't faking my browser to indicate it's something else just to use a website. and spam filters? Better idea, no commercial email. I'd like a big global email service that just disallows commercails entirely, I'df pay cash to be in on that. It would still leave the regular email to deal with people who want/need advertsing via email. the way to deal with spam is not to try and filter it, just relaise it's a subset of commercial email, filter ALL of it, inside a service that would get used by enough people to make it practical. and google has the mindshare to do that. I know they want to use their ads to pay it, but I'd rather have the option of just paying cash yearly for a decent email addy, and inside a service that disallowed commercials. I hope someone offers that sometime, too.
I'll have to look at this again, now I am thinking heck with the gmail idea. I hope this isn't true facts here that google would do this. I'll read more on it obviously, but if it's explorer and active x (any scripting like that, I'll include java script for instance) centric, I want no part of it.
1 GB e-mail account, 350 MB combined storage, personal blog, forum, gallery, auctions and more
Of course, They are primarily mac-oriented, but I can deal with it.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Last time I made an entry to my blogger account was on Saturday, March 20, 2004. I did not receive the Gmail invitation...
Thanks for backing me up, Anonymous Coward. Anonymous Coward is an asshole. We need more people like Anonymous Coward to counter all the Anonymous Cowards out there :-)
I've got a Blog on Blogger, but apparently I wasn't considered "active" enough to be invited to participate. Anyone want to somehow give their gmail invitation to me? I may even be willing to trade some old hardware I have for it.
samrolken
where is the news? it has been for last 5-10 days. read blogs and daypop.
I have an active blog. It's about politics & robotics:
;)
http://while-true.blogspot.com/
Thankfully, I'm considered an "active blogger", and I just signed up for Gmail.
I agree that privacy is not the issue here. It's usability, in a number of respects. I've just done everything I normally do in email, in the span of 5 minutes, to test the system. It's great, and I don't know how I'd improve the interface.
The hot-keys are indeed hot.
The conversation listing is perfect.
The max attachment(30Mb?) adds entirely new dimensions of functionality.
The 1 big gig is awesome. I hope for a small fee, I can get 2-5GB. Compare this to yahoo, where you get 4Mb for free, and some not-so-great amount for a service fee.
I love it. You should all join. If you are a tin-foil-hat privacy fanatic, you better get some self-help tapes, because omnipresent information access is only achieved by automated examination of the information.
Google doesn't have the time, resources, or interests in having a human read your mail. The resources part could change with the IPO, but the situation is the same
Embrace the future.
[maybe i'm a bit to excited about this...]
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
I've followed GMail with some interest. What I'd like to know, and hopefully a Beta-tester can tell me, is are there adverts added to your outbound mail? Hotmail, for example, adds a one line MSN/Hotmail ad as a signature to everything.
Are Google doing this?
Also, if anyone is offered an account that they don't want I'd hate to see it go to waste.
shaun.lownes(a)lycos.co.uk
OK, "gayest" is a bit homophobic, but you can't disagree with the sentiment.
they don't do that. At least not now, i suppose its possible once gmail goes open to the public it could though.
-
Hook us up Google!
Haven't logged into my Blogger account for at least a year - from before Google bought them. After much effort finally remembered my user/pass and logged in, no invite for me. Guess I don't qualify as "active." =)
In essence, they have an ideal test base - testers who will give great feedback, and testers who will plug GMail to those who read their blogs. Great word of mouth advertising...
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Its about incentive - who has more financial incentive to violate your privacy? Google is the BigBrother(tm) company as a key aspect of its survival. Microsoft need not be.
Could someone post the url for the blogger gmail "YES" hyperlink? Maybe a non-selectee would be able to follow the link without being authenticated.
Why in the world would I want this service?
And yes I also don't like the idea of them being able to scan my email for their own purposes (even if those purposes are 'harmless' to me, sorry), which I'm sure they do.
A gig of space? Big deal my cheap little linux server at home has 20 of those and I have email going back 10 years on it. And if/when google goes out of business or decides to charge my email will still be there, and I won't have to spend days trying to download it from google.
the first gmail account goes up for auction on eBay. I searched eBay a little earlier, but couldn't find any.
See my blog at Who's Who
Meanwhile they can watch Google take the heat for its ad angle. Its amazing Google has clinged to the ad issue for this long - its bought them bad PR when they still need their lilly-white "we're on the users side" cred. Strike one for Google marketing. Sorry guys, you should have caved at the first hint of public backlash.
The /./Google circle-jerk has almost run its course. Soon the geek will smell mass adoption (anathema to early adopters and geeks alike) and turn on Google like a rabid dog.
It is widely known that when a company goes public it gives up independence. The fact that shareholders expect profit is a side issue you're using for distraction. The issue is a company giving up control. When I say "evil," substitute the word "stupid." Anyone who has worked at a sinking company that is doing stupid things to gain shareholders knows what I'm talking about.
If, per your example, Google only sells 1% of its company, yeah, I suppose you're right. Let's see that happen. Are you a betting man, or have you just never purchased stock before?
The only people I think who care about the ad thing is the paranoid (and frankly, ignorant) few on slashdot and the media FUDmongers who court them.
How do you think a spam filter works? It 'reads' every single word in your e-mail. Any e-mail service employing one is 'reading' your mail.
If the other players are going to take anything from this, its that they'll start targetting ads to your email content as well.
-
Well, to all those people that don't see why it's so great to rush out and get an account immedietely, I have this to say:
username choice!
For the first time in my life, I don't need to get some goony name like "g733p42" because ALL the possible permutations of normal words are already taken.
Yaay blogger!
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
... too bad, the auto-sort in threads thing seems kinda cool.
Hey, Horde developers, shouldn't you be working in copying this?
The 1GB figure is just distraction. I've used the same mail client for 8 years, and only have perhaps 500MB of files. I've never touched messages older than 16 months, so could safely delete most of that storage. For me, Google touting "1 gigabyte of storage" is like AOL telling me "1,600 free hours!" Who cares? Not me.
You need a little friend to "back you up"? What are you, a fucking pussy? Lick my balls, gaydick!
There already exist non-ad, non-spam, non-privacy-invading, better alternatives. I've did a great deal of research into the available, pre-packaged alternatives when I need to find a new mail provider after college.
I even sent a comment to Google about this, telling them that they will not be able to win over users like myself who are willing to pay a small fee in order to have non-privacy-invading email, with imap and ssl.
And I don't think anyone "needs" 1GB. 98% of my emails I have no interest in saving, and in fact for legal reasons - amongst others - would rather not save.
While geekmail.cc is recently deceased (due to legal problems), it offerred 200MB for $40 a year.
When they went down, I switched to fastmail.fm. My $40 per year gets me:
- hosting email for my own domain
- 150MB email capacity
- 150MB file storage capacity
- 750MB/month bandwidth
- SSL IMAP/POP3/SMTP
- Basically server-side postfix rules
- Spam filtering
- Virus attachment filtering
And once gmail gets going, it won't be long before other providers start offering 1GB of storage.
Disk space is cheap. It's the bandwidth that is expensive.
Gmail will just be the next crappy Hotmail. They won't be getting my dollars.
Blogger could be perfect, but they don't support comments, so it's useful only for celebrities who don't want to get flamed, or just to people who don't like to communicate...
:)
That's why I didn't create a blogger account. Livejournal is much better for that purpose (or even slashdot, because you can have friends here!)
So now I can't collect gmail usernames. I even tried the "YES" link that someone posted here but as expected it didn't work. Bummer.
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
I wonder if we didn't get it the first time around, we'll get it latter on. I have three blogs but I didn't get the message. Oh well, :(
Another poster pointed out that gmail ads most likely won't be in iframes. I just wanted to add that, whether they are or not, it will be trivial for Google to find out exactly how often you load the ads and therefore whether you are blocking them. If I was Google (yeah, right) I would reserve the right to deny service if you are. Viewing the ads is what you give them in exchange for a free service -- don't expect to keep getting the service without contributing your half of the deal.
Google is doing things very differently behind the interface. For one, the entire interface is rendered using Javascript (AFAI can see).
When you send attachments, the usual way is to browse for the file, then click on the "attach" button and wait for the file to be attached before you send the email. In Gmail, you browse for the file, and the filename shows up on the email. After you have selected all the files you want to attach, you just hit the send button and it sends the email along wth all the files you have attached. It worked out really fast too (I'm using a T1 line but initially I was concerned if it was really sending the file since I sent a huge file (over 2M) and it sent me back to the inbox page in a few seconds. It did work however).
Has anyone tried to make sense of how the Javascript is being used for creating the interface?
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
SpyMac is an embarassment of flim flam artistry. It is one of the greatest rabbit tricks ever pulled out of a Mac hat.
People think there's concerns with Gmail and privacy - yet YOU would trust your email to a site that HAS NEVER backed away from the iWalk PDA being a fake, that consistently breaks MUG rules (they claim to be a MUG, yet moderators post rumors - a no no).
THERE IS NO WAY I WOULD TRUST SPYMAC with any password, email address, home address or any other information
SpyMac is just the shiniest car in the parking lot. Be careful though, there may be flood damage under the hood.
The other thing that bothers me about SpyMac is that their moderators troll the web and forums looking for ANYONE that says something bad about the site.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
you have to agree with someone to find their thoughts Insightful or even Interesting.
There should be a -1 Disagree mod, which can be easily ignored. This type of mod abuse is censorship of dissenting views, in an environment where dissent should be encouraged. Don't like linux, -1 troll. See useful, unmatched features in Windows, -1 offtopic. Its predictable and stupid. I'm tired of my posts being modded offtopic when they are on topic but unpopular. I have been forced to go the AC route to give valid views just to save my karma from mods who think they are too 1337 for their own good.
And not getting the invite. :(
j
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.
I (Sob) didn't get an invitation..
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Indie-Mail is up and running. No storage limits as long as you don't treat it like a file server. IMAP/POP3/Web access. SMTP has an alternate port for those using ISPs with port 25 blocked. You can also do a full text search on all your e-mails. All methods of access can be utilized with an SSL connection. And there are no ads.
Spam filtering is based on domains contained in the messages. You can view the current domain filter list at the site. And McAfee virus scan is running to ensure no virus infected e-mails make it to your inbox.
This service is however brought to you by the letters 'A' and 'D.' Icarus Independent offers lots more than just e-mail.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
...with java scripting turned off? Besides eyecandy whatevers, is it still useable without it? I ask because that is my default browsing mode. Using tabs, say I wanted to add the google mail page to my home set. If I need javascript, I think it has to be turned on for all the pages at once then, as it will be for any new tabs for new links. I find I can cut out the bulk of the crap on the net by keeping that turned off, and if some site insists on it, oh well, big ole web out there, I just refuse to use their site. Same with sites that use all image links with NO alt text tags, DANG that is annoying,open a page and the whole dang thing is blank boxes, sucks bigtime, lazy webmasters for the most part, because keeping images turned on slows me down (and I know I ain't alone in surfing with images off from sheer necessity) surfing like 3 times slower or something, and it's already slow to begin with..
If so,if you are required to use scripting (I can deal with a login ID cookie) too bad, I won't use gmail then, main reason I don't use any of the other web based email things. I've had a few, but after awhile the having to use scripting was driving me buggy (short drive, heh), so I quit using them. for me, a good email will give me all my mail with no flash, scripting, images, etc required. Just the text please, and let me navigate the site with just plain text, too.
And hey, if by ANY chance any moz developers are reading this, how about an image option so you can load any image without having to reload the page and load all the images, or click over and do a stand alone tab like it is now? Look at how iCab does it. Superior design there. *Handy as all get out*. You click on the one image you need on a page, it gives you a menu option "load this image", the page STAYS PUT and that image just loads by itself automagically, leaving everything else alone. El grande slickerness there. Don't know if any other browsers do that, been a knucklescrapper, icab or moz guy like forever.
Oh wait... I wrote it two weeks ago! :P
Joseph?
I've been making a small tool using DHTML and the only problem so far has been with IE which always complain "There is a problem loading the page" despite the fact that it loads it successfully.
...that's the problem, someone else has figured out how to write to our standard. Time to embrace and extend, not to mention upgrade our webdesigner tools ;) On a more serious note, DHTML support is a good thing. There's only this much you can do with static HTML.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
they come in just as any other message into gmail's system. And since *all* of my spam comes from those addresses, 50% of it is still being filtered correctly.
-
Use of the word "evil" in pretty much ANY context (especially on Slashdot) borders on ridiculous, and is fair game for ridicule
Silly Slashdot kids with no sense of irony. Why does it always have to be up to me, the lowly Anonymous Coward, to point out the humor you missed:
The original poster's NAME is EvilAdrian (253301).
It'll probably get shut down once Google finds out, but still, I'm surprised no one's doing this yet.
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
They scan each and every word in each and every message, assigning a score based on the probability of those words matching spam probabilities.
The only difference between that and what gmail does is at the same time gmail runs the word through an inverted index of advertisers, picking one out every now and then to be displayed - on the side, in a tiny text ad that most people wont notice.
-
What privacy advocates have objected to about Gmail is that, by scanning mail and displaying an ad next to it, the service reduces the "expectation of privacy".
"Reasonable expectation of privacy" is a legal term which, among other things, influences what the courts allow the government to do when snooping on people without a warrent.
For examples of this, look for instance at the case law surrounding trash.
The courts have ruled that it's perfectly OK for law enforcement agencies to pick through your trash because people do not have an "expectation of privacy" when they throw things away.
The danger with Gmail is that it starts to erode the generally-held idea that it is wrong for anyone to read someone else's email. Sure, it's just software and sure, no one is actually reading it. But the contextual ads may give the impression that the mail is read, therefore allowing the courts to rule later that there is no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in email, and allowing the government to snoop through your mail at will.
This isn't coming tomorrow, but it's one of the main objections privacy advocates have to Gmail. Similar sentiments from other privacy advocacy groups are expressed in this article
Gmail didn't just go into beta. It's been extant for at least three weeks now. I got an account two weeks ago because a friend of mine was one of the very first users and got some invites that she could dole out.
I have to laugh anytime people talk about when gmail will go live or other companies that might beat gmail to the punch and meanwhile I've been using it as my primary email account for weeks.
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
I've had a blogger account for almost 2 years now, so I got selected for the Gmail beta. I just signed up about 10 minutes ago. First problem I had was that your username has to be at least 6 characters long. As you can see from my username here, it is less than 6 characters. Not that big of a deal I guess. Besides that it looks awesome, I haven't done much with it beside set up the account and send a few test emails but the display looks really clean, reminds me a little of YahooMail. The textads on the side aren't intrusive at all, especially compared to every other free webmail I've ever seen. Load times are impressive, could just be that they have a huge amount of bandwidth and server-power allocated at the moment, but it's faster than any other webmail. I'll have to see how it responds once I have a bunch of messages in it to load. So my first impression is that it is better than any other webmail - if their UI innovation (i.e. emails organized as conversations, searching, etc.) actually works (or isn't annoying) I would definitely switch to using it as my primary webmail account. 1gig of storage space is definitely awesome, I lost a bunch of relatively important email from my stupid hotmail account (I signed up long before MS bought them and ruined everything) when I was out of country and couldn't access it - I came back to an account overflowing with spam and all my old emails auto-deleted. Yeah, I should of kept them somewhere else - but the account wasn't near full and until then I was only getting a a few spam emails per day. Regardless, it's not likely to happen when you have a gig of space to play with.
You've never been on usenet have you? Winrar or winace breaks files up very nicely and even allows you to recreate missing files or corrupted files via parity info. You can do that or use PAR files for the same purpose. Segmenting files is no problem whatsoever, and has a billion implementations.
Photos.
I have some as well here
on my laptop it's right at the corner of the G, H, and B keys...
If you want an authority for this you don't need to look very hard, just hit the Jargon File.
quantifiers
In techspeak and jargon, the standard metric prefixes used in the SI (Système International) conventions for scientific measurement have dual uses. With units of time or things that come in powers of 10, such as money, they retain their usual meanings of multiplication by powers of 1000 = 10^3. But when used with bytes or other things that naturally come in powers of 2, they usually denote multiplication by powers of 1024 = 2^10.
Here are the SI magnifying prefixes, along with the corresponding binary interpretations in common use:
prefix decimal binary
kilo- 1000^1 1024^1 = 2^10 = 1,024
mega- 1000^2 1024^2 = 2^20 = 1,048,576
giga- 1000^3 1024^3 = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
tera- 1000^4 1024^4 = 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
peta- 1000^5 1024^5 = 2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624
exa- 1000^6 1024^6 = 2^60 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
zetta- 1000^7 1024^7 = 2^70 = 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
yotta- 1000^8 1024^8 = 2^80 = 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I didn't know this existed, that certainly helps a lot towards making moz more functional for me, I'll check it out!
Spymac has Gigabyte e-mail, and if your don't like the mac content then just pop3 or something
Well, then I humbly apologise sir! Knew there was a reason you were on my friends list. :o)
Its great so far. But one small thing, the spell check doesn't have an add feature.
So my own e-mail address keeps coming up as a spelling mistake.
Everyone who signed up at Blogger after reading this raise your hand! (me raises his hand)
Might wanna re-read the FAQ, Sir (and yes, modding someone up simply because you agree is abusing the system, 'pushing an agenda'. Note that I'm not claiming that you're saying exactly that, but that the GP stated that modding someone down "simply because you disagree." is abuse, and strictly reversing that logic would be modding someone up simply (only) because you agree.).
For your convenience, this passage:
Ultimately, you might (immediately, hours or months later, at the end of your days) come to disagree with a post, but, it's very possible it can be insightful/informative/interesting in spite of your disagreement.
Cheers. (+1 funny for the WWE example, "vision" *lol*.) /jb
I need to enable active scripting and ActiveX controls T_T
[o]_O
I agree, they activated the GMail registration for their most active Blogger users. Nice move from Google, as most of those guys will blog positive about the GMail concept. I got an account aswell couple days ago as you will see on my remarks
for what it's worth, i've been testing the spam filter for about a week, and the default version still misses things like "try our internet pharmacy, buy viagra"
I do love the idea, and the ads don't bother me at all. But I have sent them a few suggestions about spam.
I don't need to spend, on a free service?
I'll buy a "proper" SSL cert when I need to. For all needed purposes, a self signed cert is sufficient.
" just don't trust that a site that can't even afford to buy a proper SSL cert is going to be able to store a gigabyte of mail for me and several million other users out there"
When I have several thousand users and steady income from ads on the main site, I'll buy a cert. In the meantime I'm being way more than generous with what I offer with the expectation that ad revenue from the main site will cover costs.
What other free e-mail service offers SSL over POP3/SMTP/IMAP and the Web? What other free service offers all those methods to send and recieve e-mail without even throwing ads at them?
Demanding I spend money on a service I'm giving away for free without so much as ads is a little obnoxious don't you think?
Ben
Work Safe Porn
That's hardly arguing semantics. If someone says, "Killing is a bad thing," to which you reply, "Not all violence is bad," you have misunderstood and twisted his argument. When he corrects you by saying, "I said 'killing' -- not 'all violence'," he is hardly arguing semantics. He's correcting you.
If, on the other hand, you replied, "Not all murder is bad, e.g. murdering someone to keep them from murdering your whole family," and he said, "I said 'killing' -- not 'murder'," now he's arguing semantics.
Money, however, is not even remotely synonymous with IPO. That doing an IPO involves money doesn't make them the same thing at all.
Of course, in that corner case you don't have to answer to them. But seriously, how many companies IPO with only 1% of their stock? Using the 0.00001% case as the cornerstone of your argument is pointless.
True, but use some good judgment. If your whole objection to the OP's post is a single word, and you feel offended, you need to chill out and not take things so personally. Troll is for posts that are clearly trying to offend without providing any other value.
Exactly. From the Moderator Guidelines:
It doesn't get much clearer than that.
I totally disagree. I've found many arguments to be insightful and interesting and yet still disagreed with their conclusion. Moderating is a responsibility that requires some thought. It's not a free hand to promote your beliefs. Use it wisely, please.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
When my portable mp3 player doesn't have enough memory, I may very well shout out "ONLY ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE GIBIBYTES? GREAT SCOTT!", and yes I will be mis-pronouncing it, like "jibbybytes".
Mine is Good
Beta testers, how decent is Gmail's filtering system? Does it allow for fairly complex rulesets? I'm paranoid about false positives, so I like making my filter rules fairly complex to avoid mishaps.
Also, does it have whitelisting?
Not sure why they pick bloggers but not slashdotters...
Anyone would like to sell those accounts on ebay?
Seriously, where is the adavntage of 1GB of server space? If you store your email on your own HD, you can search, index, and store any email you've ever recieved, even without an active connection to the internet (and without the google ads), and never need more than 10 megs or so of server space. There are limited uses for server side storage among people who regularly use several different computers. But I doubt most of those people are in the market for webmail -- most probably have corporate or academic accounts, and are far more likely to use IMAP.
Oh the horror! I hear they eat little children, too! I can't believe this troll post gets moderated up. Ph wait, it's slashdot, the land of the sky is falling.
it's like a 5 meg html file! It takes AGES to render, on Mozilla, on a 1 GHZ system with 512MB or RAM! All it says is "gimme my gmail" and so forth
and you must be one of the trolls the parent refers to
no you're the troll! ...
no you...
no you!
well your mom's a troll!
another productive conversation.
I've been using Gmail for a few hours now, and I'm very impressed with it. This is really the best use of Javascript I've seen. It isn't there to add a bunch of cool effects, but to actually increase functionality and usability. So far it has been very, very fast and fairly bug-free considering its beta status.
:)
The only complain I have so far is that by default, it didn't catch any of the spam I received. However, I've reported all of it as spam, so it will be interesting to see if it improves based upon that. So far though, its spam filter doesn't seem quite in line with filters such as the one in Apple's Mail client. Speaking of Apple, it does appear to work pretty well in Safari. There are a few quirks compared to loading it in Firefox, but nothing show-stopping.
If they can work out the spam filter and polish everything up, which I'm sure they can, they've got a true winner here. I'm copying over all of my regular POP3 e-mail to my new Gmail account so that I can access it anywhere and perform more in-depth searching on it. After all, if there's one thing Gmail tops all web and application-based Mail clients on, it is definitely searching.
I urge you to check out these screenshots for a better look at Gmail than the two or three screenshots others have posted by clicking here.
Gmail is as good as the hype suggested
Thanks,
David Gorman
http://gorman.modblog.com
at blogger, with hopes of getting asked to signup for gmail. no luck, is it only long-time users that get the gmail requests, or am i missing something?
that they own Blogger.com now, and don't have any ownership over Slashdot.
Then again, perhaps we will start hearing about offers to joing gmail.com showing up on the MSN front page tomorrow. Or on various "My.Yahoo.com" pages. At that rate it wouldn't surprise me if it started showing up on Colombia Internet's home page as well.
Note: The above is largely sarcasm. I don't expect such offers to start showing up on any of those locations, well perhaps on Colombia Internet...
-Rusty
You never know...
Dunno about this one, but it's starting to look suspicious about what Google is up to with Gmail - since they've turned to the Orkut model - create demand by pissing off people, and justify it with something such as "trusted users". This time, it's being done with less fanfare, but same pissoff. To give it some air of legitimacy, they slap "BETA" on it and use it to deflect complaints. I wonder if this might be a long term thing on Google to leave the BETA marking on things, since I've seen next to nothing in their released to public projects previously done on the Orkut Model(or anything outside of their search engine). Also, my thoughts on their sincerity of wanting people to try it is that their sincerity is a lie, since they got away with it on orkut.
Maybe they need to stop looking to Stanford as their source of inspiration on how to do things - Just because it worked in your college doesnt mean you can extend elitism everywhere you go. Open things up, and you tend to piss off less.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
There are a variety of people around the world, some of them happen to like to be able to access their "own" e-mail from a variety of locations as well. Some of these people put a firewall in front of their home system to reduce the likelyhood of problems on their internal network, and really are not interested in punching a hole in that firewall to grab their e-mail from work, or school, or the coffee shop they stop in at when out of town.
Now I will grant you that there are a lot of advantages to keeping all of your e-mail on your local hard drive. There are a couple of distinct disadvantages as well. Those noted above being some. Others include potential for theft if that HD happens to be part of your laptop. Non-immediate access to e-mail addresses you don't happen to keep on your PDA (usually those from most recent e-mail aquaintences you haven't made contacts for). Giving business associates and "personal friends" multiple e-mail addresses to try to keep up with you.
While web-mail is not a perfect solution, on it's own anyway, it does allow users to access their e-mail from a lot of locations that will not allow access to imap or pop3 services. There have been a lot of corporations who have started blocking imap and pop3 traffic into their network for the very simple reason that users have introduced viri into the corproate network using just that method. This has also been common for web-mail access as well, so I suspect that within days or weeks of gmail.com going live, the login page for it will be blocked by those businesses that already block Yahoo Mail and Hotmail.
Then again, I could be entirely wrong, and you aren't just trolling for a response.
-Rusty
You never know...
1000 MB :)
interface :)
labeled interface :)
username minimum 6 charachters long :(
pop3/IMAP waiting .......
gmail rocks ,
This guy is an Assh_le. Don't click on the link!!!The link leads you to a pornographic image with a recording "Hey everybody, I'm looking at free porno!" which blasts out of your PC's speakers. This is poster is a good argument for censorship /. Somebody at /. should track him down and block his IP address.
Most mail clients have an option to delete mail, say, a week after you check it. So if you use each of your computers at least once a week (or month, or whatever you have your email client set for) you can pretty effectively store your email on each computer separately. If you have an email client with a sync feature, it gets even easier.
That's not to say that there are no uses for webmail, and having webmail to accompany a POP account is certainly useful. I'm only saying that for most people, the advantages that GMail provides (i.e. an archive of your emails, lots of storage space, searchability) are things that POP users have been taking advantage of for years.
GMail has a very nice interface and is very usable compared to Hotmail and Yahoo. But even with 3 computers, I don't think there's anything compelling enough to give up POP access. If GMail provided the webmail it does and POP access, I'd be more open to it. But I'll still take POP access over webmail interface and server space any day.
So far I am unable to find a way to add the addresses to addressbook. There has to be an option to add from the incoming mail
Found this in metamod - greygent's karma is fading fading fadin fadi fad fa f ...
Look at all those flamebait mods!!!
SpyMac is just the shiniest car in the parking lot. Be careful though, there may be flood damage under the hood.
/. I found out that half of their features are not working and they don't have resources to handle it all. I could not even access my mail account EVER on webmail (I did not try POP3, what's the point when you want to store upto 1GB on their server itself, unless I set my every POP3 client to leave a copy on server). I was clicking through various links on the site and one time I clicked on an auction link that was actually a bid and it made me a winner of a toothbrush auction. It said that an email was sent to my spymac account that I won the toothbrush auction for $73.50. Now that was an expensive toothbrush that CVS pharmacy sells for about $35. I tried to access the email so I could let the toothbrush owner know what happened. After about 1 week of unsuccessfully trying to access my spymac webmail account, I gave up for good !! I could never afford an unreliable webmail provider for my emails.
I agree. I signed up for spymac account after I read about it on
One of my favorite "real-world" compression jokes is two words and a gesture, but you have to understand the counter-culture in order to get it. It is: "Short term..." (snapping fingers).
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.