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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!"

16 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. Not for all Blogger users... by verbatim_verbose · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.)

  2. You need to be an active blogger by maddu · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Got this yesterday by boredMDer · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:1gig? by cybotix · · Score: 5, Informative

    actually the correct term for 1,024 bytes is mebibyte, for 1,048,576 bytes is gibibyte. mega/giga are decimal prefixes, so 1 megabyte = 1000 bytes, and 1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte. (google calculator is using the old convention)

  5. Re:Details? by kbsingh · · Score: 5, Informative

    login to the blogger account, and if you are amongst the selected - there will be a message to indicate an 'invite to try gmail' on the right side of the screen.

    Not all blogger users have been invited. And people who are joining blogger now after the announcement are not getting accounts.

  6. The ad by boredMDer · · Score: 4, Informative
    For those who haven't seen it, I'll just show the ad here -

    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.

  7. Re:1gig? by mubar · · Score: 4, Informative

    True, it'd be nice if MiB and GiB became standard. For the record, this link explains the actual SI standards and binary multiples.

  8. The Gmail scanner... by Beautyon · · Score: 5, Informative

    doesnt present any ads to you if the content of your email is a PGP encrypted message.

    --
    ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
  9. Re:Details? by Alien54 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Not all blogger users have been invited. And people who are joining blogger now after the announcement are not getting accounts.

    As their announcement says:

    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

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  10. Re:1gig? by AlecC · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is a piece of distortion introduced by disk drive manufacturers. I think Connor (now expired) first introduced it, at the time that disk drives in the low number of gigabytes were appearing. They started sizing drives with a gigabyte counted as 1000 honest Megabytes. I think Connor needed to do it because with honest gigabytes, their drive (a rotten, unreliable one it turned out to be) would not make the 4 Gigabyte mark, though everybody elses's did. To their shame, the other drive nanufacturers followed. So for all disk drives, a Gigabyte now meant 10^3*2^20, not 2^30. A sad world, my masters.

    --
    Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
  11. heh.. by rebelcool · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    -

  12. Re:1gig? by Z-MaxX · · Score: 5, Informative
    no jackass --- you can't just make up your own units
    Ah, but he's not. Internation System of Units (SI) Binary Prefixes

    Be bold and be proud of your geekdom! Say "mebibytes" and "gibibytes" in public!!

    --
    Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
  13. First impressions by mrneutron · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  14. For those who are curious... by citking · · Score: 5, Informative
    ...as to what the actual mail interface looks like I took a few screenshots for ya:

    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."
  15. Re:Gmail (legit) vs. Spymac (illegit) by adzoox · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  16. Gmail impressions and 10 screenshots by gorman · · Score: 4, Informative

    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 :)

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    David Gorman
    http://gorman.modblog.com