Slashdot Mirror
Gmail in the News
roadies writes "Despite all the negativity and privacy concerns that surround Gmail, it has still gained cult-like status where net-d0rks feel self validated by having a gmail address and will do anything to get one. Services like the Gmail Machine, a randomized Gmail lotto that has people hitting refresh until they get carpel-tunnel in the index finger, reports over 7 million pageviews (though, definitely not uniques) in 3 days and 55 invites given away. They just added 222 more through donators who have given up invites in exchange for a text link on the high-traffic site. GmailSwap (covered recently on /.) has given away everything from cameras to good vibes. Good news for hardpressed geeks: The invites are becoming more and more available and mainstream. Ebay once had gmail invites going for a couple hundred dollars. Now, nobody is bidding on them anymore, so you can purchase one the old-fashioned eBay way for a dollar or two." Reader marklyon writes "Third party developers have stepped in with utilities that enhance and improve GMail. One utility, Mbox
& Maildir to Gmail Loader allows users to upload their existing email to
their GMail account. Another, POP
Goes the GMail, offers the ability to access your GMail account with any POP
mail reader, giving users the ability to permanently archive messages. GTray
lives in your taskbar and alerts you to incoming messages. Other, more
general programs, allow you to forward your Hotmail
or Yahoo! Mail messages to your
new GMail account. The question that remains, however, is whether Google will
work with or against third party developers in GMail's future."
What I noticed was that as soon as Yahoo announced they were upping their email limit, Gmail started letting me invite about 5 people a day.
Understand that I already have a backlog of 10 slashdotters waiting for accounts, but I labeled them all and as the invites trickle in, I'll pass them on...my friends and family and irc buddies are already hooked up.
Cheers!
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
.. would be Google Messenger.
Use Gmail address as a login ID, use it to capture the business IM and email market
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Perhaps all three, but I think after using Gmail for a couple of months, the idea that I can quickly search the full content of everything I've received is nice; the threaded conversations are really cool; and the sharp user interface is pretty nice.
On the other hand, the filter model doesn't cut it for me. Tagging things with a label but leaving them in an "inbox" makes it hard to find the good stuff. Maybe if I could "star" incoming messages based on criteria as well?
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
One thing I noticed about GMail was that it was, at least for a short time, a small commercial market within itself. The market ebbed and flowed depending on if invites had become availble that day or not. Originally, there were few accounts, and I managed to snatch one up thanks to my Blogger account - while it lasted, my invites were gold. Before the market "crashed" a few weeks ago, I managed to get unlimited virtual hosting and some nude pictures from a college CS girl who wanted one for "geek cool". My, it was great.
Of course, then the market crashed. So now GMail Swap and others are worthless. But I've been using my invites for another purpose now - I currently have 30 GMail addresses to my name, including some interesting ones. I figure, although the rarity may not exist in having an account, the rarity could exist in having the account you want. Commercialism rises again.
Since I am a Treo user, I still valued having the ability to check my account from my phone. But I also really liked the Gmail interface when I was at my desktop. So here's what I did:
I was pleased to see that Google allows you to override the reply-to address, so I immediately changed that to my current email address.
I then deleted my IMAP account and set up a mail forwarding alias that directs any incoming messages to my Gmail account as well as a pop account on the hosting provider's server.
I use the POP account to check mail from my Treo, and it also gets picked up by my Outlook client for permanent archiving.
The best part is I was able to switch my email exclusively to Gmail without anyone noticing the switch. This is top notch stuff.. Google has done something extraordinary here.
www.lonseidman.com
Hmmm. Try https://gmail.google.com
The filters at my office don't handle https! So it works well that way.
As always, your mileage may vary.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
See Google-Watch Watch for details on the creepy paranoid dude and then go back and read his rantings with a large-ass grain of salt.
For those who still think email is secure I got news for you: Your email is already exposed in plain text on just about any server it is sent to. If your email is ever relayed through a third party server (and a lot of mail is) then chances are an unscrupulous admin has already read your messages or at least stored a copy.
What GMail does by comparison is relatively tame. The adds are inserted at display time. All email is parsed to more effectively block spam. No human will ever read your email.
Don't take my word or the word of some kook with issues.
Read the Gmail privacy policy
EXCERPT BELOW:
Email contents and usage. The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the service. Google's computers process the information in your email for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering targeted related information (such as advertisements and related links), preventing unsolicited bulk email (spam), backing up your email, and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail. Because we keep back-up copies of data for the purposes of recovery from errors or system failure, residual copies of email may remain on our systems for some time, even after you have deleted messages from your mailbox or after the termination of your account. Google employees do not access the content of any mailboxes unless you specifically request them to do so (for example, if you are having technical difficulties accessing your account) or if required by law, to maintain our system, or to protect Google or the public.
I am pro-lifechoice.