Rediff Joins The 1GB Webmail Club

BGT writes "Gmail has for sure caused a furor by offering announcing 1 GB of space for free. But they are still in the beta stage and you cannot sign up for an account yet. Now India-based Rediff claims to be the first to actually start offering 1GB of space for free, with their Rediffmail service." (Spymac mail users might disagree with the "first free gig" claim.) Signing up for a rediffmail account was straightforward; the site has an intelligent add-a-contact interface when you send email to a new address, but lacks the searchability and multiple-label capability of gmail.

Comments

asdf

[professorhojo]

the 90's called. they want webmail back.

Re:asdf

[Solarbeat]

They also want their joke back.

Re:asdf

[Coneasfast]

there is yahoopops for yahoo

and pop goes the gmail for gmail (which seems to have dead links on the site)

Re:asdf

[headisdead]

As long as we can send Outlook Express back to that accursed decade as part of the package. I mean, it only seems fair.. ;)

Re:asdf

[Embedded2004]

agreed. Webmail, will never be as good as a pop account for me (which comes from my isp). I leave it open, know instantly when a new email comes. I do not know what the stink about a 1gig spam mail account is.

Re:asdf

[headisdead]

Well, for people like me, who work between different locations (home, student house, university), that kind of access if pretty important. I mean sure, there's IMAP, but it's not exactly perfect. And of course we can't all have remote logins...

Re:asdf

[whiteranger99x]

as a yahoo mail user (you can tell ;), I recently discovered YahooPOPs in an attempt to backup my email and leave enough space for new mail, only to find out a couple months later I got 100MB of storage for nothing.

Of course, imagine the email I would have to maintain if I let 100+MB worth of emails accumulate.

Re:asdf

[Spetiam]

That's awesome, but do you know if there's something like a YahooSMTP?

Re:asdf

[PhoenixFlare]

GMail refreshes every 2 minutes or so, so unless you absolutely must have instant notification, I think it will serve well.

Customizable filters and (as far as I know) decent spam-blocking as well. Time will tell, I suppose.

Re:asdf

[calebtucker]

What I do, so I get my mail at work and home, is have my client at home leave a copy on the server for 5 days. All of the other clients I use (work, laptop, etc) will just download the mail and not delete.

This works out well because all of my mail clients will download alll of the messages, and I can use the webmail interface to see messages from the past 5 days in case I'm not at one of my computers.

Re:asdf

[mattyrobinson69]

i use hotwayd. if im not at home, it doesn't download the message, so i can read it at college. if im at college and i want to keep it, i mark it as unread and hotwayd will download it for me when i get home

hotwayd.sf.net

Re:asdf

[dasmegabyte]

Most hosting companies offer POP, IMAP AND webmail on the same account. So you can use IMAP/POP (don't let it delete from the server!) when you have access to a REAL mail program and use webmail when you're on the go. I host a number of $5/month email-only domain accounts just because people wanted this flexibility without the financial uncertainty of a free service or the vendor lock-in of an ISP.

Re:asdf

[soul_on_fire2001]

I have had a fair amount of experience running YahooPOPS for about two months. It repetitively downloads emails that are already downloaded in the past, I ended up having multiple copies of the same email. It is not quite stable too.

SpyMac?

[DAldredge]

What about spymac? They offer 1GB email and /. has covered them in the past.

Is it that hard for the editors to edit?

Re:SpyMac?

[Anonymous Coward]

Editors already mentioned SpyMac, read the post.

Re:SpyMac?

[LostCluster]

The summary even points that out. This clearly is not the first e-mail project on the Internet to get 1GB storage going. They may have beat Google to the punch, but so have others. The claim of "first" is bogus.

Re:SpyMac?

[Amiga Lover]

What about spymac? They offer 1GB email and /. has covered them in the past.

Is it that hard for the editors to edit?

Spymac is well worth mentioning as an example of what NOT to do.

"Don't rush in and let a free for all take you down". Spymac may be the first to offer a GB, but it's not yet a "service". It's down far too often to be useful, and when it's up it's often so abysmally slow I just use hotmail instead. In its first days I was lucky to USE my spymac mail account one day out of seven.

Google's invite system looks to be their way of controlling that. They can get a setup working, then increase its size as they want bit by bit, and work out where fixes need to be made.

Re:SpyMac?

[DAldredge]

It didn't in the original, and since the editors don't answer my emails I wasn't aware they had added it. I just hope they don't ban my entire subnet for 10 days like they did when I responded to an editors post about lack of a spell checker. ;->

Re:SpyMac?

[WARM3CH]

I wouldn't count SpyMac in. There are many reports of too slow operation, long periods of being down etc. My personal experience? They never sent me any answer when I joined in. I simply filled some forms related to some personal information and then there has never been any answer....

Re:SpyMac?

[Anonymous Coward]

I too had this problem. You can have your confirmation e-mail sent again, this time for real, by going to their log-in page.

Re:SpyMac?

[wmspringer]

Google's invite system looks to be their way of controlling that. They can get a setup working, then increase its size as they want bit by bit, and work out where fixes need to be made.

They seem to be rolling it out pretty fast these days, though. I only signed up for my account 10 days ago and it's already set me to 6 invites 2 or 3 times...

Re:SpyMac?

[AhaIndia]

I totally agree with the parent post. I have an spymac account with 1 GB storage but its of no use. service is lousy, even my test mails don't reach me.

15M x 1GB

[rd4tech]

Rediff.com will also start freeing up over 15 million email addresses that have not been in use over the years, giving new users a better chance of finding an email id of their choice

So.. 15,000,000 X 1 GB = ...
What will happen after two years when those inboxes start filling up to the top?

Re:15M x 1GB

[msh104]

well, in two years, harddisks will contain much more space, so this problem might just solve itself. and also note that way not every user is going to fill up there entire mailbox. think about granny!

Re:15M x 1GB

[xsupergr0verx]

Someone can easily manage to get that much spam over a few months.

Re:15M x 1GB

[arivanov]

There will be still 15000000 free inboxes.

Rediff is one the biggest annoyances in terms of keeping spammer accounts active. A year ago it reached the point where I have put SPAM filters that flag as SPAM anything with even a single occurrance of rediff anywhere in the message on all of my accounts (and there have been no false positives so far).

So all it will have to do will be to act on the 15000000 recent SPAM complaints after the "yahoo mailing list" and "bulletproof hosting" peddlers have collected all of their responses of course.

A lot of SPAM comes from there

[Anonymous Coward]

And it is being blocked on several black lists.

Me too!.. but not quite.

[LostCluster]

It's interesting to see all of these companies upping their e-mail storage space, however, the 1 GB aspect is just the headliner of Google's product.

Google has quite the list of other new features in development including their own take on spam filter technology, and their intelligent sorting among topics. They also their text-based ad model that nobody else has been able to knock off yet. Yahoo has the chance to do so with Overture, but they've yet to connect Overture to Yahoo Mail.

So, even if everybody else in the free e-mail space can pull 1 GB out of their hats to, they still have a lot of work to do to catch up to what Google's working on.

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[System.out.println()]

Don't forget the fact that GMail is *fast* - fast enough that I would almost consider ditching my normal mail program. almost.
I do wish GMail offered IMAP. :D

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent up.

The speed of gmail is outstanding. Given that google is one of the fastest and most reliable services on the web, I think that will continue.

With gmail, you click and shit happens now.

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[aslate]

Will POP do?

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[System.out.println()]

Not on OS X.

A Perl script to do something like this would be ideal.

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just started using Gmail, and am not impressed at all. Horrible and slow interface, mediocre spam filtering and no advanced features (i.e. WAP access). Why all the fuzz?

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

With gmail, you click and shit happens now.

Oh, thanks a lot- you jinxed me. I need to change my shorts now.

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[rebelcool]

True that. Google already stores their entire cache and index in RAM, I'm sure the same is true for gmail. Every user's email message being stored in ram makes for fast access.

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[JPriest]

Why exactly are you sure the same is true for gmail?

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[calebtucker]

How did this get modded as interesting? I've only heard of the index being stored in RAM. It seems unlikely that all X billion pages in the google cache are in RAM.

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, even if everybody else in the free e-mail space can pull 1 GB out of their hats to, they still have a lot of work to do to catch up to what Google's working on.

Actually Dude, no one can beat Google as long they have fanatic monkeys like you supporting them.

I bet you have sex with Google everyday

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[Blue Stone]

Yeah, the 1 gig is really only one good aspect of Gmail, it's not the everything that a lot of people seem to be taking it as.

I really like the way it deals with emails as "conversations" - it's intuitive, and it makes so much sense.

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[soul_on_fire2001]

Spymac has that.
mail.spymac.com.

The site is usually very slow, you would be better off accessing through the mail servers.

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[System.out.println()]

I'm a member of Spymac, but the mail server is down more than your mother! OHHH! :-p

They don't have IMAP yet, either :(

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[System.out.println()]

Yeah, they actually are. Consider how long it takes to search through your hard drive in filenames. Consider this is what, a few thousand files, and you need only to look in the filename. Searches like that can still take anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes.

google is searching billions upon billions of webpages, and not just the filenames - the entire page. And it manages to get the most relevant results to you in well under a second. Do you think they would be able to acheive this if most (if not all) of the pages were stored on the hard drive? And remember that Google has approximately 100,000 servers, all likely loaded with 2 or 4 Gigs of RAM - which is more than enough to store anything they need to cache.

Re:Me too!.. but not quite.

[tarunthegreat2]

I'm one of the privileged few who got an invite..ok maybe "few" ain't correct...anyhoo I have to say that I'm in love with Gmail too cuz it's superfast...but a few things... Could it be superfast simply because there are limited users right now? And I disagree with the inituitive part... some e-mails do flow like conversations, but there are whole bunch that don't....plus the logic behind the conversation is simply e-mails from the same senders with the same subject are grouped into a conversation. So it's possible that some mails which are a part of the conversation are marked as separate if I decide to change subject midway through the 'conversation'... but I suppose once everybody becomes a part of gmail, people will change their mailing habits to conform to that logic...and 1 GB is 1GB, is 1GB...

Crappy

[pcmanjon]

I use to use this server a while back like a couple of years because a friend reccemended it.

It sucks, and is down a lot for "maintainence" (yeah fat guy tripped over the cat5 and pulled it out again I know!) etc...

My advice: wait until gmail's public, but don't register all the good names before I do!

Email me at jonkelley@gmail.com

Re:Crappy

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I use "this server" all the time and I see no such things. Cant bevilve so many moderators would fall for such a troll.

Re:Crappy

[pathloss]

i disagree having used rediffmail for over 2 years now i can vouch for its stability. and man ... just look at whats on offer here. its actually 1GB for free accounts. i was a premium member (just 600 rupees that is $10 a year ) and earlier it was for 10MB+POP access, now these guys upgraded all premium members to 2GB.. nothing extra . so for us its now 2GB+POP+fntastic spam protection. compared to others for those in india rediffmail just wins hands dowm, no not because of the 2GB (which is great !) but also for 2 other reasons : 1. its the fastest compared... to yahoo, even gmail (from india ) 2. CASH collected from doorstep. here in india ecommerce , well its not really safe as there are no real enforcement if somone uses your card number.. a DONT BE A BLIND GMAIL fanboy... for indian users its CHEAPEST POP access and certinly the FASTEST

Re:Crappy

[wmspringer]

>My advice: wait until gmail's public, but don't register all the good names before I do! That's why I got a gmail account as soon as possible; I have a common name and I didn't want someone else to get my favorite email prefix (same as my username here) before I could :-)

Re:Crappy

[Anonymous Coward]

No offence to you *fatherfucker*. But you are unemployed because a)your boss does not like you. b) you are an unscrplous troll. Dont blame indians for everything.

Re:Crappy

[Paraplex]

Its funny, with the indian E-boom I initially thought that it stood for second rate sweatshop type stuff, but just then when I read Rediff was located in india my thoughts were "they're probably offering a decent product for a reasonable cost" I hope india can keep up and become a serious competitor to Australian & US tech (make us work harder)

Re:Crappy

[Nikker]

Hey wait a second is has this guy already paid the OSDN for a blatent plug or is it just a freebie?

Re:Crappy

[pcmanjon]

I said this was a couple of years ago. It may have changed since then. You're trolling by calling me a troll I believe.

The service sucked, it may have improved.

2 years ago it wasn't as good, don't be an ass

regards,
jon

Re:Crappy

[Anonymous Coward]

No offence to you *fatherfucker*. But you are unemployed because a)your boss does not like you. b) you are an unscrplous troll. Dont blame indians for everything.

I'm not blaming indians, you homo faggot. I know several Indians who can spell and read/write/understand English just as well as I can. I'm calling you out because you're a fucking blithering idiot who can't put two words together to form a sentence. If you were an American you'd be no different. If you were a bloody orangutan you'd be no different. Comprende?

Son of a bitch. Go back to the slime you came from and learn some basic language skills before spewing your faeces here.

Cheers,
Happily employed "unscrplous troll".

It's not the size that matters....

[brainkiller]

But how you use it :)

Seriously... I would still use Gmail even if it had 10Megs of space... it is too cool not to use it... now who wants Gmail invitations? :)

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[IamGarageGuy 2]

I do!1 I do! - spamstuff264@yahoo.com

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm interested. sinistermidget2 at yahoo dot com

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[mschiller]

Would the question in this forum be more accurately titled, who doesn't want a Gmail invitation?? Seems like just about everyone either has one already, or at least wants to get one for their spam respository..

But I for one would like to check it out and apparently I am not geeky enough to have gotten an invitation already...

-- Matthew Schiller
mschiller at alum.mit.edu

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[arashi sohaku]

I would like one please.

thunder@thisissucks.com

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Pikhq]

I'd like a G-Mail invite... josiahworcester@yahoo.com
:-D Thanks in advance!

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[majkqball]

majkqball /at/ yahoo /dot/ com Tenku

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[geekoid]

I'd like one.
dadinportland@yahoo.com

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Silverlancer]

Me ;) shadedlancer@hotmail.com please ;)

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[arnott]

yeah, who does not want an gmail account !

can u pls send me one ? :) arnott@sulekha.com

Thanks

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

hook a girl up please :-D

spamism666@yahoo.com

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Deltawolf]

Im looking for someone with a Gmail account to give me an invite. Seems like something that would be worth keeping.

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm dying to ditch hotmail for my main email address. Can i have an invite. gspiers@hotmail.com

Thanks

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[kfg]

... now who wants Gmail invitations? :)

My mom might. She travels a lot, and in places with iffy internet connections, and Hotmail and Earthlink web mail are often problamatic for her, but she needs web based mail because of the amount of time she spends traveling.

Me, I travel less and stay closer to home these days, so it's never any real trouble to "phone home", and I'm having a certain amount of trouble figuring out why in hell I'd want to put a gig of my personal email on someone elses server that's going to hang around, in the practical sense, forever.

KFG

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[mattyrobinson69]

me too please:

ma//tt/y/r/obinson69 /at/ hot/mail/./com

take out the random /'s

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

ME! : reverberatingcrash@hotmail.com

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[mattyrobinson69]

me too:

m/att/y//robinson69 /// [a/t] // hotmail.com

take out the random slashes, spaces and square brackets, and obviously replace a/t with :@

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamil mixed up my two conversations with separate persons. No way to separate them. Submitted problem to gmail support, no response. I'm staying with Yahoo mail with 2Gb space as SBC/Yahoo DSL subscriber

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

since everyone is getting one, me too! amit_mundra@hotmail.com

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

just trying my luck pretty please..

xar_sg@yahoo.com

thanks!

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want an invite, just for robots to harvest fastball@faradic.net and answerman@faradic.net so they can get auto-corpused by Nuculear Elephant's project. Ciao!

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

uhm.. sure... someone said i should check this out... and that it was better than hotmail. is that really true?

I'm PaloStone@hotmail.com

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[BobTheJanitor]

I do, I do! Ooh! Ooh! Pick me!

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

It is interesting to note how everyone who has asked me for a gmail invite have the yahoo.com email addresses.

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[armando_wall]

Sign me up to your invitation list, please.

rafapp _a t_ hot mail _dot_ com.

Thanks!

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[desiderius7]

I could use a GMail invite... could you just go ahead and send it to my GMail account? justinpw @ gmail.com ;-)

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup you are correct!
Anybody looking for gmail a/c could mail me using http://www.cyberciti.biz/nixcraft/vivek/gmail-watc h/blogger.html :-)
I will never use anything otherthan gmail :-))

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[b0bx13]

yes please! b0bx13/at/att/dot/net

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[netsharc]

Oh no, the AOLers are here...

Re:It's not the size that matters....

[Daneurysm]

hey, I doubt there are any invites left...but I gotta whore for one just the same. please view my "spam-armored" email address from this post...as I would prefer not to put it out in the open. I get enough spam as it is.

Re:I've got an invitation

[kscd]

Am I the first?

junk@gmail.com

Re:I've got an invitation

[cr0y]

me? admin@crjt.net

yahoo?

[msh104]

why not go yahoo? they already give users 100mb. and it's availible here and now. and who cares about other 900mb anyway? it's not like your going to send yourself movies split into dozends of small files tranfered over a slow mail protocol. I really don't see a reason why I should wait for gmail. go yahoo!

Re:yahoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because its interface sucks. Oh, and all of the ugly animated banner ads hurt it too.

Re:yahoo?

[Professor Cool Linux]

because GMail has other features going for it that just size.

hell ill still use it if it wasn't 1 Gig

Re:yahoo?

[xsupergr0verx]

It's not the size of the mailbox, it's how you use it.

SpyMac is very inconsistent.

[Blaede]

I've been able to log on maybe about 4 times in the last 3 months. They're always down for maintenance, or some bug pops up.

What a crappy design

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense, but that site looks like crap. I almost feel like my head will explode just looking at it! Has it been updated since like 1996?

I guess that is part of the draw of gmail - it has a clean up-to-date interface that won't - you know... make your head explode from confusion.

What is the fuss here

[Timesprout]

So what if email accounts are getting bigger, jeez, like giving users more space was something that could never possibly be envisaged before google came up with GMail. Its a natural progression folks and absolutely nothing to get excited about.

Re:What is the fuss here

[Billly Gates]

But look at the hoopla for gmail?

Originally it was expected that only a ten thousand or so mail accounts would form.

But now its growing at an unprecidented rate! I use Livejournal and everyone and their brother is asking for invite codes or already has a gmail account.

This scares the hell out of their competitors. Its to prevent competition.

I am glad I am not the CEO of Yahoo right now as I would be incredibly nervous.

The archiving feature of gmail is really cool and nice. Watch for clones of that feature in the comming months.

Re:What is the fuss here

[Chess_the_cat]

I am glad I am not the CEO of Yahoo right now as I would be incredibly nervous.

Why? Yahoo! is still the world's number one web portal. Google's not going to start offering Fantasy Hockey as well are they?

Re:What is the fuss here

[christopherfinke]

The archiving feature of gmail is really cool and nice. Watch for clones of that feature in the comming months.

More like, "It's been done before." I have a webmail app I've been working on for about 8 months, and I had the archive feature, as well as the labeling feature, programmed months before the GMail announcement. They're not doing anything revolutionary; they're just taking a bunch of nice features that already exist and consolidating them into the same application.

On a separate note, if you want a GMail invite, e-mail me at cfinke@gmail.com.

Re:What is the fuss here

[burns210]

ofcourse it was natural... but google went from the standard 2-10 megs(of hotmail and others), past the 100 mark (payed-for yahoo email) and went to 1000 megs... unheard of size increase, THAT is what makes it interesting.

use of JavaScript

[Cybersonic]

I can say one thing cool about google mail, the heavy, working use of JavaScript is pretty cool. It works in Safari, Mozilla, and IE the same. Must have been hell to code :)

-Ralph Bonnell ralph@ralph.cx ralphbonnell@gmail.com

Re:use of JavaScript

[Cybersonic]

oops, thats ralph.bonnell@gmail.com

Re:use of JavaScript

[Neophytus]

Have you found main.js anywhere in the code? I wanna check the beast out but it's so heavily hidden behind fog and mirrors only my browser can :)

Re:use of JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

check the source of the main page, scroll to the end until you see something like src=/gmail?view=page&name=js&ver=adsgdfbnhdfbf bfd

Enter this URL into your browser, http://gmail.google.com/gmail?view=page&name=js&ve r=adsgdfbnhdfbfbfd and then view the source of this page.

Presto.

Re:use of JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you like spam *that* much???

Re:use of JavaScript

[christopherfinke]

I can say one thing cool about google mail, the heavy, working use of JavaScript is pretty cool.

It's also pretty crippling. Google has gone the way of Hotmail (via their recent site redesign) and killed the ability to open any of the navigational links in a new window or tab. In Mozilla, I can normally middle-click to get the link in a new tab. However, in GMail, if I want to open up my "Sent Mail" separate from my main GMail window, I'm out of luck. (The only links in GMail that are actual links are the boilerplate ones, "Sign Out", and "Help.")

If you'd like to see for yourself, e-mail cfinke@gmail.com for a GMail invite.

Re:use of JavaScript

[pyrros]

I generaly like google, but I think that their (over)use of JS is more of a bug than a feature: It breaks stuff like the forward button, and 'middle click to open in a new tab' and they also don't support opera.

I know it's in beta, but you'd think they'd start by getting the basics down before going on to all the blinkenlights. I admit their JS blinkenlights are very nice, bordering on uber (autocomplete and of course the keyboard shortcuts), but having a simple lite (no JS, or any fancy tricks) cross-browser version can't be that tough.

Re:use of JavaScript

[dema]

It actually doesn't support all versions of Safari. Anyone with Mac OS below 10.3 can only get up to Safari 1.0.2, which is not supported.

Re:use of JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

They are making this. Just sit still.

and what are the odds...

[222]

That any of these new 1gb webmail companies will be around in 3 years? Google has proven staying power, and thats where my moneys at. (quite literally, heh. I actually shelled out 25 bucks for 2 gmail accounts.)

Re:and what are the odds...

[Anonymous Coward]

You base google's staying power on what?

After they IPO and the smart money cashes out, they'll just be another dotcom with 1500+ bitter employees who worked their asses off for years at low pay and didn't get enough options to make it worth it.

Keep your money out of the market.

Re:and what are the odds...

[ashayh]

Rediffmail isnt all that great. But Rediff is a verypopular site among Indians (= potential 1 billion viewers). Being based in India, Rediffmail servers are faster than Hotmail in India so people like it.

I first heard of Rediff along the same time I got an Inernet connection (96-97). They've done pretty good, considering so many other Indian sites folded up since then. I doubt they wil go bust so soon.

But yea... Gmail is cool. I have a few invites...If anyone still hasnt seen Gmail, mail me.

ashay.humane(AT)gmail

Re:and what are the odds...

[ganhawk]

Actually, Rediff was founded in 1996 (I think the same year as Google ?). It has been quite popular since then in India. In fact I think it is the biggest Indian portal. I dont think Rediff will go down in 3 years.

Re:and what are the odds...

[Quixote]

Rediff is a spinoff (or subsidiary?) of Rediffusion, one of the premier Ad agencies in India. I doubt that they'll disappear anytime soon.

Re:and what are the odds...

[deadmongrel]

quite literally, heh. I actually shelled out 25 bucks for 2 gmail accounts
he he. All I had to do was just loginto my blogger account to get my gmail account. I had used blogger about a year ago by changed to b2 after a while. So when I heard google was giving accounts to "active" blogger accounts, I just signed in did a first post and sure enough the next day I had a gmail account.

Re:and what are the odds...

[bigwang]

Woah. I just did this and got an account. Oh my god, I wasted 3 whole days hitting F5 on that gmail random invitation thing. =) Thanks. Unfortunately "bigwang" was taken =(

Re:and what are the odds...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease!
balx_ledzep@hotmail.com

Not for me, thanks...

[Wtcher]

I think I'll stick with gmail. For one thing, they don't want to know where you live and what you named your pet!

Re:Not for me, thanks...

[brainkiller]

Thats exactly what I was thinking.... I was going to sign up just to see how it compares to gmail, but when I saw the sign-up form... heh.. it reminded me of yahoo mail...

Re:Not for me, thanks...

[Cygnus78]

Yes, the pet thing is very private. I only tell my girlfriend the name of my "pet".

Re:Not for me, thanks...

[frodo from middle ea]

I live at 123 fake street and my pet is called "santa's li'l helper"

Re:Not for me, thanks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... you refer to your penis as your "pet" so I can't help but think it's not much of a stretch to assume that what you call your "girlfriend" is really your hand.

Re:Not for me, thanks...

[eagle7186]

Yea, I have a number of complaints about the sign-up page alone already.
First of all, their "Important Tips" for the password hint question provides "'What is my favourite colour? '" as an example of a "bad" question. So what makes "What is your favourite food?" any better?
Then, after I had thought up of a nice secret question, all made to fit in the inconveniently limited amount of characters they gave me, I changed the Country field to United States, only to have the entire page reset and clear all inputs. Umm, thanks.
You also can't have anything other than letters in the fields for your name, even spaces. What if your first or last name had a space?

Re:Not for me, thanks...

[770291]

I think I'll stick with gmail. For one thing, they don't want to know where you live and what you named your pet!

No, of course not. They can just get that from the text of your e-mails.

Re:Not for me, thanks...

[Anonymous Coward]

So what makes "What is your favourite food?" any better?

Nothing. A geek's favorite food is likely to be pizza :-)

I changed the Country field to United States, only to have the entire page reset and clear all inputs

That's because you forgot to change the spelling accordingly :-) (see above)

All gmail, all the time?

[Frisky070802]

Much as I like the interesting conversations about gmail, isn't there any other news out there?

Re:All gmail, all the time?

[Anonymous Coward]

EXACTLY !

I see more GMail fanatics on slashdot than anywhere else. Just read the responses for the story when Gmail first launced 1Gb mail space. And read the responses to this story.

It is funny that GMail gets such a support on Slashdot when Google heavily supports a "secret everything" policy including their number of servers.

It is high time someone incorporates feedback system for Nutch and make it the most effective search engine. When Nutch has a personal customisable module that people can se to report about each site they visit, it will reduce the need for search engines to be very fast as you need not modify your query and hit the search engine multiple times as with Google.

But from the response on slashdot, it looks like people will gladly give out their feedback about sites to Google itself!
I cant wait to see the day an Open Source engine will dominate the market like Apache or Linux.

amazing

[Coneasfast]

what amazes me is why the VAST MAJORITY of people continue to use hotmail, the crappiest email service ever. with its whopping 2 mb of space, irritating user interface, MS adverts, and many many other annoying features.

most people use it because 'it's good enough' and 'it's what everyone else uses' . well, they would know what a bad service it is if they use something else and have a comparison.

Re:amazing

[Synkronos]

I dropped my hotmail account the instant it was bought out by MSN. Sad day, that was *sniff*

Re:amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

hotmail was actually pretty good before ms took it over. they turned it into a commercialized, low-quality cash cow that it is. god damn bastards if they are going to take it over at least don't turn it into shit.

Re:amazing

[brainkiller]

ah.. good ol' original hotmail... i still miss it

then one day microsoft buys it and decides to rape it.

does anyone know where I can find screenshots of the first version of hotmail? I've been looking everywhere for them...

Re:amazing

[Juanvaldes]

probably not what your looking for but it almost feels like google's homepage in the clean department compared to sites today.

http://web.archive.org/web/19971212072422/http:/ /www.hotmail.com/

Re:amazing

[AnotherBlackHat]

what amazes me is why the VAST MAJORITY of people continue to use hotmail ...

The vast majority of people use the "free as in included in the package" email provided by their ISP.

If you eliminate those, then the next largest block is people who have a vanity domain, and use the "free as in included in the package" email that comes from their hosting provider.

It's not until you are talking about "free as in paid for with advertising" that hotmail becomes a contender, and even then I'd bet that enough people use yahoo that few would call hotmail the "vast majority"

Personally, I've created dozens of hotmail accounts for the sole purpose of registering with sites that insist on an email address.
I bet I'm not alone in that, though probably not in the vast majority.

-- not a .sig

Re:amazing

[BoneFlower]

My hotmail account forms a critical part of my spam defense.

No, I'm not joking. I use hotmail for web registrations and putting my email addy out unobfuscated in some public place. After a website has proven to be trustworthy and important, THEN I update my info to point the site to my ISP or gmail address. It is very useful in that regard, catches the spam so the email services I rely on can stay fairly clean and useable.

Of course, I eventually have to ditch my current hotmail address when it gets overwhelmed(my current one has lasted disturbingly long in a useable state), but its a useful tool while it lasts.

Re:amazing

[mandalayx]

what amazes me is why the VAST MAJORITY of people continue to eat McDonalds, the crappiest fast food service ever. with its whopping 3-inch in diameter meat patties, irritating user interface, coca cola adverts, and many many other annoying features.

Re:amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm guessing you don't know that many non-geek people in the real world, right?

Google a bit more likely to survive...

[LightwaveNet]

I would estimate at this point Google's given out about half a million invites.

Somehow I don't think smaller free mom and pop sites are going to beable to compete.

Overall, I fail to see how GMail will ever be a profitable enterprise for Google.

I just don't see how the ad revenue would ever surpass the bandwidth costs they incur.

Re:Google a bit more likely to survive...

[Bombcar]

Uh, remember that Google already hosts the world's most popular search engine?

I think they can afford bandwidth.

Re:Google a bit more likely to survive...

[LightwaveNet]

Yes, that's exactly my point...

Google can... but all these other people who are matching their webmail service because of Google's offering don't have the underlying financial resources/machine resources/network etc to really scale as well.

Re:Google a bit more likely to survive...

[waynelorentz]

Overall, I fail to see how GMail will ever be a profitable enterprise for Google.

What Google loses is bandwidth it gains in mindshare. Like radio station contests, or summer soft drink contests, or NASCAR advertising. None of these things make money in and of themselves. But they are part of a company's larger advertising, promotions, and marketing campaigns. Anything your company does to increase mindshare (within reason) is a good investment.

If, three years from now, people start saying, "I'm going to check my g-mail" the way they now say, "Why don't you just Google the answer?" then it will have more than paid for itself.

Re:Google a bit more likely to survive...

[Bombcar]

Ah, I see. I wonder, though. The main killer of the smaller sites is that you'll want to change someday.

After all, the main reason people use hotmail, etc is that they can keep the same email address even when moving to a different provider. Most ISPs provide web access to their mail servers, but if you change ISP you'd like to avoid changing email address.

Of course, those in the know fork out the $15 a year for the domain name that remains the same.....

webmail

[NineNine]

I'm not sure how you work, but webmail, at least for me, is infinately more useful than a regular POP client in some cases. With webmail, I can check my mail anywhere, and I don't have to worry about storage. It's that simple.

Re:webmail

[0racle]

I prefer that my ISP has a webmail front to my POP accounts. I can it anywhere, anytime, and still download it and keep it locally when I get home. I don't really worry about storage, but I don't trust webmail providers to backup the important messages I need to keep.

Re:webmail

[Anonymous Coward]

My ISP (roadrunner in NYC) has webmail access, but for some reason, the sessions time out in less than the time it takes to load a page (even on a fast connection), so it's pretty much useless.

Damn

[bigberk]

What are Nigerian 419 scam artists going to do with that much storage?

Unsuspecting Victims

[Anonymous Coward]

i will be willing to laugh maniacally at a box of kittens for a gmail invite.

kthnxbye.

nizaam34(at)telus(dot)net

Sure!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have any left...

erik (AT) theophys (DOT) kth (DOT) se

Cheers,

Erik

Size is not important

[InternationalCow]

But search capability is. I find it amazing that everybody and his grandmother keeps trippin' about the 1G of storage. Who cares. If I want to keep old emails around I archive them in a tarball that I keep handy somewhere. I receive large amounts of non-spam email and what I really, really need is a decent search capability (not only on literals but also on categories and so on). Mailsmith (MacOSX app) does a decent job. It uses grep and indexing iirc. In my tarballs, I just grep for what I want. But it feels clunky in a way, so if Google can offer ueber search capability and allows for intelligent filtering of incoming mails, I'll sign up the moment it reaches 1.0

aventuremail.com ?

[YellowOz]

anyone signup for this free 2gig account? i did about a week ago and starting yesterday they seemed to have disabled alot of accounts for no reason. anyone here anything?

Re:aventuremail.com ?

[Diskore]

yes, the same thing happened to me. I haven't seen anything about this until here and now. That site seemed to be pretty slow and feature-less so I'm not really too concerned. I was just trying it out for fun, but now I have teh gmail and don't need crapventure. The one cool thing about aventuremail is you could get 2 and 3 character names, unlike gmail which requires at least 6

Re:aventuremail.com ?

[YellowOz]

yeah its not like i need it anyways, i run my own mail servers, i was basicly using it to pass large files back and forth from the office, eh you get what you pay for :)

How about a 2GB account?

[lortho]

Some folks have already tried to outdo gmail/spymac et.al. on the 'bigger is better' kick. Aventuremail recently offered 2GB accounts for free (and still appear to if you go to their site), but they apparently bit off more than they could chew and are no longer accepting new registrations (though they will certainly let you try, for marketing purposes - if you try to sign up for one now, they'll take you through the whole process, then tell you you're more than welcome to a 3GB account for $22USD/year).

Re:How about a 2GB account?

[YellowOz]

see post above they have locked out most of the people who signedup for the free accounts :(

a relief

[Anonymous Coward]

it's nice to see how outsourcing has a positive side to it

Bollywoodmail

[toupsie]

I would switch to Rediff in an instant if they can turn my spam into a music and dance number with a large ensemble cast.

Re:Bollywoodmail

[dasmegabyte]

I'll bet Stephen Sondheim could put together a penis enlargement mail that would really make you think.

Top posting, grrr

[chrysalis]

Just like Gmail, Rediff forces people to copy everything and do top-posting when replying to mails.

This is really anoying.

Re:Top posting, grrr

[Shaklee39]

Why? That is the standard way of doing it through email. No one wants to scroll down hundreds of lines to see your message. The only place idiots think that bottom posting is acceptable is usenet and it shouldn't be used there either.

Re:Top posting, grrr

[chrysalis]

No, that's the Microsoft way. Nobody did this and people were civilized enough until Outlook came out.

Sorry, but Microsoft is not a synonym for "standard". RFC1855 looks more like a standard to me, moreover people respected this years before Microsoft released any TCP/IP software.

http://00f.net/item/27/

If you like to quote 1 Mb of previous replies just to add your own 2 words, that's your choice.

But at least, a webmail software should give the choice to the sender.

Re:Top posting, grrr

[Kredal]

I agree!

> No, that's the Microsoft way. Nobody did this
> and people were civilized enough until Outlook
> came out.
>
> Sorry, but Microsoft is not a synonym
> for "standard". RFC1855 looks more like a
> standard to me, moreover people respected this
> years before Microsoft released any TCP/IP
> software.
>
> http://00f.net/item/27/
>
> If you like to quote 1 Mb of previous replies
> just to add your own 2 words, that's your
> choice.
>
> But at least, a webmail software should give
> the choice to the sender.
>
>
> --
> Pure FTP Server [pureftpd.org]
> Upgrade your FTP server to something simple
> and secure

Re:Top posting, grrr

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too!

> I agree!

>> No, that's the Microsoft way. Nobody did this
>> and people were civilized enough until Outlook
>> came out.
>>
>> Sorry, but Microsoft is not a synonym
>> for "standard". RFC1855 looks more like a
>> standard to me, moreover people respected this
>> years before Microsoft released any TCP/IP
>> software.
>>
>> http://00f.net/item/27/
>>
>> If you like to quote 1 Mb of previous replies
>> just to add your own 2 words, that's your
>> choice.
>>
>> But at least, a webmail software should give
>> the choice to the sender.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Pure FTP Server [pureftpd.org]
>> Upgrade your FTP server to something simple
>> and secure

--

This space wasting disclaimer is intended solely for the recipient of this message. Content of this message are confidential, privileged, and classified TOP SECRET. Reading possesion or distribution of this message is a felony punishable by torture by soft cushions. This is totally irrelevant, but we feel that wasting people's bandwidth for no good reason won't make us go to hell any faster.

Better Yet

[andrewlong]

Setup your own mail server and have unlimited storage and no attachment or message size limitations.

Use qmail with vpopmail, spamassassin, clam antivirus and rbl checking with spamhaus. Then setup some webmail client like IlohaMail or oMail.

Now thats geek points.

And of course you'd run this all on your slackware server.

Re:Better Yet

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.shiremail.com -- got the t-shirt.

Re:Better Yet

[endsley]

I use postfix, Courier IMAP, and Squirrelmail for an swesome interface to my mail. Workds great and with postfix using RBL and friends there is very little spam. And since I have a mirrored 18GB SCSI it's very fast and plenty of room. But I rarely use more than about 5MB of space so I guess the point is moot.

lousy claim

[monsieurcoffee]

What a lousy claim. Spymac and aventuremail.com both offered 1gb of free email prior to this.

Re:lousy claim

[srikat]

True that, although spymac hardly ever works. and as you can see, crapventuremail no longer works anyone.

Indie-Mail

[KalvinB]

has been free from the beginning (April) and has never had a limit on the storage. Claiming 1GB is just an oversell. It also features the ability to search e-mails.

It also sports IMAP, POP3, SMTP (with alternate port for those with port 25 blocked), and web-access with SSL. And no ads. It's supported by Icarus Independent which uses AdSense.

Anybody with a weekend to spare, Mercury Mail and some talent can put together a free e-mail service. The web-mail front end uses Apache 1.3.x, PHP, MySQL and OpenSSL. It just parses the files Mercury uses. Simple and secure. Mercury has built in web-mail support but I've never used it. I prefer having the flexibility of writting my own front end.

Ben

Re:Indie-Mail

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah?

And what assurances can you give that I won't lose my account when this free, unlimited, ad-free, and searchable e-mail service becomes a burden to the owners.

Because other than giving them the ability to poke through my mail and address book, I really don't see what's in it for them other than costs.

Re:Indie-Mail

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, icarusindie.com is kind of a stupid domain name.

Why do i need any of them?

[nurb432]

Run a mail server at your own home, add imap4 support and some sort of web interface like squirrel-mail.

Then you can have as much space as you want, no ads, no garbage. And its accessible from anywhere..

Re:Why do i need any of them?

[Brianwa]

A lot of ISPs in America don't even let you run your own mail server, so many people have to rely on other email providers.

Free Gmail Invitation

[dealsites]

Seven availiable right now: http://www.dealsites.net/gmail.html

Somebody explain

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail has for sure caused a furor by offering announcing 1 GB of space for free.

What's so exciting about an offer to announce 1 GB of space for free? I'll jump into the business of offering to announce too it's that's so lucrative.

Re:Somebody explain

[dasmegabyte]

Offering a service for free can be quite lucrative, but only if you make it up in volume.

pop3

[mysoulisfarting]

they have a pop3 for 400 INR (approx 8$). Now, that sounds good for an online archive storage kind of script...

E-mail bandwidth is minimal

[KalvinB]

I run a mail server. It doesn't take much bandwidth at all. Sure there's 1GB of storage but a very small percentage of the users are going to go anywhere near the limit. E-mail is a very inefficient way to send large files. There's about 20% overhead.

Smaller "mom & pop" shops can compete by offering a unique/catchy domain name.

I offer POP3 and IMAP as well as secured web-access. Google doesn't support those other two without a third party hack.

Google offers a lot but they don't offer anything that nobody else can offer except the domain name. And they don't offer all the possible features people want for an e-mail account.

Ben

Re:E-mail bandwidth is minimal

[Doomie]

Gmail actually has https support. Just type https://www.gmail.com

As far as POP3 is concerned -- check out the previous slashdot article about Gmail. There are "hacks" for this.

Moreover, they say that they might introduce POP/IMP support, and maybe for a fee. We can only sit and wait until they launch the service :)

Re:E-mail bandwidth is minimal

[smcv]

E-mail is a very inefficient way to send large files. There's about 20% overhead.

To be more precise, base64-encoded attachments (i.e. everything except text-based formats like HTML) occupy 33% more bytes, by encoding groups of 3 bytes into groups of 4 ASCII characters.

Attachments are an ugly hack to transfer non-ASCII over SMTP, which is a non-binary-safe ASCII system designed for short text messages (in fact, most of MIME consists of fairly ugly hacks, really).

More recent protocols like HTTP build on MIME in a more useful way and can cope with binaries directly (and HTTP's download-on-demand model and support for partial downloads make it a more sensible way to distribute large files, anyway).

Re:I've got an invitation

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail does not allow usernames less than 6 characters long. So junk@... is not possible.

Stability

[mrpuffypants]

One of the biggest reasons that Google's GMail is still more attractive is simply stability.

If you sign up for Spymac mail or Rediffmail you don't have the backing of a major corporation that has an infrastructure in place to support future growth, investors looking for the company to *not* fold, and a dedicated staff just for your data.

Any fly-by-night place can buy a massive hard drive and start offering 1 free GB of mail, but if they run out of cash and fold then what happens to all of your mail in their old system? At least with google there is a pattern of longeviety that seems to ensure your data will be protected for a long while.

Re:Stability

[christowang]

On the same sort of idea, I'll bet Google doesn't actually have the full amount of space available for all their users. (Space = Users x 1000 MB).

I'm sure they have taken into account probably more then 50% of the accounts will never be used, and just be setup by people who want username@gmail.com just in case they decide to use it.

Though, Google can probably expand their network fairly quickly if it does become a problem.

Re:Stability

[rebelcool]

I disagree. Imagine if you gave every person on the planet a gmail address. Thats only 6 billion * 1000 = 6 trillion. You can build a 6 terabyte array for a few thousand dollars.

Considering that google stores their *entire* webcache in *RAM* across 90-100,000 machines, 6 terabytes is nothing. I bet they store every gmail user's email in RAM as well.

Re:Stability

[man_ls]

Since google is using GB not GiB to measure their storage space (which is fine...but they're not quite the same thing) we'll play in their units.

1 TB = 1000 GB (remember, 1 TiB = 1024 GiB, just for comparison)

So for every TB of hard drive space, they can serve 1000 customers.

6 TB of hard drive space, would serve 6000 customers. Thus in order to serve every person on the planet with a Gmail account, they'd need something to the tune of 6 billion GB of storage...or 600,000 TB.

Not quite a few thousand dollars...at this point we're looking a few million dollars, probably.

However, Google has the infrastructure to support it, doubtless.

Re:Stability

[ganhawk]

"If you sign up for Spymac mail or Rediffmail you don't have the backinging of a major corporation that has an infrastructure in place to support future growth, investors looking for the company to *not* fold, and a dedicated staff just for your data. "
I dont know about Spymac but Rediff is a big corporation in India. It was founded in 1996 and is the most popular mail service there. Just because it is not in your country does'nt make it a "fly-by-night" place.

Re:Stability

[mabu]

If you sign up for Spymac mail or Rediffmail you don't have the backing of a major corporation that has an infrastructure in place to support future growth, investors looking for the company to *not* fold, and a dedicated staff just for your data. Any fly-by-night place can buy a massive hard drive and start offering 1 free GB of mail, but if they run out of cash and fold then what happens to all of your mail in their old system?

Someone mod this guy funny.

Re:Stability

[Anonymous Coward]

Rediffmail is consistantly offering it's free email services for past six to seven years. I think it's one of the first free web-based email service in India. Just because one has not heard of that name does not mean it's "fly-by-night" operator. Typically American if the parent poster is American.

Re:Stability

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the math here. Six billion people are not going to get gMail accounts. The number may reach the millions, but probably not tens of millions for the first year. And of that amount, not everyone will be active or heavy users-- I'd bet most accounts will never reach 1MB, even with some spam. (Keep in mind, not everyone receives the same amount of spam as the regular Slashdot reader... If they don't post or have a website, their address is less likely to be found.)

Also, many will sign up and never use it because they already have e-mail accounts-- one reason there are so many hotmail and yahoo users is that they were the first mail services many of us used, especially those who were a little late to get online in the mid-90's. Now that everyone already has a few addresses, only a fraction of those who sign up for gMail will use it as their primary account. Keep in mind that again, I'm not talking about you, the tech-savvy Slashdot reader-- I'm talking about the masses, who make only send and recieve a dozen e-mails a week.

Now here's a question. gMail is supposed to keep your mail for life. But will they be shutting down accounts if there is a long period of inactivity, like the other big services (notably Hotmail?)

Re:Stability

[Anonymous Coward]

You're probably right. Just like how most banks are only required to keep an amount of cash on hand equal to ~20% of the total amount on deposit in their accounts at any given time. The full amount would just never be needed, and can be better used elsewhere.

Re:Stability

[Anonymous Coward]

Their period of inactivity is 9 months, which is somewhere around 8 months longer than Hotmail. So yes, they'll shut it down. And yes, it is DAMN easy to make sure they don't. Just visit once every year and you're pretty much set.

Re:Stability

[binand]

If you sign up for Spymac mail or Rediffmail you don't have the backing of a major corporation that has an infrastructure in place to support future growth, investors looking for the company to *not* fold, and a dedicated staff just for your data.

I have absolutely no idea on this Spymac, but Rediff has been around for quite long now (6-8 years I think). Slashdot has linked to Rediff many times in the past - it is an Indian news and e-Commerce site. Rediff is traded on NASDAQ (not that its current stock price is anything to write home about), and is backed by a bigger media company conglomorate, Rediffusion.

Binand

Re:Stability

[Kredal]

Checklist of things to do every spring and fall:

1. Adjust clocks for daylight savings time
2. Change batteries in smoke detectors
3. Shower
4. Check GMail account to keep it active

more outsourcing

[unclefungus]

this time it's not people, but webspace!

whoop dee doo

[xangsta]

i get 200gigs of email space from hosting my own email server off my cable connection :P

Re:whoop dee doo

[Junta]

Yes, I love df -h being my 'mail quota'. Also, searching is nice and fast. And the ability to create a number of accounts and implement very effective spam filtering/prevention is nice too.... Total control of how I access my mail and send new mail is good too, Authenticated smtps relay, imaps access, and webmail only for when I'm desparate means a much smoother experience.

I have honestly been surprised why geeks have been so excited over gmail when they often have the resources to give themselves whatever they want. True, it is more work and worry, but the benefits are incredible and the work and worry not significant for people who do or have had to do this sort of thing for a living (and for those who haven't, what better way to develop a more sophisticated skillset).

Re:whoop dee doo

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps because...not all geeks have a live ip... there are certain advantages of a webmail that one can't deny... specially if you are on the move and have to use cybercafes or something... or if u r at ur workplace/institute...

Re:whoop dee doo

[dasmegabyte]

How about this: the maximum upload throughput on most cable connections is 128 kilobits per second unburstable. That's not much if you do any other upload activities, like p2p, online gaming, putting photos on a website, etc. Adding to that the inherent instability of domestic internet access, not to mention domestic power, just say "I run my own server at home" is kind of quixotic. Better to put your stuff on a small server whose admins will give you damn near carte blanche for a low, low price.

Re:whoop dee doo

[Junta]

Good point, in my case I have 512 kbps upstream, and implement traffic shaping to really exploit it so the user-interactive stuff isn't impacted so badly. When using a mail client through IMAP, it can intelligently cache and syncing local with remote after an initial sync takes very little time.

As to instability with respect to net access and power, I'm fortunate with power and need nothing more than a 60 dollar UPS to cover that, and the net dropouts are what e-mail was architected to handle. I actually do have an arrangement with a friend with an alternate provider in case one provider cuts access for an extended period of time.

Anyway, ultimately the answer to 'why' is more than "just 'cause". Free mail providers banner ad/slip ads into mail/give out addresses, and even the ones you pay for have no compelling reason to give shell access and/or all the configuration capabilities you want... As long as my connection is generally reliable (I've had ~5 minutes total downtime over the last month) and my power reliability is nothing the UPS can't outlast, I'll run my own server where I have the control I want.

Gmail accounts for you...

[dallask]

if you want an account, I have 5 to give out...

codeninja@gmail.com

Re:Gmail accounts for you...

[geekoid]

I'd like one.

Re:Gmail accounts for you...

[kjj]

I would like Gmail please.

kjjaeger@yahoo.com

Re:Gmail accounts for you...

[dallask]

OK, IM OUT OF INVITES...

but send me an email and ill put you on the list the next time I have them.

email: codeninja@gmail.com to be put on the list

Re:Gmail accounts for you...

[Erik Lindahl]

If you still have any left... erik (AT) theophys.kth.se Cheers, ERik

Re:Gmail accounts for you...

[herrvinny]

if you have an extra, whirlcavern@yahoo.com

Me Too

[Anonymous Coward]

wizzardme2000 at ified dot ca

I wonder what privacy laws are like there?

[Trillan]

If they're fully based in India, I doubt any US laws would apply to them. What can they get away with that a service based in the first world couldn't?

Re:I wonder what privacy laws are like there?

[Anonymous Coward]

MOd parent up. USA have some of the less strictest privacy laws in the developed world. I think _all_ the countries in Europe and most of the Asian countries have thighter privacy laws.

Re:I wonder what privacy laws are like there?

[Trillan]

I said first world. And I was asking, not assuming anything. You could get away with being less hateful in the future. :)

Re:I wonder what privacy laws are like there?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are also listed in NashDaq. stock Symbol "REDF"

Where is the ToS?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is just my ignorance, pardon me. A long time ago, I had tried their service. (A lot of my friends used it and they recommended it.) I was put off by the lack of a privacy statement or a terms of service... Do they have one now? Back then, I had found it kind of unprofessional. Anyhow, if they get a lot of users now, I am sure they will put up lot more ads and get professional or simply die out... or perhaps, just suyddenly turn paid... I am betting my money on Gmail for now, and Yahoo has already started sounding better. I just wish Yahoo had decent programmers that could create a wc3 compliant html editor... Their html editor does not work on firefox for me... The Google coding is atleast much more smart and platform independent.

Re:Where is the ToS?

[dasmegabyte]

Don't blame the coders, man. It's probably some project manager's fault. They probably said, "we'd like to spend time making the site designer work on platforms other than IE. It will take 60 hours," to which the manager said "Naw, let's not do that just for those linux guys. Ooh! Let's make some more of those paper dolls in slutty costumes that all the teenage girls seem to like!"

Yahoo pop

[nuggz]

Doesn't yahoo still permit pop access if you allow "directed marketing" emails?

Choose mail options, then POP access and forwarding.

I don't mind having an occasional targeted email for a free 100 meg pop account.
Now if only my ISP would let me have more then a 10 meg mailbox.

Re:Yahoo pop

[soul_on_fire2001]

No. The POP access is for receiving emails. There is no option to forward the emails.

Re:Yahoo pop

[simcop2387]

that isn't a pop access to yahoo mail, its to import a pop account into yahoo

Re:Yahoo pop

[netsharc]

Well, technically there is POP3 access to your Yahoo! Mail account, you have to pay for it..

dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

this is a dupe

this was on slashdot a few days ago

Innovate, don't imitate... :-P

[Jugalator]

This just goes to show that Google is once again leading when it comes to innovation, by offering a free mail service where you don't have to delete mail. Then other services follow... Say, why didn't they do this before Google?

But I guess it's good with competition. I don't know how this compares with Gmail though, since there's of course much more to a mail service than how much mail you can store. Uptime and speed for example, and this is another area I believe Google can be trusted in, since I rarely see their services getting overloaded or being down temporarily.

I also noticed Gmail has a "report as spam" feature so the users will build a massive spam database. Many mail services simply provide some unknown filters that catches maybe 60% of all spam. It's good to know that Gmail does this, since I don't doubt they'll have a problem building their spam database with all their potential users.

Re:Innovate, don't imitate... :-P

[Jugalator]

By the way, they of course also have a "this isn't spam" thing, so false positives shouldn't really be a problem. Cloudmark SpamNet provided a similar feature before they went commercial (not even their volunteer beta testers building the bulk of their database got a free registration -- greed at its best!), and it worked fine regarding the accuracy as far as I could see.

*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm high on the invite chain, and can't get rid of my invites fast enough.

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-79a5ae8a96-f3a7b8d 940

First person to click gets a gmail account!

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

and for spam beta testing, this is the address it went to... lubyitty@gmail.com

Try again

[xX_sticky_Xx]

6 billion*1000MB= 6 trillionMB. That's not a 6TB array, it's a 6exabyte array. Hardly feasible.

1GB, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a lot of spam.

Yahoo and SMTP

[Spetiam]

Oh wait, I should have looked around more before asking.

From the YahooPOPS FAQ, How do I send emails?

How do I send emails?

Ensure that you have YahooPOPs!/Windows running. Check the IP address and POP3 port that has been configured in YahooPOPs!

Enter the same details as the outgoing/POP3 mail server in your email client. If your mail client does not give you the option of specifying the POP3 port, make sure you use the default POP3 port in YahooPOPs!, i.e., 110.

If your PC is not on a network or you do not want other on the network to use YahooPOPs! on your PC to download emails, set localhost (also known as 127.0.0.1) as the IP address in YahooPOPs!

Enter your Yahoo Mail user id as the username and your Yahoo Mail password as the password in your email client.

Once this configuration is done, simply check your emails using your mail client.

This is really, really awesome!

How about some reliability?

[fishrokka]

10 MB, 100 MB, 1GB, 3GB -- I really could care less about the storage space. What I want is reliable webmail.

Yahoo Mail has been out since this morning -- by my account it's been down for at least 8 hours now. This is not the only outage in the past few weeks either.

Maybe I should head over to ebay and bid on a gmail invitation.

Re:How about some reliability?

[ip_fired]

I have 4 accounts that I've been trying to give away.
If you want one, I'll let you have one. The next 3 people who post beneath this message will also get one if they want.

It's weird, but apparently right now, only geeks want these (It's like pulling teeth to get my non-tech friends to leave hotmail or yahoo).

Re:How about some reliability?

[shadowofdarkness]

I would like one

Re:How about some reliability?

[ip_fired]

Let me know where to mail the invitation and I'll send it your way.

Re:How about some reliability?

[Davez55]

If you're offering, please...

davez@davez.co.uk

Re:How about some reliability?

[shadowofdarkness]

darkshadow@nospamshaw.ca
just remove nospam

Re:How about some reliability?

[HornyBastard77]

If you still have an invite left, I'd appreciate a chance to check out the service.

You can mail it to me at s.kaushal[AT]rediffmail.com

Thanks!

Re:How about some reliability?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take one.

angelick1@hotmail.com

Re:How about some reliability?

[ip_fired]

Well, I've given all mine out now, but my friend has 6 more invites. I'll pass the info on to him if you would still like a gmail account.

Re:How about some reliability?

[Shaklee39]

If he would can you have him send one to shaklee33@hotmail.com. Thanks

Re:How about some reliability?

[Anonymous Coward]

can you have him send one to susanschill AT yahoo.com? Thanks!

Re:How about some reliability?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to test drive gmail. e-mail me at ruffriderb05@yahoo.com with an invite. TY!

Re:How about some reliability?

[Anonymous Coward]

send me an invite. help me get out of hotmail hell.

heretic1977 AT hotmail DOT com

thank you kindly.

Re:How about some reliability?

[fishrokka]

ip_fired... just getting back to this -- if you still have that gmail account for me I would appreciate it!

fishrokka [at] yahoo [dot] com

not that I could retrieve your invite if I could ... friggin' yahoo mail is STILL down. 9 hours and counting...

Re:How about some reliability?

[ip_fired]

Sent. Hopefully you'll be able to get it soon. I'm all out of invites now!

Re:How about some reliability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would appreciate it greatly next time you have some. Thanks:

mm22 AT mail.com

Re:How about some reliability?

[Bad D.N.A.]

cubanpete666@yahoo.com

Thanks mate.

What we'll really do with that gig...

[Angry Black Man]

I already got an account! send me all the freakin spam and meaningless chain letters you can muster up! I've got a whole gig to waste on the stuff now.

Invite taken!

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, someone took the invite! Better luck next time to the rest of you!

What gmail needs

[sjbe]

Others have mentioned some of this but there are a few things gmail needs (IMO) before it is something I'll use full time. Your needs may be different from mine. In my case I'm looking for a good web interface to consolidate emails from several addresses. I also want access via a client (mozilla or thunderbird in my case) as well, for offline access and backup.

In no particular order I'd like to see:
1) POP/IMAP access to account
2) Easy address book importing (and for more than just Outlook & Lotus Notes - I need Mozilla dammit)
3) Enhanced contact management
4) Mail backup/upload mechanism - If something does go wrong I want to be able to recover and quickly repopulate my account.
5) More filters & categories

I understand that Google is working on at least some of these. What they've got so far works brilliantly for what it is. It's just feature incomplete for me to use full time. The ads are much less obnoxious than I feared and I've even see one or two actually useful ones, which surprised me. Your milage may vary...

Re:not really a GB

[xsupergr0verx]

Yahoo offers 100mb, crackhead.

The one you'll never see:

[Phil John]

1) POP/IMAP access to account

Google's revenue model for Gmail is such that they need to pipe you adwords based advertising to stop this being a total loss leader.

You could, however, write a screen-scraper to pop3 proxy, which would be fairly trivial (just make sure it's rule based so that when they change their layout/markup it is easy to update).

(proud owner of a gmail account since the day before yesterday :o)

msg to whoever modded me up..

[Anonymous Coward]

i was being sarcastic..

Whatever happened to privacy?????

[mysoulisfarting]

From: http://www.rediffmail.com/cgi-bin/terms [i]3. Registration Data. In consideration for the Service, you agree to provide RediffMail current, complete, and accurate registration information (the "Registration Data") as prompted to do by the Service and to maintain and update this information as required to keep it current, complete and accurate. You understand the RediffMail Service is advertising supported and you grant rediff.com the right to disclose the aggregate Registration Data to third parties in connection with marketing the Services. Furthermore, rediff.com may itself use your individual Registration Data to provide targeting of advertisements and other Service offers. [/i] Who would want an account there?

Re:Whatever happened to privacy?????

[Mir322]

Who would actually bother to give them real info ? ;)

Re:Whatever happened to privacy?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Aggregate registration data probably means a description of the audience an advertiser can reach on the service and should not include selling specific registration data to third parties. So this is like any other service based on advertising revenue ... however I would check with rediff before signing up.

Hotmail DOES offer alternative access.

[David M. Andersen]

Hotmail offers rather interesting protocol used by Outlook/Outlook Express that lets programmers do just about anything with a hotmail account using WebDAV.

jhttpmail has more information.

Now we just need native support added to Mozilla and I'll be happy.

Does it _really_ work?

[Anonymous Coward]

I created a free account, read the welcome message, sent a first test e-mail to myself.

I couldn`t login again.

There`s a "Forgot password" link? I used it, entered my matching information and got a new automatically generated password -- which also doesn`t work!

My test e-mail didn`t came yet in the other account of mine... maybe it takes some time... :-(

A new method of piracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this be used as a new method of piracy?

What's to prevent me from signing up for a 1GB account, e-mailing a bunch of MP3s to it, and then giving out my username/password to anyone to peruse my inbox?

Re:A new method of piracy?

[Zen Punk]

The reality that e-mail is a horribly inefficiant way to transfer large files, that's what. Even if you had the patience to get all those files onto Google's servers, I doubt much anyone else would have the patience to download them from there. That's the reason most who engage in 'piracy' transfer HTTP or FTP from the web or use file-sharing networks.

Re:A new method of piracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Even if you had the patience to get all those files onto Google's servers, I doubt much anyone else would have the patience to download them from there.

Okay, so do we know for certain that Google's e-mail servers are slower than a typical P2P connection?

I would say that I get, on average, a P2P download connection speed of about 3000 to 5000 bytes per second. And it's not unusual for me to endure download speeds as slow as 1000 bytes per second. (I have kick-ass broadband, so the bottleneck is almost never on my end.)

If Google's servers are as fast or faster than that, then I would definitely prefer downloading it via a 1GB e-mail account, because then I wouldn't have to suffer all those flaky dropped connections that I'm plagued with on P2P. (I'm assuming that Google's e-mail servers will be pretty robust.)

You're right that e-mail is a "horribly inefficient" way to transfer large files. But most P2P connections are too.

2 Gmail invites to give away...

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

I made a mistake and posted my offer in the wrong google-related article, so Im going to ignore my other post and do it here. I have two gmail invites if anyone is interested - first two to respond with an email address.

Re:2 Gmail invites to give away...

[pdxmac]

I'd love one.

Ben_Wichser(at)yahoo.com

Re:2 Gmail invites to give away...

[eagle7186]

eagle7186@yahoo.com

Re:2 Gmail invites to give away...

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

I sent it... word of warning, I have heard some people say that Yahoo auto filters gmail invites into a bulk/spam folder, so you might want to look for it there ;)

Re:2 Gmail invites to give away...

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

Sent. Again, I have heard yahoo auto-filters gmail invites into bulk/spam folder, so check there if necessary.

Re:2 Gmail invites to give away...

[eagle7186]

thanks... I might be giving this away to someone else, just to let you know, for when they notify you who created the account and everything :o)

Re:2 Gmail invites to give away...

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

Considering I don't know who you are, I'm not sure I could tell the difference ;)

Re:2 Gmail invites to give away...

[FrankNFurter]

Totally offtopic, but - did you know that your last name means 'wanker' in German?

[OT] The Über Prefix

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, I have a real question. For the last weeks I have read many many many adjectives with the prefix über (or some variant). Is Über the über cool thing to say now?

(Please, I dont ask this question iwht bad intention, is a real doubt I have. Thank you)

1GB

[jasonr2020]

Gmail certainly has other features than the 1GB of space, but that's what people seem to know them most for - "gmail" and "1GB of storage" are closely linked in people's minds, as that's what the big fuss was about when it was first announced. As the 1GB part gets more obsolete, gmail might find itself without any sort of a selling point. Not, of course, that it doesn't have lots of good selling points - it's just that they might be harder to see by Joe Schmucko Hotmail User.

Next Frontier of Outsourcing?

[Kalrn]

Great, we're supposed to outsource our email to India now, too? ;)

Yahoo has 2GB now!

[AaronD12]

I have a Southwestern Bell DSL account, which came with a 100MB inbox when I signed up. I just noticed my Yahoo inbox now is 2GB!

Backups!

[LoocSiMit]

Now I can have several GB of on-line, off-site storage I might consider it as a backup solution. Dump a tarball to to your Gmail, Rediff etc. accounts over-night and all you most important crap is stored off-site.

56k users need not apply :)

Re:Backups!

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm.. well... not too big a tarball, I hope, unless you've split it up, since the attachment size limit is somwhere around 10 megs, iirc.

It worked!

[Anonymous Coward]

After I changed my auto-generated password last letter to uppercase.

Don`t ask me why I tried this... must be some kind of ESP or something... weird!

Now on to find some 10MB Linux distro... :-))

Re:I've got an invitation

[shetty123]

Send me an invitation to shetty123@yahoo.com

I just got my redIffMail 1GB account

[shetty123]

i got my rediffmail account for 1GB. Looks okay. Pretty simple registration form. i use this one for back-up. supports 10MB single attachment. i used yahoo mail since like 5 years now..and last week yahoo upgraded my account to 100MB for free. I think yahoo got scared from google and rediff.

Spymac bites it hard

[penginkun]

Spymac may claim to be the first to offer 1gb email, but it was only in reaction to Google's announcement.

In any event, Spymac's servers are tremendously overloaded and are therfore sluggish. I've also had problems with Spymac email never arriving, whether incoming or outgoing. Probably something to do with how overloaded they are. I've got a couple addys there, as backup, but I don't (can't?) actually use them at the moment.

I'm looking forward to Gmail. If it's as good as it's claimed to be, I'll probably switch to using that for my primary email, and use my ISP-provided address as a spamcatcher.

Yahoo offers 2 GB

[digid]

Yahoo now offers 2 GB accounts for $19.99/year. The free accounts are a generous 100mb. It would take me a couple years to even use up 100mb.

Re:I've got an invitation

[Anonymous Coward]

send me one at goldy153 at yahoo.com

Thanks!

[Trillan]

That clears up my question, thank you. :)

Rediff looks fly by night

[heroine]

Been through a zillion free email providers since 1996. Most of them vanished after a few months or experienced massive service interruptions. I'll wait a while before switching to rediff.

Re:Rediff looks fly by night

[swapsn]

Rediff is traded on NASDAQ :

REDF
Its definitely not a fly by night service...

Re:Rediff looks fly by night

[asymptotal]

a 10 year long night then.

some facts for you (no, i dont work for them):
1. rediff's been around since '94, has been on the nasdaq since '00 (trading at $7.76 when i last checked), has had US offices since '99...
2. rediffmail clocked a million subs way back in '01 and runs on international grade server farms in india and the US.
3. rediff utilises backends from akamai, google...same as msn and yahoo.

so hey! dont switch to rediff if you arent based in india, but take off your US centric blinkers before you diss the service.

not quite

[desiderius7]

And it manages to get the most relevant results to you in well under a second. Do you think they would be able to acheive this if most (if not all) of the pages were stored on the hard drive?

Don't assume that just because it searches fast, there is no way it's on hard disk. At such a large scale, bandwidth becomes more of an issue than hard drive access speed. Just read about the filesystem they invented for themselves. Don't assume that they're simply mirroring the unix filesystem hierarchy that most websites use. It's a complex database. MySQL and PostgreSQL provide faster access times than simply storing a file on the hard drive, depending on how you're accessing it, and all those are are interfaces to storing data on the hard drive in a different structure.

Who cares?

[orshneed]

Seriously, who cares? Any other company/site that offers a substantial amount of email space still can't compete with Google. It's stupid to even try. Honestly, with their spam control and every other feature offered, who needs anything else?

I'll take gmail thank you very much

[BoneFlower]

I like my gmail:)

It would take some mighty impressive features to get me to use something else for webmail. Depending on how well I find the searching and threading features to work, I might even switch to gmail for my primary email account, its some good stuff.

Re:Here ya go

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking low-life Hindoo. You are begging for a invite to gmail. What a lowlife shitskull. Go take a bath in cow-urine you piece of brown sewer refuse.

Re: Invite code

[Anonymous Coward]

What a fucking low life Hindoo cow dung. You fucking lick your white mastah shithole for just an invite to gmail. fucking loser Hindu. Go and take a bath in cow-urine and eat cow dung you shit skin.

Space

[amalani]

1Gb of space has no use actually. I'd be happy even if GMail offered say 10 to 20Megs of space. My three year mail archive takes about 100 megs on my computer. But that contains all the mails thave Ive ever found useful/worthy of keeping. Pros: >Incoming mail doesn't bounce if you havent checked for 3+ days (hotmail) >You can archive all your mailing list subscriptions in your a/c (I'd rather do that on my comp in outlook/thunderbird) Cons: >I like to see my inbox say you have n new mails and also that its n% full not 0%.

Re:Space

[shetty123]

i use space as a online storage purposes. Space do matters.

not anymore :)

[tanveer1979]

Well it sure does. I had an account on rediff and due to their atrocious spam policy my email address is unusable. But soon it is about to change. Rediff has employed the services of one of the best anti spam guys in the business :). Cant name who but i am sure its just a couple of months when rediff becomes the best anti spam email. Infact i expect it to rival outblaze!

Spymac Issues 'Correction'

[Lord Flipper]

What they actually meant was: When you are navigating within the spymac email site, you'll think you're downloading a 1 Gig attachment. Sorry for the confusion". ~flipper

Other Ports/Remote Fetch

[nurb432]

If your ISP has issues with you doing that, then use a hosting service to POP/fetch your email ( so you can have a real domain ) from, to your home PC. Set that to happen on a schedule.

After the mail is local, you just present it via a web server or IMAP to youself. Then extend those ports to the outside world, changing the port number as needed to get past any ISP issues..

Most hosting servces will let you relay thru them if you have an account, so outgoing is taken care of too...

IMAP anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about POP? If you have 1GB of remote storage (with awesome search), but would you bother eating up your local drive (except for maybe a cache when you're offline).

IMAP is much more robust and fits the paradigm of a storage server (which Gmail basically is) than POP.

1gb webmail??

[techefnet]

who the hell needs that much email storing? you woould store a lot of spam for that ;) anyway, i dont see why they cant store their mail at their own computer too.. if they wanted to access it some other place you always got mutt and ssh ;)