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A GMail-based blog With 1000 MB of entries

Posted by Hemos on from the using-the-space-in-more-interesting-ways dept.

Jean-Luc R. writes "Via mediaTIC blog. Gallina is a GMail blog tool created by Jonathan Hernandez that uses GMail messages as "entries" (so 1000 MB of entries!!), replies to conversations are the "entry comments", uses Libgmailer (gmail-lite project) to connect to GMail. It uses XML/XSLT and by the way it's a GPL software. You can download it there. See the Gallina Demo Blog as for an example."

20 of 257 comments (clear)

  1. New gmail auth? by J-bob2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How are they getting past the new gmail authentication?

    1. Re:New gmail auth? by coandco · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There isn't any 'new GMail authentication', at least not in a form that would affect this program.

      If you have GMail, you probably won't have noticed anything different in your login screen. The only time that their extra authentication measures kick in is when someone tries to log in to an account tons of times in a short period with the wrong password. It's not meant to block all external programs, just prevent automatic password-guessing type attacks.

  2. Not so sure by mcc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many of Google's other functions, like the search, they openly published interfaces to via web services and such. They explicitly disallow in the GMail TOS using web-fetching "screen scrapers" like this thing uses, but I'd imagine their main objection would be not so much the loss of control as that they don't want to be locked into a specific set of HTML-- if they significantly change their page layouts then any program which fetches and reprocesses GMail web pages will break.

    But this bloggy thing is a very cool feature and Google might well publish a public web-services interface to GMail as well to allow things like this to happen before the end.

    --
    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
    1. Re:Not so sure by Dr+Tall · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I would just be concerned about Gmail being used as a HD backup service or huge incidents of bandwidth theft. It would be easy to come up with a lot of accounts, since your first account can invite yourself again and again.

    2. Re:Not so sure by harvardian · · Score: 3, Interesting

      but I'd imagine their main objection would be not so much the loss of control as that they don't want to be locked into a specific set of HTML

      I think you (like many other Slashdotters) give Google too much credit. Don't confuse "don't be evil" with "be good all the time." It's not that they don't want to break 3rd party apps when they change HTML, it's that they don't make advertising revenue when people screen scrape their content. If the COGS (Cost of Goods and Services) of Gmail began exceeding advertising revenue, Google would have no choice but to cripple the service or shut it down unless they found a better way to monetize it.

      Of course, to play devil's advocate to my own argument, Google may be angry at 3rd party tools like this not because they want more money, but because they don't want such a great service to be ruined by people who break its business model.

    3. Re:Not so sure by Plac3bo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes! This guy is right on....almost. Right now GMail does not offer IMAP or POP, but they `say` they plan to in the future probably when GMail is out of beta), but then, yes, forget the tunnel vision view of scraping HTML, and just use the standard protocols of IMAP and/or POP to capture the data. I haven't looked at the TOS in detail, but it seems as long as you are using standard methods of retrieving messages, there would be no problems.

  3. Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can I now mount my blog using gmailfs?

    Seriously, this is getting silly. It's supposed to be an email system and it's going to be financed by google targeting ads specificly to their users (based on their emails, but who cares about privacy anyway?), so I don't think google will let these things survive.

    Now I could understand if someone developed a technique that allowed for bigger attachments (pr0n anyone? ;-D)but a blog????

  4. Use it for email by cmallinson · · Score: 4, Interesting
    If google built a blog tool that oculd hold 1000MB of data, someone would figure out how to get it to store email.

    I'm a bit concerned that everyone seems to want to find a way to fill up their Gigabyte on Gmail. If storage becomes the main feature of Gmail, people will eventually open up 500 accounts and built a Gmail array for their file storage. This will force Google to lock down their application, and those of us using it for EMAIL will suffer.

    1. Re:Use it for email by jsebrech · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If storage becomes the main feature of Gmail, people will eventually open up 500 accounts and built a Gmail array for their file storage.

      The delay and throughput of internet-based file storage is just not worth it, and with the gmail interface in between it would be even slower. People are doing these things for the novelty factor, but as soon as they figure out that there are easier ways to get the same things done, they'll move on, and this won't be a problem anymore.

      Besides, if you're using gmail for personal storage, you can just email yourself the files you want as attachments. And if you're using it to host stuff, you're going to have to run elaborate scripts, which waste tons of bandwidth uselessly copying data, and since bandwidth is more expensive than disk space, it would be more cost-effective to just get more disk space on your webserver account than to use elaborate gmail-interfacing scripts.

  5. Re:Sick of gmail by spacefight · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Other companies have their operating systems, programs and services tested on their users, I think you might know the one. There's a reason why there's a "send bug report" button now every time IE crashes. Google takes its time to let the service grow with its userbase in case of size and functionality. Which I personally prefer.

  6. 1000MB may sound like a lot... by baywulf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1000MB may sound like a lot but at current hard drive pricing that is only about a half dollar if you buy a 100GB drive. Why do people go to so much trouble to redirect GMail for other uses? If people do things that make their advertising less valuable then they will strike hard on everybody and that only hurts us normal users if they make it harder to login or use as an email service.

    1. Re:1000MB may sound like a lot... by CrankyFool · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The thing about gmail (or any other situation where you're using Google's filesystems to store your stuff) isn't that you've got the same 1000Mb you've got on your desktop.

      Using Google's filesystem means you get:
      1. Redundant, FAST network accessibility from pretty much anywhere, because it's Google;
      2. Redundant, fault-tolerant, self-healing systems on which your information, because it's Google (we've all actually read the PDF talking about GFS, right?).

      Now, I heard somewhere that because of Google's massive scaling it still only costs them about $2/Gig (though there's no way for me to verify that number), so it's not like _FOR THEM_ it's a lot of money, but there's no way you could replicate some of the features of gmail (and that's even disregarding things like the actual software capabilities of it) for, err, not a lot of money.

  7. Online MP3 Storage by Kraegar · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Having gotten an extra account invite from google, and not knowing anyone who was interested, I decided to start a new account myself, and email mp3's to it. In the emails I include the artist, album, and lyrics. I group styles using the "label" feature.

    So now I have 1gb of online, searchable mp3's.

  8. Do you really want to entrust your data to others? by John+Jorsett · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Email. Blogs. Mountable drives. And all built on GMail. I'd be quite concerned about becoming too dependent on the good graces of a third party for maintaining my data. I recall the number of people who got caught flat-footed when free email services and photo hosting went belly-up with little or no notice. Not to mention putting potentially sensitive material in a convenient place for hackers to target, or law enforcement or aggrieved spouses to subpoena.

  9. Re:Sick of gmail by Schart · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Aww, sounds like someone hasn't been invited to the party... ;)

    Google just gave me a few invites, I'd be willing to give you one if you think it might help sweeten that sour taste in your mouth.

    Funny thing is, I hardly even use my gmail account because I've had my mac.com address so long. What I've done, though, is to use gmail like an email archiving station. Just a simple, "If sender of message is in my address book, forward the message to my gmail address" rule. Requires no interaction at all, I don't even know it's happening but all my "good" email is auto-magically archived.

    Blah blah, I ramble. Seriously though, I'll send you an invite if you'd like...

  10. Re:For fucks sake by Niello · · Score: 2, Interesting
    ...not use it as some file storage solution, file system, blog client and kitchen sink

    I see your point, but if they're offering 1GB of space they HAVE to assume that peeps will use it to store stuff. I mean... c'mon... if I never, ever deleted a single (non-work) email in my whole life I doubt it would come close to 1GB... INCLUDING spam.

    --
    I give men fish.
  11. ANYONE NEED A GMAIL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Here you go (first come first serve):

    One!
    Two!
    Three!
    Four!
    Five!

    After you sign up, your new e-mail address will be shown to whoever clicks on the link you signed up with, FYI. Enjoy.

  12. Gmail should remain invitation only! by BondGamer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Although this may be a little off-topic: I think google should keep Gmail invitation only, as it is doing with orkut. I don't see any downsides, that is unless you refuse to communicate with any other person on the internet. But then why would you be using email?

  13. 10 invites to try it out yourself by lixlpixel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    fundisom.com/free-gmail
    first come, first serve.
    and if you manage to catch one, and feel like saying thanks -
    have a look at the ads there...

  14. Re:1000 MB???? by hazem · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not necessarily lazy, but I have to say, I'd prefer to use 85,840,734,641,021 over 5840734641021. Especially if I have to quickly add 1000000 to it or transcribe it by hand to some other medium.

    Of course, I tend to prefer using tools that help keep me from making mistakes.

    I've worked on documents where people have written things like "4,24,120 incidents". It was a great flag to me that something was wrong and I was able to check it with them. If they had simply written 424120, I would never have spotted the error.

    Commas might be deprecated and spaces prefered in the world community, but in either case, I think they're helpful in reducing errors.