Gmail Goes Public

An anonymous reader writes "Google has apparently given the green light for Google's e-mail (Gmail) to be open to the general public." From the registration page: "As we make room for more Gmail users, we want to first extend invitations to Google users. We're still working to make Gmail better, so for now, we're just inviting a small number at random. Looks like that's you! We're really excited to share Gmail with you and we hope you like it." Observed at the P-I Buzzworthy Blog as well.

Comments

I can't even

[stoolpigeon]

people to take my gmail invites any more. I think it's a little late to open it to the public-- everybody already has an account.

Re:I can't even

[NeoSkandranon]

everybody already has an account.

Everyone who wants one anyway.

Some of the people I invited promptly followed my lead and abandoned their six or seven hotmail (and ISP-based) email addresses and had everything useful forward to Gmail.

Others made an account and check it from time to time.

The bigger group is the last one: The people who really don't care (either through lack of understanding or sheer apathy) about Gmail's advantages.

These days I can't give away an account, because I've sent them to all my group 1 and 2 friends already. The only ones left are the "Why should i switch from Yahoo/Hotmail/Webmail?" crowd

Re:I can't even

[jp10558]

And me, the why should I switch from my own POP3/Imap/Webmail server? I hate webmail !

Re:I can't even

[Drooling Iguana]

Gmail lets you connect via POP3.

Re:I can't even

[lucabrasi999]

why should I switch from my own POP3/Imap/Webmail server?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe that I have found and anti-Google Blashphemer in our midst!

Re:I can't even

[mabinogi]

your own server lets you do what the hell you want, and POP3 is a horrble mail protocol from a user's point of view. (IMAP is horrible from a developer point of view, but that's beside the point)

when Gmail does IMAP it'll be interesting to those of us with our own servers, but only a little.

Re:I can't even

[CrankyFool]

There are actually valid reasons for some of us to not use gmail for general-purpose emailing.

Aside from the obvious privacy issues -- any company who has its people put company information on another company's systems is a little nuts -- there's also the power and flexibility of running your own MUA/MTA pair.

For example, I've got my own wildcard domain -- anything at this domain goes to me. In addition, my MUA (mutt) is configured to automatically make my replies come from the address to which the email had been sent. I consider this useful to me, and a way to give out specific addresses so as to see how spam ends up getting to me.

gmail actually takes a step in that direction -- they let you use '+' notation (eg 'user+whatever@gmail.com'), but they don't do the next step -- making it so you can automatically respond as 'user+whatever' to emails sent to 'user+whatever'.

And, frankly, it's just _faster_ for me to use my own CLI MUA to go through a bunch of emails, and more convenient and familiar.

On the flip side, my dad recently decided he finally wanted to get an email account, so I created a new domain for him and had all mail sent to this domain forwarded to an account I set up for him at gmail. So he'll be using gmail for mail. I really do like gmail -- I use it for some specialized purposes -- but it's not the one-size-fits-all-so-everyone-should-use-it-alread y that you seem to be thinking it is.

Re:I can't even

[DigitumDei]

I have my gmail forwarded to my home account where I access it through my local IMAP server. When at work I use gmail, at home I use thunderbird. And offshore backups of email thrown in for free. ;)

Re:I can't even

[kevcol]

You, of course, are speaking only for yourself. :-) I run my own mail and Gmail is still very useful for me, most notably for the very effective search. I have procmail bouncing a copy of inbound mail to gmail that I can access on the road if I am not using my laptop to ssh in my own server (I am not running Squirrelmail or Imp, etc.). I also like sending all my list mail to my gmail account which for me makes it easy to read. I like the 'conversation' method of threading for lists. A year later and I am currently at 29% capacity.

Re:I can't even

[nickname225]

I am a lawyer - although products liability is not my area of concentration. If we ignore for the moment the fact that software developers almost never have any liability when their products fuck up. It is very doubtful that any court would let Google escape liability simply by putting BETA in the corner. If you make a product and offer it to the public - substantially as a non-experimental product - you will be held liable. The courts generally look, not at technicalities, but at the substance of the transaction

Re:I can't even

[artemis67]

I think that that was the point. Google was trying to capitalize on the word-of-mouth thing to build up their user base. By the end, they put a little form field box on my GMail page and told me that I could invite 50 of my closest friends.

Ummm... yeah.

That's like when you see those cubic zirconium rings advertised on TV, and they say, "There's a strict limit of five per caller!" (It always makes me want to call and order six, just to see if they'd do it. They probably would.)

Re:I can't even

[edesjardins]

This comment baffles me. Why on EARTH would you still want to use POP3 mail? I manage an Exchange server as well as my own POP3 server and now use neither for my personal email in favor of Gmail. Why? Simply because I have so many computers that I use! With Gmail I have pretty much unlimited space, the ability to SEARCH my email and actually find what I'm looking for (ever tried to find something in Outlook that you've filed away a year ago?), and I always have ALL of my email on any computer I use! I don't have to think "Wait, I sent this at home on my Mac, but I wish I had it at work on my PC in Outlook... Blah blah." Those days are gone, and frankly... GOOD RIDDANCE! Just my opinion, of course.

Re:I can't even

[CrankyFool]

It's remarkably simple (though, true to OSS principles, it's also remarkably non-obvious if you don't pore through documentation). You need two things in your .muttrc:
A) Specify what addresses might be valid addreses for you, using 'alternates'. e.g.:
alternates user@dom.ain.com
alternates otheruser@other.domain.com
alternates @myspecial.domain.com
The last line is the one that says that any mail address @myspecial.domain.com is a valid address for you;
B) set reverse_name=yes

That tells mutt that, if you get an email that's to one of your addresses (see A above), even if the current machine name is not that address, it should formulate the 'From:' address based on the recipient address, rather than the local machine name.

That should be all you need.

Eagerly awaiting my Offtopic moderation ...

Re:I can't even

[jp10558]

I don't know - I like the lack of ads. I like the speed of Eudora on messages on my local machine. I like being able to look through messages and not have to be online. I like the lack of "tags". I like unlimited attachment size. I like GPG plugins.

I like e-mail being separate from websites. I like not having my mail processed to show me ads.(wait I already said that didn't I?)

Oh, wait - I like not getting spam from those people who try every combination of @gmail, @yahoo etc....

And, I like VNC through Java applet for checking my mail or anything elsewhere! Just me though, I like taking the whole interface if I can(which I can do via broadband).

I also like not being more beholden to big companies for my communication.

Re:I can't even

[MightyMartian]

I think the world might be a tad better place if not everyone runs to GMail. It certainly isn't the be-all and end-all of email, and if you're just going to check via POP3, it loses some advantages. I have my own mail system on my Linux box. At home, I generally use Pine, which works directly with my (rather large) collection of folders. I have IMAP installed so I can use Thunderbird from work. I don't really see any point to GMail. If I have to change addresses, I'll just send out a form message to my address book.

Re:I can't even

[k.ellsworth]

email me to k.ellsworth@ THESPAM gmail.com and i send you an invite... as anyone else need one i'll send back invites. i have 50 left

Re:I can't even

[edesjardins]

I've never receieved ONE piece of Spam at my Gmail address since I've had it - I got the account in August. Just sayin'.

Re:I can't even

[alanh]

>For example, I've got my own wildcard domain -- anything at this domain goes to me.

I used to do this as well. If I needed to give my address out, I'd come up with a company specific one on the spot. However, I abandoned the "forward all" account when someone started spoofing the From: line of their spams with <random text>@alanhoyle.com addresses. I started getting thousands apon thousands of bounced spam messages showing up in my inbox. My choice was either to train my mail filters to catch these bounces as spams, or quit the forward-all account. I still get more than 100/day, but the load is greatly lessened.

In my experience, the vast majority of my spam comes from email addresses posted on either my web site or from WHOIS information. Only one of my company-specific addresses ever seems to have made it onto a spam list.

Until recently, I prefered my tweaked solution with Pine, bogofilter, and a modified version of IMAP Spam BeGone. With an SSH client like PuTTY, I was using the same interface I was used to wherever I went in the world.

However, I've become hooked on GMail as it's so much more convenient to deal with Spam there. Click, click click, poof! it's gone....

Re:I can't even

[SilkBD]

A big thing is privacy. Google may be wonderful, but what about tomorrow?

Hold On... so you trust Microsoft(Hotmail) and not Google?

This nonsense about privacy issues is crap... Microsoft can look at your emails as much as any ISP or Webmail host.

Re:I can't even

[shellbeach]

Ah, Gmail misinformation. It's a wonderful thing ...

A big thing is privacy. Google may be wonderful, but what about tomorrow?

If you're that concerned about privacy, you could still use POP3 and SMTP with GPG or similar. Why would you bother, then? Well, having a non-ISP linked email address is a highly useful thing - for those of the community who don't run a mail server (e.g. don't have broadband or don't have the skills) this is vital to being able to switch providers and get the best deal.

The other is web interfaces suck.

You've obviously never tried Gmail then. I was a diehard PINE user before seeing Gmail, I hated Yahoo, Hotmail, Fastmail, etc interfaces and thought Gmail might be a good mailing list replacement for my yahoo account because of the greater storage space. I think it took about three days to forward all my mail to it and use it as my primary account. It's a beautiful interface, runs with some incredibly neat javascript - you have to see it to believe it.

A third is the problem of using POP3 access, but still having to hike your mail client mail via SMTP. If you use your own ISP, you're at risk of getting flagged at some point in the future of failing SPF.

But, you see, Gmail actually provides an SMTP server for you to use. That's right! You get POP3 and SMTP. And if they ever decide to stop that, there's still mail forwarding so you can throw everything else over to the email address of your choice.

Re:I can't even

[Noose For A Neck]

IMAP solved all these problems years ago, and isn't run by one big corporation in the business of information warehousing and other dubious practices. You can access all your mail from any client anywhere with a network connection and access to your IMAP server, and proper searching is taken care of by competently-programmed clients, anyway.

I personally have deep reservations about throwing all my personal data into GMail - there's no telling what exactly Google will be doing with that information in the future.

Re:I can't even

[MightyMartian]

I didn't do anything complex at all. Just went to http://www.washington.edu/imap/ and downloaded their imap daemon and added the following line to /etc/inetd.conf:

imap2 stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd imapd

As I recall, a

kill -hup `pidof inetd`

was all it took and then it was off to the client. The only thing to remember is that you have to set the root mailbox to "mail", otherwise your entire home directory will show up in your mail client. I actually can use Thunderbird on the same machine, but though I like Thunderbird well enough, I stil prefer Pine. Next step for me is OpenLDAP, so I can grab my address book wherever I go.

Re:I can't even

[ducman]

I'm one of those people who are still asking, "why?" I admin my own server and use IMAP. Since I travel regularly, I'm more likely to have my PowerBook than an internet connection. Mail.app lets me have my mail with me, search it, work offline, move things onto and off of the server, if I want to. And of course I can use the web mail client on the server to read mail from any other machine. So why would I let Google search through all my mail and target me with ads?

Re:I can't even

[ImpTech]

> I also like not being more beholden to big companies for my communication.

Of course even when running your own server, your ISP is ultimately in control.

Re:I can't even

[willfe]

I don't know - I like the lack of ads. I like the speed of Eudora on messages on my local machine. I like being able to look through messages and not have to be online. I like the lack of "tags". I like unlimited attachment size. I like GPG plugins.

You can use POP3 to fetch mail to a local mailbox (or another server elsewhere) and send through gmail via SSL+SMTP. Apart from the attachment size limit (not sure if SMTP lets you break it or not), where's the problem? Your local mail client won't offer up ads (and you can keep Eudora). It can use GPG plugins. It can skim through messages without being online. And much to my annoyance, those pesky "tags" you dislike are completely stripped when you pull mail via POP3 (it'd be handy, whether you specifically think so or not).

I like e-mail being separate from websites. I like not having my mail processed to show me ads.(wait I already said that didn't I?)

Yes, you did already say that. You repeat yourself a lot in this post, but that's okay. We still love you :) Besides, now I get to repeat myself too. Use POP3+SMTP and you're back on local client, no webmail interface.

Best I can tell, mail is parsed real-time for ads when you view them on gmail.google.com; presumably if you just POP3 them they're never parsed for ads. Then again, it's not as if Google's the first to do this; Yahoo and friends sometimes shove interstitial ads into their mail interfaces. They want you to pay for POP3 access too.

Oh, wait - I like not getting spam from those people who try every combination of @gmail, @yahoo etc....

Sorry, but spam's a problem everywhere, not just gmail.com; the only reason a dictionary spam attack hasn't been launched against your domain is they haven't gotten to it yet.

And, I like VNC through Java applet for checking my mail or anything elsewhere! Just me though, I like taking the whole interface if I can(which I can do via broadband).

Wait. So you want to use the VNC Java client, via your @!#$ing web browser, to read your mail on the local machine sitting wherever you're not when you get the burning urge to check your mail? Yet somehow just using the original damned webmail interface is beneath you?

I also like not being more beholden to big companies for my communication.

Please, take yourself off the cross. You said you like Eudora, so you're "beholden" to them trusting their stuff isn't spying on you. You use VNC via Java, meaning you're beholden to Sun and their Java implementation (or one of the few other vendors, like IBM and Microsoft, who ship VMs of their own) for the viewer. Then there's the VNC vendors. Then there's the people who wrote the OS you're running.

I won't make the "if you have nothing to hide, why do you want to hide?" argument because it infuriates me and because I do think privacy is important, but please, please, please stop acting like e-mail is your achilles' heel. For truly secure communication you shouldn't even be using e-mail in the first place, but Gmail provides enough tools to encrypt mail as needed if you plug a mail client into it (like Eudora, which you already use).

the link is one-time

[eobanb]

the link that appears on the front page of google for certain people only works that one time. There is no universal link for creating a gmail account right now. You need to just go to google.com and it may or may not show up.

Re:the link is one-time

[Mr. Sketch]

No, but you can always get an invite from the GMail invite spooler. It has almost 500k invities waiting to be given out.

Re:the link is one-time

[WormholeFiend]

I doubt it.

I noticed a few days ago that the 10 leftover invites I had were removed from my account.

Made me wonder if something was up, but having no one else to invite, I just shrugged it off.

Re:the link is one-time

[Rummey]

Even better! The message toggles between 1000MB and 1GB. Wierd!

Mike

Re:the link is one-time

[ikkonoishi]

I think that is kind of the point.

It keeps people from signing up for the accounts with a bot better than the obscured numbers thing does. (Although it is possible to automate joining still.)

Re:the link is one-time

[Arctic Dragon]

I was unable to see the Gmail link despite refreshing Firefox 20+ times (even when identified as IE6 SP2), but I immediately saw the link when using IE6 SP1. Strange coincidence?

Re:the link is one-time

[cicho]

It's an interesting experiment in propagation. How fast and how far will gmail spread just by way of invitation, without it being officially open and without a costly advertizing campaign?

Thanks, but no thanks...

[lucabrasi999]

we want to first extend invitations to Google users

Thanks, but I've already received about 1,000 invitations.

Open to everyone? Great

[filmmaker]

There goes my best pick up line.

Re:Open to everyone? Great

[mekkab]

I dunno about that. I tried to brag to my wife about my gmail account when they were semi-rare and she said "GAY-mail? You have a GAY-mail account? HAHAHA!"*

*Yes, my wife has a Catholic school girl's sense of humor and is down with poop jokes. Its quite endearing.

Re:Open to everyone? Great

[filmmaker]

Worse.

I make Beavis and Butthead look like Don Juan.

Re:Open to everyone? Great

[Reignking]

Gay-mail account? Sounds like hot-male, to me.

Re:Open to everyone? Great

[KarmaPolice]

I dunno about that. I tried to brag to my wife about my gmail account when they were semi-rare and she said "GAY-mail? You have a GAY-mail account? HAHAHA!"*

I believe that would be a hotMALE.com account...

Re:Open to everyone? Great

[coolfrood]

Homophobia is so gay!

Google Section

[dadybeef]

1st Post Recommendation - Google Section!

Just refresh...

[mobiux]

if you don't get it the first time, just keep refreshing.
It took me 3 times to get the invite on the screen.

Re:Just refresh...

[snuf23]

Or just send me your email address and let me finally use up my 100 mojillion invites that nobody wants.
I promise your email address will not become inundated with pornographic spam.

Maybe just penis enlargement ones.

Bad Gmail link.

[Osty]

The link to Gmail in the story goes to a page that says:

Account Already Created

The link you followed to this page has already been used to create your Gmail account. To access your account visit http://gmail.google.com and log in with the username and password you chose during registration. To create another Gmail account, you'll need a shiny new account creation link. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Here's a better link for Gmail.

I don't see any way to create an account yet.

[Behrooz]

2. How do I sign up? When can I get a Gmail account?

We're currently only offering Gmail as part of a preview release and limited test. We don't have details on when Gmail will be made more widely available, as that depends in part on the results of the test.

Uh. Without a way to create public accounts, this is just another form of beta. Looking on the main gmail page, it sure looks like there's no way to create an account for someone who doesn't have a google account yet.

Beta? Yes. Public? About as much as it was before.

On the other side, I've got about 50 invites left.

Re:I don't see any way to create an account yet.

[doc_holliday814]

Well, that's the thing, they haven't gone public yet. The original poster merely gave Google his/her (what am I saying, it's /., his) email address back when the GMail debuted. I did the same thing and last week I received a similar email. Of course, I've had a GMail account a long time now so I don't need it, but that's what's really going on. So, to recap, GMail is still beta, they're just sending out invitations to those people who signed up when GMail debuted.

Re:I don't see any way to create an account yet.

[Nuclear_Physicist]

On the other side, I've got about 50 invites left.

Everyone in gmail has 50 invites left. They currently replenish your used invites daily. I've handed out a few gmail accounts in the past few weeks and my number of invites continues to peg at 50.

As a result, gmail was effectively completely open quite a while ago.

Re:why not sooner?

[lucabrasi999]

Rock solid, score one for google.

Yeah, they really made huge advances in e-mail technology and turned it into something special.

BTW. Can anyone tell me how do I turn off my sarcasm tag?

Anybody have success forwarding attachments?

[DustyShadow]

Gmail is great but there is one thing that I hate about it. Whenever I'm sent an attachment, I can't just forward it on to someone else. Has anyone figured out how to do this? I'd rather not have to download the attachment and then make an entirely new email with it attached.

Re:Anybody have success forwarding attachments?

[ares284]

Ahh... Gmail *will* forward attached images - just not embedded HTML images... =\ So yeah, what you really want is HTML support in the editor, and I second that. If the pics are attached as simple files, it will forward them - but those pesky Outlook users that have the pics showing within the message always mess it up for us Gmail users lol. -Ares

Google: Fix the top post reply method

[Neil Watson]

Please fix the interface so that replies do not top post. (Yes, I did submit this to Google when I first discovered it).

Re:SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

[antifoidulus]

Now if only we could turn "Ask Slashdot" into "Ask Google" we would be set!

Bit late

[Turn-X Alphonse]

After the 50 invites each of us have on Gmail run out I suspect there won't be many peopleleft on Earth without a Gmail account.

Hell I've got half a mind to go and make 50 Gmail accounts with the invites purely to use them up..

Go figure...

[BishonenAngstMagnet]

Gmail was cooler when nobody had it yet.

I've been getting Server Busy errors

[bigtallmofo]

For the past few days while using my GMail account, I've been getting Server Busy errors. This has been happening both when logging into my account as well as actions within the account (sending email for instance).

Nothing anywhere near the frequency as my old Hotmail account, but I guess they're still ramping up their userbase slowly so as to avoid this type of thing.

As a side note, I have 49 Vintage GMail invites currently and will sell them for $1,000 each.

POP3

[FiReaNGeL]

I just hope that the best feature of Gmail will remain free now that they've gone public.

POP3 access, no strings attached (read, stupid Hotmail requiring Outlook). Gotta love that.

Re:POP3

[qa'lth]

Actually, if you get the httpmail plugin for Mail.app on OSX, you can connect to a hotmail account.
There's also a Linux/UNIX daemon that I forget the name of that can do the same thing, it makes the HotMail account appear to be a normal POP3 mailbox.

It doesn't just require Outlook, fortunately.

Re:POP3

[ad0gg]

How would google make money off ads if people pop'ed their mail?

Re:POP3

[captwheeler]

How would google make money off ads if people pop'ed their mail?

Its the interface they're selling. Look at their 'why use gmail' page and you'll find:

(1) The secret is search
(2) It's all in how you look at it
(3) Never lose a message again
(4) Filing email is not the best use of your time
(5) Frying your spam
(6) It has ads. But only good ads.

Every point here is tied to the gmail interface; there is no claim that 'you get 1 gig.' So it looks like they are betting that the client you use won't be as good as gmail. I use pop3 for gmail, but I've also found myself logging on and thinking about their interface more and more.

Two things

[SweetAndSourJesus]

• You fail it.
• That's a swell idea

Re:Wee.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone who wants a gmail account has one. I still have 50 invites left untouched.

Everyone who wants to know that everyone who wants a gmail account has one, knows. There are 50 posts saying so.

Re:That's why they gave me 50 invites!

[eobanb]

Actually, the plan DOES seem to be coming together, for Google anyway. I remember several months ago, I asked about 20 people if they had heard of Gmail, and of course the people that read Slashdot had, and ordinary people in my History course hadn't. Now I have people emailing me who are completely non-technical (e.g., have other people come and fix their computer for them), telling me that their new address is @gmail.com. I have high hopes for Google; like it or not, places like Yahoo have some nice free services, yet Google was very successful in getting a lot of users switching to their services quickly.
Partially, it has to do with simplicity; I'm really hoping that eventually users will come to appreciate neat and clean appearances instead of whiz-bang embed-tag-wav-file nested-tables best-viewed-in-IE ad-clogged flash-driven interface X.
I just hope Google can apply this to other things. For a long it seemed as if it was Yahoo's way or the highway, which in turn reminds me of Microsoft.
Do more stuff, Google. Do more stuff! XMPP!

Direct link

[turtled]

Here:
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
Just truncated from the paragraph. The posted link was the result of someone singing up already. I also have 50 invites... but, with the link I posted, everyone is ready...

Re:Direct link

[ral315]

Er...that's a link for a GOOGLE account. It's not the same as a Gmail account.

Once again, Gmail accounts are NOT available to the general public, just a random sampling of the population.

gmail is still buggy

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, I'm surprised. Google has introduced a few bugs in its latest release of gmail.

For example, the "mail forwarding" feature cannot be disabled once it has been enabled. Any change to it does not not save.

Re:Google: Fix the top post reply method

[Anonymous Coward]

Please fix the interface so that replies do not top post. (Yes, I did submit this to Google when I first discovered it).

Bottom posting is for grizzled usenet hippies.

Re:You can always get an invite

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, each time you post this message in a reply to a post in this story, it's modded +5 ;-)
see how many you can get!!

theory

[genomicon]

It's not so weird that Google has waited almost a year to go public with Gmail. Clearly it's the finale of a very large marketing experiment. First, Google develops an initial core of beta users, who upon registering for the email system get to invite more beta users. Then Google gets to sit back, watch the whole thing percolate, and collect valuable data on how long it takes for word-of-mouth to translate to market saturation, or how often free invites turn into new users, etc. From a research point of view, to get all of this they would need those several months they took.

Re:Give us folders

[Poromenos1]

There is such a feature, it's labels. It does the same as folders, although a bit differently.

Re:why not sooner?

[interiot]

What happened when Blizzard released World of Warcraft to the public? Its popularity far outstripped Blizzard's predictions, and their previous rock-solid product became an endless string of "emergency maintenance" announcements.

Same with Google... GMail requires space to be dedicated to each new person. If the influx of new people is greater than the rate at which they can aquire new hardware and squash new scalability bugs, then it won't be rock-solid anymore.

Controlling popularity is important. Google might be overdoing it a little bit... But in this game, it's far better to err on the side of going too slow, especially when you're as popular as google is.

Re:Google: Fix the top post reply method

[CanSpice]

Yes it is.

Bottom posting is for grizzled usenet hippies.

What gmail needs to do

[Monkelectric]

host MX! I'd be glad to pay money for to host my domains email accounts!

They're missing a huge revenue stream IMHO. How many small and medium sized companies systems admins could get BACK to work (instead of writing spam rules).

Re:What gmail needs to do

[Yolegoman]

Oh yeah man. It would kick some posterior to be able to use the Gmail interface with my own domains.

Re:What gmail needs to do

[evilmousse]

I accomplish this somewhat, but it doesn't work in the webmail interface.

first, i went to zoneedit.com and set up my account so my domain uses their nameservers. then i configured a lot else, but what's relevant here is their mailforwards. I set up one private and one catchall address to send to my private and spamdump gmail addresses, respectively.

The biggest lacking is that you'll need your own SMTP server, as using gmail's will force the return address to be your gmail address, whereas you'll want to use your domain's. I set up my own SMTP with a login/password to forward to my isp's smtp server.

so in my normal mail client, i DO use my own domain address for email, but it all just forwards to gmail. when i need to, i can use the web-interface if i don't care that the recipient will see my gmail return addy. either one goes to the same place.

Move along people....

[kiehlster]

Isn't this old news? I've seen the gmail links on google search a while ago. It's not something new to me. They've been sneaking in gmail invites into their popular Blogger service for a while as a way to slowly increase their user base while they probably sit back and build the infrastructure to hold more users. Yeah, gmail's been boosting the amount of invites lately, but I still don't see a signu form on their gmail page. I think this is all just more invite leaking. It's not public until their signup page is public. Just look at the trail of evidence: techwhack guardian.co.uk Some other SEO news

Should still be Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

GMail definitely needs to stay in Beta. It has a long way to go before it is as good as my hotmail.

With hotmail, I got hundreds of fantastic e-mails offering me all sorts of fantastic merchandise EVERY DAY. With GMail I only get a few, they need to work on that.

Also, their ads aren't nearly as effective as they could be. They need big flashing banners that just implore you to click on them like hotmail. I can hardly even notice GMails ads. They have a lot of work to do

Spammers?

[mecro]

Its too bad its beginning to go public. As of right now, pretty much anyone who wants a gmail account has one, with isnoop.net's Gmail Spooler at something around 500,000 invites. I just hope people don't start signing up for mass accounts and spamming everyone with 1 GB worth of junk.

Re:Google: Fix the top post reply method

[NewWazoo]

A: Because it breaks the flow of information.
Q: Why is top-posting irritating?

B

Re:Google: Fix the top post reply method

[rhavyn]

Which is great when I'm the one who asked the question and don't feel the need to re-read what I already wrote to get to the important bit. And I would argue that the vast majority of email replies are going to a single recipient and that recipient doesn't want to re-read what they wrote.

What's the deal?

[Major Lame Brain]

I see the offer when I load google's main page but after multiple reloads the offer switches between:

"Google's free email service with 1 GB of space"

and

"Google's free email service with 1000 MB of space"

Re:What's the deal?

[Roguelazer]

You get 24MB more with the 1GB deal... You should probably click on that one...

HERE IS THE LINK

[jester22c]

Here is the actual link to sign up.

Good grief.

https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

Re:HERE IS THE LINK

[jardin]

No it's not. Good grief. :P

Re:Have they figured out folders yet?

[dbavirt]

Labels are better. I can apply several labels to a message, but I can only put a message in a single folder (without having multiple copies...)

Re:SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

[SlayerofGods]

http://answers.google.com/answers/

Re:Google: Fix the top post reply method

[Anonymous Coward]

But if I ask many questions, or discuss many topics, then it makes sense to indicate which part you are referring to. It also often makes sense to re-read what I wrote, since I have been dealing with many other things since I wrote you. I also often get copied into the middle of a thread, so I have to read from the bottom up to figure out what is going on.

I generally prefer to quote the relevant line, and then reply to it. Repeat until done. The problem is that since Outlook made top-reply the standard, everyone has become used to it. Now you'll get the entire email thread in every single email, and some people can't live without that. It's a waste of space (and dangerous, since people don't bother to read what they're forwarding sometimes). It would be far better to have a good threaded mail reader, but unless MS does it, it's irrelevant. People are trained the Outlook way, for better or worse.

Then again, I still use a text-only mail reader.

this just in

[btnheazy03]

Yahoo! Mail filtered my Gmail confirmation e-mail as spam

Re:Google: Fix the top post reply method

[jonadab]

> Bottom posting is for grizzled usenet hippies.

Bottom-posting (quoting the whole message and then putting your reply at the bottom) and top-posting (quoting the whole original message below your reply) are both cretinous and bad. The correct way to quote is interleaved, i.e., you quote a relevant excerpt, reply to it, then if necessary quote another relevant excerpt, reply to it, and so forth.

Gnus gets this right: it quotes the whole message (depending on how you have it set up) (except the signature (if it can tell where the signature starts)), but if you go to any point in the message and start typing, it breaks there and rewraps the quoted portions above and below, and your reply gets inserted at the proper place, unquoted, as a separate paragraph. Any parts of the quoted message you don't need to reply to, you're supposed to delete before sending. Gnus warns you if you try to send a message that's mostly quoted material and very little original response (though it'll let you do it if you insist).

But I don't suppose it's reasonable to hold a webmail interface to the standard of functionality set by Gnus.

Re:I'd like to note...

[halleluja]

I'd like to note that I pointed this out on March 05 and only got to +2.

For higher rates you need to be invited.

Re:Google: Fix the top post reply method

[Anonymous Coward]

A: Because it breaks the flow of information.
Q: Why is top-posting irritating?

Not being an irritating prick a good reason.

in email there is NO REASON ON GOD'S EARTH YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO TOP POST

Google Mail now blocks all RAR files!

[jbridges]

As of last week, in the name of "security", Google Mail now blocks all RAR attachments, even a tiny test one with just a text file in it will bounce.

Google Mail does not block all ZIP files, only ones with Executable files.

Google Mail doesn't block TAR (or other archive) formats at all.

The supposed danger in RAR files is someone will have WinRAR installed and open a executable attachment inside the RAR. Yet there is the exact same danger in TAR files. In fact more danger since more archiving programs (like WinZIP) support TAR files!

no message numbers.

[oliverthered]

POP3 is poor compaired to IMAP, I keep getting dupes down because GMail doesn't support unique message numbers.

the googlenet

[mapmaker]

Google
Google News
Google Maps
Gmail
Froogle

Google's services now comprise something like 40% of my online activity. How much longer till they take over the world?

Re:the googlenet

[panck]

yes, indeed.

as i posted on my blog after Google Maps came out, here's my Google world takeover timeline:

• present: images.google.com, local.google.com, gmail.google.com, maps.google.com, news.google.com, blogger.com, et al

• 2006-2007: dating.google.com, jobs.google.com, groceries.google.com, voice.google.com, tv.google.com

• 2008-2009: dna.google.com, wherearemykeys.google.com, INeedToPerformAnEmergencyTracheotomyOnMyselfHowDoI DoThat.google.com

• 2010-2011: brain.google.com, LSD-over-IP.google.com, RealPhysicalSexSomehowContainedEntirelyInAURL.goog le.com, peaceOnEarth.google.com

• 2012-END: maps.hyperspace.google.com, quarks.google.com, beamMeUp.google.com, tomorrow.news.google.com, singularity.google.com

Craig Shergold is dying of cancer and wants gmail

[infonography]

Disclaimer, Craig Shergold was a kid with cancer who became a internet hoax. Please take this as a joke and don't bother him.

Top-Posting, Email Heresy

[Catiline]

YES!!! > Is it really all that irritating? >> It reverses the flow of conversation and makes relating >> parts of the message to the reply difficult. >>> Why? Outlook and most other email clients top post. >>>> Top posting. >>>>> What is the biggest email sin/heresy/faux pas?

Re:why not sooner?

[learn fast]

Another post from someone who's never taken a MARKETING class.

This has nothing to do with server space. Gmail would never be as popular as it is today if they hadn't used their ingenious "give these codes to all your friends!!! -- or else you can't get in" promotion. This has nothing to do with a beta stage it's a marketing promotion. Sometimes, making your product artificially scarce makes people want it more, and I for one am once again awed by Google's awesome duality of marketing and technical brilliance.

Re:Google: Fix the top post reply method

[Catiline]

Actually, the joke goes:

YES!!!
> Is it really that irritating?
>> It reverses the flow of conversation and makes relating
>> reponses to their originating comments difficult.
>>> Why? Outlook and so many other clients default to that.
>>>> Top posting; it's absolute email heresy.
>>>>> What is the worst faux pas to commit in email?

Cracked it?

[Zukix]

I can think of a reason why they have the invite system... they have just mapped the social networks of the net's most avid and active users.

Who might you ask does the spooler identify? The friendless.

Best thing

[Jozer99]

Probably the best thing about GMail going public is the fact that it puts even more pressure on other free E-Email providers to improve their services. Anyone remember the pre-GMail days? Hotmail and Yahoo both charged to get you over 10 MB, POP3 access was almost NEVER free, and quite often you had to put up with tons of banner adds, popups, end-of-E-Mail footnote adds, and spam kindly sent by your E-Mail provider.

Re:Google: Fix the top post reply method

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Not universal bottom post...please no!

Public forums, discussions, etc. bottom post and quote the relevant parts, or mix replies with the quotes. You rarely need to quote more than two replies behind.

Lengthy individual replies mix replies conversation-style with the quote: > Can you do this? / No. / > What about this? / Yes.

Normal/short individual replies (read: most e-mail) top post. The person who sent you the e-mail wrote the letter; don't you think he knows what he wrote already? An additional benefit of this style is it allows you to quote the entire original if necessary without forcing your reply to the next screenful.

Most of the people I see supporting bottom posting are people who participate on mailing lists and USENET and assume that everybody does, too.

Problem: MSN Hotmail sends Gmail to trash

[CHESTER COPPERPOT]

Does anyone else have the problem of hotmail sending gmail emails to the hotmail trash? I have sent numerous emails to friends with hotmail accounts and nearly ALL goto the trash. Not to sound like a part of the tin foil hat crowd but something is up with Microsoft and Google compatibility.

GMail as the Notepad of the Web

[Jon_Aquino]

Today I realized that GMail's latest features make it an excellent replacement for Notepad and other basic desktop text editors. (Use its Save Draft feature so that you can edit your text whenever you want.)

GMail has a number of powerful advantages over Notepad:

• Filename is optional. No need to think of a unique filename to save under -- just enter your content and go.
• Search all your past files at once. Try that, Notepad!
• Spell-checking on demand
• Load/save your text files from any computer in the world
• Cross-platform
• Undo Discard. Ever wish you could retrieve your file after closing it without saving? Now you can!

This is incredibly cool - a viable web-based replacement for basic desktop text editors. Yes, the Web OS is slowly coming together!

Is this a hoax?

[adeydas]

For some reason I don't see a 'Sign up' button. Also it is mentioned here that "We're currently only offering Gmail as part of a preview release and limited test. We don't have details on when Gmail will be made more widely available, as that depends in part on the results of the test."

GMail Coolness: Downloading Multiple Attachments

[Jon_Aquino]

I recently discovered another cool GMail feature: it lets you save all your attachments at once (as a single zip file). Other webmail systems (and even desktop mail clients like Outlook) force you to save each attachment, one at a time.

That's the thing about GMail - it is constantly being enhanced with new features, requiring no user intervention, with no updates to install. Features are being added to it more quickly than Yahoo Mail and Hotmail, and far more quickly than desktop mail clients like Outlook, which get new features (and bugs) on a yearly cycle.

Oh, and GMail is free.