Gmail's Birthday Presents

Jicksta writes "Since today marks the first birthday of Google's online email service, Gmail, the Gmail team is rolling out some great new features. Every user's email account storage has been doubled to an astounding 2GB and users now have the ability to use some new snazzy rich text formatting features including fonts, bullets, colors, and highlighting. Happy birthday, Gmail!"

Comments

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[Oculus Habent]

This is frikkin' awesome!I only got 1406MB, though, not the full 2GB. Not that I'm complaining about my free e-mail account. All that, and it's a real story. :)

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[diegocgteleline.es]

This is frikkin' awesome!I only got 1406MB

Apparently it increases at the same rate than the javascript counter they put in the main page

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[ackthpt]

This is frikkin' awesome!I only got 1406MB, though, not the full 2GB. Not that I'm complaining about my free e-mail account. All that, and it's a real story. :)

You don't really want 2 GB of email. It's too damn much to wade through. Even downloading it would be painful.

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[Richardsonke1]

Take a look at the main gmail page. You can see the counter slowly increasing your space allotment throughout the day.

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[pasokon]

Well... apparantly, they want to keep giving storage beyond 2GB. See here. Also see the home page (where you sign in)... http://gmail.google.com/

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[zxnos]

sucker! i have... ...1416MB

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[over_exposed]

You don't have to download it... it's web based. That's the point of web-based e-mail. It stays on the web so you can get it from anywhere...

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[DjMd]

Boooo BOOOOOOO!
I call foul, an Actual story on slashdot on 4/1?
How cruel.

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[Striikerr]

As nerds around the world move their coveted porn off their hard drives to Gmail storage, Google will soon be able to post the following on their login page for GMail and actually mean it... "All your pr0n are belong to us..."

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[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

It looks like they're going to make it 'infinite' and not just 2 GB.... That means they might be trying to do some sort of file pooling with big files and maybe a bit of filtering for stuff of this large size kind. This is theoretically possible, but it'd take years of engineering work to do, I'd bet. I hope google's got people smarter than I am working to put that together. After storing how a huge portion the data on the internet is sorted, they might be finding out that STORING all the data on the internet is easier than FINDING it......... And gmail could be a bid to try and do that.

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[AndroidCat]

Oh? I thought it was all the email I was receiving on how to make things larger.

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[cayenne8]

"...and users now have the ability to use some new snazzy rich text formatting features including fonts, bullets, colors, and highlighting. "

Geez...just what we need. Email should be plain text...you are just wasting bandwith with all the rich text crap.

Geez...thought it was bad enough with trying to get idiots using MS Outlook to quit putting crappy wallpaper on their emails...not to mention the other stuff. You get a 2 line email, that is like 1.5MB+ in size with all the formatting crap, dancing images....etc.

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[Anonymous Coward]

var START = 1112331600000;
var END = 1112439600000;

function updateQuota() {
if (!quota) {
return;
}

var now = (new Date()).getTime();
if (now < START) {
setTimeout(updateQuota, 1000);
} else if (now > END) {
quota.innerHTML = 'Over 2000';
} else {
quota.innerHTML = format(((now - START)/(END - START)*1025) + 1025);
setTimeout(updateQuota, 50);
}
}

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[sepluv]

...until it reaches infinity+1.

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[AKAImBatman]

If you haven't done it yet, log out of your account and watch the MB counter on the front page. It's mesmerizing... like watching a disk defrag or something...

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[MyLongNickName]

I just create a program to e-mail random noise. Can't pool that.

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[PeteDotNu]

I've got JavaScript turned off, and it is still increasing.

So their JavaScript must be server-side. How curious.

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[jimi the hippie]

You are currently using 40 MB (3%) of your 1426 MB

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[Da Fokka]

Notice that neither of the mentioned functions contain any images. The extra bandwidth required by colors, bullets and fonts is negligible [1]. Since e-mail is used for a lot of structured communication these days, it's good to see there's a little more than ASCII art to rely on.

[1] You can only select sans-serif, serif and monospace fonts.

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[jimi the hippie]

Nobody's gotten this yet??? IT'S AN APRIL FOOLS' joke.

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[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Then you're being a jerk and don't deserve a G-mail account and know it. Why would you make a program like that and why do you imagine it wouldn't stand out like a monstrous zit looking to be popped with a white-hot needle?

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[muditgarg]

Take a look at this ...some snapshots of the storage capacity increasing slowly..

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[Tibor the Hun]

i think it's a troll.
you don't have to wade through it either. you use the built in search engine.

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[utexaspunk]

It doesn't do backgrounds or any of that crap. it just gives the basics- size, color, alignment, block quotes, a few fonts... the cool thing is that they've again incorporated the appropriate keyboard shortcuts ctrl-B turns on Bold, ctrl-I Italic, etc...

That doesn't add a significant amount of size, particularly in light of the 2GB you get for mail. Even slashdot supports some level of message formatting. It makes it much easier to add emphasis. If someone overuses it, blame the writer, not the application...

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[Anonymous Coward]

the key word is choice
if you want to live in a world of black and white courier text, thats your choice
if others want to use modern technology and features to enhance their visual impact of their communication, now they can with GMail

im suprised at the anti-technology luddites of half the idiots on this site, wether they are screaming about they want cellphones without cameras and mp3 players to others who wonder why GUI's are preffered over typing 200line crptic command lines

its all down to choice

dont like it then choose something else, we in the UK have a word for people who get all huffy and bigoted when presented with differing opinions, they are called wankers

enjoy

--AJS

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[maxwell demon]

I didn't know that infinity+1 = 404.

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[MyLongNickName]

This may be difficult for you to comprehend, but I was simply illustrating a point. This shows why a true "infinite" storage concept cannot work. When designing something like this, you must always look at how it can be abused and then put up safeguards, or scrap the idea altogether.

There is only one person in this world that doesn't understand that. Therefore, I welcome you to Slashdot, Mr. Gates!

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[badboy_tw2002]

Crappy wallpaper and dancing images are not professional. Bullets are and make emails covering a wide range of ideas easier to read.

Colors make it easier to decipher who is saying what without relying on everyone to not mess up the quoting. Just because they weren't available from day one on the internet (aka "The good old days where we had plain text and by gosh we liked it!") doesn't mean its not useful.

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[krakelohm]

I agree that adding dancing cats and crap to email is lame, but who made you the definitive authority on what people can and cant do with email?

Yea I am in one of those moods today :)

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[AnonymousJackass]

You get a 2 line email, that is like 1.5MB+ in size with all the formatting crap, dancing images....etc.

Yep, but at least you can now get 2-Gig of space to save it in! :)

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[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone say gmailfs?

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[dj42]

I'm certainly pumped.

===========
You are currently using 0 MB (0%) of your 1433 MB.
===========

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[sepluv]

Should have previewed. That should go to the GMail homepage.

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[BRSloth]

if others want to use modern technology and features to enhance their visual impact of their communication, now they can with GMail.

I would really appreciate if those "others" choose to put content in their "communcation" instead of replying an email just putting a "Me too" in red letters with yellow background, with fonts in italics.

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[Anonymous Coward]

it was bad enough with trying to get idiots using MS Outlook to quit putting crappy wallpaper on their emails

Just like a former colleague of us. Somehow she tried to do that, setting a background (unknown to her) with an alt tag. She also wasn't aware that the mailing list manager will strip off HTML stuff from the mail, leaving only text in. So her mail began like: "GlacierColleagues!" And ran immediately to the IT guys why they have to do this to her all the time...

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[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Point taken. I'd retract but this place doesn't allow that.

I said it'd take a bunch of people smarter than me, and I meant it.

Thing is, if you DID do pooling, there'd be a point where you would group people who were 'contributors' and generally the 'contributor' would probably become asymptotic to a certain point. Noone can produce beyond a certain level, except if they are uploading massive amounts of home-made video at astronomic quality. Thus if you were really going crazy you could do file-pooling and allocate a certain portion of your HD space to the pool, and then allow users so much space for personal use, and tell them how much they were using.... A file would qualify for pooling after, say, three or four users, and they could be grouped.... an incredibly interesting problem, actually, the management of the space. But I'd bet that if GOOG put their mind to it it could be done. Meaning, should they continue to go through step 1 of the underpants gnomes' process, (Profit) they will eventually solve it.

It boils down to text being negligible now, pictures of a certain size being negligible soon, and possibly video in
If it's feasible, it's eventually done, so I'd love to see it happen with a company that has the slogan 'don't do evil' before a company with the slogan, "WHERE'S MY MONEY," manages it.

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[stinerman]

ADDers unite!

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[projectVORTEX]

Or, for that matter, extremely socialite family members who enjoy forwarding on EVERY e-mail they recieve, even if the e-mail's size is 2 MB or more... and they do it from a 56K modem too!

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[MyLongNickName]

I have to agree with you on this point. This would be an interesingthing to try to implement. You would also then have to work around folks who'd try to break the system with three or four accounts, and mailing the same thing to both accounts. The data would then be "grouped".

Storage could be allocated by amount of space / number of users accessing, I suppose. Ultimately, what you are ending up with is a global shared hard drive, as you alluded to, Google IS the Internet. Why is the theme music to 'Pinky and the Brain' playing in my head?

And sorry about the harshness of previous replies. I am a recovering jerk... it's a long process :)

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[TeknoHog]

In any case, formatting breaks the standard/idea of email as plain text. It assumes that the recipient is using a graphical/HTML client. It's the same kind of thinking that everyone is using MS Word, so it's ok to send information in the form of .DOCuments. Which is fine if you absolutely know how your recipient is going to read the message, but not a nice assumption to make in general.

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[cetan]

...we in the UK have a word for people who get all huffy and bigoted when presented with differing opinions, they are called wankers

The irony of your post is too much to handle. You sir, are an idiot.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah dude, people were saying that when gmail originally came out on April 1 a year ago... and oh... look at your own email?

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[ashot]

its not the same thing at all; html is an open format

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[OhNotSeven]

Geez...thought it was bad enough with trying to get idiots using MS Outlook to quit putting crappy wallpaper on their emails...not to mention the other stuff. You get a 2 line email, that is like 1.5MB+ in size with all the formatting crap, dancing images....etc.

Funny....I have *never* received a mail with a wallpaper, and most of my friends (actually I do have some :D) use outlook. Just because they use windoze doesn't mean that they are dumb.

Granted bandwidth usage is an issue...but there are bigger bandwith eaters. Need I list them?

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[__aahrlq8808]

"You get a 2 line email, that is like 1.5MB+ in size with all the formatting crap, dancing images....etc."

Yeah, but now you get to keep 682 more of them!

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[NanoGator]

"You get a 2 line email, that is like 1.5MB+ in size with all the formatting crap, dancing images....etc."

1.5mb? Don't you think you're embellishing on your point just a tad? That's akin to me complaining about RedHat coming on 450 CDs.

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[generic-man]

Good post. I agree.

--- Original Message ---

"...and users now have the ability to use some new snazzy rich text formatting features including fonts, bullets, colors, and highlighting. "

Geez...just what we need. Email should be plain text...you are just wasting bandwith with all the rich text crap.

Geez...thought it was bad enough with trying to get idiots using MS Outlook to quit putting crappy wallpaper on their emails...not to mention the other stuff. You get a 2 line email, that is like 1.5MB+ in size with all the formatting crap, dancing images....etc.

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[Eric S. Smith]

its not the same thing at all; html is an open format

The format is irrelevant; the point is that you're sending something that's not plain text. As the person to whom you responded points out, this is only okay "...if you absolutely know how your recipient is going to read the message...".

More specifically related to Gmail:

• The HTML produced by the Gmail editor is rather hard to read, especially since it lacks whitespace.
• It may also be more likely to trigger anti-spam rules, just by nature of being HTML.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Which I could see being a problem except for one little fact:

We're accessing gmail from a WEB BROWSER, right? and what do those things do?

If you answered RENDER HTML, you're right! congratulations!

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[Anonymous Coward]

I only got 1406MB

Mine is 1337. ! @m UB3R h4x0r!!!

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[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Well, I don't think the malicious people would be as hard to spot as you do. What I'm saying is that there will come a point where to actually produce enough storage data to cripple the system, you will need to either a: be mass producing data and storing it, or b: be maliciously pranking. If data storage comes to the point where tossing even three continuous days of full motion video at top quality at someone is negligible space (and this is a coming day, it seems) even on a massive scale, the only people doing 'too much' data storage on the system will be people who are TRYING to screw over the system. These people are easily isolated and removed. If they were to, for example, split their videos and whatever into a large number of component parts they would still need to use the same IP's to push the data forward, or do it in a large markable batch.... Any way you cut it, once people do things on this scale in a malicious way, you're probably going to notice..... Additionally since Google's become the other 400-lb gorilla on the internet, who wants to mess with them?

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[ip_fired]

Most good mail clients should provide both the nicely formatted html and the text in 2 different MIME blocks. I just tested gmail, and it does this.

So what are you really complaining about, the extra 1k that the e-mail has because it has good formatting?

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[Anonymous Coward]

So what? e-mail is plain text. HTML is not plain text. Whether it is an open standard or not does not make a difference.

By your logic, it would be OK if I would send you an e-mail containing a huge SVG file rendering all the glyphs of the text. Because SVG is an open format for vector graphics. Or maybe you prefer a raster image in PNG format? Or is PDF open enough for you?

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[SeanAhern]

Are you a troll? I'll feed you anyway...

The point was that you don't know the environment in which your email is read at the recipient end. Is it a webmail app? Is it mutt? Thunderbird? Outlook? You have no guarantee (unless you ask the recipient) that they'll even be able to render HTML with their email reader. Not everyone uses a webmail program these days.

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[tolan-b]

But the HTML and plain text versions are sent in separate mime blocks, so a text only reader should have no problem.

So what's the problem?

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[Anonymous Coward]

That's great, but they should get some fucking IMAP and I might consider actually using the service. IMAP is a feature I would pay money for if they had it. Otherwise Gmail is pretty useless to me.

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[ashot]

The format is irrelevant; the point is that you're sending something that's not plain text.

You contradicted yourself in that sentence =]

Besides, thats a straw man: all I said its not really comparable to sending doc attachments, which it isn't.

And, btw, you never "absolutely know how the recipient is going to read the message."
ASCII and Unicode are agreed upon formats, just like HTML. The important thing is that they are open and standards based.

I'm not sure what the big deal is anyway, I use Opera mail and its never had a problem decoding HTML messages, including Gmail (I just tried).

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[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Geez...just what we need. Email should be plain text...you are just wasting bandwith with all the rich text crap.

Hahaha. That complaint made sense about 5 years ago. Today the "bandwidth" being "wasted" in the e-mail is miniscule compared to the JavaScript required to run your webmail...not to mention the stupid flash ads in Yahoo! Mail and others...

and we haven't even considered how much bandwith is wasted by spam. All considered, HTML mail is not that much of a waste.

And if it's done right, there's no problem. We use HTML on Slashdot for comments when we need emphasis of some sort, but those italics only added 7 bytes to my message. I hope Google's smart enough to keep the HTML short and clean. (Hint: leave off the font tags when the default will suffice. Hint 2: nest them if you need to specify multiple changes.)

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[Anonymous Coward]

HTML is plaintext. Certain clients choose to render the HTML to make it more useful, but this doesn't change the fact that it's plaintext.

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[doyle.jack]

No kidding. I was showing someone at work the difference in size between two emails with the same single line of text... one was html message with a stationery (Outlook) the other was the exact same message converted to plain text.

We took the original messages after delivery over the internet and printed them out.

The plain text version took 1/4 of a page of paper to print out (including headers and everything). The same message in html with stationery took 6 pages.

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[Saeger]

I think the problem is that the parent poster is either using a broken mailreader that doesn't understand how to handle the multiplart/alternative mimetype, or, he assumes that google is as stupid as some spammers and will ONLY send text/html (rather than text/plain AND text/html parts).

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[SeanAhern]

Maybe with gmail it is. But you're not guaranteed that all mail clients will behave this way. I have received emails that are purely HTML with no separate text MIME block.

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[syynnapse]

If you recall, everyone thought the original gmail story was a joke - and i didnt believe this one until i saw my own storage change.

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[Short Circuit]

Some idiots tell Outlook to only send HTML versions of their email.

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[Cow Jones]

HTML is plaintext.

When will people stop spreading this nonsense?

HTML is text/html,
Plain text is text/plain.

They are *not* the same.
Using your logic that the rendering client defines the format ("Certain clients choose to render the HTML"), everything would be plaintext. Image viewers also just "choose" to render a PNG as an image. Sheesh.

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[Uber Banker]

The irony of your post is too much to handle.

You seem to be listening to too much Alanis Morissette.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Most good mail clients should provide both the nicely formatted html and the text in 2 different MIME blocks. I just tested gmail, and it does this.

Why is this a good thing? You ever seen someone post a combo message to Usenet? Did you see the five hundred LART followups?

So what are you really complaining about, the extra 1k that the e-mail has because it has good formatting?

Yes. If I wanted to look at HTML, I'd fire up Mozilla or Firefox. Call me anal.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Bullets are professional? Bullets, as in bullet points?

That's just not right, dude.

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[Anonymous Coward]

If anything, he didn't embellish enough. The athletics department at my school recently sent out a ~9MB email to the entire campus, on the occasion of an upcoming basketball game.

Classes and reminders about email etiquette were offered shortly thereafter.

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[mrchaotica]

Do you write with six different colored pens, like a 14 year old school girl? If not, then color is not "the basics!"

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[NanoGator]

"If anything, he didn't embellish enough. The athletics department at my school recently sent out a ~9MB email to the entire campus, on the occasion of an upcoming basketball game."

Okay, this happened once. This is a far cry from the implication that everybody runs around doing this.

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[ashot]

'plain text' is a format (ASCII, Unicode) just like any other means of encoding data. If you wanted to be completely pure, you should just send your friends email in binary, then you could be totally sure that they could read it. Sending 'plain text' emails in Russian is not very simple as there are 3 different encodings for the russian alphabet.

I can see an argument being made that somehow its fundamentally different, but on the grounds that it contains no style information, I think its an awfully weak argument though..

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[Hooptie]

Only 9MB, you had it easy. Recently we had a girl send a 250MB attachment to everyone in the company. The bad part is we have Outlook's cached exchange mode turned on, so everyone had to get the 250MB file at the same time. Exchange was not happy. And our sales reps were calling ME to complain that they couldn't get their email.

Oh well, at least she's cute.

Hooptie

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[shayne321]

It assumes that the recipient is using a graphical/HTML client.

Yes, it assumes the recipient is participating in 2005 with the rest of us, not stuck in 1994 with you. For $DIETY's sake, even pine will read HTML email these days.

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[knightri]

1487 for me

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[b100dian]

Do you write bold, like a 14 year school boy?

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[utexaspunk]

since when was that the "standard idea"? I think the "standard idea" of e-mail should be the electronic equivalent of mail, and what you're talking about sound more like e-telegrams.

sure, it should have some degree of backward compatibility (like another poster said, it includes a plaintext version in a separate MIME block) and should be a widely available, open format (not .DOC files or .PDF's), but other than that, it should be as close to real mail as you can get- pictures, fonts, you name it.

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[forkazoo]

Some people really do use uncompressed BMP's. I've seen it. They need a picture file for their signature, and for the logo, etc... Sad, but true.

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[Infinite Entropy]

Besides, the HTML tags could always be stripped out, yes?

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[RevDobbs]

Unfortunatly, you can't rely on ASCII art 'cause retarded MUAs (like gmail) won't display messages in a mono-spaced font. That is a feature I've been requesting for ages.

And your argument of using style for structured communication is bunk. What does colors and fonts have to do with your message, and how are they going to render in pine? Bullet points? What's wrong with an asterik?

If you want to sell me something, send me the URL of a webpage. If you want to effectivly communcate with me, send me a plain ASCII email. If you need back up images, send links to web page, but for the love of god don't email them to me.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You're adding another layer. If you want to interpret HTML as text/html, that's your prerogative.

Just to pick your brain a little more, if I sent you a password in an HTML email, would you consider it safe? By your logic, I didn't really send it plaintext.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Can you open up a PNG in an ASCII text editor and do anything useful with it? What do you use to write your HTML in? Do you have a text/html editor?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Some idiots only use text mail clients. See, there is another side to your overwhelming ignorant statement.

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[CaseyB]

It assumes that the recipient is using a graphical/HTML client.

In other words, it assumes that it's not 1990.

<Cue rant on why it's impossible for you to read mail any other way than in a text-mode reader over SSH. Gimme a frickin' break.>

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[Cow Jones]

If you want to interpret HTML as text/html, that's your prerogative.

Not really. If I just ignore the MIME type, I'm broken software.

if I sent you a password in an HTML email, would you consider it safe? By your logic, I didn't really send it plaintext.

You're confusing MIME types with encryption.

I was talking about the difference between HTML and plain text; both of them are "plaintext" from a cryptographical point of view.
If you're talking crypto, the opposite of plaintext is cyphertext, not HTML.

So: both HTML and plain text (as in text/plain) are text, but they're not both plain. Get it?

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[Da Fokka]

Unfortunatly, you can't rely on ASCII art 'cause retarded MUAs (like gmail) won't display messages in a mono-spaced font. That is a feature I've been requesting for ages.
Well congratiulations, now you can use them!

And your argument of using style for structured communication is bunk. What does colors and fonts have to do with your message, and how are they going to render in pine? Bullet points? What's wrong with an asterik?
I readily believe that people using Pine will find a message in plaintext just as convincing as a properly formatted message but a lot of people also look at the packaging of the information.

If you want to sell me something, send me the URL of a webpage. If you want to effectivly communcate with me, send me a plain ASCII email. If you need back up images, send links to web page, but for the love of god don't email them to me.
I will keep it in mind ;)

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[Anonymous Coward]

My point was you chose an arbitrary definition of plaintext. You chose to use MIME types as your basis. I did not. That doesn't make your answer magically more valid than mine. HTML is still plaintext as far as I'm concerned.

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[mrchaotica]

No, I don't write bold, I write strong. You should too; it's more semantic that way.

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[Anonymous Coward]

overwhelmingly

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[diegocgteleline.es]

The format is irrelevant; the point is that you're sending something that's not plain text.

Dude, it's 2005, we're not in 1950. Sylpheed (my MUA) doesn't support HTML view of mails but it can parse the text and shot it as plain text.

Besides, I like the fact of being able to use things like bold fonts instead of _imagining_ or *imagining* bold fonts. Text formatting is certainly useful, and I'm all for it even for text-based MUAs. Another problem is people abusing it and people linking images instead of attaching it but we are in 2005, not being able to write with colors in a computer with a 256 MB video card and a 21" TFT is stupid.

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[Anonymous Coward]

What if I send you what looks like an HTML document, but mark it text/plain? Would that satisfy your definition? If not, why? How would you know that the extra characters aren't just part of the document? If that's "plaintext" then, why does changing the MIME type (which does not change the content of the document) alter things?

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[ded_guy]

Do you have a text/html editor?
Some people do.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be listening to too much Alanis Morissette.

It is ironic for a person decrying someone else's "huffy" tone to resort to using the word "wanker". Similarly, it would be ironic for someone decrying profanity to use the word "fuck". It seems that you are the one who listens to too much Alanis.

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[Anonymous Coward]

And these don't just save plain ASCII files?

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[Cow Jones]

What if I send you what looks like an HTML document, but mark it text/plain?

Then it should be displayed as a plain text. You can check this with Firefox, or any other software that respects MIME types (ie, not MSIE).

Changing the MIME type of an email alters things because it changes how the receiving application interprets and displays the message. Using HTML in emails has brought us such wonderful things as self-installing trojans, web bugs, and messages that play a MIDI track in the background. I've been filtering all HTML emails into a quarantine folder for years now (those that haven't been marked as spam before), and a lot of my friends are doing the same thing. The results are great: 99% is spam, and the rest is from family members who have just discovered the cool formatting options in their mail client.

Re:Schweet

[shawb]

Then that's the fault of the sender. Most email clients have three options: plain text, html, or both. Yhis is generally configurable on a per user basis. But, seriously: Why don't you just get a compitent email client? They're free, ya know. You're basically doing the same as complaining that HDTV only puts out color signals and can't view the shows correctly on your 12" B&W tv.

And if you can't be bothered to change to a new viewer, you can always just parse the HTML yourself.

Re:Schweet

[Anonymous Coward]

You can keep your porn in 2gigs? What... is your fetish ASCII porn???

Re:Schweet

[shawb]

Have you seen what happens to storage limits? Once there is this much storage, someone will come out with higher res. video. Or 3d video. Or total sensory immersion where all of the neural inputs to the brain are copied. Once that is high res enough, someone will figure out a way to map all of the hormones etc in the body to make a truly realistic experience. And you know what industry will bring this to you? That's right... porn.

Re:Schweet

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN is now reporting this to be true!

http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/01/technology/google. reut/index.htm?cnn=yes

Re:Schweet

[Short Circuit]

Some idiots only use text mail clients. See, there is another side to your overwhelming ignorant statement.

Text emails work just as well in Outlook, Gmail and Evolution as HTML emails do. HTML emails don't work well at all in mutt, pine, or mailx.

I don't have a problem with people sending me HTML versions of their emails. Just include a part with a MIME type of text/plain.

Re:Schweet

[SeanAhern]

Then that's the fault of the sender. Most email clients have three options: plain text, html, or both. [This] is generally configurable on a per user basis.

Very true. I hope GMail has such configuration. I haven't logged in recently to check.

But, seriously: Why don't you just get a compitent email client? [Patronization deleted.]

As for my druthers - I wasn't trying to argue from my own personal preferences or setup. I don't have a compatibility problem with my local email client. I can handle text, HTML, or both just fine. But my experience is irrelevant to the general case.

I was pointing out that the argument that you can always assume an HTML-capable mail reader in the general case is a false one. There are many people out there who still use text-only email readers for valid reasons other than they "can't be bothered."

Re:Schweet

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony of this is that Gmail doesn't even display HTML emails properly in their interface because they strip out a lot of the code and ignores CSS entirely.

Re:Schweet

[RevDobbs]

No, this is about effective communication. When was the last time an HTML email conveyed something other than the poor taste and color blindness of the sender? How well does your cell phone render blinking periwinkle Comic Sans on a light grey background? And how much time is your secetary going to waste while she diligintly changes each letter to a different color of the rainbow?

It is not about being anachronstic; it is about being practical. Email is a technology best limited to text/plain in 7 bit ASCII (for English speaking users at least).

Re:Schweet

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, it's so hard taking a jpg/gif instead of the ascii itself (even txt)..

Re:Schweet

[Anonymous Coward]

That was my point. It's all how the client interprets it. Thank you for agreeing with me.

Btw, spam really has nothing to do with our dialog. I suppose it's a last ditch effort to try to prove a valid point.

Re:Schweet

[Uber Banker]

Subject: Irony? The irony of your post is too much to handle. You sir, are an idiot.

Reply:

Profession of ignorance and of willingness to learn as one interrogates another on the meaning of a term.

Alanis. Indeed.

Re:Schweet

[Splintax]

I think this is a joke that I was too retarded to understand, but I'll bite anyway.. Use the tag, 'cos it's correct HTML. :-) I think <strong> was deprecated by W3C a while back, in any even strong can have a range of effects but b is always bold.

Re:Schweet

[mrchaotica]

Well, the joke was in the pedantry of my statement, but it was a correct statement. You've actually got it backwards -- is deprecated because it's "always bold." HTML is not meant to describe what the text should look like, it's meant to describe what it means. <strong> always means the same thing: "strong emphasis." What does bold mean? Especially, what does it mean if your html is getting rendered by a text-to-speech or braille device?

Figuring out what stuff looks like is what stylesheets are for, remember. If you want something to be bold and some other semantic tag (like strong or a heading tag) doesn't fit, enclose it in a <span style="font-weight:bold">. But be careful, because if there's no semantic reason why that text should be bold, why are you making it such at all?

This is the same reason why there are several tags that have the same visual effect. For example, <em> and <cite> look exactly the same as <i>, but they're used for completely different things. The difference between emphasis and a citation is pretty important, especially if you're a machine parser. A search engine could give higher priority to emphasized keywords, or a program could use cite tags to generate a bibliography. Neither of those things work if you just use <i>, because there's no way to tell why the text was italic.

Not a joke

[mirko]

but it's still increasing, I have 1412MB as of yet.

Re:Not a joke

[piacoa]

Just because Google happens to be the creative authority on providing users their features, they're incrementing it by roughly 1 MB every 5-10 seconds until it gets to 2 GB. Snazzy!

Re:Not a joke

[bird603568]

so in around a hour and a half to 3 hrs we will have 2 gigs? i really dont think soo. Quick we need to fill up our inboxes to test it. BTW where is this space comming from?

Re:Not a joke

[coolcold]

but they will make it back to 1Gb after April 1st
its a joke

(so am I :p)

Re:Not a joke

[over_exposed]

a lot of hard drives...

Re:Not a joke

[electronerdz]

Well, obviously, a lot more hard drives... however, just because they say everyone has 1GB (now 2GB) of storage doesn't mean they really have that much on their end. They don't expect everyone to fill up their 1GB, and will add as needed.

Re:Not a joke

[KinkifyTheNation]

Gmail was announced last year on April 1st and it's still around today, is it not?

April 1st?

[maotx]

In light of April 1st I have to say I'm not sure if this is legit or not.
My gmail account has slowly been growing today (it's at 1440MB capacity now) and have noticed the rainbow features being integrated.

Will this last till tomorrow? Who knows. I'm liking it as is. I wouldn't think that Google would offer a service only to rip it away. If I had to speculate I would say that this is their answer to Yahoo!'s recent 1GB offer of e-mail. And as for those of you who keep complaining about gmail being in Beta still, I think Google answered it best regarding their "Gulp" product in their FAQ:

11. When will you take Google Gulp out of beta?

Man, if you pressure us, you just drive us away. We'll commit when we're ready, okay? Besides, what's so great about taking things out of beta? It ruins all the romance, the challenge, the possibilities, the right to explore. Carpe diem, ya know? Maybe we're jaded, but we've seen all these other companies leap headlong into 1.0, thinking their product is exactly what they've been dreaming of all their lives, that everything is perfect and hunky-dory - and the next thing you know some vanilla copycat release from Redmond is kicking their butt, the Board is holding emergency meetings and the CEO is on CNBC blathering sweatily about "a new direction" and "getting back to basics." No thanks, man. We like our freedom.

Re:April 1st?

[two_stripe]

Considering GMail was launched on April 1st last year, id say you'd be pretty safe in assuming that it isnt actually a joke.

Re:April 1st?

[StormShaman]

Carpe diem? More like caveat emptor.

Re:April 1st?

[Anonymous Coward]

mine is also ar 1.414 GB which is kinda wierd that we both are at 1.4

Re:April 1st?

[Mahler]

Consindering Google-humor, that just might be all the more reason to suspect it is...

Re:April 1st?

[MPolo]

Just log out of Gmail. Then you will see the "joke" about the Infinity+1 Email account. Then at the end, they say "April Fool" and link to the new features mentioned in this article. Hence, the two GB is real, it will just take until tomorrow until it is there. (Or at least that's my analysis.)

The question remains of whether the submitter saw the joke, realized that it needn't be submitted, given the glut of them, and then found the new features, or just clicked on that glowing red "New Features" link at the top of his logged-in page.

Re:April 1st?

[moontumbohotmail.com]

My gmail account is also at 1.4GB. I'm thinking it's probably real, considering that Google launched on April Fools day.

Re:April 1st?

[killjoe]

The FAQ item is great. When do I get to make mailboxes though?

Re:April 1st?

[kebes]

This is not an april fool's prank. It is real. The joke is the "infinity + 1" storage that appears on the gmail main page. But if you follow the link they have, which reads:

"Gmail turns 1 today. And we've always loved a good joke. We know we won't reach infinity, but check out what we will do ..."

You will see that they are very serious about increasing to 2 GB of storage. The counter on the Gmail page seems to be increasing from 1000 Mb to 2000 Mb at a rate that will reach the goal by the time the day is over.

Re:April 1st?

[iamzack]

Awwww...does this mean they scrapped the Google Moonbase http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html/ they started at this time last year?

Re:April 1st?

[tijnbraun]

Maybe is somekind of variation of Moore's law.

On April Fools' Day your GMail storage will double and the funniness of Slashdot jokes will be halved.

Re:April 1st?

[Will2k_is_here]

Read the link:

But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able

They discovered that a gigabyte is great, but 99% of all users aren't using more than a megabyte a year. Therefore, they really don't need to worry about limits. They just add on more disk space for the few users who actually need it.

Re:April 1st?

[GreyPoopon]

In light of April 1st I have to say I'm not sure if this is legit or not.

This is probably redundant by now, but the new features are definitely not a joke. I sent email with Rich Text from GMAIL to another email account, and it worked. However, there still appear to be some bugs in the interface. At any rate, tomorrow will tell whether they yank the features away.

Re:April 1st?

[op12]

The koke's on you! It's not trying to reach 2000MB by the end of the day, but Infinity+1 by the end of time!

Re:April 1st?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was actually launched on March 31. The Press Center later changed the date on the release to April 1.

Re:April 1st?

[Eq 7-2521]

Last year, I thought that Gmail itself was an April Fools joke, in addition to whatever real joke they had going. Similarly, two years ago I thought Mayor Daley carving big Xs into Miegs Field was a joke, but sadly it turned out to be real.

Re:April 1st?

[GTRacer]

They discovered that a gigabyte is great, but 99% of all users aren't using more than a megabyte a year. Therefore, they really don't need to worry about limits.

Funny, that's the mentality broadband ISPs used when pricing their plans...then when everyone had a killer app that actually used what they were sold, backpedaling and AUP-juggling ensued.

I don't think the Google will do this, but FWIW.

GTRacer
- Has ONE message in GMail inbox

Re:April 1st?

[DJStealth]

Mine was at 1428, I hit refresh then it went up to 1429. Looks like they're doing it slowly to prevent sudden chaos on their disk drives (just like they do the invite-only system to control the amount of users registering).

Re:April 1st?

[DJStealth]

See this link

Re:April 1st?

[DJStealth]

FYI, if you want to know how long it will take to get to 2GB, see the following algorithm from their web page:

var START = 1112331600000;
var END = 1112439600000;

var quota;

function OnLoad() {
el("gaia_loginform").onsubmit = lg;
gaia_setFocus();
LogRoundtripTime();
if (!quota) {
quota = el("quota");
updateQuota();
}
}

function updateQuota() {
if (!quota) {
return;
}

var now = (new Date()).getTime();
if (now < START) {
setTimeout(updateQuota, 1000);
} else if (now > END) {
quota.innerHTML = 'Over 2000';
} else {
quota.innerHTML = format(((now - START)/(END - START)*1025) + 1025);
setTimeout(updateQuota, 50);
}
}

Re:April 1st?

[DJStealth]

Unix Time Conversion

Copy/paste 1112331600 and 1112439600 into the above site to test. (I guess the last 3 digits are milliseconds)

Apparently, it looks like it depends on your system clock! If you want 2GB now, set your date to the future!

Re:April 1st?

[rmarll]

The wierd part is if you log in when the mantisa changes, your space available updates (x% of x megabytes) as well.

Yes, I know we've got the two gig and they're just playing games with the counter. But they sure were through when they set out to do this.

Re:April 1st?

[UnsolicitedHuman]

I think the javascript is timed in such a way that it reaches 2GB by the end of the day.

Re:April 1st?

[rikkards]

That could be a good Poll question:
How many emails do you have in your gmail box?
a. 1-100
b. 101-1000
c. 1001-10000
d. 10,000 but all are member enlargement spam
e. Cowboyneal is my mail box

Re:April 1st?

[Zerth]

Actually, saturday morning

Re:April 1st?

[snuf23]

I don't know what to put in that account really. I am using 13MB or so, mostly a few scans of artwork that I stashed up there for safe keeping. Even my second Gmail account which I use for online site registration that I suspect will bring me spam is mostly empty. The spam filter catches most of the crap coming in anyway.
I guess I should make DVD backups and seperate them into 10 meg attachements and upload them.
Then I will never have to worry about scratching my copy of Gigli.

Re:April 1st?

[tim256]

MSNBC is reporting this same story.

Re:April 1st?

[0siris]

...and that'll be exactly the kind of thing that would kill Gmail.

2GB is quite a bit considering they don't charge. I'm paying £17.99 GBP per month with my ISP, and they only give me 1GB.

I'm hoping you were joking. Please don't ruin it for the rest of us...

Re:April 1st?

[Feztaa]

I primarily use my gmail account for subscribing to a handful of mailing lists. The gmail account becomes a searchable archive of mailing list posts which is *really* handy for use as a reference. I also use it as the email adress listed publicly on my website as I've found gmail's spam filter is really good (I've seen a few false positives but according to my spam folder, I've only gotten 14 spam in the last 30 days).

So nothing that I store on my gmail account is particularly private, so I'm not worried about any privacy issues. Private, personal email is all GPG encrypted, using my ISP's mail account.

Re:April 1st?

[snuf23]

"I'm hoping you were joking. Please don't ruin it for the rest of us..."

I though this line:

"Then I will never have to worry about scratching my copy of Gigli."

would have been a dead giveaway. Yes, I admit I was joking.

Haha! April fools!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You Slashdot editors are teh funny!!!!!!

Re:Haha! April fools!!!!

[Tribbin]

And they build a rich text format mail composer for today also!!! HAHAHAHAH!

Re:Haha! April fools!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, this is probably the only non-April-Fools joke story we'll see today...

actually a real article

[JeanBaptiste]

unless google is also having april fool day fun, but I don't think so.

Re:actually a real article

[ceejayoz]

unless google is also having april fool day fun

I take it you haven't seen Google Gulp yet?

More google news :)

[SlongNY]

More google news :) http://www.google.com/googlegulp/product_line.html Yummmy...

True story!

[BWJones]

Wow, the Google story first non April Fools post of the day on Slashdot. Now all we need is a true to life post on the new Apple PDA.

Re:True story!

[Tibe]

...then a repost of the Google story.

...then a repost of the Apple PDA story.

...then someone bitching about reposts.

Love-Hate/.

Re:True story!

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I was hoping that the rainbow text and stuff was an April Fool's joke, its hard enough reading html email without my sister turning it into rainbow colored AIM crap.

Happy Birthday

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool happy birthday gmail

Thats Great

[CrazyTalk]

Two years old - but when are they finally going to be off of Beta release?

Re:Thats Great

[CrazyTalk]

Darn, can't edit my responses. I meant to say one year old, of course. Still, seems a long time to be in beta, especially with so many users.

Re:Thats Great

[Anonymous Coward]

1 (one) year old, you moron

Re:Thats Great

[Anonymous Coward]

you are gay

Would've been believable...

[Anonymous Coward]

... if Gmail hadn't been released on March 31, 2004.

Re:Would've been believable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it was definitely released on April 1; I distinctly remember all of the "is this true?" babble that came with it.

Ha!

[ackthpt]

Fooled me again. NOT!

oh, shit, it's true, what's up with that?

Ok, so since I read me email as ASCII text, I supposed they translate these Rich Text feature for email going outside the Gmail system?

Re:Ha!

[Mr Guy]

Most likely use MIME. Post your email and I'll drop you a note and you can see for yourself.

Re:Ha!

[sepluv]

Their are two alternative MIME parts: one is plain text and one is HTML.

In other words, if you have your MUA set to display plain text, you'll see the rich-text features translated into plain-text equivalents (e.g.: with blockquoting) or removed.

Whereas, if you have your MUA set to display HTML, you'll see them in all their glory. Here's the gory detail:

Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_Part_877_30704583.1112374049929"

------=_Part_877_30704583.1112374049929
Content -Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

***Plain text version here***

------=_Part_877_30704583.1112374049929
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

***HTML version here***

------=_Part_877_30704583.1112374049929 --

April Fool's?

[Flypside]

I'm actually believing this one for the time being....

Re:April Fool's?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good choice.

If you go to gmail.google.com, you can see their offer to raise the storage limit to 'Infinity + 1', but on the next page they basiaclly say 'All jokes aside, in honor of the 1 year anniversary of Gmail, we're raising the limit to 2 GB. Have fun with it'.

No Joke

[JuliusRV]

And this isn't even an April Fool's joke, it's for real! :)

Not april's fools

[thundercatslair]

Finally a story that isn't a april fools joke. The new features are nice, but the 2GB storage? Again pretty useless.

Re:Not april's fools

[Anonymous Coward]

then go back to hotmail, if you don't like it.... the nerve of some people...
do u want your email in a golden tray, brought by a butler? for FREE???

Re:Not april's fools

[Reignking]

Only if the butler is Jeeves from Ask Jeeves...

Re:Not april's fools

[thundercatslair]

I wasn't complaining, I was just saying it is useless. Could you ever fill 1 gigabyte worth of e-mail, let alone 2? It is nice to have virtually unlimted e-mail storage, but really, it is there for marketing purposes not because people will actually use it all.

I have to say

[dan dan the dna man]

I love the way the counter on Gmails home page is slowly crawling towards 2000Mb. Every time I log into Gmail my % use is dropping today!

About time

[mrbaggs]

Finally, some real news.

wow!

[agent2]

neat.

yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

i love a good party.

Oh yeah? Infinity plus 1!

[havaloc]

Check out the napkin drawing on the login screen.

Sweet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail is like a sore dick; you can't beat it!

Re:Sweet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is like a sore dick; playing with it hurts, but you can't stop doing it.

This is not very usable...

[Anonymous Coward]

...without the blink tag.

Size increase

[freak4u]

Yeah, my account is slowly increasing too. Nifty. I thought this was an April Fool's at first, then i hit Compose..

How long until 2gb?

[stecoop]

On the web page it is currently about 1400mb. It is counting up to 2gb but it is going to take a few days. I bet I wont be able to tell the difference in storage space between now and then anyway.

Re:How long until 2gb?

[Stalyn]

hang on... lemme use my time machine....

okay back it'll reach 2GB at 12am EST.

Re:How long until 2gb?

[TravisWatkins]

It'll reach 2GB at 12am CST too. The JS uses your timezone for the counter.

Re:How long until 2gb?

[Stalyn]

you sure about that i'm messing with my timezone and it isn't changing...

Re:How long until 2gb?

[TravisWatkins]

Try changing the actual time. :)

Re:How long until 2gb?

[fanblade]

You're messing with your timezone? If messing with your timezone doesn't change anything, perhaps that's because gmail is upping the space all around the world at the same GMT. Actually change the time and it should work.

Re:How long until 2gb?

[Stalyn]

i'm not going to mess around with my hw clock just to see the counter change... btw the real storage space.. when you log in is determined by their server's hw clock.

This appears to be

[SparksMcGee]

A parody of the term "News" for Nerds, or else the lamest April Fool's joke ever. C'mon guys, you were on a roll. Keep the good times coming and bear in mind that no one cares about gmail...in color!!

Infinity + 1

[CompotatoJ]

You thought infinty was a lot of space? Google is topping that.

Great!

[Kilroy Wasn't Here]

I can send people bigger images of my satellite photos now...

Cool!

[NerdHead]

I like the RTF tools so far. One problem is that if the background is for a small text and you change the size of the text, the background color size doesn't change automatically.

Watching the size counter increment instead of going directly to 2000 Mb reminds me that today is April Fools Day. I'll look at it tomorrow.

I thought this was a 1/04 thing...

[bcmm]

The great thing is, it has been increasing gradually all day. You can watch the capacity going up on the login page (along with some humorous stuff), and the storage capacity when logged in increasing smoothly in line with it.

Re:April Fools again

[Aayenn]

Lies. Google is taking over the world soon. Everyone knows it. This is only one more way. Soon you'll see "Google buys microsoft" and thats when everything will end.

timer

[ice-nine]

The disk space is going up gradually over the course of the day (I'm guessing, from the counter on the gmail front page (viewable when you're logged out)). When I checked early this morning I had 1128 MB, then 1129 MB, and when I set my system clock ahead, it jumped up (then back down when I set it back).

ag

Re:timer

[hamlet2600]

thats cause they are just running a javascript timer:

quota.innerHTML = format(((now - START)/(END - START)*1025) + 1025);

Re:timer

[Malicious]

If you set the date on your comp to Apr 2nd, you will see 2GB.

Re:timer

[vikramrn]

Changing the system clock only changes the counter on the main page...it is done in javascript using a function of the system time.

Whereas the disk space is actually increasing gradually, independent of the display, but matching very closely (only by 2 or 3 MB)

Re:timer

[back_pages]

Hehe, clever post.

In other news, I noticed that Google News now lets me reorganize the sections on the front page with the "Edit this customized page" link in the upper right corner. It says it is "new", but I don't know how new it is and I've never noticed it before.

I'm not that impressed by the configurability, but I was impressed by the functionality Google is getting out of a web browser. The configuration tool is drag and drop within the web page. That is pretty spiffy to me.

Re:timer

[LiENUS]

Drag and drop is farely easy, there are dhtml libraries to do that effect.

Re:timer

[Anonymous Coward]

dirty liar.

Re:timer

[Stalyn]

Sat Apr 2 05:14:07 FJT 2005

uh no....

Re:timer

[Stalyn]

actually look at the page's source

var START = 1112331600000;
var END = 1112439600000;

1112439600 (extra 000s?) is Sat, 02 Apr 2005 11:00:00 GMT

Re:timer

[Anonymous Coward]

1112439600 (extra 000s?)

Javascript does that. It's a feature. The extra 0's are ms.

Dump this into a page and point your browser of choice at it:

<html>
<body onLoad="doUpdate();">
<span id="curTime">
Foo
</span>

<script language="javascript">
function doUpdate ()
{
var now = new Date();
document.getElementById("curTime").innerHTML = now.getTime();
setTimeout('doUpdate();', 50);
}
</script>
</body>
</html>

Re:timer

[Leroy Brown]

FYI- If your PC had the correct time, it would match exactly.

Competitoin?

[adennis]

Hmm... I wonder if this could have anything to do with yahoo and hotmail starting to catch up with mail space... One of the many things Google has always been good at was staying ahead.

Re:Competitoin?

[xtracto]

Well, it could be but, since i started to read about the Hotmail's 250 MB offer I got a bit happy, but, nope, i still had those miserable 4 MB... now I know why:

"
250MB inbox available only in the 50 United States, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Eligible Hotmail users will first receive 25MB at sign-up. Please allow at least 30 days for activation of your 250MB storage to verify your e-mail account and help prevent abuse. Microsoft Corporation reserves the right to provide 250MB inbox to free Hotmail accounts at its discretion"

So ... nope Hotmail service is FAAAR faaaar FAAAAAAAAAR from getting my attention again...
as I have the fortune not to live in the USed

Yep... here it is...

[xtracto]

As I mentioned... I posted this before and the story was rejected... so why was my story rejected and this one not??? hm...

Re:Yep... here it is...

[gmuslera]

Happened to me the same, submitted the story yesterday night, when my mail space was about 1098Mb, but got rejected. Oh, well, i could had expressed badly or the editors were overwhelmed with April's 1st stories

I hate April Fools

[k4_pacific]

Seriously though, this April Fools thing was funny for a while, but it has to stop. I depend on this site for serious news. But today its all joke articles like this one. Come on now, two Gigabytes? For email? Very funny guys.

Re:I hate April Fools

[kevin_conaway]

Umm, check your gmail account. Its not a joke, at least for today.

Re:I hate April Fools

[DoubleDangerClub]

No joke. If you don't have a gmail account, I can see the skepticism, but it really is true. Going up to 2GB and beyond! The rich text editing is done very well too.

Re:I hate April Fools

[lsmeg]

Seriously though, this April Fools thing was funny for a while, but it has to stop. I depend on this site for serious news.

Best april fools joke all day!

Re:I hate April Fools

[StonedRat]

The joke was they were offering infinity +1 not 2GB. the 2GB is for real.

Re:I hate April Fools

[shyampandit]

Well, the great thing about google is that their claims which look like an april fools joke are actually real!

Everyone thought gmail itself was a joke last year but it was real and it really shook things up and looks like they will do it again ;)

Re:I hate April Fools

[ShadeARG]

Gmail was launched on April Fool's last year and everyone thought it was a joke then. A free gig of e-mail? Yeah right! Who would do such a thing? And you're also saying that others will follow suit throughout the next year? What? No way!! .. that's the power of Google.

Re:I hate April Fools

[Anonymous Coward]

"K4's Joke".. Let me introduce you to DoubleDangerClub.

DoubleDangerClub.. This is "K4's Joke"..

DoubleDangerClub missed you "K4's Joke". ;)

Re:I hate April Fools

[Anonymous Coward]

I depend on this site for serious news.

LOL

Re:I hate April Fools

[vraddict]

I believe there was much scepticism involved when gmail was first announced 1 year ago. Who's to say this is not part of their marketing. April Fools..... OR NOT????? (dramatic duh duh dummmm music)

Re:I hate April Fools

[macshit]

The rich text editing is done very well too.

Er. If you have your normal text-entry widget set up to use emacs-style keybindings, you'll notice the gmail rich-text text widget doesn't use them -- they apparently reimplemented the input handling in javascript or something.

Lose, lose.

Re:I hate April Fools

[macshit]

Hey no joke man.... There are plenty of serious stories I first heard about on slashdot. It's like hearing somebody mention something down at the corner store.

Most notably I first became aware of what was happening on 2001-9-11 in various off-topic comments in a slashdot story; initially I thought people were joking (it seemed too absurd to be real). The feeling of disorientation and ... dread as I realized it was really happening is still palpable.

Anyone noticed...

[(Jehuty)]

... That the counter on the Gmail page shows how much storage you have, and it keeps on increacing, u need to sign out of your Gmail account to view it

doubling every year

[unk1911]

would be nice if the storage space would double with every google birthday

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

Re:doubling every year

[Anonymous Coward]

FAKE SIG

Re:doubling every year

[SmokeHalo]

Perhaps it will. Or even better, increase exponentially every year until it reaches a terabyte.

Re:doubling every year

[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about until it reaches a googolbyte?

Re:doubling every year

[unborn]

Doubling itself is an exponential increase.

Re:doubling every year

[SmokeHalo]

Hey, whaddaya know? I stand corrected. I must need another Google Gulp to get the wheels back on my brain.

1406MB == 2GB

[scovetta]

1406MB is the same thing as 2GB, since 2GB = 2,000,000,000 bytes (by the definition of hard drive makers), and Google probably just redefined MB to mean 1,422,475 bytes.

In 10 years...

[Patrick Mannion]

It will in Preview Release stage and the capcity will be 1TB!!!!

I hope this one is a joke.

[R.Caley]

Otherwise it's time to tag all gmail sourced email as spam.

why still Beta?

[Dtyst]

With all these features, I really think that Gmail should get rid of the Beta, how much more can it be improved? Why not start using version numbers? It is much more cool when version numbers change and you try to figure out what's new.. ;)

Drive Extension

[Plazzma]

2 gigabytes of storage might be pointless for just email, but it could be useful if you use a Gmail Drive Extension like http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

Re:Drive Extension

[maraist]

2 gigabytes of storage might be pointless for just email

Are you kidding me? Apparently you don't subscribe to mailing lists. And apparently you don't have relatives that send you lots of pictures. With a 10 Meg attachment limit, you'd only have to send 100 such pictures over the course of a year or two and you're saturated.

Yes you can delete stuff, but gmail advertises "never delete your email again".. How many years can you use an email account before it becomes over-saturated.. By using google-search on your "archives" you can always retrieve a little thing that you didn't think was important enough to keep at the time.

Kinda...

[ackthpt]

Re:actually a real article .. "Since today marks the first birthday of Google's online email service, Gmail,

But since it's beta, is it really a birthday or is a a beta birthday?

Ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

April Fools?

gmail storage growing this morning

[qBeaks]

I cheched this morning and they were allowing me 1330MB

now it is 1414MB

It seems they are increasing the limit over time today.

npr OT

[gngulrajani]

Did anyone notice any april 1 pranks on NPR's Morning Edition this morning??

-greg

2GB?

[slashrogue]

Hmmm.... You are currently using 2 MB (0%) of your 1415 MB.

Re:2GB?

[slashrogue]

Oh, nevermind. I had to actually sign out of Gmail to see the front page that has the counter of how much storage space is available.

Re:2GB?

[Drakonian]

It slowly increases up to 2 GB.

Not a prank!

[Kimos]

Remember that last year Gmail was announced on April Fool's. Besides, there's no way that our good friend Google would give us a fantastic and believable gift then brutally take it away.

My only fear is that Google can't resist the draw to become evil forever. If they start making some of these new toys for-pay-features. *shakes fist*

Re:I am sick of this

[FidelCatsro]

Dude this story is true ;) so i think they did what i suspected they would do
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=144539&cid=121 10727(part of it is a joke though)

Re:I am sick of this

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeeeezzz.. You think -these- 'April Fool' pranks are bad, just wait for the BIG one on the second, and the -real- April Fools Day, April 15th... Think about it... Americans once again getting screwed royally by their government..

Look

[mattmentecky]

Heh, if you look on Slashdot's main page, you see three Google stories:
one about not real news (fake), one about a new service and one about Google expanding within an existing service.

I would say that is a typical Slashdot day ;)

Gmail is 1337

[schleyfox]

I got lucky and got a great picture of it going "You are currently using 44MB (3%) of 1337MB" http://slyfox.zapto.org:8082/display_entry.php?65

Re:Gmail is 1337

[sepluv]

You, sir, are on very very sad individual.

Re:Gmail is 1337

[Anonymous Coward]

you got lucky and slashdotted your server =)
1337

Re:Gmail is 1337

[Anonymous Coward]

This is perhaps the most pathetic display of behavior that I have ever witnessed. It is time for you sir, to seriously re-evaluate your life. So pathetic...

Re:Gmail is 1337

[schleyfox]

And its a P2 over ADSL :O Oh well can't last forever

Re:Gmail is 1337

[jcuervo]

You, sir, are on very very sad individual.

You, sir, have no sense of humour.

Re:Gmail is 1337

[Snowbeam]

You are currently using 335 MB (23%) of your 1478 MB.

Re:Gmail is 1337

[Anonymous Coward]

If you thought that was funny then I submit that it is you who has no sense of humor.

I have 1337 mb...Thought it was a joke...

[Who drank my chocola]

This, of course, led me to believe it was an April Fool's Day prank... You know, a "leet" amount of storage...

Re:I have 1337 mb...Thought it was a joke...

[piacoa]

Yeah.. I thought (especially with the napkin drawing attached) that the storage increase was similar to the "glitch" they had for a while when they were "offering" 100 GB of storage... but sure enough (after enough FAQ reading), the increase is legit. Thought it admittedly would be cool if Google offered a consistent 1337 MB of storage!

No joke!

[moniker_21]

I've been in and out of my Gmail account all morning and I didn't even realize at the bottom it now says the following:
You are currently using 57 MB (4%) of your 1414 MB.

Nice! Thanks Google!

My favorite part

[Jeff85]

How to get Gulped? You can pick up your own supply of this "limited release" product simply by turning in a used Gulp Cap at your local grocery store. How to get a Gulp Cap? Well, if you know someone who's already been "gulped," they can give you one. And if you don't know anyone who can give you one, don't worry - that just means you aren't cool. But very, very (very!) soon, you will be. I guess I'm not cool. =(

The real joke

[beerbaronstatic]

The real joke is that they were claiming to give everyone infinity + 1 MB worth of storage space. The 2 GB of storage is the sad sad reality(after being compared to infinity + 1)

Re:The real joke

[klui]

+1GB. All units rounded to nearest GB.

Re:The real joke

[bhtooefr]

No - it keeps growing:

You are currently using 2 MB (0%) of your 2057 MB.

Now, it'll NEVER hit infinity, but this is nice.

However, the more interesting thing (to me, anyway) is that they appear to properly sniff for Opera 8, and let it into the standard view (before, they saw "Opera", and forced it into basic HTML (unless you ID'd as IE)).

Yay!

[greypilgrim]

More space I will never use. Who the heck needs 2 gigs of email storage? I'm using 9mb, and I've had my account for almost a year!

Just the meta physical tags please

[Stanistani]

I personally admire the rectitude of normal, unimposing users whose insouciance and anomie natheless inspire the diversion of all that I survey. Indeed, even if one's raison d'etre were so mundane as implied, there would still be no plantain for composition.

Re:Just the meta physical tags please

[Anonymous Coward]

Huzaaaaah to you, Sir!

Re:Oh yeah? Infinity plus 1!

[Anonymous Coward]

hey that link went straight to my inbox. how did you hack into my account?!!

foolios

[Hits_B]

You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine - Homer

Not an April Fools Joke

[MadMorf]

Unlike most of today's headlines...

Go to your Gmail account for more info...

Why can't this be a joke?

[kickabear]

In every email program/service I've ever used, I've always set it to text-only. If I need to set something apart for emphasis, I've used regular punctuation and correct word choice. I've never needed to use large fonts or colored text to get my point across. Instead of useless features like bold and italics, why not work on a feature such as downloading email from my existing POP accounts, so I can consolidate all my email into one service?

Props for the increased space, though.

Re:Why can't this be a joke?

[op12]

Well, for one, they rolled out that rich formatting thing at least a full day before the 1st (I was reading about it yesterday), and claim to have been phasing it in for users even before that.

Re:Why can't this be a joke?

[fraudrogic]

Back in my day, we used plain text and used punctuation if we needed to emphasize a word. All these fancy colors and fonts. FLIM FLAM! All we really need is PINE and thats all there is to it!

Sincerely,
Grumpy Old Geek

Re:Why can't this be a joke?

[horigath]

I would guess that they are not working on forwarding and POP downloading because it's already been implemented.

Re:Why can't this be a joke?

[jimmyCarter]

..why not work on a feature such as downloading email from my existing POP accounts, so I can consolidate all my email into one service?

Check out GMail Loader (GML). I think this takes care of what you're looking for.
(http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/download.htm)

Re:April Fools again

[neoform]

Umm, it's not a joke..

my inbox size has been upped and just so you remember, Gmail because available on April 1st.. which wasn't a joke either..

if you want to see gmail's joke, go to their page www.gmail.com you'll see their "Infinity+1 Inbox" joke..

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Double the storage capacity is great and all, but I'd MUCH rather they increased the maximum size of attachments beyond 10MB. What say you, Google?

Is it real or is it slashdot

[coyote4til7]

If the dna-in-dinosaur-bones mob had made the mistake of announcing last night, we'd all be assuming it was an april fools joke now because basically _everything_ on slashdot for this 24 hours is bull.

Gmail ups to 2Gigs may be real or it may be a dumb attempt at a joke. Don't care enough to click the 12th might-be-a-joke/might-be-real link of the day.

My pledge: boycot slashdot on April Fools day. Next: hit submit then close slasdot window till tomorrow.

Re:Is it real or is it slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail ups to 2Gigs may be real or it may be a dumb attempt at a joke.

As many others have pointed out by now:

You are currently using 0 MB (0%) of your 1422 MB.

So far, it's half joke. :P

opera support!

[froggero1]

and now g-mail considers opera a fully supported browser, as the automatic contacts, and all the java script funness works again!

When is this going live, dammit!

[arthurh3535]

Some of us non-invited people would like a Gmail account to!

Re:When is this going live, dammit!

[jtaylor00]

There actually was one day this past month when Google had a link on their front page to allow anyone to sign up for a Gmail account. It looks as though it has been removed for now.

Re:When is this going live, dammit!

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have to do is ask.

I keep getting topped up to 50 invites every time I send a few out, I imagine other people do too.

Or you could visit Isnoop to get one sent to you.

I asked for one in my .SIG and got one within two posts.

If nobody sends you one, or you don't feel like giving out your email address, I have a gmail account in the name of mpreditor that you can reach me at.

Posted as AC because of thread moderation.
UserID = PReDiToR (687141)

Re:When is this going live, dammit!

[hass]

Just ask someone for an invite. I have 100 invites between my two gmail accounts. Or if you don't want to ask someone for an invite, try this site. http://isnoop.net/gmail/

Re:When is this going live, dammit!

[ESqVIP]

Actually, it's still there, and it just shows up randomly for people. I, for instance, never saw it.

Google often does that: Gmail's new features are slowly appearing for everyone, and when they were testing the new layout for the results page (minor changes, like a smaller logo) only a few select people (detected based on their cookie IDs) could see it.

Richemail formatting in PURE JS

[MyIS]

I for one don't care about the whole increased storage cap. But the new rich-text formatting feature makes me glad and upset at the same time.

For a long time now I've been thinking of making a rich-text editor in pure Javascript, so that it works in any browser, unlike past offerings from Hotmail. And now, it looks like that idea wasn't that crazy after all. Of course, I missed the boat to fame, pretty badly, now that Google made it so public. Yeah, I know, someone else probably did it before, but those efforts were obviously pretty obscure.

Most importantly, though, I think this shows the tidings of the new application: built entirely using the browser as a client interface, and the server as the app-logic/storage. Don't buy Microsoft Office, get a free consumer version from Google. Of course, business-features are also rentable, for a small pay-as-you-go rate of $.05 per minute. The customer is happy - all they need is a browser on ANY PC with teh intarweb; the vendor is happy - no more piracy issues, EVER. Plus, the software "seller" doesn't need to bother with tech support nearly as much - only need to answer the occasional "my JavaScript is turned off/I use Lynx" call.

I'd like to hear what you folks think of this vision of the future. And of course, links to existing examples that prove that these sentiments are soooo 1999.

Re:Richemail formatting in PURE JS

[NamShubCMX]

http://www.fckeditor.net

I know there are at least two open source implementation of HTML editors.

See wikiwig for an example...

Re:Richemail formatting in PURE JS

[Anonymous Coward]

yahoo has the same sort of features in mail and the 360 blogger/communities pages to edit text in colors and fonts, etc.

Re:Richemail formatting in PURE JS

[Jherek Carnelian]

> I think this shows the tidings of the new application: built entirely
> using the browser as a client interface, and the server as the
> app-logic/storage.

A major problem with this model is that it is inherently not-Free. Sure, you may get Free access to the client-side source, but the server side is where the real work probably gets done and getting access to that source in any meaningful way is not going to be possible.

Remember the point of Free software is so that the user, or his agent, can modify and improve it to better fit their needs. But, even if you were able to get the source for the server-side code, you still could not implement any improvements or bug fixes that you made to it, unless you were to go and get your own server to run it on too which isn't likely.

> Plus, the software "seller" doesn't need to bother with tech support
> nearly as much - only need to answer the occasional "my JavaScript
> is turned off/I use Lynx" call.

I don't think that would be true. Yes, the more of the logic that runs on the server, the less outside influences like broken drivers and such on the client end will cause failures. But, that does not reduce the potential for bugs in the implementation itself and, refering to my previous paragraph, since it is infeasible even for expert users to fix bugs themselves, things may be harder for the user in the long run.

Re:Richemail formatting in PURE JS

[Senzei]

but the server side is where the real work probably gets done and getting access to that source in any meaningful way is not going to be possible.

Although I will agree on the "getting access to that source" part, much of the work for all of this is done client side.

Most of the "server work" is reformatting database query responses in something meaningful to the client. If your server responds with XML then all you need is some XSLT to reformat it and JS to toss it into the page. All of the behavior is handled by client side javascript. Basically the server still does what web servers have always done, serve text and images. If anything the server does LESS processing here than it normally would.

Re:Richemail formatting in PURE JS

[thing12]

Of course, I missed the boat to fame, pretty badly, now that Google made it so public. Yeah, I know, someone else probably did it before, but those efforts were obviously pretty obscure.

It's not pure js - it uses the rich editing component in Mozilla and Internet Explorer just like all of the other rich editing js apps out there (there are dozens, several of them are well known see HTMLArea, FCKEdit, etc...). So, you can still make your claim to fame by writing one that doesn't use the browser specific components.. since that's what you want to do anyway right? Pure javascript?

happy bday GMAIL

[kreativemind]

Hapy birthday GMAIL, look forward to a nice Google Party!

The joke is this....

[jupiter909]

The joke is that storage space these days is CHEAP, and googles knows it. They give us something that rocks, and everyone else is too fscking stupid to catch on. April fools most people are everyday.

Google Beta

[op12]

This doesn't specifically relate to the mail increase, but it's the only legit google post to mention it under :)

Under the faq's of their "googlegulp" product, they explain their logic in keeping products in beta for so long.

All i can say is ..

[FidelCatsro]

Thank god i did not threaten to eat my mac before Reading this one through , Part of it is a joke though (2gigs thing seems real though)

Picked Up By The AP

[TheFlyingGoat]

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

I don't know which is funnier, that Google felt that people actually needed 2GB, or that Slashdot thought it was a April Fool's joke. :)

anyone uses their max capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

think about it: Google doubles storage capacity but how many of us will reach that volume?

Google has many employees that know about statistics and they know (for example) that 90% of gmail users doesn't surpass 100Mb of data stored so saying "hey, you now have 2gb!" is only a marketing trick, not a hardware one. In this scenario 10 users would be using the "teorical" storage limit assigned to only 1 user.

Obviously anyone has a limit of 2gb but gmail isn't assigning 2gb really, they assing storage only when needed which is a minimum of the user spectre.

Re:Oh yeah? Infinity plus 1!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the URL of the drawing so you can see it without logging out.

counting up

[kebes]

If you check the source code for gmail's login page, you'll see how they are calculating the "running tally" of your current storage limit:

var START = 1112331600000;
var END = 1112439600000;

function updateQuota() {
if (!quota) {
return;
}

var now = (new Date()).getTime();
if (now END) {
quota.innerHTML = 'Over 2000';
} else {
quota.innerHTML = format(((now - START)/(END - START)*1025) + 1025);
setTimeout(updateQuota, 50);
}
}

It looks like it's counting from 1000 to 2000 over the course of the day.

good and bad

[tomstdenis]

First, gmail uses this as a HUGE datamining service.

Second, ooo free space...

Personally I don't care if they read my emails or send them off to spammers or what not. It's a quality service, works well and is realible. ... and it's free.

Tom

That what you said...

[seanvaandering]

LAST year at the same time too! Funny, but Gmail is still here ;)

very sad...

[Cashen]

its sad that i first heard about this on news.google.com linking to a earthtimes.org article this morning. here is the article http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/2241.html

decreasing?

[fernique]

I wonder, will the storage counter begin decreasing tomorrow, after April 1-st go away?!

Jokes on you! ...or is it?

[Gamzarme]

The clock what you have sitting in the lower right hand corner of your screen controls the numbers on the www.gmail.com page. Therefore, if the counter is bogus would the entire thing be a joke? Maybe we'll find out tomorrow.

Google fanbois

[jvalenzu]

Can someone explain what the exciting thing about google is again? A web search engine? Yawn. Free web email? Who doesn't have an email account? Why is it that every time Google puts the word beta in front of some turd it becomes front page slashbot news?

Re:Google fanbois

[LouCifer]

Why is it that every time Google puts the word beta in front of some turd it becomes front page slashbot news?

For the same reason anyone puts Linux or Apple in front of it.

Re:Google fanbois

[Pierce]

Because of how they do it. Google's approach is often technically superior (at first) and different than other companies.

Re:Google fanbois

[jvalenzu]

Because of how they do it. Google's approach is often technically superior (at first) and different than other companies.

Sure, but people come up with technically superior stuff all the time. It's not like IBM gets play for each product release, and for what I can tell they are about as boring as Google.

Rich format rocks

[peterdaly]

I didn't know it was possible with a web interface to implement the rich text formatting they are doing. Right down to ctl-b to bold highlighted text. This works like a real word processor!

2GB doesn't excite me, I'm using less than 100MB right now. The rich text? It knocked my socks of this morning.

-Pete

Re:Rich format rocks

[Pierce]

This also makes the concept of an online word processer a little closer...just keep adding features to the rich text code.

Next /. news

[renrutal]

GeNToo - Gentoo on the Microsoft NT kernel
Linux
Posted by Zonk on Friday April 01, @13:69PM
from the a-least-it-is-not-about-ubuntu-dept.

unrealisticCFLAGS writes "In some Gentoo.org news, the release engeneering team breaks more barriers:

We are happy to announce the first experimental release of Gentoo for the NT kernel! Away from mainstream Gentoo a group of developers has managed to push the flexibility of our distribution to new heights and getting it to run natively on the well-known NT kernel!

Further information, a howto, some screenshots and installscripts can be found at the project's site[www.gentooexperimental.org/nt/]

How do you do URLs properly?

Re:Next /. news

[m50d]

Use <URL:foobar> like it says at the bottom of the comment box. Or ordinary <A> tags.

Re:Oh yeah? Infinity plus 1!

[houghi]

You need to log out if you want to see it if you have login automated.

Google == Genius

[Progman3K]

Have you noticed?
Google has a very interesting sense of humour: first they launch Gmail on April 1st.
This had the effect of confusing people; lots of us expected it to be an April Fools joke and immediately dismissed it, so it effectively went under the radar initially.

Now on the anniversary of their landmark e-mail service, they are at it again!

Joke or reality? You figure it out.

Personally, I believe this is Google's way of remaining low-key while at the same time being (possibly) the biggest thing ever.

Genius, true genius.

Re:April Fools again

[DarkMantle]

I for one welcome our new Information sorting overloards.(beta)

Just increase the attachment size...

[Peterus7]

That's all they need. A one gigabyte, hell, even 700 mb attachment size, and it'd be perfect. A sourge to the MPAA, yes, but perfect.

Oh, THAT JavaScript

[PeteDotNu]

I'm a fool.

Yet still no calendar...

[Astryk]

I'd love to ditch my local mail apps altogether and all that's holding me back is the lack of a calendar in gmail. It doesn't seem like it would be a difficult feature to add, and the combination of mail, contact and calendar management is largely what has made Outlook so successful. Yahoo's implementation is adequate but their mail interface is nothing compared to gmail's.

Re:Yet still no calendar...

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Dude, Gmail is a mail service, not a PIM.

And in Other News

[joschm0]

AT&T worldnet just raised their email storage limit from 10Mb to 25Mb. Woohoo.

Re:And in other news

[VoidWraith]

You can force it to give you the better view, as long as you've got JavaScript enabled, just use http://gmail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser as the URL.

Slowly... space is creeping across the accounts...

[Erik_]

My was at 1328Mb two hours ago, now it's at 1428Mb.

Finally!

[justforaday]

Now I can finally send all my email messages as rasterized Photoshop text saved as TIFFs. I'm so glad those space constraints are gone...


...says the guy who's been trying to send 1.1MB PDF to a Hotmail account only to have it bounced back because it's too large. 10MB attachment size limit my ass...

Thank god...

[Shkuey]

"You are currently using 3 MB (0%) of your 1429 MB."

I was so close to having to invite myself for another account...

Double the Gmail Filesystem space

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail Filesystem

NOOOO!

[bestadvocate]

I had Just reached 1% of my email box used. Google I shall fill my inbox, and I wont use huge cheater attachments, with pure text I shall defy you! (and automatic slashdot emails help ;)

A hidden bonus to Rich formatting...

[jbarr]

I realize that many /.ers have no problem with plain text, but the important thing to understand about the new Rich formatting feature is that it goes much farther than just making your messages look pretty. If you enable Rich formatting, when you reply to or forward a rich formatted message that you received, it now retains all the formatting. Before, everything was converted to plain text. Gmail finally allows you to manage messages unaltered. This is good news for both personal and business users.

This potentially positions Gmail to be a WebMail client for the masses, because what you receive is what you will reply to or forward. This was a hugely lacking feature that has now been added.

Kuddos to the Gmail developers!

-Jim
GmailTips.com

Infinity plus One

[Juiblex]

Well, if their plan is to give Infinity + 1 bytes... and if their definition of Infinity is the same as the one given by the Google calculator... then we will end up with an account of... 1 byte! :(

Just look at:
http://www.google.com/search?q=(1/0)+1

Re:Infinity plus One

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 1/0 does not equal infinity. The answer should be "undefined".

Re:Infinity plus One

[Juiblex]

But 1/0 is very close to infinity, because:

lim |1/x| as x->0 = Infinity

Re:Infinity plus One

[gorre]

But 1/0 is very close to infinity, because:
lim |1/x| as x->0 = Infinity

It's not close to anything, it's undefined (0 is not a unit).

Re:Infinity plus One

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedant to pedant: it is undefined in the reals, but it is defined (as that sideways-eight symbol) in the extended reals.

The Rich Text Formatting is Nice....BUT....

[dbzero]

It would be even better if images could be embedded within the email as well ... rather than attachments.

Re:The Rich Text Formatting is Nice....BUT....

[dbzero]

Another thing...Long emails get truncated by Gmail. Sometimes I like to email long articles or bulletin board threads and find, to my dissappointment, most of the email is gone. With all the space Google is providing you would think they wouldn't truncate long messages.

Not 2GB... it's 1424 MB

[CaptainPinko]

Thats exactly my current limit... weird.

Re:Not 2GB... it's 1424 MB

[night_flyer]

its counting up, last I checked it was 1439... theres a counter on the login page

Re:Not 2GB... it's 1424 MB

[franksp]

It's enlarging as th eday goes by...I imagine thta by the end of the day it will be 2GB

Re:Not 2GB... it's 1424 MB

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is how much of my mail is about enlarging things. Usually in inches, tho.

Re:Not 2GB... it's 1424 MB

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to log out, then head to http://www.gmail.com. There's a Javascript-powered counter on the front page.

Incidentally, I just learned how to do a little DHTML using that page as a template -- throw the stuff in a

<span id=whatever>

, then assign to document.getElementById("whatever").innerHTML.

Google just keeps on giving. :-)

Does anyone see

[Unsichtbarer_Mensch]

the obvious irony on the "napkin graph" on G-mail's login page? It's obvious that they are mocking of yahoo's desperate attempts to compete with them....

HTML Formatting

[Dizzle]

Zonk, you're wrong as usual. The HTML formatting isn't a birthday present, it's been there for at least a week. Couple this with your "news" about space games, and I'm very dissapointed in your editing skills.

And we all know girls only like boyfriends with skills.

Re:HTML Formatting

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: that feature has been there for several days, but only enabled for some accounts. Now they enabled it for all accounts and they also made its presence more obvious by linking to in from their April fool's logout message. In the last days, many people got that new feature but did not even realize that it existed because they didn't click the small "new features" link.

So let's not insist too much on Zonk-bashing here...

Re:HTML Formatting

[Dizzle]

I apologize to Zonk. I also think Zonk is too similar to Zork, and that game was boring. Probably just childhood trauma seeping through into my everyday life. :(

If that is your opinion, you're entitled to it.

[mmell]

But, ah, if that's the case, you should stick to the 'mailx' command. Y'know, Google isn't forcing people to use these new features (or GMail at all, for that matter), they're merely making them available.

<blink>Lots of things are available, but that doesn't mean we should use them</blink>.

Re:I am sick of this

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck yourself.

You know...

[-kertrats-]

On most sites, there's legitimate news with an april fools joke snuck in.

Here, there's april fools jokes with a legitimate news item snuck in.

In Other News...

[Juiblex]

Yahoo says will keep competitive to Google, and is now offering Infinity plus Infinity megabytes.
Google replies, offering Infinity squared megabytes.

Re:In Other News...

[Anonymous Coward]

This will continue until Google figure out a way to provide transfinite mail storage.

Re:In Other News...

[chromakey]

Yahoo says will keep competitive to Google, and is now offering Infinity plus Infinity megabytes.
Google replies, offering Infinity squared megabytes.

Still not enough to hold all my porn :(

Re:In Other News...

[jonadab]

> Yahoo says will keep competitive to Google, and is now offering Infinity
> plus Infinity megabytes. Google replies, offering Infinity squared megabytes.

I'm holding out for at _least_ two raised to the infinity power megabytes.
Of course, in an ideal world we'd all have infinity factorial to the infinity
factorial power terabytes.

They should have used FCKeditor

[Mustang Matt]

Is there any reason they couldn't use FCKeditor for this functionality?

I'm sure google wants to do their own better, but FCKeditor works really well and is simple to implement.

Re:April Fools again

[SWroclawski]

In my defense, it wasn't redundant when I posted it- there were no posts then.

Happy Birthday Gmail!

[cameronk]

Untitled Document Our relationship started nearly a year ago. Like an attractive transfer student in high school, it seemed like we needed an invitation just to meet. My friends kept on telling me about your personality and, yes, joy about the ways you brightened their lives.
Eventually one of my friends provided an introduction, and we hit it off. In fact, we have been going steady for nearly nine months now. You are all that I ever wanted, almost, and seem to be the most popular member of our class. From reliable junk mail filters, to free pop access, to email searching, it seems like my past relationships were with just a bunch of Yahoos.
My only wish is to be able to hold you in the Palm of my hand, like a Web Pro appreciating your every nuance. It may not be Siberia, but it remains home sweet home. I know you listen, that's one of your features I find most endearing.
Let's celebrate our first anniversary and look forward to many more years of bliss.

Funny Image

[echocharlie]

I love the doodled graph on the main page. I didn't notice at first, but the shiny effect around the Infinity+1 and the coffee stain really add realism to it. It's these little touches that make Google what it is today.

Re:Oh yeah? Infinity plus 1! / Legal warning

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Check out the napkin drawing on the login screen.

The logo for Lucent Technologies is plainly visible on that art work. Lucent...er Avaya ... ummm ...some guy in Chicago will be calling you about this.

Happy G-day

[p0rnking]

When I first read this, I though for sure it was a April fool's joke ... who would have thunk that Gmail would ever allow rich formatting?

Also, another thing I noticed this morning, after someone told me that they had 1399MBs of space, is that I was at 1400MBs, and now seems to be going up about 1MB per minute.

Now if only Gmail supported a normal list view of all emails, along with grouping conversations.

Re:Happy G-day

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only Gmail supported a normal list view of all emails, along with grouping conversations

Are you joking? Click "All Mail".

Re:Happy G-day

[p0rnking]

All Mail still has "conversations".

How about a Delete All Spam Button before fonts

[ozten]

I loved Gmail for the four months, until I filled my 1 Gig quota! I was getting a few thousand spam emails a day, and managed to max out my account. Here is the kicker, there is no "Delete all spam" button. You have to physically go into your Spam folder, and click "Select All" for the 100 visible emails, and then click "Delete Forever". Repeat 1,000,000 times and your done.

I submited two suggestions over the past year, but haven't gotten a good response. The one change they did make was to auto-delete Spam after 1 month, not I am running at about 400MB of spam all the time, so atleast my email doesn't bounce :)

Great work GMail crew, but add a "Delete All Spam Forever" button before adding cute bullet lists and fonts.

this news is "ho hum"

[Anonymous Coward]

More space, ok.. although I'm only using 2% of what I have already.. Rich Text? Ugh. For my outlook email I have it remove rich text formatting. Can't stand the crap.

time to modify mimedefang-filter

[amiliv]

Crap. They started adding HTML into email.

And for those saying that adding HTML does not waste bandwith, just consider this. I've created one-liner "Let's test bold stuff", with only single word "bold" in bold on GMail. Sent it. It created multipart/alternative email. First part was plain text. Second part was HTML. HTML part was 2.48 times in size of text part! Nice. And no, Google's idea of specifying something is bold is not good old "b" tag. They are fancier than that.

Counting the headers and everything else, the resulting multipart/alternative email was 30% larger than it would be if it was text-only. 30% larger, just to have single word bold in one-liner email! For larger emails where header/content ratio is lower, this would get even worse (closer to 100%, and for a bit longer texts such as this one probably well over double in size).

Now, one might say "who cares, I have 2GB for email". Well, news for you, I have 150GB (would have 300GB if it wasn't for the RAID1). I want to use that 150GB to be able to keep more email for longer time (which is basically idea behind GMail). Me, and everybody else who shares that 150GB of disk space with me. Not to store less email for shorter period of time.

And yes, vast majority of people will overdo things when you give them control over fonts, and will make texts look way worse than if they were simply plain text. The truth is, if something looks like it should be in bold, most likely it doesn't need to be. And if anybody cares to check typesetting hints and tips for making readable text, they say: use one font and stick with it in entire document, use special stuff (bold, italics) rarely and wisely.

Check your local newspapers, or grab any book from your bookshelf, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Than compare it to average HTML email. And see the difference.

BTW, would somebody explain to me why is specifying numbered list in HTML more readable then:

1. foo
2. bar
3. foobar

in plaintext?

Or why are bullets more readable than:

- one
- two
- three

Somehow I fail to see the difference.

Well, enough complaining. Time to finally modify my mimedefang-milter to drop all text/html parts. I need only one copy of what somebody wrote. Not two. Considering that more and more people are using GMail for mailing lists, my private mailing list archives are going to literary explode. Wish there was a way to prevent wasting my bandwith in the first place.

Re:time to modify mimedefang-filter

[klui]

I prefer plaintext.

However... whenever you create a numbered list, and you edit it by deleting/adding items, you need to manually renumber all your items. For bullets (and numbered lists, too), if any item span more than one line, you need to redo the formatting otherwise it looks like it was typed by a 5th grader. The auto lists take care of all that for you.

wiki like this

[hbr]

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a wiki that worked like this instead of all that ===heading=== __underline__ **bold** stuff.

Even better if it allowed inline images too.

It's obviously been too long since I used latex...

Even better, check the privacy policy

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Gulp and Your Privacy From time to time, in order to improve Google Gulp's usefulness for our users, Google Gulp will send packets of data related to your usage of this product from a wireless transmitter embedded in the base of your Google Gulp bottle to the GulpPlex(TM), a heavily guarded, massively parallel server farm whose location is known only to Eric Schmidt, who carries its GPS coordinates on a 64-bit-encrypted smart card locked in a stainless-steel briefcase handcuffed to his right wrist. No personally identifiable information of any kind related to your consumption of Google Gulp or any other current or future Google Foods product will ever be given, sold, bartered, auctioned off, tossed into a late-night poker pot, or otherwise transferred in any way to any untrustworthy third party, ever, we swear. See our Privacy Policy.

Gmail's Press Release

[bluenote39]

We just upped the Gmail quota for all our users to 2GB. Hotmail, yahoo, lycos.. up yours!

No suitable name for Google calendar

[sapped]

They actually have all the technical details to a Calendar worked out. The only issue holding up a release at this stage is the name.

Galendar doesn't sound quite snazzy enough.

Oh well. Then again I was the guy that suggested they use Go Ogle for their image search so maybe Go Date would work better for the calendar.

Seriously, I do agree with you. I just implemented a PHP calendar on my website for the family to use and a Google calendar would probably kick my attempt to pieces.

I am impressed

[Red_Icculus]

They are really trying to make use fill up those 2 gigs with fonts etc.

MODS ON CRACK (what else is new...)

[SoTuA]

Infinity + 1 isn't "Informative", it's "Funny".

And in other news

[emtboy9]

Mozilla 1.7.6 seems to no longer be a "supported" browser... unless they are playing some sort of sick prank...

Yesterday my 1.7.6 install worked fine with gmail, but today I keep getting routed to the "Basic" view with none of the candy that made me like my gmail account in the first place (filters, selections, etc).

I hope this is some sort of practical joke...

Slow and steady

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed a lot of you commenting about the slow rate of them adding. Actually, if you go to the gmail page and logout, you can see a couter, which seems to be extremely accurate.

(ps. :( you stole my story)

Kids these days don't know old school at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in my day, we used plain text and used punctuation if we needed to emphasize a word. All these fancy colors and fonts. FLIM FLAM! All we really need is PINE and thats all there is to it!

Sincerely,
Grumpy Old Geek

Back in my day, we used plain text, and careful choice of language to emphasize a point. We didn't use none of that fancy puntuation: it was strictly and completely unnecessary. A pox upon PINE and all its house, a pox, I say: it's a useless frippery. We used telnet to port 25 to send mail, and only when it was important. That's the way it was, and we liked it. If you didn't know your RFCs, you didn't belong on the internet, that's what we said back then...

Kids these day, I tell ya... they don't appreciate luxuries like PINE and elm. I'll bet you even used that fancy, snooty new "web browser" called lynx to post this. For shame, sir. For shame.

Signed,

Crochety Older Geek

Err, you dont really get that much extra

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'll also notice that the amount of space that you use has increased too.

Re:I am sick of this

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly the same thing happened last April Fools when Google announced Gmail.

New features ? What about IMAP ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where ?

... And partial string searches still don't work.

[limber]

What bugs me is that for a search company, they have certainly implemented search within gmail oddly.

You can't do partial text searches (i.e. search for 'vacation*' (or variations thereof) to return e-mails with 'vacations'). It's highly vexing to be trying to find an e-mail that you KNOW exists, only to discover in the end that it wasn't getting returned because your search string was incomplete!

Why store all your e-mails if you can't search for them easily/intuitively? Very odd. Does anyone know why this is the case? Performance?

This design choice is acknowledged in the help (it's one of their FAQs), but they don't give a reason for why they made that choice.

CNBC fell for it quite quick...

[Anonymous Coward]

It made morning market news near the opening.

Gmail's New Features

[00 Agent Kid]

Well, it seems that Gmail is going to pull even further ahead of the competition. I don't think that I will ever use 1 GB of space, let alone 2, it will entice those who use email for storage purposes. And I don't think RTF will waste that much bandwidth. Text formatting shouldn't take up much space.

Myne is 1600 MB

[hariatslashdot]

Yep, I got 1600MB only not 2GB

POP

[numbware]

Free POP access and automatic forwarding

Woohoo! Thunderbird time!

i have more than 2GB

[Dr-Leech]

You are currently using 313 MB (15%) of your 2050 MB.

Me, too...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are currently using 0 MB (0%) of your 2050 MB.

Maybe it's 1024 -> 2048.

A message to EVERYONE

[ericdfields]

To all who are reading this. To all who have responded to this news article. To all those who love Gmail's new feature. *Especially* to those who responded _negetively_ about Gmail's new features. I think I might have a message to you. Do you like them? Use them. Do you not like them? Don't use them. Don't like Gmail in general for adding them? Don't use Gmail. Do you think they take up senseless bandwidth? Well... I think I need to restate that in a couple questions to answer this one correctly: Do you think they take up too much bandwidth now? or do you think that they take up too much bandwidth now for your intended use of e-mail? or do you think that they _don't_ take up _enough_ bandwidth for how you WILL use Gmail in the future? Do you think you won't use Gmail? Do you not use Gmail? I think we need to stop posting unnecessarily negetive posts on Slashdot, and start posting in order to enlighten. -- eric P.S. Slashdot offers bold, italic, underline. They could be used to stress your argument. Did I stress my argument well? Did I use them?

Happy New Year's, too?

[owlgorithm]

Has anyone else done the math and noticed that, given Gmail's current expansion rate, it will equal 3000MB on January 1, 2006?