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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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]

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!

More google news :)

[SlongNY]

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

No Joke

[JuliusRV]

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

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:Schweet

[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

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

[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

[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>

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

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

[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:Schweet

[Richardsonke1]

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

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

Re:Schweet

[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/

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: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)

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

[jcuervo]

You, sir, are on very very sad individual.

You, sir, have no sense of humour.

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...

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. =(

Re:Schweet

[DjMd]

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

Re:Schweet

[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..."

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?

[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?

[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:Schweet

[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.

Re:Schweet

[AndroidCat]

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

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:Schweet

[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.

Re:Oh yeah? Infinity plus 1!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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?

Re:How long until 2gb?

[Stalyn]

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

Re:Schweet

[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...

Re:Schweet

[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.

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.

And in Other News

[joschm0]

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

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

Re:Schweet

[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...

Re:Schweet

[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

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:Schweet

[dj42]

I'm certainly pumped.

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

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.

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:Schweet

[stinerman]

ADDers unite!

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:Schweet

[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.

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.

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:Schweet

[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.

Re:Schweet

[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?

Re:Schweet

[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).

Re:Schweet

[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.

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.

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...

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. :(

Re:Schweet

[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.

... 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.