Slashdot Mirror
E-mail As the New Database
jira writes "BBC has an article confirming the trend of using inbox as a sort of personal database. At my workplace I can personally attest to the growing sizes of those pst files and an unwillingness to erase any emails because of 'loss of information'." From the article: "The trend has become more pronounced as the services have dramatically increased their storage capacity in response to upstart Gmail offering a free service with 1,000 megabytes (Mb) of storage." Update: 04/22 23:03 GMT by Z : To reflect that the story is at respected news organization BBC, not a BBS.
Gmail is up over two gigabytes now.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Mb = Megabits MB = Megabytes
8Mb = 1MB
I hope this clears things up!
Thanks to Google's Infinite Improbability Storage Drive, storage space is now at 2.120 GB to 1 and rising.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Why feel guilty? It's a good database, with a pile of space. You're going to forget, your hard drive is going to die, your house is going to burn down with all your notes inside, you're going to get fired. What's left? Your Hotmail account, your Gmail account. I pay 20$ a year for virtually infinite data storage with incredible reliability. With Gmail, I get it for free. I pass e-mail between the two for redundancy and as a result the only thing that will kill all my data is an apocalypse or massive economic failure.
My little site.
Yep. I do desktop support and nobody wants to delete anything. that's their paper trail and the one email they delete may mean their job down the line as people are looking for somebody to blame and heads to chop. Most communication is done through email with proper CCs (and sometimes BCCs) and they require it even between people sutting next to eachother just so there is that paper trail at a later date. When they've told somebody or reported an issue, they want to show proof they've done so later if somebody else drops the ball and there are people looking for blame.
"Gmail offering a free service with 1,000 megabytes (Mb) of storage."
I don't know about you, but my Gmail has 2121.046851 megabytes of storage space. I mean 2121.047702 megabytes. I mean 121.048913 megabytes. I mean...
Personally, I think it is a good idea, I would really like to see Google Implementing some kind of "GDrive", where I can have all or most of my documents, I know there is an ap for doing it in Gmail but, I maybe a Google's service with web page and file browser interface (as cool as their Gmail interface) would be nice.
.ppt etc) talking about Scotland vacations, I get some ads about vacations.
Of course, I would like it to be free (as all other Google's services), and I would not mind having the ads at the side if for example I have a document (.DOC,
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Sure, but try synching that inbox to your PDA. I will be first in line for the windows CE phones with 2 gig HDs.
PR As stated, trend reports are almost always PR. At least it isn't a dupe.
2*31*37*263
But searching sucks, and I depend on Evolution to do virtual folders. I'd love it even more if my email server was actually a true RDBMS where I could have, besides the traditional IMAP interface, a D (Tutorial D or D4 or something the like) language interface where I could query at will, and save my queries as views that would show up in IMAP as (virtual) folders.
BTW, even non-relational ISO SQL would be so much better than what we have now.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
"BBS has an article confirming the trend of using inbox as a sort of personal database. At my workplace I can personally attest to the growing sizes of those pst files and an unwillingness to erase any emails because of 'loss of information'." From the article: "The trend has become more pronounced as the services have dramatically increased their storage capacity in response to upstart Gmail offering a free service with 1,000 megabytes (Mb) of storage."
.PST
BBS = The BBC
pst = Microsoft Outlook
Gmail is no upstart, they're run by Google. Gmail currently offers 2121MB (that's Megabytes, not Mb - which is MegaBITS)
This isn't news. This is what Google had in mind when they started the Gmail service.
Hey, don't you have to go manage somebody about now?
Using the best knowledge of today to create the problems of tomorrow.
No, that's what Mailinator is for. (to hit confirm when you sign up for a service like nytimes).
Welcome to Mailinator(tm) - Its no signup, instant anti-spam service. Here is how it works: You are on the web, at a party, or talking to your favorite insurance salesman. Wherever you are, someone (or some webpage) asks for your email. You know if you give it, you're gambling with your privacy. On the other hand, you do want at least one message from that person. The answer is to give them a mailinator address. You don't need to sign-up. You just make it up on the spot. Pick jonesy@mailinator.com or bipster@mailinator.com - pick anything you want (up to 15 characters before the @ sign).
Later, come to this site and check that account. Its that easy. Mailinator accounts are created when mail arrives for them. No signup, no personal information, and when you're done - you can walk away - an instant solution to one way spammers get your address. Its an anti-spam solution for everyone. The messages are automatically deleted for you after a few hours.
Let'em spam.
It must have been a *really* slow news day, or someone at the BBC is rather slow. Techies have been doing this since the 1st email message was received, and everyone else has been doing it since they discovered email.
I know a small handful of people who tend to keep their email cleaned out and very small. For everyone else, it's a huge. mostly convenient database.
This "story" is only about 1% less sill than reporting that "recent study shows people prefer to breathe than to stop".
But, I find my email working in exactly the way he proposed. My email package provides the best database I have of my work and communication. Searchable by date, correspondent, content, subject; control-click to organize by date, sender, header; automatic filters to sort by same; subfolders; attachments of all kinds accessable by the search; and I can add to it from anywhere by emailing myself. I use email to mainain to-do (email myself), I use email to maintain a calendar of past activities by searching for email on the topic (when did we do X?) , I use email to store minor documents and search for them as attachments. By using pop and downloading all email to my harddrive, I have no limitations of an account.
So, while dubious about "lifestreams", I've backed into it as the core of my work habits.
Ever have to deal with a bloated and corrupted .pst file?
:-)
No fun.
Users that like to keep everything on the planet should probably think twice about trusting it all to Microsoft Outlook (or any local POP email client, for that matter)
IMAP rocks.
In spite of Google's business principle against evil and in spite of the my frequent use of gmail, I think it is fundamentally bad and potentially evil. "Possession is nine points of the law", and there is no good reason for Google to be in possession of *MY* email. A few GBs of storage is *NOT* the issue, and I have plenty of free GBs right here in my possession, even including space for the indexes. Perhaps Google really is a good company and they will never abuse the power of possessing someone's email--but the historical evidence does not support that belief. Every power gets abused sooner or later.
In simplest terms, here is the threat of online gmail: Would you want your worst enemy to have access to all of your email? If you have put it into gmail, then all it would take is a single password leak.
The constructive alternative is obvious. Gmail should live primarily on your own disk, preferably integrated with the Google Desktop. The nine points of possession would remain on *YOUR* side, since you would still possess all of your email.
Many extended services could then be built on that model...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I am suprised the RIAA has not gone after email companies yet, they have to be an attractive target. It is going to be an easy way of sharing MP3's. I might have a CD, rip the best songs to MP3's and email all my friends. Hell, maybe we'll even form an email group that does nothing but share MP3's. I wonder if the RIAA will come after them if that becomes the next trend.
Why on earth would a person need 2 gigabytes for email? If it is a company, they must have their own storage, nobody would want to trust a free email account for buisness.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Of course, after having this pointed out to me it I realised -- "too late" -- that this should have been obvious to me, only I had never bothered to give it any thought.
My point is, thanks for reminding us all of this fact in an appropriate forum. Google fanboys may mod you down but, you raise a very important and relevant point that deserves consideration. I hope I'm not the only one who thinks so.
Every respectable mail client from pine through gmail allows you to save mail to folders other than "Inbox". Anyone who does not take advantage of this feature, and allows their inbox to grow to hundreds or more megabytes is a damned moron.
Inbox is for messages you have just received or otherwise still require your attention. If you got it four years back, it doesn't belong in your inbox.
When you get a magazine subscription via snail mail, do you leave your back issues out at streetside, clogging up the mailbox, or do you bring them in and store them in a rack or closet? Why would electronic mail be any different?
OR, if you're not paranoid, you can store stuff in your email account and not worry about people in black suits sporting dark sunglasses trying to get to your data.
Mail and Usenet are the two hardest things to backup. A large mail system or a usenet feed can have hundreds of thousands of tiny files being added and removed per minute (if you use a single mail file, a few kilobytes written to the end of the file every couple of seconds, followed by 1 GB of data being copied over itself because the user finally erased that first email from the head of the file since they were over quota.
Seriously attempting to keep a backup of this mess means mailservers that refuse to delete a message that hasn't been on the server for more than one backup cycle. It means using either a checkpoint/snapshot filesystem or mirrored RAID array then pulling out one of the drives to perform the backup from, then putting it back and hoping that it synchs up before it's time for the next backup.
This is why nobody bothers doing this for usenet. Too much work just to save some porn.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
It's been very useful for helping maintain her system - when Somethine Bad happens to her PC, whether it's spyware or bit rot or hard drive problems, whichever child is nearby can just format the disk, reinstall whatever generation of Windows is handy, get a new AOL coaster (I picked one up in the hotel lobby last trip :-), and she can log in and all her bookmarks, email, buddy lists, etc. are all there right away. We did have to buy an actual install-from-scratch version of XP once, because she'd lost the old Windows ME disk, but WinME was such a loss that scraping it off the disk and getting rid of Compaq's "helpful" system backup software were a pleasure anyway.
Meanwhile, *my* mom's still happily using her decade-old Mac Performa 630 with System 7.x, Netscape and Eudora, keeps her data on disk as text files that she backs up to floppy, had to buy some more RAM a few years ago so a new printer driver would work reliably, and her only real problem is that her local Mac repair guy retired and no longer makes house calls. It's much more reliable, but she's never been afraid of technology.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Don't pick up the phone. I don't want to waste time talking to you when I could be getting work done.
I definately don't want to see you in person unless it's a social visit and I happen to have a moment of freetime.
I want you to list out, in written detail, exactly what you need so I can reply, in written detail, with useful information. Be clear, consise, and detailed.
I plan to pull up this email next week when you claim we never discussed the topic. I'll kindly remind you that we did discuss the topic and you agreed to take care of your business. If I asked to record the phone call, you'd probably have a panic attack.
If you really have something important to discuss, you can write it down. Spoken words are meaningless and forgettable.
Phone calls are interruptions that require my full attention. Emails can be replied to as my time becomes available.