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GMail Sign-Ups Via Mobile
jm.one writes "In the wake of recent releases releases Google Desktop 2.0 Beta and Google Talk 1.0 Beta, Gmail (known as Google Mail for legal reasons in some areas) is finally open to everyone. Learn more in the Google Blog entry and register at the Gmail website. Please take note that sign-up occurs via mobile phone at the moment, and only U.S. citizens can register for now. Plans to add more countries are on the way."
So a person can still get on even if they aren't in the US.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
I just noticed that I'm now able to send email out with addresses other than my gmail account.
VERY cool from a business standpoint.
It is still clearly marked "Beta" and no links to registration is found on the gmail.com website.
Gmail is out of beta is it? News to me, still says 'beta' in the logo and nowhere in the blog entry does it say Gmails out of beta, just that you can sign up for it without an invite in the US.
So they want your mobile phone number as well
**Strokes chin...**
"You need to receive and enter a special invitation code in order to create an account. Currently, we are only sending these codes as text messages to US mobile phones. So you will need to have a mobile phone with text message capabilities (most phones have this) and the invitation code itself.
One of the reasons we are offering this new way to sign up for Gmail is to help protect our users and combat abuse. Spam and abuse protection are two things we take very seriously, and our users have been very happy with the small amount of spam they've received in their Gmail accounts. We take many measures to ensure that spammers have a difficult time sending their spam messages, getting these messages delivered, or even obtaining a Gmail account (spammers will often use many different accounts to send spam). Sending invitation codes to mobile phones via SMS is one way to address this, as the number of accounts per phone number can be limited.
If you want to open an account a different way, you may want to ask a friend with a mobile phone to receive an invitation code for you or to ask someone you know who already has a Gmail account to email you an invitation."
...that Google is now going to start to associate a Gmail account with their mobile number? This can be abused...
"Give up hope, dreams are for suckers."
Please take note that sign-up occurs via mobile phone at the moment
Let me be the first to say, huh?
Is this odd to anybody else?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
1. Extremely quick
2. Very simple, unobtrusive interface
3. Extensive search features
4. Very large storage space
For a Webmailsystem from a commercial operator it is extremely good imho.
Give Google your phone number to get free email? Whoa, if Microsoft tried this, they'd have a mob with pitchforks and torches descending on Redmond.
My personal opinion is that Google waited to long to release this service to the general public, and they have lost their edge in web mail.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
Google's social networking project, sadly, I don't think will ever get out of beta.
As serveral people have pointed out, Gmail is still in beta, they have just opened the sign-up model slightly.
I am on the gmail site now and it's not out of beta. Not yet. I bet it will be in a few months though. This IS the first time anyoen who goes to the site can register and for now only via the SMS text message. If you ask me, it's a ingenious way to implement a captcha. Still has issue with handicap users (unless one has a phone that can text to speech the SMS). This will only prevent spam for a short time. All the spammer needs is a pocket pc phone and a program that can read the SMS, and go to the web page and authenticate it. Easy peasy and all they have to use is a smartphone.
Gorkman
Google says they're sending invitation codes by SMS to prevent spammers from obtaining Gmail accounts.
I call shenanigans. What good is a Gmail account in comparison to a zombie?
5. excellent spam filtering
I can't remember the last time GMail missed a spam.
For all those saying "huh?"
/. writeup...
From the Google blog:
Why use mobile phones? It's a way to help us verify that an account is being created by a real person, and that one person isn't creating thousands of accounts. We want to keep our system as spam-free as possible, and making sure accounts are used by real people is one way to do that.
Right now, sign-ups only work with U.S. mobile phone numbers, but we're eager to support others.
Honestly, it would have been useful to have that in the
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
1. Extremely quick
Quicker than Thunderbird or Outlook?
2. Very simple, unobtrusive interface
Simpler than Thunderbird or Outlook?
3. Extensive search features
Better than Thunderbird or Outlook?
4. Very large storage space
I already keep every mail that's not spam or duped in the replies, it's not nearly 2TB yet.
Plus; it's not backed up! If keeping e-mails is important, don't you think it should be backed up?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Not that Google is evil now, but their ability to get *really* evil if they ever go evil has been steadily increasing...
One notable hole in Google's research lineup has been privacy. If all Google wants is aggregate data, why no clever solutions to provide the individual with guarantees that Google can't get useful individual data but can get useful aggregate data?
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
but wanting my mobile number is insane. Google, in my estimation, is not only a profitable corporate company, but with their recent hiring of top secret cleared engineers from the governemnt, I think they could be a part of echelon. Laugh all you want. Tell me I have a tinfoil hat all you want. What better way for the government to be able to spy on people without the legality of a wiretap, or breakin to look at your computer. Now they don't have to. Google is becoming far more powerful than even Microsoft. Microsoft isn't hording near the personal information as Google is collecting from people.
There are a number of articles from various sources on why people should fear Google froma privcy standpoint.
Read this for a little background info:
Google Watch
2. Undoubtedly better than Outlook.
3. Yes. This is Google we're talking about.
I do think my e-mail should be backed up, and I trust the good folks at Google to do that for me.
Moving from one computer to another constantly, it's a must that I have a webmail account that I can use anywhere, and for that, GMail is simply the best.
Quicker than Thunderbird or Outlook?
Depends on the speed of your computer and internet connection.
Simpler than Thunderbird or Outlook?
Sure.
Better than Thunderbird or Outlook?
Much better! It's as if you were searching the web with google!
I already keep every mail that's not spam or duped in the replies, it's not nearly 2TB yet.
It's not TB, it's GB.
Plus; it's not backed up! If keeping e-mails is important, don't you think it should be backed up?
Google employs redundant storage. I've heard that data is stored at least 3.5 times, but I'm not going to search for a source for this right now...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Ever since Goolge had its IPO, I can't seem to trust this company. Personally, I will never sign up for any Google product....though I do use the search engine. I hate the fact that they want/have so much control over various services ... their practice of "Do no evil" is dying...I personally believe they are trying to assimilate us all!
I call bullsh*t... how does requiring a mobile phone help anything spam related? I can sign-up with my mobile phone for 1 account, and then, if history is any indication, Google will grant me hundreds of invites within a week or so, and I can send them all to myself and sign up hundreds of accounts... hell I still have hundreds of invites left... TO THE SPAM CAVE!!
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
I was planning on using my 150 GMAIL invitations as christmas presents! Now they won't be very valuable.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Quicker than Thunderbird or Outlook?
Outlook.pst | 1,970,129 KB | Office Data File
Yes. And that's not taking into account startup time for the application should it ever exit uncleanly (yay, "Recovering Mailboxes").
Simpler than Thunderbird or Outlook?
Umm, yes.
Better than Thunderbird or Outlook?
Ehh, so-so. They get the job done. Certainly the search interface is easier and faster than what Outlook provides.
I already keep every mail that's not spam or duped in the replies, it's not nearly 2TB yet.
You mean 2G. And for personal mail, it should be fine for a decade or two.
Plus; it's not backed up! If keeping e-mails is important, don't you think it should be backed up?
???
As opposed to keeping it in a mail file your local hard drive?
shrug. don't like it? don't sign up. not like anyone is forcing you to. i'm sure you can sign up right now for a hotmail account and MS doesn't want your cell phone number.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
I really want google to do something like MSN direct. that watch was really cool and I was happy to pay $50.00 a year to get im messages on it as well as the other info and calendar data.
Problem is that MSN sucks. they changed their protocols so my home automation system can no longer send IM's to my watch from it's linux server. Also they have not been attracting any more FM broadcast stations to carry their data signal so there has been no expansion in coverage. coupled with the fact that their biggest watch maker fossil has dropped them, things look bleak for this really neat idea.
Google has the chutzpa to do it right, and hell I'm tickled to pay for the service as well as many others seem to be.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Now they want to keep and store mobile numbers. I understand why they're doing it, but couldn't another approach be used to limit account generation? (linking to a valid, non-GMail account for example)
So your proposed technique would allow a spammer to register, by providing a valid email account on his own mail server? The phone network is a good choice on Google's part, but not a new idea.In my reply a little further down, I pointed out Google's rationale for wanting a mobile phone number.
If you still don't buy it, that's fine, but that's what's going through their head.
I can kinda sorta see their point. What they don't want is a machine mass registering for new accounts from their registration site, and this effectively keeps that from happening.
However, in defense of the other repliers, I think that asking for people's cell phone numbers is a bit over the line. I wish they had just used something like word verification instead.
2. Very simple, unobtrusive interface
Simpler than Thunderbird or Outlook?
Um, to add to this You can use Tbird or Outlook (or any other pop mail client to read your gmail)
Instructions for doing this are here
Do not read this
So they want our mobile numbers? I'm guessing that they are going to try to triangulate our positions. So they can put your position in Google Earth. Can you picture all those red dots in Google Earth? Can you picture the accompanying tooltips?
"CowboyNeal is currently in Club Blue Oyster and has unchecked mail"
If you company uses commercial software to filter websites, its true that you may not be able to access the website directly.
However, this might just be the trick for you. I know that this works at the company I'm at. Here's how it goes:
1. Go to Google's translator page (or alta vista's babelfish). http://www.google.com/language_tools/
2. Select Chinese to English (ensures that none of the words on a page will actually be translated) on "Translate a web page"
3. ??? 4. Access (probably without the images, depending on the blocking software)
So, basically Google's servers access the content, do the translation, and feed it to you through their site's url. Again, this may or may not work. It all just depends on your company. I should also note that you should be careful, because this may be a terminable offense at your employer.
That's ridiculous. How does stopping people getting an account prevent spam? Unless gmail only allows mail from other people, spammers are probably capable of sending mail from other mail services.
And allowing sign-up by mobile? I'm unimpressed, even other e-mail services without Google's billions have managed the simple functionality of ALLOWING SIGN UP ON THE WEBSITE. Maybe after a crack team of PHDs work on the problem for a few years Google might have that as well. Just like the first basic web mail services had decades ago.
I don't see how Google has so many fanboys whilst they contiuously take the piss out of the users. Making them jump through a hundred times more hoops than anywhere else, for a service which isn't really much better.
Instead of everyone saying "Huh? The logo says Beta..." and "OMFG, why does google want my phone number?", why don't you READ their FAQs?
One of the reasons we are offering this new way to sign up for Gmail is to help protect our users and combat abuse. Spam and abuse protection are two things we take very seriously, and our users have been very happy with the small amount of spam they've received in their Gmail accounts. We take many measures to ensure that spammers have a difficult time sending their spam messages, getting these messages delivered, or even obtaining a Gmail account (spammers will often use many different accounts to send spam). Sending invitation codes to mobile phones via SMS is one way to address this, as the number of accounts per phone number can be limited.
Granted, it's not the best idea, but it's a good a way as any to stop spammers. Not that spammers couldn't just find an invite any time they wanted, though. (Anybody want one? I have a couple hundred)
Find a friend with a cellphone to sign you up. Or PM me, I'll invite you. Invites still work, nothing changed, they just added another way to get stuff done. And it does cut down on spam- the first time they find a spammer, they can see who invited him, and bam, the spam chain is broken. Bitching on /. doesn't get anything done.
Of course, bitching about google must give you some weird sense of fulfillment...
-everphilski-
It seems that I made the mistake of adding the / onto the end of the tag in an attempt to follow XML syntax made my URL invalid
http://www.google.com/language_tools
The interface is unobstrusive, I'll give you that. But the rest of the reasons aren't that great.
It's very slow. Opening it up takes ages. It just says 'loading' in the top of the screen. If you're in another tab, the gmail tab doesn't have the swirling thing to show it's loading, so you don't know whether it's actually loaded or not.
When it actually loads (after around 10-20 seconds), the interface isn't reliable. Sometimes when you click on an email the whole thing just freezes. When you click on a link in an e-mail, TWO tabs come up, one with the link, one back to your inbox. And the focussed tab is your inbox, not the link.
The size isn't much use. Other providers have similar size. Can't say I've ever filled it past 500kB so I couldn't care less about that.
I don't use search features, I store e-mails in relevant folders. Gmail doesn't even have folders, just 'labels', which means they're not neatly stored. It also doesn't tell you how many e-mails you've got in each 'label'. For instance if you put messages from person 'x' into label 'y', It just says 'y' at the side of the screen, it doesn't actually tell you how many are in there. It only shows unread mails. I thought people raved about Google's interfaces? They're worse than others.
As far as I'm aware there's no custom filters you can put on incoming mail like you could do with a proper e-mail client.
I'm afraid the conclusion is that gmail is an average webmail service with excellent marketing.
If you believe that your public phone number is too much information to give google, then just have a friend sign you up. This is an added feature, not an added restriction. Before you couldn't sign up at all, now you can sign up if you have a phone. Doesn't really seem like anything to lose sleep over.
As the URL to be translated is passed using GET on just about every translation service, some filtering software (*cough*8e6 R3000*cough*) can read that.
Also, some other filtering software (*cough*WebSense Enterprise*cough*) blocks GLT and Babelfish as "Proxy Avoidance".
Try again?
3. Yes. This is Google we're talking about.
Actually, you can't just generically say google searches are automatically good.
I have been unimpressed by the searching functionality inside their maps tool.
Whenever I enter a place name to goto it fails horribly and tries to list business locations within the displayed area. A lot of the time I end up back on my old mapping site until I find the location and then drill down from a country view to where I am looking for.
Other map software finds addresses and locations using single keywords MUCH better than google.
Try going onto maps.google.com and entering "Hollywood" to see the effect. I do note however it is getting better and can now finally find my hometown at the first attempt.
Other search problems I have noticed were bugs in gmail, but those have been fixed now, so all is good again.
liqbase
Yes, but at that point if they find an account spamming, they have instant access to all your other accounts too, thanks to the invitations being sent from an original account.
They can still track it and shut it down easily enough, I would think. Smart of them, they may have solved the spam problem, from a mail carrier's point of view. They haven't kept spam from my inbox yet though. Come on Google, do I honestly need to write filters to stop subjects like "Man f***ing hot blonde"?
GMail accounts can also be used for Google Talk. Google Talk supports voice chat. I wonder if they are planning on partnering with some of the mobile telephone companies to allow mobile 'phones to work as endpoints for Google Talk conversations (or even provide an SMSIM gateway - there are a couple for XMPP but they require you to have some way of sending SMS, which costs money). This would be much easier to do in the US where you need to pay to receive mobile 'phone calls, since the cost to Google would be relatively low.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
subjects like "Man f***ing hot blonde"?
That's spam?
So now you have to be neither blind (can't read Captcha) nor deaf (can't talk on a mobile phone therefore can't justify paying a mobile phone's monthly fee) in order to get an invite without already being a regular on geek boards such as this one.
I'm confused as to how "sign-ups only work with U.S. mobile phone numbers" became "only U.S. citizens can register for now". Do you have to prove you're a US citizen to buy a mobile phone in the US now?!
Search better than Thunderbird or Outlook? Much better! It's as if you were searching the web with google! I disagree! I want my wildcard searches. Not everybody remembers in which tense the keyword sought for is specified in mail.
Lone Gunmen crew.
Just joking...though this would cost me $.05 cents a pop in text messaging to sign up. A small cost to pay for a decent free email service. It does keep people who do not have cell phones from getting free email (yes those people exist, and are probably one of the people that NEED free email the most). And I worry about them storing mobile phone numbers by default (they say you can remove them manually). It would just really suck if someone hacked google and got a bunch of mobile numbers, but all in all a novel way to stop spammers.
Never trust what they say, you can sign-up with a canadian cell phone number.
i'm sure you can sign up right now for a hotmail account and MS doesn't want your cell phone number.
No, they just want your soul.
Bastards didn't get mine, though...I signed up for my Hotmail account back before Microsoft.
If you sign up for a Google account, it comes with GMail. All you need is a valid email address to confirm with. All this fuss is silly considering that such an easy backdoor exists.
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount/
I switched from all email clients to Gmail a year ago, and I've never looked back.
Conversation view is marvellous. I am not talking about threading, I'm talking about about conversations. Seeing what I said, seeing what they said in response, hiding the quoted text... Searching email is also a pleasure. Why standard email clients show you a relevant snippet of text when you search for something when GMail has been doing it for at least a year just defies reasonable explanation. If I search for an email from a professor about a certain project, I don't want to sift through the text of five emails, I want to know which one I want. GMail shows you quickly.
Email - conversations - intelligent search = Dark Ages.
You really haven't used GMail, or you would understand this too. It's a moment of realisation, when you see your disjointed email world come together, is when you see it. It takes about a week, otherwise it's just like every other webmail app, just prettier.
Oh, and Google doesn't need to advertise anything. Word of mouth will do it for them.
mod parent up. i don't understand the fuss either.
i don't have friends. i'm a geek.
So is this registration simply for a gmail account, or for a gmail account that is mobile?
Can simply wait for hotmail and yahoo(well, it is pretty good already) to wake up and introduce smooth AJAX and WYSYIG interface, add more memory, clean up their advertising and spam filters. For a company like Microsoft with billions in cash, it should not be a big deal. So, my guess is if one waits for about 6 months, one does not have to abandon his 9 year old Hotmail account.. Is Microsoft listening? Providing a good interface is a matter of willingness to think about the user and innovate rather than hire rocket scientists. I recently worked on http://www.collaze.com/ and found that any feature I want to give to the user can indeed be implemented in DHTML/Javascript, if you are passionate enough to research and experiment.
Explore your creative side
So where is GMail's WAP? It is kind of sad that I can use Yahoo Mail via WAP, but not GMail.
I realize there are WAP gateways to GMail one could set up on your own server, but why can't they just offer it natively???
Works for Canadian phone numbers. I just tried it using a phone in the 416 area code (Toronto, Ontario, Canada).
The article's summary is wrong too..."and only U.S. citizens can register for now" - I'm in Canada and not a US Citizen. Besides, does having a US-based mobile number make you a citizen?
By the way, the link to the sign up page is here: https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1
I just signed up with a Canadian mobile phone, so the whole "US Only" thing isn't strictly true.
In my university they have US based gateway so when I login into gmail it shows links to registration on front page; but at home my gateway is local so it does show me 50 invitation inside the account as well as info to this new feature.
The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
This is an obvious attempt to gain personal data. By knowing your mobile number, they will know your area code and also be able to link your google account to anything done via google sms. They've been saying all along, they want to make search more personal.
Of course, it might be out of date, but...
2. Does creating a Google Account give me a Gmail account?
Unfortunately not. Gmail is currently in a limited release, so you need to get invited by another Gmail user in order to sign up. If you're interested in Gmail, you may want to check the About Gmail page periodically for updates. If, on the other hand, you already have a Gmail account, you can use your Gmail username and password to sign in to your Google Account.
http://www.google.com/help/faq_accounts.html
> US mobile phones
Can you read me now?