30Gigs Web Mail Launches Into Beta
gaanagaa writes "Neowin reports, that a new web mail service launched today is promising to bring users an email inbox of 30gb." The original intent of 30gigs.com was apparently to create an "'All in one' site for the webmaster and avid computer users. According to the sites 'about us' page, combining personal file storage, GD2 signatures and anonymous email all in one service, which would be free." In their brief review of the service a Neowin user also offers a word of caution with regards to their extremely short terms of service and privacy policy, calling them "shady".
Can someone give me an invite? Oh, and maybe First Post.
According to their website, they provide you with a "malibox"!
I can't fill up my 2 gigs on Gmail, nor my gig on Y! mail, why in the world would I need 30 gigs?
-Palal
I am not sure i like that. I think a playful method like a web based slot machine that lets you win an invitation (ajax based not to hammer the servers) would be nicer. Sigh.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
1 terabyte, right here.
word of caution with regards to their extremely short terms of service and privacy policy, calling them "shady".
It should be a good thing to not have a long lawyerlike TOS. Terms of service is a way for companies to bypass the laws and shouldn't be needed at all. Period.
To anyone that thinks this is a serious contender in the Webmail wars, you're missing the point. I doubt very many people use their entire storage, or even come close. It's just used as a marketing point. The reason that any particular mail storage will beat the others is because of it's features. Gmail is popular (well, for starters because it's google and at the moment google is sexy among some geek circles) because of it's interface. Yahoo recently realised this and brought out a new interface of it's own (well, I say new. As in new for a webmail provider. From the articles it's just an Outlook Express clone, although it may be quite useful, I don't know. Like google, Yahoo has decided to not open it's new and improved webmail service to everyone, at least last i heard anyway).
Having said that, I doubt anyone is going to win the Webmail wars. All that will happen is they'll fight amongst each other to get more of a customer share by adding more features. Which is great for us. But 30gigs isn't going to be a contender anytime soon (if ever).
I remember when everyone used hotmail, back when it used to be usable. Then Microsoft screwed over its users with more and more intrusive ads, shitty interface and more. I'm just waiting for Microsofts response to Yahoo and Google's improved webmail interface.
With a box that big you could, if you developed a network, work out an eMail p2p system.
Simply upload the stuff you want to trade and forward it to people who need it. How do you know who would want the stuff you've uploaded? You'd need to develop a network where your node advertises what it has available, and autoforwards the file when someone requests it.
After the initial uploading there is really no more bandwidth costs for you as you can forward the files for free - the email providers' servers handles the load.
See, if you could use it as intentional FTP space or some such, there might be a use, but really, a 30 GB e-mail service is no differnt than a 250 MB e-mail service for 99.9% of people out there, including me. Most mail systems limit attachment size somewhere around the 5 MB mark, so it is not like you can either expect or send large files to use that space. Nice advertising gimic, but no real use.
The privacy policy doesn't state that they won't read your data or not give it out to other people. I certainly wouldn't store my tax return on this server.
If there would be the ability to have a "webdrive" like there's available for google, this might be interesting.
;)
Otherwise, to keep 30G of chainletters, spam, and the occasional email seems like a waste of space. In the line of google's history, they'd come out with 50G mailboxes in no time to stay current and on top.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
It's a cocktail. Mixture of Malibu and Oxtail soup.
"I can't fill up my 2 gigs on Gmail, nor my gig on Y! mail, why in the world would I need 30 gigs?"
If you belong to a lot of yahoo and google groups, and the groups you belong to like to send a lot of attachments (porno) you can fill up 2 gigs in a couple of days.
Not that I know from experience or anything...
I tried out this thing yesterday for a bit.
Here's the problems:
1) The domain name sucks. Who wants to be john@30gigs.com
2) The interface sucks. Hard. It's about as plain as it can get (it looks like they're just using Squirrelmail with their own stylesheet).
3) Their privacy policy is vague on what kind of information they share
4) There doesn't seem to be any reputable parent company behind it meaning it's chances of survival are questionable.
Overall rating: THUMBS DOWN.
Besides, size isn't everything!
- Do anyone know how much spam you get with this service?
- How does it handle attachements and their sizes?
- How fast does mail travel through their servers?
- How high uptime do their servers have?
- Customizable mail filters to manage mail?
- Multiple labels per mail, set by filters?
- POP3 forwarding/servers?
- Address books?
- Antivirus checks?
- Do they backup?
I mean, if you have 1 GB+, why in the world would you want more?
My over-a-year-old Gmail account use 16 MB now. 0.016 GB. It can fit about 150x more mail. Now, how many years is that?
To me, it's just not a valid selling argument anymore.
Hey folks!
I'm planning to unveil my ONE Terabyte Free webmail service by the next couple of weeks and all people on slashdot will receive invitations ASAP.
PS: Anybody got old HDD?! wish to get rid of em? Don't hesitate to contact me
I was talking to a friend the other day and we were laughing about our old systems. I remember having a conversation where we said "What on earth would you do with a 1GHz processor?" or "I got this new 1GB HDD and it should last me a couple years at least!" 30GB email boxes seem rediculous now but don't discount them. It's hard to imagine now but someday in the not too far future we will be laughing about how we somehow managed to get by with our 500MB hotmail account or our tiny 2GB GMail accounts!
The domain 700petabytes.com is still available!
30gigs.com page is kind of a mess. Nice.
If you transfer that much data you should think about designing a small interface to handle it, to include shortcuts for the functions you use. After all, it has to be a bit cumbersome to work with that much data through a mail client.
So a long privacy policy is a good privacy policy? I think not. 30 pages of lawyerspeak is for the birds - all privacy policies (at least the ones you have to click through to obtain some service) should fit on a page or less, else they aren't generally read.
What I'm waiting for is someone that offers a PAID service, say around $5-10 a month.
Not only would this eliminate any and all advertising in the interface and your outgoing mail, but it would invariably come with guaranteed availability. Y! and Gmail make no promises whatsoever that the mail stored on their servers won't get wiped due to a failure, upgrade or whatever.
Such a service would also probably include features that you'll never see from the free ones, like telnet/SSH access (perhaps with a pine-like interface), access via POP, IMAP and maybe even certain groupware suites (GMail has POP, but the terms suggest they might do away with it in the future), ability to use your own domain, and high-security storage (encrypted disks and such).
> Besides, size isn't everything!
Ah, one of those again... luckily I've just set up my own dual RAID-5 mailserver for just my own mail, on 2.4TB disk.
Whaddayamean, compensating?
Something like... GmailFS?
From http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answe r=10350&topic=194
"POP access is free for all Gmail users and we have no plans to charge for it in the future."
What in that statement suggests that they might do away with it in the future? Or were you just spreading FUD based on something you read a long time ago?
And alternative that is not free, but very full featured is RUNBOX (www.runbox.com). Runbox offers 10GB email, and 1GB of file storage. They also offer POP, IMAP, Webmail, WAP and Mobile access. They even provide SSL access to boot. Pretty great service for a small fee. You can also host your own domains email on their server, thus giving you the ability to keep your johndoe@mymail.xxx accounts if you desire. Check it out, I've been using it for several years and love it.
- Do anyone know how much spam you get with this service?
e r=8770&query=attachments&topic=0&type=f&ctx=en:sea rch
You don't get spam from them. The spam filter has been excellent for me so far - and I've used it for a long time.
- How does it handle attachements and their sizes?
An e-mail can be up to 10 MB once encoded, including the message body and attachments. http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answ
- How fast does mail travel through their servers?
Who cares? It probably doesn't take very long.
- How high uptime do their servers have?
24 hours a day most days, but sometimes there are a fwe hours of unreliable service.
- Customizable mail filters to manage mail?
Yes.
- Multiple labels per mail, set by filters?
Yes.
- POP3 forwarding/servers?
Yes.
- Address books?
A basic one.
- Antivirus checks?
No (but viruses probably enter the spam box).
- Do they backup?
Dunno. Don't really care much, either. Google are good at storing data.
Note their SMTP banner:
220-server.solostar.ca ESMTP Exim 4.52 #1 Mon, 03 Oct 2005 09:23:15 -0400
It doesn't even have their domain name in there, which is a good sign that they don't have their own server but are using shared web hosting or bought a dedicated server from a host. I doubt there's more than one server available.
Then note the occasional MySQL errors trying to get to their home page.
Then look at solostar.ca, the domain in the SMTP greeting, and all the weird spammy links on their home page.
My guess is this is a site set up by one teenager somewhere and won't last more than a few weeks. It's impressive that he got it up on here, though, so maybe he has a future in future plans that are thought out better than this one...
What's a GD2 signature? A quick search only brings up material related to the GD graphics library, plus a handful of articles related to this webmail site.
I signed onto gmail about 6 months ago, about when they upped their quota to 2 GB. How fine!
Except since then, I've accumulated 172 MB of mail and the Gmail quota has gone up in steps to 2650 MB.
I am falling behind by nearly 100 MB a month. Help!
Fiat Lux.
I tried out this thing yesterday for a bit.
Here's the problems:
1) The domain name sucks. Who wants to be john@30gigs.com
2) The interface sucks. Hard. It's about as plain as it can get (it looks like they're just using Squirrelmail with their own stylesheet).
3) Their privacy policy is vague on what kind of information they share
4) There doesn't seem to be any reputable parent company behind it meaning it's chances of survival are questionable.
Overall rating: THUMBS DOWN.
(I posted this review to Neowin yesterday BTW).
"I filter at +6, and have yet to miss out on an important comment." (#822545)