OK, I'll show my ignorance. I know GMail is from Google, but why should anyone use it? what makes it special?

It is similar to yahoo or msn mail, but I think their big attraction is the amount of storage they pony up for free. In exchange, I think i heard that they will search the text of your email messages to match up to appropriate advertising, though supposedly tasteful and unobtrusive, whatever that means.

gmail.google.com for details

David

You get 1 Gb of storage space for free. There are a couple of other services offering this now, too. But I like gmail's interface. A lot.

I don't really care if there's advertising - it's on the sidebar, denoted as advertising just like Google's search results. It's all automated, Google has better things to do with their time than read my emails.

Everyone who requested one got a gmail account. If you didn't get yours drop me a line and I will resend it. Enjoy!

I think the appeal is that it brings google-quality searches to your email.

I dunno, I can't say I've ever really *missed* Google-quality searches in my emails. (What is Google-quality searching anyway ... if I search for X, it's either there or its not...)

its not avaliable right now, how did u guys get it?

It's currently a closed beta, you have to be invited by a user to get an account.

You can also create personal filters and attach them to your email for easy searches later on.

Personally, I like that I never have to worry about my free email box filling up.

I ran out of Gmail invites but they keep coming through every couple of days. Mark, Usman, Eldan et al--give me a couple of days. Carl, yours went out.

Thanks heaps Dave

Mine works like a charm!!

I have a couple too if anyone wants one...

I'll take one if anyone's offering...be a cool place to store stuff. Videos, music, et al...

stonefield99@hotmail.com

Stan

I will take one. usman152008@yahoo.com
Thanks a lot.

I sure could use one..

cliff@bluedigitalmedia.com

I want one! :-) cachole AT infosel DOT com

I got two as well.
If anyone wants, please send an email to dcampos at gmail.com

I will only invite the people who sends a message to the email above. Otherwise this person could receive multiple invitations and I don't know how this works in Gmail (two invitations for one person)

Well, this is not fair.

I could definitely use one as my paid yahoo email runs out in 10 days.

patrickdmasters at yahoo dot com

Thanks in advance

Not to beat a dead horse, but I've got a few to spare as well. If anyone wants one that hasn't already gotten one from someone else, drop me a line at brightmonkey at gmail dot com.
Mario

> What is Google-quality searching anyway

The quality in Google is that it’s probably the best relevance engine on the web. Microsoft would die to have it. In fact, they are advertising heavily to get people way from Google because people are using Google to search for things on Microsoft’s web site, which denies Microsoft the opportunity to mine the search data to understand what customers are looking for the most.

Ever notice that when you use Google, what you want is almost always on the first page? That’s because Google just doesn’t find what’s there, it weights the relevance of each hit and shows you the results sorted by what is possibly the most relevant to what you are looking for talking into account the importance of certain words over others.

> ... if I search for X, it's either there or its not...)

It may be there, but you might not find it! I have an email client at work (which employees are forced to use) that is a piece of garbage. I don’t know why I bother filing things because I can never find them again. The searching is quite useless and not only finds hundreds of things I don’t want, but doesn’t find the one thing I want when what I searched for is exactly what’s in the email. ARGH!

If you just use email casually you might not see the value. If you work on extended projects (one to two years in duration) and use email as a documentation mechanism, you can appreciate how valuable a Google mail search can be when looking for an email that was received 6 months to a year ago. I wish I had it at work.

~jr

I still dont have one if anyone wants to send me an invite :)

I would send an email out, but unfortunately I have to use AOL for dial up access at this hotel and it forbids my Outlook to allow outgoing emails (calls it spam.)

Thanks.

Patrick

I've sent you my last remaining invite Pat ;)