Gmail
June 17, 2004 on 9:41 am | In Web/Tech |Thanks to fellow patent blogger Dennis Crouch (the lucky dog who is “patent” at Gmail.com), I have been demo-ing Gmail (snipper@@gmail.com….stephen and nipper were already taken). Gmail is in beta testing, with a public release slated (according to rumor) for August. Thus, you have to be invited by someone to test it out…and that someone has to have been giving extra “invites” from Gmail. Sounds like Gmail has been really generous in giving out invites lately, so you can probably pick one up on eBay for less than $10 if you really want one and can’t find someone to give you one.
I’ve got to say…it has got a lot of potential. This post is a bunch of my observations…not really an organized post…bear with me…
I like the prospect of having all of my old emails archived in one place, a place that I can search. I have the same thing at work, using Outlook and the add-in Lookout, but the ability to extend this functionality to my home email is frankly COOL.
Another cool option is the ability to track the conversation by thread (all of the previous emails in the conversation are tabbed so it is really easy to refresh your memory about what you were talking about without scrolling to the bottom. (I.e., see this snapshot of a casual discussion of Gmail with my youngest brother…who is dying to get his own Gmail account) 
One of the other things I like is how (you can see this in the snapshot), the first line of the email is shown in the list of emails…
What else….I found it kind of freaky to not have a “delete” button but having a “Archive” button (you can though select “Move to Trash” from a drop down box). There is also no “REPLY” button at the top. If you start typing in the text box at the bottom of the email, it will take that as a cue to “reply”.
Don’t forget…it is a webpage and thus it is easy to reload the page (and check for new email) by pressing the F5 key on your keyboard.
The ads are pretty unintrusive. Bob Ambrogi and I were chatting by Gmail (he is demoing it too…see his post) and he mentioned that he lived in Boise for 6 months at one time. The ads that showed were both to on-line yellow page directories (for Idaho).
One improvement it needs…the ability to import your address book.
That’s my quick two cents. It is worth trying out, if someone offers you an invite snag it. You don’t want your email address to be something like myname12093123123123@gmail.com, do you?
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