‘This is not meant to be bragging, merely an informative look at Google’s new e-mail service. I am lucky enough to know someone that works for Google, so I happened to get an invite to join.
I have to say, I love it! I have been using Gmail for only about 2 days now, but it’s stunning. I think the thing that I most like about this are the ‘conversations’. You know how you get a reply to an e-mail and the new one is at the top of your box, and the old one is still in the middle? Get a few more replies and your mail is covered in this one topic! Gmail is different. It groups each message with all of the rest of the replies with the original mail. Example: If I send something to Meggie and she replies, the original message plus the reply are in the SAME message group, and it’s taken to the top of my inbox. If I send her one back, and she replies again.. again, then whole thing is taken to the top of my box, all 4 messages. I can read everything at once instead of opening all of the messages separately. Other features include
Address completion. (You type in one letter, and it pulls up a box with every e-mail address you have with that letter in there for you to chose from)
It’s fast! (I push ‘Inbox’, and it’s loaded faster than anything I’ve ever seen)
Trying to navigate out of an unsent message triggers an ‘Are you sure you want to discard the message?’ alert. (I mess up and hit something wrong at least once a week, killing my typed up message every time.)
E-mail snippet makes it very easy to browse through messages. (You can also search!)
Keyboard shortcuts. (I can open a new message by just typing ‘c’)
Labels. (Like folders, but I can put several labels on one message. If it’s from Meggie, but about cats, I can put it in labels family and cats!)
Starring (tagging) messages is fast. Something like what Orkut uses to rank your friends. (just click on it, tagged. click again.. untagged.)
Spell checker. (Very fast!)
1GB of storage! (Never delete anything again!)
There are so many great features on Gmail that there are people going mad to get an account. There’s even a web page set up to help people get connected to others with accounts. Gmail Swap is getting quite scary. $50-$150 for one, as well as a host of other strange stuff. So check the swap list and see what people will do to get one! Wow. I have no idea how long you have to have an account before you get an invite to give out, but I have no idea what I’ll do with it yet. I really don’t know that many people that would really appreciate it.
