I've got invites I'm not going to be able to use, I've burnt through all of my friends already... so...

Anyone who'd like a Gmail invite, please email me (daniel.oconnor@gmail.com), I've got 3 to give away. What do you have to do? Nothing! Just pass the favour along when you get your invites.

If the date is past 25 June 2004, then I wouldn't bother, they've probably been handed out already!

*dangles one at Watchdog*

Alternatively, append your email to the endless Official GMAIL Invite Thread - and maybe somebody will be kind enough to grant you a mailbox :tongue:

On principle I have blocked Hotmail and Gmail domains and at the same time I will refuse point-blank to send correspondence to anyone that has an email address residing in these name spaces. I don't care who is affected by it and care even less what anyone thinks. If people want to send me an email they can use a proper email address supplied by either themselves or by their ISP. Nothing worse than reading an email endorsed with spam by the hosts of the service. If it is good enough for me to run my domain/website, etc without receiving an income for it why can't everyone else? And before anyone asks, I am not rich either, I am a common man on a common man's wage.

If there is some sort of uprising against this sort of legalised spam then can someone please let me know where to sign?

Lastly, What the hell is a Gmail invite? Some sort of encouragement for me to opt-in or what?

Unlike Hotmail when an email is sent from a GMail account there is no awful spam at the bottom of the email saying 'If you want to try GMail go to http://blahblah.com - now!' etc.. One of the points I like about GMail.

GMail is also free to sign up for, no 'Extra Space' scam either. I think the only money Google is likely to make out of this is the one row of adverts down the side of the GMail account page that are designed to match the criteria of the email (personally I don't see that properly working, but I don't take any notice of them anyway).

Unfortunately, there are people who are sort of forced into having these free web mail services either temporarily or permanently. Outlook Express not working for example (and other email programs like Eudora).

As for the invites GMail is still in a "beta stage" of testing. Partly I think this is true but the whole invite thing has made people want GMail even more just for the sake of having one, so it's a clever marketing ploy (that they are not getting any money out of, cept the Google ads). So to get a GMail account you need to be invited, and these invites are put in accounts at a seemingly random basis. Later on Google will open GMail to the public.

Regards,

The way I read news reports on the Gmail proposal was that the mail server would scan each email for certain words and then include a banner ad in the email based on the content of the email. What wasn't said was whether this would be included on incoming mail to the account holder, their outgoing mail or both. Then again the reports could also be wrong but I based my decision on the former just to be cautious. If the reports I read are wrong then I'd remove the block.

At the moment though, it really annoys me that the 'Net has become so reliant on advertising. I am not against people making money from it, the 'Net is a legitimate business tool, but in the right circumstances. I'm a freelance photographer and do plan on setting up a portal to sell photos one day, when I can be bothered getting one of the banks to give me a merchant account so I can take realtime credit card payments. Advertising wouldn't be so bad if it was more tasteful, most internet advertising pertains to penis enlargements and fake university degrees, neither of which are much use since the average bloke is built for the average sheila and I am quite sure that prosective employers can tell the difference between a degree from a legitimate university and a non-existant one.

This page might clear things up

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/benefits.html

This *is* google releasing to the public. They bought up Blogger, they own Orkut - they have their eye on all of the semantic web stuff, ie FOAF.

The internet is gossip powered: RSS and blogging are two of the more popular fads right now. Your journal of your geekishness, indexing and pointing out what you find of interest on the internet. People you talk to or meet read your journal and get a personalised wandering through the internet - as you.
Social networking - telling your friends - is indeed a clever marketing ploy - making the end user feel incredibly important -> "I know someone that gave me Gmail" is like saying "I know someone who consorts with celebs" - there's a feeling that your only *this* far away from someone important.
There's a lot of that stuff in blogging: I can leave comments for the internet explorer 7 developers on their personal blogs, I can read about what google is doing in their personal lives - the rich and the powerful are now only a google search away.

And.. Watchdog, oh my god do you *not* pay attention to the internerd :S as if you've not heard of gmail!

Finally: Outta invites people, those lucky ones that got em from me, pass em on just as freely! Enjoy.

(6) It has ads. But only good ads.
Gmail isn't a traditional webmail account. There are no pop-ups, untargeted banner ads or warnings urging you to buy more storage. Gmail however, will often place a few highly relevant, text ads adjacent to the body of your email. You'll also see links to related web pages you might find of interest.

What "good ad" would show if a spam email made it's way through for a penis enlargement?

Ansell?
KY Cream?

Okay, the page did clear a few things up though.

This is the first time I have actually said out loud "wtf" to a forum post. What are you on? This has to be the most arrogant post I've ever read, and yes this includes all of Soul_Eater's.

I think arrogance would be, after hearing all the speculation regarding gmail (admittedly some can only be (dis)proven in time), to create and use a gmail account.

Bad Zack! Don't flamebait! :S

If you can find someone's posts to compare mine to then they really can't be all that bad.

You do understand the meaning of arrogance, right?

for once i'm on watchdog's side. his arrogance is no match for codemastr's arrogrance back in the day.

back in the day, was back in the day, so leave it there dont bring it here.

Yep. It's so much easier to try and trip people up on semantics, right?