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Drift Net > tech news Testing G-Mail
A Brief all-purpose review of the newe e-mail serviceGoogle offered preliminary G-Mail accounts to selected members of their pyra account holders. I got to try out my own account and work out some of the kinks. The 1 Gig of server space is designed so that a user can collect as much electronic debris as possible, becoming a packrat and accumulating odds and ends rather than selectively deleting every 1K confirmation e-mail you send while arranging plans for a coffee date. The key is G-Mail allows its users to wade through their E-mail using a google powered search engine. The utility and common sense of the idea are headslappingly dead on, and the fact that no one else has tapped this need within the telecommunications market is one of the reasons G-Mail is primed to be huge. G-Mail is without a doubt the "smartest" E-mail service currently being provided. Google technology allows the service to interact on a subtle, more personal level with its users through complex algorithms. One function that struck me as incredibly useful is the "contacts" folder. Whereas many E-mail users spend hours updating and revising their address books, G-Mail creates your contact folder for you, based on who you are e-mailing the most. The most frequent E-mailers appear on top,so you will have instant access to those you are more likely to be communicating with. When I log into my G-mail account for the first time, the following is the first E-mail in my inbox: "First off, welcome. And thanks for agreeing to help us test Gmail. By now you probably know the key ways in which Gmail differs from traditional webmail services. Searching instead of filing. A free gigabyte of storage. Messages displayed in context as conversations. So what else is new? Gmail has many other special features that will become apparent as you use your account. You’ll find answers to most of your questions in our searchable help section, which includes a Getting Started guide. You'll find information there on such topics as: How to use address auto-complete Setting up filters for incoming mail Using advanced search options You may also have noticed some text ads or related links to the right of this message. They're placed there in the same way that ads are placed alongside Google search results and, through our AdSense program, on content pages across the web. The matching of ads to content in your Gmail messages is performed entirely by computers; never by people. Because the ads and links are matched to information that is of interest to you, we hope you'll find them relevant and useful. You're one of the very first people to use Gmail. Your input will help determine how it evolves, so we encourage you to send your feedback, suggestions and questions to us. But mostly, we hope you'll enjoy experimenting with Google's approach to email. Speedy Delivery, The Gmail Team" The bad:the design on G-Mail is somewhat hideous, something that could easily prove to be Google's weakest link. Bland, drab, colorless, composed of thin borders and a mostly white backdrop. It's barely even a skeleton of a design. There's as little visual pull here as humanly possible; it's as if G-Mail were designed not to look like anything at all. It's true that the Google main page has no responsibility to be attractive-looking, as it is based on functionality above all else, but E-mail services should be different. The only reason I carry a Hotmail account is because of the sexy interface. There certainly isn't anything unique about the E-mail, and the loading time can be grating. Finally, because I can't test out G-Mail very well until I start getting E-mails, I send one out to my NYUhome account that says "What hath God wrought?" I then turned back to the search features and type in "God" in the search box. My lone e-mail comes up, "God" highlighted in the results field. Another feature is the "Starred message", which allows you to assign importance to different E-mails, thus making them easier to find later on. Unfortunately, there is only so much testing of the service I can perform until I actually am receiving a good amount of E-mail. So everyone should send me some at Roshan.Abraham@gmail.com. Write cryptically, incoherently, and write soon, please. |
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| Recent comments by Bill Gates have stirred up a small backlash among copyright reformists |
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 08.21.2004 - 4:06 pm EDT"Roshan shares a personal anecdote about P2P software"
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