da gmail, da gmail, wat wat da gmail

I finally got signed up with Gmail today. My new email address is nicklargent at gmail dot com. I’ve only used it a little bit so far, but I’m already quite impressed. Unless the others like hotmail & yahoo play a little catchup, Gmail could very easily take over the webmail market. Before I talk about some of the cool features I just wanna say that all you idiots out there that have privacy issues with Google need to get a freggin life. If you don’t like it, don’t use it and stfu. For the rest of you, here is what you have to look forward too….

Aside from the 1GB of storage you get, the two main things you will notice about Gmail are the lack of folders, and the conversation organization of your messages. Gmail isn’t just another mail service, it’s an entirely new way to work with your mail. Google has done away with the concept of organizing your messages into folders. Instead you just assign labels to your messages as they come in and then archive them. When you need to find an old message, you search for it. This method keeps your inbox clean and makes it very easy to find every message.

When you bounce a message back and forth with a buddy, Gmail will display that group of messages together as a conversation instead of individual messages. This makes it a lot easier to keep track of. It works similar to a threaded message board, although I find Gmail a bit more intuitive.

A slew of other nice features I’ve come across…

• Sending a message will automatically add the address to my contacts
• The interface for the spell checker is the easiest one I’ve ever used
• Typing names in the To: field works just like a full mail client
• Quoted text in replies is hidden by default

In general the interface is very well laid out and very quick. I was amazed at how fast I got a response to clicking on the different buttons.

Unfortunately, Gmail is still in beta and they aren’t taking new sign ups. However, you can swing by Ebay and search for ‘Gmail’. There are dozens of people auctioning off invitations for under $3. Thanks to my man Drew for pointing that out to me.

Sorry for the lame title, I couldn’t resist. Jump over to Strongbad if you don’t get it.