G'day, Gmail.

I often feel like I'm a slave to my email. When my inbox looks a bit barren, I tend to get a bit antsy, hitting "Send/Receive" like a madwoman and checking the status bar on Outlook, lest it appear that our email server is down. Outlook defaults to check for new mail every 15 minutes; I've changed this so it checks every 2. I'll admit it, I'm a bit obsessed.

Perhaps it's because the majority of my day is dictated by my inbox. A client emails with questions or concerns, and VOILA! Like magic, a phone call or meeting is instantly created. We often have last-minute mandatory conference calls, and as of late, I have a recurring Google News search on my company's name to keep abreast to the influx of news stories about us (since apparently reporters seem to spend most of their time speculating about possible IPO's and how that will affect everything from the economy to politics.) Because of my dependence on it, you can understand why I find Gmail to be the best thing that's hit the Internet since - well - Google!

I've been beta testing this program for about a month, now, and let me tell you - it's fabulous. It's lightning fast. It's intuitive. It self-refreshes so I can just keep the window open on my deskbar and occasionally glance at it to see that - YAY! A darling boy has written me about his daily boredom and WAHOO! People are coming to my cookout! Instant gratification, and totally caters to my impatience and tendency to plan things far in advance. You see, now I don't have to wait to decide that I'm going to the Braves game on Tuesday instead of Wednesday (as to not coincide with Cinco de Mayo, of course) - I can see that people would prefer that in seconds. Better yet - it stores all emails as conversations, not individual lines of text, which allows me to keep track of all the people that are coming over to drink Mint Juleps with me on Saturday and the ones that refuse to come to what they deem as a "girly" event.

As for those privacy concerns that people are talking about, did you know that both Yahoo and MSN require you to enter your name, email, address, as well as sundry other items that they store to profile you going forward? Gmail only asks for your name & current email account. And as for the controversy surrounding the serving of ads, there will NEVER be a person reading - nor storing - your emails. A computer scans emails for content & keywords so it can serve you targeted ads. This is the same technology that works as a spam filter or even a spell checker! In the past month, I've probably gotten 10 or so ads on ALL of my emails, and I even used one to buy a product that was being advertised.

Trust me, my friends, Gmail is fantastic. What did we ever do without it?

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How 'bout YOU answer that question? I've got some Gmail addresses available to give out...as Sarah said, convince me you deserve one. (I prefer tulips to roses, in case you're wondering.)

Comments

[helenjane]

Well, I just traded building a web site for practically countless treatments at a day spa in the Bay Area.

Oh yeah.

Next time you're in for a little Googlebizness, I declare, we're hitting the spa for a few facials/manipedis/massages...

[Dave]

I don't suppose mere flattery would work on someone as beautiful, brilliant and talented as yourself, would it? :-)

Okay, okay, so I like to try new stuff like this and I've been curious about Gmail since I heard about it.

Pretty please with tulips on top?

[lindsay]

we all want one! tell us when it's going public!

[hollismb]

Don'tcha think I should get one for figuring out that Javascript error a while back? Yeah? I'm still ticked I don't yet have a Gmail account. I want it....bad.

[hollismb]

Nevermind, somebody else hooked me up.

[Druzba]

Give one here! Now.