One of the big reasons for my comment yesterday about being underwhelmed by gmail was the data portability issue. One of the reasons that I have stuck with buying upgrades to Eudora on Windows since version 2.0, in spite of its many bugs, was that it kept my email stored locally in what was essentially a text format that I can access with any text editor, and manipulate with any text editing language, from awk to Perl. I already have over 2 gigabytes of archived email, and the email I recieved in 1988 is as accessible to me today as what I recived yesterday. Just like I have always followed Robb's law, I never want to have my main store of email data be somewhere that I don't control. Plus, I like working with email using the greater power of a desktop application. So, until Google offers easy export of mail data, I didn't think I would use my gmail account for anything other than a throwaway email address.
However, via TinyApps, today I discovered Jon Barker's POP to Gmail. I had forgotten about the ingenuity and generosity of all the developers out there who start off by scratching their own itches. POP to Gmail is a clever little application that logs into gmail, scrapes your email, and downloads it into a local POP3 server, from which you can access it from any email client. Brilliant! Now the application itself still has a few bugs, and it unfortunately relies on the Microsoft dot net framework, but what a clever idea. Jon is improving it at a rapid pace, and I suspect that it will push Google towards offering POP3 access at a reasonable price. In the meantime, POP to Gmail works (mostly) and makes Gmail usable.
Update: October 17, 2004 : Jay Barker discontinued work on POP to Gmail program. It has been replaced by something called GPopper, which I haven't tried. I myself decided that it wasn't worth using Gmail until it officially supported POP3, as Yahoo does for $20 a year.
Also, I have closed down comments on this entry, because I am tired of reading the inane illiterate comments people left.
Posted by Geodog at June 11, 2004 01:41 AM | TrackBackMy apologies, but my web hoster has turned off commenting, due to a flood of obscene spam bringing the server to its knees. I hope to have this weblog transitioned over to Wordpress in the near future, so that I can have commenting up and working again. Until then, please feel free to send me your comments via my email contact form.. Please ignore everything below this comment.
please give me Gmail account. i am frome iran
i want Gmail tnx
well....the news for Gmail account spread like a forest fire every where....but non of us has seen any gmail account ...atleast in my case i've never seen...and dont even knw how to make it..when it clicked www.gmail.google.com it asked me to enter the user name and passwoed .." what if i dont have already one..?" so theres no such link to make a new account...so you googlers must look into it so that everybody could get equal advantage of the feature..thanx
Posted by: Hasnain Ali on September 14, 2004 02:57 AMsir if you have done this so give the accounbts to us like people we wanna use gmail features
Posted by: honey on September 20, 2004 09:31 AMsalaam .sir i want to get gmail id but there is no link 4 it .plz give me gmail id ............i will be very thankful to u.
Posted by: ubaid on September 28, 2004 10:08 PMI wnat to feel lucky , to perticipate google's new
creation.
I want to Gmail account please send me how i can create gmail account.
Posted by: anon on October 10, 2004 11:43 PMi want gmail account. plz tell me how to create this account
Posted by: nisha on October 12, 2004 02:33 AMi have tried so much to make my id in gmail but i cant ....... so i want help form u all
Posted by: ishwar on October 13, 2004 09:11 PMI HAVE G-MAIL. YOU HAVE 2 GET A INVITE FOR AN ACCOUNT. ONCE U HAVE AN ACCOUNT U GET INVITES U GIVE TO OTHER PEOPLE. IT TOOK ME ALMOST 3 MONTHS TO GET AN INVITE. IF U HAVE ANY QUESTIONS PLS EMAIL ME LITESKINLIZ@GMAIL.COM GOOD LUCK TO ALL
Posted by: LITESKINLIZ@GMAIL.COM on October 14, 2004 07:16 PM