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4 Gmail Invitations

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Please pardon my ignorance (I live in a very limited world and am confined to whatever webtv lets me do -- which isn't much), but what is GMail?

A new webbased email service (think yahoo/hotmail) provided by google. Its not opened up to the public as of yet, but there's a beta currently in progress where a limited amount of people have been invited to create an account. It's become quite famous already, mainly because a) it offers people a ludicrous amount of free space (1 GB, as compared to the 10 meg or so previously offered by yahoo/hotmail), and B) privacy concerns since the terms of service give google the right to read and store your emails in order to 'provide' you with advertisments that they believe will suit your needs.

www.gmail.com

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...privacy concerns since the terms of service give google the right to read and store your emails in order to 'provide' you with advertisments that they believe will suit your needs.

I don't think this is quite correct. My understanding from reading their privacy policy is that no actual people will read your email, but rather only that they may be scanned by an automated system (which I imagine just searches for certain keywords) which will then use information it might find in them to personalize the google ads that may appear at the side of the window. I not only have no problem with that, I think it's a great idea. If I'm going to be advertised at while using a free web-based email program, I'd much rather see ads tailored to my own interests than just any random stuff. I think that's better for me, for google, and for the advertisers.

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Alright, I am making this a free for all. Anyone with 50+ posts can message me for a Gmail account. Please include your email and first/last name. I will even accept a rain check for 50+ posts if you aren’t quite there yet.

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Howdy all,

To be honest I had no idea what Gmail was until I read this thread. I was inspired to look it up.

Pretty neat concept. I just did a lot of reading on it. The pro's seem to outweigh the cons. There seems to be a lot of paranoia out there regarding this application. To be honest at first my reaction was to reject the idea of it. But as all that I read digested in my brain, I realized that monitoring email is just as easy a feat as monitoring phone calls, both cellular and land line.

Sadly I only have 37 posts. Guess I better get cracking if I want one.

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Howdy all,

To be honest I had no idea what Gmail was until I read this thread.  I was inspired to look it up.

Pretty neat concept.  I just did a lot of reading on it.  The pro's seem to outweigh the cons.  There seems to be a lot of paranoia out there regarding this application.  To be honest at first my reaction was to reject the idea of it.  But as all that I read digested in my brain, I realized that monitoring email is just as easy a feat as monitoring phone calls, both cellular and land line.

Sadly I only have 37 posts.  Guess I better get cracking if I want one.

Those of you with any paranoia regarding gmail privacy issues are morons. Plain and simple. You act is if gmail is the only email provider that does this; they are not. Yahoo! Mail does the same thing, but not only do they target adds to what you're reading, they also place cookies all over the place in order to keep track of exactly where you've been and what you've done/looked at.

http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/pixels/details.html

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Those of you with any paranoia regarding gmail privacy issues are morons.  Plain and simple.  You act is if gmail is the only email provider that does this; they are not.  Yahoo! Mail does the same thing, but not only do they target adds to what you're reading, they also place cookies all over the place in order to keep track of exactly where you've been and what you've done/looked at.

http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/pixels/details.html

Yahoo! web-beacons aren't even remotely similar to what gmail is doing. Perhaps you should endeavour to understand the precise issues that people have with gmail's privacy policy before you accuse them of being 'morons'.

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Those of you with any paranoia regarding gmail privacy issues are morons.  Plain and simple.

That's a pretty sweeping indictment. Are you sure this one particular issue is enough to qualify someone for moron status?

VES

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Barstool, if you are convinced that nothings wrong with gmail's privacy policy then go ahead and use the service, but let other people judge for themselves. Calling them morons for such a thing is really absurd!!

I have wholly shifted my mailing needs to gmail too, and I personally have no problems with their privacy policy. Let others here think for themselves, and they will eventually reach the right decision. So next time please refrain from such stupidity.

aynfan, again you have posted without stating who it is you are addressing. I think someone warned you about this before too, right? You ought to have enough intelligence to understand why I or the rest have been telling you this, so please don't do it again.

Dinesh.

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so there are 7 invites and I would sure like to have one.... :(

I will send you a Gmail invitation.

Keep up the good fight in Bible Belt!

Best Premises,

Martin Lindeskog - American in Spirit.

Gothenburg, Sweden (a.k.a the socialist "paradise").

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For anyone who has a Hotmail account, Hotmail is going to offer 250MB of space.

For Yahoo folks, it is already 100MB.

If you have either of these, it is pointless switching to GMail.

The competitive response has been quick. Consequently, instead of going down in MBA case-studies as a great strategy that worked, GMail will go down as an attempt to create a competitive advantage that was readily replicated by competitors. The bottom line, all mail-providers end up with higher costs.

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Not quite. Google has a competitive edge with its array of 100,000+ servers, its search technology, and its text-based ad network. None of its competitors can match any of these advantages, which is why I predict Gmail will be wildly successful – short of government obstruction, at least.

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If there are any gmail invites left, I'd like one.

As for contributions, hands down David has helped me out more than I've helped him out. After looking through the site however, here are some minor thoughts:

-Update the images that show up during navigation such as Home>Essays>Philosophy Essays so that the overall integration of the site is better.

-For people that might be overwhelmed by the information handled on your site, have a sort of "site navigation" page that explains each feature.

-Not sure if you want better visual integration between the forum and the main page, but maybe think about using a spin-off of your main header at objectivismonline.net in your forum as well as match the colors up more closely.

-Not sure if this would be necessary but have you thought about a link under "About" (or an top-level link) along the lines of "Common misconceptions about ..." and you can put objectivism, selfishness, capitalism etc.

-Have you thought about getting your hands on the domain oo.net along with your current one?

-Is it just my rank or does this forum not have the "email me when someone posts a reply" option?

That's all I can think of right now, superb job so far nevertheless.

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