gmail

google was gracious enough to invite active blogger users to beta test their new email service, gmail. you've probably heard about it's content based ads or its 1gb of storage. (fratocrates team, you should be able to get yours by going to blogger's home page and signing in. the invite should appear above the sign-in box on the right side of the screen.)

it's a pretty cool product. they've definitely upped the ante for web-mail UIs, and it might even surpass the UI of traditional thick clients -- although i am sure there will be mozilla/thunderbird extensions mimicking the nicer features.

to be honest though, i don't have enough email in my gmail account to really give it a good workout. i have so many god damn email accounts at this point that it's pissing me off and i don't really feel like having to check another one for email. perhaps i'll subscribe to a few mailing lists which might be a reasonable simulacrum of having a normally populated inbox. (on a side note, aol has opened up their email with imap, which ROCKS. i hope hotmail and gmail follow suit.)

anyway, current beta testers get to invite two people to join gmail, and people are buying/selling these invites on ebay. last i checked, one was going for $60. pretty insane.