I was somehow expecting that. Google launched today two new services, out of which I’m expecting at least one to be true, and the other to be fake. Since GMail is three years old today, I assume that the GMail Print feature will be for real.

Starting today, Google introduces GMail Paper. Now in Gmail, you can request a physical copy of any message with the click of a button, and they’ll send it to you in the mail. Google will print all messages instantly and prepare them for delivery. You should be receiving them in 2 to 4 days. Basically, a stack of Gmail Paper arrives in a box at your doorstep, and it’s yours to keep forever. You can read it, sort it, search it, touch it. Or even move it to the trash—the real trash. (Recycling is encouraged.)

So far so good, but since Google made a habit out of tricking us today, they also launched TISP, a service that is supposed to offer you Wi-Fi internet access from everywhere. Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines. Well, it could have been believable until the part where they’re tweaking up their toilets.

1st of April is not over yet. Enjoy.

Three years ago, Google was launching GMail, an innovating mailing service that was perceived as a practical joke at the beginning due its chosen launching day. Today, three years later, GMail is one of the most popular webmail options, directly competing with Yahoo’s Mail.

Even if recently, Yahoo offered unlimited space compared to GMail’s 2,9GB, I still believe that users are not looking just for storage space, and they want more flexibility and user-oriented features. That’s why GMail was and will still be my favorite.

Happy birthday ;)

It was announced on March the 27th, so it’s a good five days away from April Fools. However, it does sound like a prank: “Yahoo! announces that it’s offering free unlimited e-mail storage starting May this year”. When I first found out, it seemed rather far-fetched, and it still does.

Basically, this means that Yahoo! is giving up one method of income, from users who payed 20$ per year for 2GB of space (and it’s losing those money from users starting May, as they will be refunded, if they want to), and it engages in the race to buy a LOT of storage space.

Irrealistic as it seems, this comes at a turning point in Yahoo!’s mail service. 10 years ago, Yahoo! Mail was being launched, a service which was capable of holding up to 4MB of mail, more than an average attachment today.

On the other hand, this might seem like a method of distracting people from GMail’s gimmick of the ever-expanding mailbox. Whether or not it will work, only time will tell. My guess is it won’t, mainly because people don’t look for storage space when they analyze possible e-mail accounts. Not unless they plan on using that space specifically to store stuff, rather than storing them on their on computer. While this might seem like a godsend for those kinds of people, it’s not. Yahoo!’s service states that abusive accounts will be suspended, however leaving their owners with the possibility of accessing their accounts and their stored data.

Instead of a conclusion, let’s look at what John Kremer, the Vice-President of Yahoo! Mail, said in his announcement:

We hope we’re setting a precedent for the future. Someday, can you imagine a hard drive that you can never fill? Never having to empty your photo card on your camera to get space back? Enough storage to fit the world’s music, and then some, on your iPod? Sounds like a future without limits.

Very optimistic words, but is it really possible? My guess is it’s not. Because Yahoo!’s Mail is not unlimited, it just means they will have to acquire an enormous ammount of extra storage space to fit the e-mails of approximately 250 million people worldwide. This is something that you can not do, with today’s technology, with your iPod.

I was asking myself a week ago what will Google plan for 1st of April this year. A first approach is taken by Gmail. As you probably know, there is a small counter on the front page that shows the continuously increasing storage space for your e-mails.

With the new update, here’s the new space targets and how many days until that much space is hit by the counter on the page:

2800MB: Already reached
2835MB: In 18.22 days
2980MB: In 384 days
3125MB: In 749 days
3270MB: In 1114 days
3415MB: In 1479 days
3560MB: In 1845 days

So at a glance, Gmail will increase with just 700MB in 5 years. That doesn’t look so promising. However, noting the history of Google events that took place on the 1st of April, I took the liberty of guessing a few directions regarding this issue.
* Google could announce the new quota will be actually available now, instead of 5 years, and everyone would be happy.
* Google could speed up the increasing process and a realistic quota will be available much sooner.
* Google could keep things just the way they are (regarding Gmail) for 1st of April this year and focus on another prank.

That’s for Google to plan, and for us to find out.

After a while where subscriptions were only possible in certain countries, GMail has recently announced that it opened registrations for users from across the globe. It has even posted a “Sign up” link on their front page. This comes after GMail experienced problems with German and British domains. Get your address for free, here.

I know what you’ll say, that you can do all this stuff using the ‘Show search options’ button. But if you’re like me and you like doing things simple, quick and using your keyboard then these tips might just be useful.

We all know the search bar in our Gmail accounts that lets us keep track of the e-mails we sent and received over time. Also we all know the advanced menu that helps us find that important e-mail you’re looking for 30 minutes. If you combine the two mentioned above you get the following:

Here are some standard tags to find e-mails, their function can be easily deduced:
- from:
- to:
- subject:
- label:

All you have to do is type it in the search box like so:
from:[email protected]
or maybe
to:[email protected]

Another interesting search criteria is ‘filename:’ after it you can add the name of a file attached to a e-mail and better yet you can put there only the extension and it will find all the files with the given extension.

A interesting combination is “in:” and “is:”. It tells Google where to look ( inbox, spam, anywhere but it does not work with the ’sent’ folder) and is: has several values (starred, unread, read). You can use them separately or you can come up with expressions like:
in:inbox is:unread

There are also several searches I think you will find easy to understand:
before:date (yyyy/mm/dd)
after:date
cc:
bcc:

Now that you know this basic syntax you can evolve using combined searches like:
to:etherfast subject:(hardware OR playstation)
from:etherfast before:2006/01/23 subject:games “WoW” price

There you have it, the possibilities are practically infinite, that’s what I like about Google, it just provides the tools for you to enjoy.

After a three days period when we all asked ourselves if Gmail will ever increase the storage space again, the figures started to increase again.
About 20 hours ago, it seems that Gmail started counting from 2,8GB and already added over 1MB :)

For those of you who don’t remember, Gmail started as a potential April fool’s day joke from Google in April 2004 with 1GB storage. After one year, on 1st of April 2005, Google announced that Gmail DOUBLES the storage space up to 2GB. This was of course received by users as a potentially joke, but the increasing process never stopped counting ever since… That until three days ago.