Happy Birthday Gmail!

Gmail, Google's web-based e-mail service, went live one year ago today in what most believed to be an April Fool's joke.

"A Gigabyte of e-mail storage for free? No way, it must be an April Fool's Joke," we said to ourselves. Only it wasn't. They were serious.

From the beginning, Gmail was available by invitation only. They began expanding the service when they offered Gmail to all users of their blog service, Blogger. Then they began offering those who had accounts the ability to send invitations to friends. That's how I got mine. Being tired of constant warnings from Hotmail about approaching my 2MB storage limit, I was anxious to get a Gmail account. The opportunity came when Chad Canipe offered his two invitations to anybody who wanted them. By the end of June last year, I had my Gmail account up and running. To date, I've kept just about every e-mail that I've sent or received and have an accumulated total of 31MB of data stored, a whopping 3.1% of 1GB. Additionally, every message is searchable. I have no doubt that I could find any message that I needed in seconds.

Gmail is still available by invitation only as it is officially beta (testing), though anyone interested shouldn't have any problem getting an invitation. I've got fifty (50) to give away in case any of you are interested.

Other companies who offer web-based e-mail (Yahoo!, Hotmail) have recently increased their storage capacities to compete, but Google is not to be outdone. Today, Google announces that they are doubling their current storage capacity for each user to 2GB!

Google Search revolutionized the way we search online.
Gmail is revolutionizing the way web-based e-mail works.
Look for these other developments from Google, as well:
Google News
Google Maps (very nice)
Froogle (Google's online price search)

Disclaimer:
Even though Google did go public last year, I am not a stockholder, just a fan. :-)

I hope to have pictures and a post up soon documenting events from last weekend. Christy and I have been absorbed in the American Dreams Season 1 DVDs I got from the library.


Films Recently Watched:

The Passion Of The Christ (2004) dir. by Mel Gibson
Watched this at my church on Good Friday. They did end up showing the film in its Original Aspect Ratio and on a 16 x 12 foot screen, to boot.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5

The Incredibles (2004) dir. by Brad Bird
Watched this again when I got a chance to be home alone for a while on Saturday. Got to crank up the sound! One of Pixar's best.

M (1931) dir. by Fritz Lang