It's scary how fast those 7+ GB can fill up. Need to make some room in your Gmail account without spending all day? Here is your best friend in the question for a cleaner Gmail account. Just search for:

has:attachment filename:*.doc

This is a pretty inefficient filetype, so you get some serious bloat. As far as my inbox goes, these are generally the worst offenders. I go back in my email history to when there was a conference and I was being pounded with press releases and space clears up pretty quickly... Next up is:

has:attachment filename:*.jpg

but only if this is your work email account as you probably won't want to delete images from your buddies. Images tend to come in groups and they tend to be large (most of the ones sent to me are ready for print). JPG is more effective than GIF because people often use GIFs in their footers/signatures (for HTML emails) so a search for GIFs will turn up way too many emails that have only 3K or 5K attachments.

has:attachment filename:*.zip

This can be incredibly effective as these tend to be larger file, but I don't check for them very often as I don't get sent many zip/rar files any more. After all that, empty the trash and see how well you did. In the last 15 minutes or so I cleared up 2% of my total holdings. It wasn't enough to make a huge difference (I was pretty conservative about what was deleted) but I find that by doing some light housekeeping once a month it keeps my account from filling up.

Wow. Who knew such a little change could make such a big difference? This is one of the better UI improvement to Gmail since it was first released, and it's a major bonus for us label fanatics. The labels are a little too loud, so it make my mailbox look even more cluttered, but I'm not complaining...

So I went away for a week and beforehand I unplugged my Wii so I knew it would be safe. Not that there was anything to worry about, but it seemed like a simple enough thing to do. I started it up today for the first time in about 8 days and I got a strange error when I put in Super Mario Paper. It told me that the disc (brand new, perfect condition) could not be read and that the system needed to be restarted. I tried again... same result. Not only did the game not start, but all the loading was going extremely slowly. This was too weird- it was like my Wi was pulling an Xbox 360 on me. Next I tried another restart, but this time with Wii Sports. It loaded, but the process too about three minutes and then loading was extremely slow between stages. Also I could hear the optical drive making a strange mechanical noise. After playing for about 20 minutes, oddly enough, the system was back to normal. All my games worked and the loading was as quick as ever. I'd be lying if I said I knew what happened, but it seems like the system just needed some time to restart and get itself situated/updated/rebooted and so on. Right now seems to be back to normal, but I went through a strange and frustrating couple of minutes, most of which was spent wishing Nintendo use still using cartridges.

Google Gears is a lot more than an offline version of Reader. Yeah, that's totally awesome but it has much larger implications than that. I won't get into it all here, because a lot of people have already done an excellent job of explaining it. For the best post out there I would check out ZDnet's blog and the IT Matters podcast. I can't believe they did not roll out Gmail offline at the same time as Reader! It's also interesting that Gmail, before Gears came out, worked offline well. You could not save or send or anything like that, but I never lost something I was typing and the transition from online to offline and back was seamless. The only way you would know (aside from not being able to do a few things) is that chat would become unavailable and it would not autosave.

Once there was a time when as soon as Google rolled out a new feature I had it. Gmail? I was there. Mail Fetcher? I had it on day one. Google Analytics? Google Apps? I was always so proud of being allowed in right at the launch, just like the cool kids. It looks like those days are over though. My Google Analytics upgrade has not come yet. Apparently I am going to have to wait it out just like everyone else.

We're excited to announce the newly redesigned Google Analytics. Over the next several weeks, we will be migrating all existing Analytics accounts to the new Google Analytics interface. You will be notified by email once your account has been migrated. For an entire month you will be able to access both the original interface and the new interface. During the migration, you should experience no interruption in service and you'll be able to see all of your data regardless of which interface you use. For a sneak peek at the new Google Analytics, take a look at the following resources.

I have found myself sitting here watching the tour video over and over, wondering what I did wrong.

PC Magazine posted an article yesterday noting how Gmail seems to be falling behind competing services, like Yahoo, AIM, and Hotmail. From the article:

Where does this all leave us, as consumers? Well, we're lucky enough to have three great, new, totally reinvented (not to mention free) Webmail services at our disposal. Gmail, on the other hand, has been left behind.

The article then goes on to link to reviews of AIM Mail, Opera Web Mail, Windows Live Hotmail (beta), and,Yahoo! Mail (beta 3). There is a lot of reading to get through, but there is a summary right there on the main page- Hotmail and Yahoo share the editor's choice award. So is Gmail falling behind the pack? The article rightly points out that it does not use AJAX like the others (so no drag and drop), but says its strength is in the extra features (like Gcal and Documents) that are integrated into the platform. Over at Web Worker Daily there is a pretty solid rebuttal to PC Mag's claim. The author at WWD points out that Gmail is different, not worse or falling behind, which seems to be correct to me. Before getting on the defensive though, it should be pointed out that Gmail not having changed much recently may be because it was so far ahead of the other three (Opera does not really count) than even with the advances the others have made Gmail still has a better interface and better performance than the others. Gmail could stand for some updating, but it is still the most scalable, most adaptable, and most powerful webmail currently available. It may be falling behind in the storage category (Yahoo is coming out with an unlimited size mailbox) but the search features, a light-weight chat system, and easy access to great tools (like Reader) definitely set it apart from the rest. Personally I think Gmail should throw in some changes like increasing customization, integrate better mail importing, increase the power of Mail Fetcher, and have a more options as to the layout, but I am sure there are a lot of things in the works. That said, I think it does the best job at being powerful without becoming bloated or cluttered. As the others have improved they have not been able to maintain this balance. There are also the intangible's to consider though. For example, I have heard rumors about job applicants who are applying to a tech position having their resume immediately screened out just because they had a Hotmail account. This seems ridiculous, but your email account does say something about you as an internet user. Plus there is the factor of advertising. Gmail has very low-profile text ads which are totally out of the way. Other services us much more visable ads, often graphical ones, that are annoying and oftentimes intrusive. This is something that may not seem like a big deal at first, but can get very annoying over time. Speed is another thing to factor- Gmail may not have AJAX, but I have found it to be the fastest of the bunch. Also browser support is something to take into consideration- I have not had problems with Gmail on any computer, even ones without Javascript (you have to use the HTML only browser), or older systems, etc. Not many other webmail platforms can match it in this respect. Another final aspect that has to be taken into consideration is the login. Your login for these sites is now the same you use for other Google sites or other Yahoo sites. Google does the best job of making this simple and effective while I have constant problems with Yahoo and Microsoft in this respect. Your Google account gives you easy access to great tools like Analytics, while my Yahoo login can't even get me into my old school Flickr account. Sorry to rant. I don't want to come off as a Gmail fanboy, but I really think that PC Mag's article, while bringing up a some good points, came to the wrong conclusion. Yahoo and Hotmail have been greatly improved, Gmail is still the winner here.

After a few months of having Mail Fetcher available to me, I finally got around to setting it up. The goal was to add consolidate two Gmail accounts so I could control one that I rarely use from my primary account. Setting up a Gmail-to-Gmail fetcher is extremely easy and takes just a few seconds once you have made sure that the secondary account allows for POP access. Setting up Mail Fetcher with another email service probably won't be quite as easy, but so long as you know some basic information it should not take very long at all. For me it took a minute or two to set up but the system was not functioning 100% properly for an hour or two (message retrieval was laggy and it was saying that is fetched messages but they did not appear). Not that Mail Fetcher is set up and working properly I have two problems with it. The first is that Gmail only checks the second mailbox every 60 minutes. My account checks at the 17th minute of each hour and there is not setting to make it check more frequently. There is a "check mail now" command but to get to this you need to go in settings and then to the accounts tab, which is inconvenient. More of a problem for me is that when sending out or replying to email you can choose to send it from either address, but Gmail always includes a section in the email header for the sender. This means that when replying an email sent to my secondary account the header the recepient sees will have the correct "From:" address, but the "Sender:" is my primary address! This is not okay if you are using the account for work or trying to completely differentiate between two accounts, which for many people is the entire point of Mail Fetcher. Google covers this on their help page:

Note: your Gmail address will still be included in your email headers in the sender field, to help prevent your mail from being marked as spam. Most email clients do not display the sender field, though some versions of Microsoft Outlook may display "From customaddress@domain.com on behalf of yourusername@gmail.com."

The other option, especially if you don't want to wait, is to set up a forwarder on the second account which means you should get it sooner, but than the Sender/From issue still exists. Plus you will have to still set up "Send mail as:" in your account tab which is a similar process to setting up Fetcher. All told, Mail Fetcher is a great option, but it has its problems. The Google's Discussion Group on POP and forwarding brings up some issues about people have trouble getting the Fetcher to stop fetching when they are done with it and a lot of people complaing about the From/Sender issue. Many point out that Yahoo Mail Plus does not have this problem and this not only is this a problem with Gmail but that it is something that is easy to fix (or at least make a setting to change). It is something that will prevent me from using Gmail with my work email addresses as the whole point of having separate accounts and a fetcher is to be able to keep them apart while consolidating storage and access.

Like most independent internet publishers, I keep pretty close tabs on my site's traffic statistics. For this blog I have noticed that every day a few people come here from Google after searching for error code 767. This was the error code that came up when Gmail went down for me (and a number of other people a few weeks ago. These only amount to a few people a day but it is interesting. If people are searching for this term than they must be, for some reason, locked out of Gmail. Currently my Gmail account has been perfect since the last widespread interruption, but it makes me wonder if at any given time a small percentage of users are having their own problem. Otherwise why would be they researching that error code? I don't think this is anything to worry about, but it is worth noting. This blog is currently the number one search result for "gmail error code 767" so if people are searching for this there is a good chance they are winding up here. This makes it pretty clear that not many people are searching, because I am only getting a few readers a day, but webmail downtime is a serious problem. These are probably small, isolated incidents so I don't think they are any cause for concern. I have noticed that error codes 767 and 766 can sometimes result from a problem with the browser interacting with Gmail and can often be solved by cleaning out the cache and trying again so hopefully most people are coming by the blog, getting instructions, and fixing everything. If the problem is some sort of rolling blackout where a few people can't get on at any given time it will surely come to light sooner or later, but I am guessing that after the last problem and now that Apps Premium is out Google is going to stay on top of their webmail (though platform upgrades can lead to outages from time to time).

It should be no surprise that Google, as a company, has really embraced blogging. Googler, as it turns out, are great bloggers and have lot of interesting things to tell us about their company. They have never really been ones for corporate transparency, but Google is a big company and a lot of cool things are always being churned out so its great to get whatever insights we can, or at least be informed of new developments. Google's main blog, googleblog.blogspot.com, takes a little-bit-of-everything approach and fills us in on big developments like Google Apps Premier, nofollow tags, Google Maps traffic information, translation suggestion, and online child safety, but also covers lighter topics. This lighter subject matter includes new (National Engineer's Week!), personal posts, and the like, and are probably put there to remind us that the company is not run by robots, at least not exclusively. But that's not it, there are a load of other blogs as well. Google Analytics has its own blog,  so does Reader (this appears on the front page of Reader), Adsense, and others. Gmail does not have one, which is disappointing, but it's news is alway highly publicized anyway. Not only do Google's services have blogs, but many of their people do as well. Lot's of people read Matt Cutts' blog, which is not an official Google blog, but is often read as such.  Other Googler's with blogs include Bladam, fury.com, beust, snarfed, and Shellen.org, but there are a lot more. Aside from Matt Cutts', most are pretty small but if you look you may stumble on some good content. Even ex-Googlers blog... I've been a reader of Google's main blog for some time now, but never really bothered to investigate the page. As is turns out some are pretty good. They don't have comments, which is really disappointing, but given how much impact Google has on the internet, and through the net, our lives, it is nice to keep tabs on the company.

About a week ago, Steve Rubel posted about how to Turn Gmail into Your Personal Nerve Center. It got mass amounts of well deserved attention from all around the web and I can honestly say that it and (to a lesser extent) its follow up were two of the most helpful blog posts I have ever read. I am a long time Gmail user, and I would even consider myself a power user, but it was clear to me that I was only scratching the surface. As it turns out the timing of the Nerve Center posts was less than fortunate. Gmail was down for a lot of users almost all day yesterday and only this morning became fully operational. Not everyone was affected, but I was, Mr. Rubel was, and so were a lot of other people- even paying Google Apps users. We are still all awaiting an official response from Google, but the only word on their blog was something about widgets and feeling lazy. Clearly, this has many of us calling into question the use of a Gmail as a personal nerve central. Data centralization is great, but if Gmail goes down, as we observed yesterday, you're in trouble. The more central Gmail becomes to your work life and data storage, let alone your communications, the more of an inconvenience outages are. Much of the posting on the official discussion thread had to do with how much one should rely on a free service. There were questions about if Gmail actually is a free service or not- it is ad supported- but those missed the point. What matters is this- how much can you rely on something that is still in beta, has no guarantee, offers you almost no way to get in touch with a support person, has a history of deleting accounts, offers no transparency, and is big enough that a few thousand users here or there don't really matter? It seemed like Google Apps Premium was going to be the start of a solution to this but apparently Apps users had interruptions of service yesterday as well. It would be interesting to know how the phone support handled things... What's the next step? Well it is going to be different for everyone. Personally I believe that Google has a lot invested in Gmail, especially now that Apps Premier is out, and that this is something they will learn from and do their best to prevent from happening again. Many posts on the discussion board pointed out how this does not happen with Hotmail or Yahoo mail and also that the outage is causing them to rethink using Google Apps for their business. I am sure both of these really resonate the people at Google. For many of us, our lack of control over my Gmail account remains problematic. While having Google handle everything (servers, hosting, security, administration, etc.) was what attracted to me Gmail, it is now worrisome. All Google account holders at some point have decided that they trust Google to hold on to their personal information, whether its RSS feeds or emails or server analytics, and now we are all having to deal with that decision. The other option would have been private hosting which would be much more expensive, had questionable security, and used a comparatively worse webmail program. I think Gmail is still a great choice for a personal nerve center but we should all be diligent about redundantly saving data and backing up Gmail locally.

The usual fixes for Gmail errors recommended by the message board (see previous post) make it seem like not being able to access Gmail is a local issue. This problem may have stemmed from something with their servers, but we were led to believe that the problem was, at least after a few minutes, on our side. Well, this time it seems to be different. I still can't log in and other people are experiencing the same issues. It seems like Gmail is experiencing pretty large-scale outage.

• http://groups.google.com/...
• http://groups.google.com/...
• http://groups.google.com/...
• http://groups.google.com/...
• http://groups.google.com/...
• http://groups.google.com/...
• http://groups.google.com/...

Here is the Gmail is Down page or you can find more info at Gmail Help > Problem Solving. In addition to posting on that last link I sent message to the Gmail team through and online form. I got an unhelpful auto-responder message:

Hello,Thanks for your report. We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience...

Edit- 12:55pm - There are reports on the Gmail is Down board that Gmail for Google Apps Premium is also down for some people! I have not been able to confirm this. Also, at 11:44am I got an email from Google saying:

Thank you for your report. We are aware of this problem, and our engineers are 
working diligently to find a solution. We apologize for any inconvenience this 
issue may have caused.

Sincerely,
The Google Team

So looks like they are working on it... I was able to login to Gmail using mail.google.com/mail/h/ for about 2 minutes and I saw that my mail was there along with some new items. I was unable to view any of the items or my drafts. All my other Google services are unaffected. Edit- 1:05pm- Finally, Google speaks...

Hi all,

We are aware of the issues a small sub-set of our users are
experiencing when logging in and sending messages. Rest assured that
our engineering team is working diligently to resolve these errors. We
appreciate your patience.

Please refer back to this thread for updates as they become available.

Thanks,
Gmail Guide

Edit- 3:29pm- No progress. The Gmail Guide has only posted once again on the Google is Down board, though the topic is up to 192 posts. A lot of people are really unhappy, and it's showing on the discussion board. It looks like the issue is starting to get some recognitition in the blogosphere: here, here, LAist, and even on Digg. Most people are reporting the issue starting at about the same time- around 1am EST last night, give or take an hour- though most did not realize until this morning. Edit- 4:36pm- After reading a nother of reports on the semi-official thread, it looks like Gmail is back up, at least partially. I tried and got a 767 error and then cleared my cache and noticed my Google Personalized Homepage Gmail widget worked! I tried Gmail again... success! I have not received any of my mail from today, but it seems like it is on the way and will be delivered soon. The last two pieces of mail I got were received at 2am and then I got one at 7:04am, but nothing until then. I just emailed my server from the Gmail account (normally takes just a few seconds) and it worked perfectly. Incoming email is still delayed and overall operation is slow and spotty. One error I noticed is that outgoing mail is sent but not added to the sent box, at least not yet. Edit- 9:21am Day Two- Some time between about 1am and 9am all my late email arrived. Gmail is back to operating at 100%. Some explanation would be nice... At 7pm Google Guide reported that "This issue should now be resolved. However, some users may continue to experience message delivery delays as the backlog is cleared", that was their last message from what I have found.

I don't know what it is with my Gmail account, but I have not been able to access it for a few hours now. Well, to be more accurate, I could not access it last night, went to sleep, and now still can't access it. What's odd is that I could not access Gmail for a few hours just about a month ago. The common advice is to: - clear browser cache - restart browser - attempt to login to gmail at alternate addresses, namely and As of right now none of these are working for me, but I tried a different account on my computer and that worked fine. I can still access all my other Google services (Reader, etc.) but no mail. This is insanely frustrating especially since there is no where to turn for support.

Google's big news today ended up being a premier version of Google Apps. Now, for $50/user/month year businesses can use Google Apps with a number of upgrades over the free versions, including 10GB of Gmail storage, 99.9% uptime guaranteed, phone support, and advertising-free operation. Just about everyone with a blog had something to say about this, though many of them were just pointing out how many other people commented on it. The Basics:

• Boston.com
• Techmeme
• Information Week
• NY Times

The Bloggers:

• Forrester
• Office Evo
• Infections Greed
• Techcrunch
• SEO Land
• Gigaom
• Gartenblog

Noteworthy:

• Read/Write - no presentation app?
• ZDnet- looking at the fine print
• Zoho - eek! actually we are not worried just yet

All told, Google's Apps looks like a pretty nice package. It is lacking in a number of areas and has a few scary contractual terms, but all in all it looks like a good package. The $50 price per user makes it much more affordable then Microsoft Office, especially factoring in a 2007 upgrade, but the users will have to have an internet connection in order to access their apps and stored data. So there are tradeoffs, but in this time of non-stop connection, it is looking like a pretty solid deal, especially for small business users.

I just got finished reading a seemingly boring article at the Houston Chronical's Chron.com focused on pointing out how Gmail is now open to everyone. If you keep on web going's on, this is something you already heard, though I, like many other people was surprised that this move did not happen at the same time Gmail was moved out of beta. Anyway, the more interesting part of the article came in this quote (emphasis added):

Now that Google has more computing muscle, Brin said the company will start selling additional storage capacity to e-mail users with extraordinary needs. Google still hasn't figured out the specifics, but Brin indicated the e-mail storage and fees to be introduced later this year would be similar to Google's photo-hosting service that charges $25 annually for 6.25 gigabytes and $500 annually for 250 gigabytes.

Well, it looks like someone at Google has been listening to the users. While for the vast majority of users the 2.8 or so gigabytes is more than they will ever need, power users, some of which have been using Gmail for years, are in need of space. With no way increase their limit, up to this point they have been forced to search through their mail and delete items (only those with attachments would have any impact), something which goes against the entire idea of Gmail. After all, the plan was to never again have to delete a piece of mail. Picasa's pricing currently runs at:

• 6.25GB ($25 USD per year)
• 25GB ($100 USD per year)
• 100GB ($250 USD per year)
• 250GB ($500 USD per year)

This means that we can expect Gmail to be pretty affordable. If people are barely getting by with 2.8GB, the prospect of more than doubling their storage for just $25 a year should be an easy sell. I would imagine that upgrade's to Gmail's storage capacity will be available in more than four increments, maybe even by the gigabyte considering how text and attachments tend to accumulate a lot slower than photos. Personally I have been with Gmail since June 2004, which was on the early side, and while it is my primary personal email address, I don't use it for work, as many people do. I have done some house cleaning here and there (deleting a few of the oldest/lartgest attachments) and have kept my account at a slim 314 MB (11%) of my 2817 MB. The space issue is not one that applies to me, but the prospect of paying for Gmail is something I am more than a bit interested in- not because I think Google needs my money, but by paying for the service there would have to be some guarantee behind what you are paying for, whereas with a free service if you account just stops working one day you are out of luck. Paying for more storage would not do the trick in this instance, by some for of Pro account would.

I went out for a few minutes and went I got home and I tried to check my mail, this is what I got. This was at 8:52PM EST, though I have no idea when it started. Basically I can't get to the login screen and am stuck with this rather unhelpful message.

The full message reads:

Server Error We're sorry, but Gmail is temporarily unavailable. We're currently working to fix the problem -- please try logging in to your account in a few minutes.

So all we, the users, know is that something is wrong and people are working on fixing the problem. Uh, super...

Personally I have not backed up my Gmail for about 10 days, so am feeling kind of dumb. I am confident that everything will be fixed in a timely manner, but this is not very reassuring. Edit: OK, it looks like this is localized to my account and has not affected a few other people who I have asked. It is 9:24PM and I still can't get on. I am feeling a bit less confident than before, though I can still access other services, like Calendar, Reader, and Groups (etc.) Edit 2: Looking for help. Edit 3: 9:45PM EST it works again. Crisis averted.

OK, I'll admit it: I rely on Gmail for my personal mail. Yes, I have a server and a few other hosting accounts, but I really like Gmail. I originally went there for the great design and usability, but stayed, in part, because of the warm and fuzzy feeling I get when I remember Google is protecting my data. I mean, it's Google, the company whose shares sell for $500 and could (allegedly) lose entire data centers without any interruption of service, what could go wrong? Well, there have been a few incidents lately. And some accounts were, uh, deleted. But everything is better, right? Well, most of the issues have been addressed very quickly, but it seems like everything is not perfect. Today Gmail was down for some time, according to a few different sources. Personally I did not experience any outage, but this is not confidence inspiring. I did notice that Google Calendar was loading extremely slowly all evening, something else which is problematic. I can't really say whether Gmail went down for me or not because I have been keeping myself logged out whenever I am not using it. Normally Gmail is always open in a browser window so I can check it frequently, but after reading about more security problems, including another XSS issue, I have put Gmail on lockdown. I won't lie, this is a major hassle, because it also keeps me logged out of Calendar and Reader, so I have to log in an out of all three all day long. By using a single password for all my dealings with Google I feel like any vulnerability would be catastrophic, especially once you factor in things like Mail Catcher (which I still don't use) and Google for Domains (also which I don't use). Yes, I being somewhat alarmist- the last security problem only allowed people to grab a list of contacts- but in issues like this I always fear for the worst. Plus, the ZDnet blog did say that the XSS maneuver can "can steal cookies and hijack your Google account" so maybe there is some cause for concern. I still back up my Gmail account about once a week to my local system, and despite my fears I haven't seen any reason to switch to another provider. I am going to keep a close eye on it and I think the people at Google realize that this is an important enough product that they have to keep it running well, so I am hoping for the best. I can't wait for a non-free version, so we can have a few additional features and assurances.

OK, I'll admit it: I rely on Gmail for my personal mail. Yes, I have a server and a few other hosting accounts, but I really like Gmail. I originally went there for the great design and usability, but stayed, in part, because of the warm and fuzzy feeling I get when I remember Google is protecting my data. I mean, it's Google, the company whose shares sell for $500 and could (allegedly) lose entire data centers without any interruption of service, what could go wrong? Well, there have been a few incidents lately. And some accounts were, uh, deleted. But everything is better, right? Well, most of the issues have been addressed very quickly, but it seems like everything is not perfect. Today Gmail was down for some time, according to a few different sources. Personally I did not experience any outage, but this is not confidence inspiring. I did notice that Google Calendar was loading extremely slowly all evening, something else which is problematic. I can't really say whether Gmail went down for me or not because I have been keeping myself logged out whenever I am not using it. Normally Gmail is always open in a browser window so I can check it frequently, but after reading about more security problems, including another XSS issue, I have put Gmail on lockdown. I won't lie, this is a major hassle, because it also keeps me logged out of Calendar and Reader, so I have to log in an out of all three all day long. By using a single password for all my dealings with Google I feel like any vulnerability would be catastrophic, especially once you factor in things like Mail Catcher (which I still don't use) and Google for Domains (also which I don't use). Yes, I being somewhat alarmist- the last security problem only allowed people to grab a list of contacts- but in issues like this I always fear for the worst. Plus, the ZDnet blog did say that the XSS maneuver can "can steal cookies and hijack your Google account" so maybe there is some cause for concern. I still back up my Gmail account about once a week to my local system, and despite my fears I haven't seen any reason to switch to another provider. I am going to keep a close eye on it and I think the people at Google realize that this is an important enough product that they have to keep it running well, so I am hoping for the best. I can't wait for a non-free version, so we can have a few additional features and assurances.

Happy new year! There is not too much to say right now, in the early hours of the new year, but I wanted to kick things off anyway and get the first post out of the way. Here are some noteworthy links you may have missed while partying last night.

• Finding the Next Google at NYtimes
• Windows Screwup Forces Ubuntu Shift
• Google ends 2006 with a hiccup
• Another Gmail Problem? (another link)
• Raw Sugar Dead- Digg Next?

I looks like the Gmail problem has been fixed, but by this point many people's confidence has probably been shaken. This and the other issue probably had no effect on people that don't follow tech new, but web professional and IT deptartments who are considering moving to Gmail are definitely going to be put off by this news. Personally all this negative press has made me start to backup my Gmail and reconsider depending on it so heavily, despite over two years of perfect service.

Happy new year! There is not too much to say right now, in the early hours of the new year, but I wanted to kick things off anyway and get the first post out of the way. Here are some noteworthy links you may have missed while partying last night.

• Finding the Next Google at NYtimes
• Windows Screwup Forces Ubuntu Shift
• Google ends 2006 with a hiccup
• Another Gmail Problem? (another link)
• Raw Sugar Dead- Digg Next?

I looks like the Gmail problem has been fixed, but by this point many people's confidence has probably been shaken. This and the other issue probably had no effect on people that don't follow tech new, but web professional and IT deptartments who are considering moving to Gmail are definitely going to be put off by this news. Personally all this negative press has made me start to backup my Gmail and reconsider depending on it so heavily, despite over two years of perfect service.

Today there were a number of very troubling posts concerning Google's Gmail webmail service. Both TechCrunch and Gigaom reported how a number of Gmail accounts have been deleted with no hope of restoration. As a Gmail fan and someone who relies on it for personal email this is more than a bit troubling. The word on the street is that a number of email accounts (about 60) were removed and that it is Google's policy not to restore deleted accounts. There is no word on why this happened, but some people blame it on a Firefox 2.0 error, and ultimately it just means that a few people are out of luck and a lot of people are concerned. A Google rep was nice enough to email TechCrunch saying how many accounts were affected and that they did whatever they could to remedy the situation for those users. I rely heavily on Gmail and generally see it as a very secure communications tool. My reasoning has always been that despite having my own server the chance of something going wrong with Google's mail, the same one they use for their corporate communications, is relatively small. I know people are going to scoff at this and say to never trust your email to anyone else or the anyone who does not backup their email locally is stupid, but many people use Gmail as their backup. Still others use Gmail for their domain or have added other accounts to their Gmail (Mail Fetcher), both programs that I access to and have been considering. It goes without saying that these people, myself included, are more than a bit disturbed by what was revealed today. The question that immediately comes to mind is- what to do for now? I would say that for the time being continue using Gmail normally and make sure your password/security practices are as strong as possible. Also, using a email client like Thunderbird or Outlook, back up your email using POP. I just set this up recently and it is a tedious process, but it does offer some piece of mind. Google seems to have limited each download to about 380-500 emails at a time (this seems to be restriction to download size) so it has been taking me a long time to get through all that email, but it's worth it. It turns out that I have been using Gmail since 6/17/04, so that is a lot downloading even with my occasional pruning and mass spam deletions... What can Google do to help with these problems? It seems that they have done what they can with the current situation, but looking past that there are still things that will help make Gmail more useful and more reliable. First of all, make it official! Gmail is still in beta after all this time and despite its being a huge success. Google really needs to get on this as soon as possible. Next they should offer some sort of backup/export tool in which email can be handed off to a client, backup server, or local machine without problems or dealing with POP. Next offer a paid service in which people that rely on Gmail could have some reassurances along with tech support and the option for more (hopefully unlimited) storage. There are a lot of other things people asking for, like IMAP support, in-line spell checking, an offline client, some way to import mail, page customization, and more, but those mentioned before are the deal breakers. This situation has probably shaken a lot of people's faith in Gmail, and rightfully so because the loss of an email account that is connected to so many things (bank account, credit cards, retailers, work, etc) along with the stored email associated with it can be a major ordeal. Personally I will be sticking with Gmail though I will be backing up periodically, and I will definitely be reconsidering consolidating my work emails with my Gmail account.