1. in April 2004, Google announced that it was getting the mail business. Its website, ad-supported service, Gmail, there was much more than the basic search feature to your Inbox. But it offered 1 GB of storage space for the free time period, when the 1/250th that amount was considered a luxury, some observers — including myself — wondering if press release trumpeting the Gmail was the April Fools prank.
Today, when Gmail makes headlines, it is often the service hiccups. Abort modes and slowdowns, typically brief and isolated are feed news and panicky tweets ("is Gmail down all or just me?"). Last month a program error crippled embarrassing information about the service. users% 02 — seriously — 30 000 for five days. When you are on the way in which people are entitled to the goods than Gmail is centered, the small percentage of users still have a lot of problems for the people. (See the video of the top 10 must-try gmail Extras.)
Gmail's biggest challenge is not the reliability of the record, which is still for the most part, replaced the company's e-mail systems known as compared to the pound. It is one of the things, not just quantity. Little by little, 2004: a stripped-down Web mail morphed into the kitchen sink.
Crazy amounts of storage, the focus — currently have 1.8 GB of email and 5.5 GB of space for the spare parts. No longer have any of the basic regulation, the service, even if, as the case may be. Is chockablock properties, options and related tools, some of which are only tangentially related to the email. You can make calls to any landline for free in the USA. And to make video calls. And send text messages or instant messages. You can manage your calendar on the left and a to-do list on the right. The buzz, Twitter-like social network, which was briefly caused controversy last year before the sinking largely unnoticed Gmail gumbo will be mentioned?
Google Gmail engineer, invented his time and the current Incarnation still feel it Turn "geeks built yourself. More than 50 properties are located in the Labs section in the data warehouse, an optional, experimental tools, which is an interesting part of the developers of the minds of the peephole. Labs features are, for example, a simple and useful, such as extra keyboard shortcuts and the ability to view messages that contain photos on Flickr. The others are a tad graphics programs, such as don't forget Bob, which searches for and propose to the other recipients of the message, you may want to add to the list. And a few have even the police, such as mail goggles, which forces you to perform simple mathematical problems before allowing the sending of email in the late night weekend — the certainty, partied too warmly and sending the message to you later regret.
Use the and properties, such as a number of Labs, but always leaves me exploring the tenders wishing that the Gmail team spent less time päihität of projects and more time unchanged. For example, the Gmail interface is cacophony links, buttons, menus, and lists, with none of the Google.com home page streamlined discipline. For years the Inbox allows you to read messages in plain called the discussions, which people tended adore or else threaded view. Recently, it began to switch to normal view, on the other hand, the non-threaded, but still does not offer the option that is best suited for my particular brain: you use the reverse-chronological order sorted discussions, such as your Inbox, in fact. (By arranging them in the top of your Gmail messages, the oldest requires unnecessary scrolling to see the recent items.) (For more information about Google's best iPhone apps of 2011 50 list time: n.)
Every so often Get fed with Gmail and flee. Sometimes, to escape the big-name competitor than Microsoft recently spruced up Hotmail and sometimes the Spunky upstart like Threadsy. (Thanks to Gmail's IMAP e-mail support, it is possible to dispose of the option and take your email address and mail to you.) I have so far always been skulking back. All of Gmail's shortcomings, it is the other e-mail programs that Churchill said democracy is the same relationship to other forms of Government: it is the worst of all but one of the other.
The problem is not Gmail, but the e-mail message. As a programmer, Ray Tomlinson invented in 1971, when the Internet was a smattering of the Government of the people and the training of researchers. E-mail is abused today as much as it is used in junk e-mail senders, Marketers, uncles and other Nutty that bombard our inboxes. Once in the form of a communication on the unimaginably fast it feel so as not to compromise the plodding and younger, sprightlier options such as Twitter, Facebook messages and text messages. Perhaps that explains why young people are not all that joins it to the (Recently said, the time to study the 12-and 17-year-olds used the number by using the Web mail services such as Gmail to your computers running validly licensed copies of the decreased 48% per year).
In short, the reinvention of e-mail is ripe. Google has its share of a priority for the Inbox folder, which will monitor your Gmail mailboxes, you can view the messages with, and try to push to the top of the one you want to read immediately. To me, the choice seemed hopelessly crude petroleum, and confusing at first. But when we figured each other out, it became the compelling reason closed with Gmail instead leave the snit. (See the promises and problems of the cloud computing.)
Google, the most radical rethinking of e-mail messages is not displayed within Gmail, however — it was a Wave, a stand-alone service, the company announced in 2009. Wave set to improve the mail as much as to replace the e-mail, instant messaging, word processing and file sharing, and it was a big ideas include:. (When you have finished writing your message, the client could see the contacts it character by character typos and all.)
The company unveiled the Wave with the hoopla, which may or may not be impressed, even Steve Jobs, bring into force the laws, regulations and opened up the public beta testing. And then ... Google pulled the plug after the service was an immediate hit in only a few months. It was a little as if Ray Tomlinson was given in this document to the e-mail, in 1972.
I hope that the Wave wipeout is not gone Google too timid. Reinventing the mail may be a daunting proposition, but reinventing only one e-mail service — Gmail — is a great start. And in this case, it might be the best way to bring back any of the some of the minimalist thinking that helped make Gmail such miracle back in 2004.
Technologizer, which he founded in 2008 after almost two decades as a tech journalist; personal technology blogs on Twitter he's @ McCracken harrymccracken. His column, also called technologizer, appears every Thursday, Msnbc.com.
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