Doing It All Online - Part 2
Posted: 12.08.2005
By:
Derek ColemanGmail - The Outlook Replacement... It seems Google believes that you should never have to delete email and you should always be able to find the message you want. Using their powerful search engine, you are able to find mail without worrying about organizing your mail. With the ever growing storage you get (2.6GB and counting), you never have to throw away old mail. The interface is easy to use and has a pretty shallow learning curve to get you going. I find interesting features of Gmail even to this day. As my mailbox grows, Gmail seems to almost adapt to the change in my habits of using it. It's almost creepy how it finds just what I am looking for when searching for a message. Yep, Gmail has just about eclipsed my nearly abandoned Outlook accounts. Migration of my enormous address book went smooth and I love the fact that it has a built in spam filter and the new virus scanner. I used to hate all the spam I would get in my Outlook inbox every day. Now, I get less spam and the only spam I do get is new and once I report it as spam I never see anything close to it ever again. Now that Google Talk works with Gmail to notify users of new messages and they introduced "Web Clips", which allows you to view your RSS feeds right inside Gmail, I don't see a reason to turn back. It seems like they're adding new features every day!
How I Use It... I don't think I could ever imagine being able to store large files using email, or using Gmail's rich text formatting to start a report or essay, and I can't tell you how many times the auto save and draft features saved my work from disaster. I have used it as a notepad while programing and website design. I use it to store my ever growing bookmarks (alphabetical because I can). I store articles from the web for later reads. I have even stored several photos to view while out of town and away from my main PC. I use it regularly as an alternative to chat clients due to it's awesome conversation view. It is so browser compatible that it works on a PSP! I believe in five years just like five years before now, we will see Gmail users doing things with the service that we could never have imagined.
What's Next From Google?... So, what else can Gmail offer? So many ideas, so little time. I would like to see Google add a calendar to the service in the near future as well as incorporate Google Talk more into the service. For instance maybe the ability to click a button that allows other people to see that you are able to use the voice features of Google Talk. I see Google Maps some day becoming a large part of any Google formula in the future. Something like a mesh of Gmail+Google Maps+Google Calendar+Google Talk would be very interesting to see brought to light. One other idea that seems bizarre but could work would be to incorporate Google Video into Gmail. Maybe create the ultimate Skype killer with the combination of email, video, voice, calendar, and maps all with the power of its search engine! The future is wide open to the development of this wonderful and extremely useful application. And while my test computer has less than 400MB of hard drive space left, my Gmail's 2.??GB space continues to grow even when I sleep.