It seems like every blog author is talking about their experiences with Gmail. Right now I’m using gExodus 0.2 to archive a couple of years worth of mail and it is a most efficient program which I highly recommend. A lot of people are paranoid about their mail being scanned for targeted advertisements, others are freaking out because they think that their mail can never be deleted. Personally, I’m not all that paranoid. If you don’t think that your broadband provider has trails of everything you do and could dig up an e-mail you sent through their server in a heartbeat, you need to think about that too. Aside from one gigabyte of storage, Gmail is fast, the search features are excellent, and it’s bound to get even better once it’s released. Personally, I am happy to have somewhere to put my mail where I don’t have to worry about backing it up and burning it onto CD all the time. I wish this was around when I was an undergrad. It beats the hell out of Penn State’s Webmail.

Thanks to Chris Holland I have a Gmail account. He was nice enough to extend an invite to me and I thank him for that.

My first impression of Gmail is that the interface is so clean. The only image is the Gmail logo. It’s spartan, but that allows it to run fast. A webmail interface built mostly on CSS without the clutter of images and ads that’s UNHEARD OF! Yeah Gmail is currently running at lightning speeds. Let’s hope its infrastructure will be able to handle the influx of the rest of the world when it goes public. The other cool thing is the keyboard shortcuts. Ironically, I just started playing Legend of the Green Dragon (web based MUD) and that also uses keyboard shortcuts which I have become very fond of. At any rate, Gmail is definitely worth checking out. Yahoo and Hotmail will not be able to compete with 1GB of space. If they try to, their already slow interfaces full of ads will only get bogged to hell. Let’s hope Gmail takes out its competition swiftly.

So there’s all this madness about getting Gmail accounts right now because they are invite only. My boyfriend went begging for an invite last night and and got one. I woke up this morning to email from him - my first email from anyone on Gmail ironically. I’m jealous of course because by the time I get one, my email alias will be like 40 characters long (mostly numbers) reminiscent of my most recent Yahoo! endeavor. I’m sure I’ll eventually get a Gmail account and it will be wonderful, like I’ve died and gone to webmail heaven, but I can wait. There’s no point in prostrating myself in front of a bunch of geeks that will most likely berate me before they send me an invite. I’ll just be patient and wait.

Hot on the tail of Firefox, Thunderbird 0.7 was released today with significant improvements. It’s faster, a little bit sleeker and very much in alignment with Firefox development. When Watch out cause it might eat your profile, but if you’re an IMAP kinda girl like me, you’ll be all good. All of you people out there stuck with POP mailboxes should be shopping around for IMAP mail anyway.

When these two apps hit 1.0, they’re going to be major players. I know on the Mac with Safari being slower than a hot afternoon at Shady Pines, Firefox is poised to make a big impression. We’ll see what happens.

Anyway, tell me what Mail clients you use! I am interested in seeing how many of you guys are going to hold onto Mail.app with the grip of death even as other e-mail readers continue to leave it in the dust.

I just installed it and I’m excited about the speed. It’s running a lot faster than 0.8 but that could also be because I dumped my old profile and all the old settings and started over. I’ts a lot cleaner and Tabbedbrowser Extensions and Adblock both seem to work quite well. I’m in desperate need of new OS X themes though I’m getting a little sick of Apollo. We’ll see. Suggest a theme and I’ll try it out!

So I’ve been using Firefox for a while now (almost 2 months), and I’m impressed. This is coming from someone who used Safari almost exclusively since it was available and barked at anyone who tried to tell her anything bad about it. Firefox, at this point in its development, is a more sensible browser than Safari. Note that I didn’t say it was a better browser. Firefox is a great browser for people who like to tinker. If you’re not scared to get your hands a little dirty, install some extensions, play with themes, and do a little reading to see what works and what doesn’t, Firefox is the way to go. Some people are content to use whatever browser they download or whatever comes with their system as is. If you’re one of those people, you can stop reading now. Cool things about Firefox: * You can install extensions by clicking on web links for them * There are a lot of themes (but make sure they work on Firefox 0.8 for your OS before you install them * There are TONS of sensible extensions that make your browsing very slick * It’s available for Linux, Windows, and OS X; one browser to bind them * It’s quick like a bunny - no joke * You can add multiple search engines to the search box: Google, Froogle, Amazon, Wikipedia, and IMDB are just a few of my engines * The whole browser is themed in CSS: if you can’t find a theme you like, make your own Currently I am running the Apollo theme done by Aaron Spuler which some people are delighted about. I am also running the Tabbed Browser Extension which allows me to open links from other programs and new page links in tabs in my existing browser window. Today I also picked up Adblock which strips out 95% of the ads on the internet with a little help from the filters on Aaron’s site. With those two extensions, I have a really comfortable surfing experience. I am going to look into other extensions and if I see anything else worthy of mention, it’ll get posted here. Got any extensions you want me to try out? Drop a link in the comments and I’ll check it out.

If you didn’t know it by now, the cowards at Microsoft have decided to drop development of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for the Mac platform. I am grateful that I no longer have to worry how badly IE is going to mess up my next design project, but I’m also pissed off that the giant spineless wonder decided to run at the first sight of competition. Yeah I said it.. Safari scared MS and they packed up their bag of tricks and headed for higher ground. BAH! I was looking forward to a longer battle between IE and Safari for the Mac desktop, but I guess that’ll never happen. I just want to know how many of you people actually still use IE. Isin’t the consensus that it’s not standards compliant, therefore it’s almost impossible to code for both IE and another browser without one of them barfing on your design. Furthermore, there is no tabbed browsing. How do you friggin browse the web without tabs? I, personally, would shoot myself if I was forced to go back to a PC, much less have to use IE as my browser. *GAH* Tell me what browsers you have gotten to love.

Ladies and gentlemen… this is the most exciting news that I’ve had all year. NETSCAPE IS GONNA CALL IT QUITS! YAY FOR OUR TEAM! Once Netscape bows out, then I can REALLY make use of my CSS book for sure!