Gmail for the People

After a lot of humming I finally got my Google Gmail beta account. I also have invitations to give away. So, if you are interested in beta testing Gmail, click on the image to the right. Please note: If you are a member of our staff, or an anonymous reader who belongs to Blogger, first check your Blogger dashboard. If this link appears you will get Gmail much faster.

So far, I love Gmail. It seems to organize your email in such a clear way, giving you many options to categorize and archive your mail. Don't worry about the element of storage space. You have 1000 megabytes to play with. This should last you for years before you need to start deleting anything, even spam. This is email without borders. Whatever you want to do with your mail, you can find a way to do it.

Gmail allows you to place a label on every piece of mail so that you can quickly browse every item in that category. If you can't find what you are looking for that way, you can do a Google search of any words or phrases in your mail database to locate the message.



Specific emails of vital importance can be affixed with a gold star so that you can find them quickly. You certainly can delete messages at will. But, Google seems almost offended when you do so saying "Who needs to delete when you have 1000 MB of storage?!"

Start a Data Cloud

Data clouds are sprites of information that users tap into and spread at free will. It can be text, video, audio, or any media. You are not limited by low file transfer sizes to participate in this phenomena.

Future generations will reference Gmail as an entity that changed the structure of electronic communication. Leading email providers, including Yahoo!, are already scrambling to compete, even as Gmail is only in beta.

One element that needs improvement is the address book. You cannot create email groups, that is, lists of contacts who all need to receive bulletins related to the same subject. Let's say you have a business staff and would like to send frequent bulletins to a specific department or list of associates. You would need to cut and paste the email list from earlier bulletins to keep the group in tact. Outlook Express handles this much better. I have yet to see how well Gmail provides 'weapons of mail destruction' to handle SPAM. I'm sure that it will be better than Microsoft, which provides nearly zero protection in its mail clients.

Gmail forces you to think differently about your email. It gives you all of the power, and then takes it a step further. The most intriguing step you must take with Gmail is facing that point of pushing the "archive" button, thus releasing your mail from the inbox and from there on relying on the unique interface to find past items. It's exciting, but a little disorienting.

Some privacy groups are concerned about how Gmail scans your messages to put ads in your email. So far, this hasn't bothered me. It's really no different than how search engines and web pages place ads, except there are no banners or images, only a table on the right with text links to related subjects. No person ever views your mail in this process. It's only a bot doing the work. It is, as far as I'm concerned, the most non-invasive free email service available.

Jim

JFK on War

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind...War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." -John F. Kennedy

The outcry I see against Michael Moore so far shows me that we haven't quite reached JFK's vision. If you believe in these words by JFK, you should see Fahrenheit 9/11. If you don't, you have a much greater need to see it.

Aside from those blindly towing a party line, I see Americans wondering why they were lied to and why this administration is the scarriest ever since Nixon. This movie will answer these questions.

trailer

Peace
Jim

Quotes for Peace

"I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war."

-Cicero

"The way of peace is the way of love. Love is the greatest power on earth. It conquers all things."

-Peace Pilgrim

"The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war."

-Desiderius Erasmus

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."

-Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind...War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."

-John F. Kennedy

"The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The arms race can kill, though the weapons themselves may never be used...by their cost alone, armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve."

-Vatican statement to the U.N., 1976

"War would end if the dead could return."

-Stanley Baldwin

"In separateness lies the world's great misery; in compassion lies the world's true strength."

-Buddha

"It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners."

-Albert Camus

Jim's Top Ten Rip-offs in America

This is not actually a story, but I might do a story on each one.

Jim

#10. Milk

Okay, maybe this is unfair of me to mention because I come from the Dairy State and I think the dairy farmers should get paid fairly. But why did milk suddenly go from $2.09 a gallon (if you know where to shop) to $3.89 a gallon (same store)?! Are the cows on strike? If so, give them what they want and let's get those udders flowing again.

#9. Ring Tones

Now you can buy popular song snippets and download them to your cellular phone so they play when it rings. If you are someone who is doing this, please stop. No one wants to hear your phone ringing to "Err body in da club get tipsy" in video game quality music. You're music already sucks as it is, and this behavior does not help you to personify that image you're going for. You're wasting your money and annoying people.

#8. Dr. Atkins

There's a reason he's dead. You can't eat only protein and fat and be healthy. Bread is good for you. That's why Jesus gave it to people with fish. Everyone is rushing to sell us low carb crap now. The other day I saw a sign at the store advertising diet soda as "low carb friendly!" Diet soda has always been sugar-free. This is not a scientific breakthrough. Please eat balanced meals and exercise.

#7. DSL

DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line. It is the phone company's answer to broadband Internet access. Unfortunately, it is usually only about 10% as fast as cable Internet, but costs almost as much. Since the whole idea of broadband is to give you speed, it hurts my feelings that they even offer this service to people. If you want a fast Internet connection, install a cable modem and share it via a wireless router with everyone within a block of your house. Even with everyone surfing at once, it will still be faster than DSL.

#6. Disney

Walt Disney was a great man and had a great thing going. When he died, greedy corporate executives took over and ruined everything. Now kids in sweatshops in third world countries are getting ten cents an hour to make Mickey Mouse dolls. Every few months they shove a new movie down our throats and completely saturate the market with crap based on the movie: shoes, cereal, fruit snacks, t-shirts, Happy Meal toys, hats, dolls, play sets, trading cards, beverages, candy, etc. Don't forget the DVD! Get it now because soon it will be locked away in the Disney vault for ten years! By the way, my kids cannot live without these things.

#5. Lawyers

Why should it cost so much to work our way through the legal system and protect ourselves? If we are going to have laws and a judicial system, legal information and guidance should be provided free to everyone who needs it. I'm not talking about a public defender who sucks. I'm talking about a quality service to help us through our day-to-day lives so that we know which end is up. Why should the rich be the only ones who use the loopholes? The legal playing field needs to be leveled.

#4. Check 'n' Go

These places prey upon those in a bind. Perhaps someone had some bad luck financially and can't get a loan or even a checking account. So, places like this charge high fees to cash their paychecks. Want a $100 loan? Sure! That will be one thousand % A.P.R. It's called predatory lending, A.K.A. loan sharking. What a rip.

#3. Gasoline

A friend of my dad's once said that if gas ever got up to $1.00 per gallon he would stop driving a car. That was in the 80's. I'm sure he's still driving at $2.39 per gallon. It's time to stop using this type of energy. There is a finite supply and once it's gone, it's gone. Why is alternative energy not a top priority? Remember when people used to drive around in their cars for fun? When was the last time you heard someone say, "Let's just go for a drive?" Now, many of us can barely afford to drive to work.

#2. Parking

Charging people money to park their cars is one of the biggest scams ever and should be banned. City parking tickets are a curse and frequently send people into a downward spiral. People who can't pay lose their vehicle registrations and drivers' licenses because of this, wreaking havoc on their lives. Also, their is no reason why anyone should have to pay $20 to park at a concert, an amusement park, or in a parking structure near where they work. This is usury and needs to be done away with.

#1. The Iraq War

This war has cost us more than anything we have ever bought, not just dollars, but also human lives. Monetarily, we will be paying for it for decades. What's worse is that the majority of Americans were against it from the beginning. When you have a president who is told by his people not to go to war, and instead he takes their money, spends it all on the war, and lies about why he's doing it, it's time for a new president.

Jim

You're welcome to add your own rip-offs.