Of gmail and e-mail wars...

For those who still do not have gmail, there is some good news. I got a very early invite to gmail thanks to this blog. Of late I find that google is allowing me to invite more and more people to open an account with gmail. So much so that, I am beginning to have spare invites for more than a day before someone asks me for an account. I am not going to review gmail because a lot has been written about it, but I can certainly say that it has spoilt me from someone who organized my mail diligently to someone who doesnt care about the tons of email I get. I am beginning to search for the mail I want. I don't like it, but I am addicted to it already.

Talking about e-mail wars, just read that yahoo is planning to offer 100 MB free, going up to 2 GB for paid users. This is getting interesting. But, my hunch is that, this is not all about space. One look at anyone who has used gmail and you will notice that this is more about the email experience than anything else. What gmail is attempting to do is to change your email habits that you have developed over years. I for example have always been diligent enough to classify my e-mail in folders, delete unwanted email on the spot, keep a clean trash folder every week and even classify my sent items. Whenever I have used outlook, my .pst file has never ever crossed 300 MB. But, gmail is attempting something different. From what I was, I now have forgotten to delete my email. I delete irrelevant conversations (that's how ur mail is automatically classified by gmail) once in a while, but again, it goes into trash and I don't clean my trash folder. In fact, I search through it for some mail I may have deleted. There have been times in previous life when I have mistakenly deleted important mail in my eagerness to maintain my email, never to be able to recover them. But now, I am comfortable with having it all in my trash, so that even if by mistake, I deleted an important mail, "I can search through the rubble" so to say.

To be frank, it took time for my habits to change. In fact, when I started using gmail, I continued to follow my old habits, using a miniscule portion of my 1GB. Gradually, the laziness (which is why I don't like this transition) caught up with me. Gmail was involved in the process. Try cleaning your trash and it politely reminds you that you don't need to, that you have 1 GB space and that you can google search through your email! Gmail nudges you, slowly but surely, to change your habits, become lazy, don't care about organizing your email, but just google search when u need it and carry on doing more productive(?) work. It helps the process by automatically classifying your email into conversations. So when I search for an email, the whole thread is thrown up automatically. I like that! Which is why I changed. I still don't know if that's good, for I am hardly organized about other things in life! :)

Gmail has helped since I joined verizon as I have been busy with work and so, the little spare time has helped. Shifting gears (reminds me, schumi won AGAIN!), talking about work, its getting interesting and intriguing. Interesting as far as the technology goes, intriguing as far as the people management and group dynamics go. I realize that I have a long way to go...