That Good Night - Internet

6 Free GMail Invites

Tue, 07 Sep 2004 10:01:29 -0700

I know it seems that the GMail invite phenomenon has fizzled out, but in case there were still people interested in having a GMail account with 1 GB of storage space, send me your e-mail address and the first 6 people to do so will get invites.

You don't even have to do a good deed anymore, how about you just write something whimsical in the comment box to amuse me?

New Free GMail Competitor: 1 GB and No Invites Necessary

Wed, 07 Jul 2004 20:56:34 -0700

I learned today of an Israeli company called walla.com which offers free e-mail accounts with the same 1 GB (1000 MB) storage capacity that Google's GMail provides.

For those still looking for GMail accounts who haven't yet secured invites, consider looking at walla.com. I signed up immediately after I heard about this service, and my initial impression is that it is very similar to GMail. It doesn't seem that the advertising is quite as intrusive: ads are provided based on demographic and geographic information that you provide and certain predetermined keywords are highlighted in e-mail text as links to advertisers' sites.

GMail Privacy: Much Ado About Nothing?

Fri, 25 Jun 2004 20:45:55 -0700

I've been using my new GMail account for a little over a week now. I haven't used it for any personal e-mail, but I've used it as the contact address for some deals over Craig's List and other assorted communications.

There's a lot of paranoia about GMail's privacy policies, and it centers mostly around the fact that GMail displays targeted text ads like the ones displayed in the column on the right of this site. A lot of people take this to mean that Google is reading your e-mail to choose the ads. The application that chooses the ads does so in real time based on keywords in whatever page you're viewing. I don't consider this to be problematic at all. They are storing the content of your e-mail anyway, and they're not doing anything with it that any other free web-based e-mail service doesn't do.

GMail, Excite, Yahoo E-Mail Storage

Thu, 24 Jun 2004 20:35:36 -0700

What am I going to do with all of this storage space?

First, my GMail account had 1000MB of storage. Then my Yahoo account went up to 100MB of storage. Now my Excite account is going up to 125MB.

So my first question is, what on earth do I need all of this space for? Especially considering that I have over 200GB of storage space on my computers.

My second question is, how did Excite and Yahoo increase their storage space for each member by 25 times or more so quickly?

Internet Information Evolution

Thu, 17 Jun 2004 08:03:43 -0700

As I read the newspaper on my way into work on the train this morning, I got to thinking about just how much the internet has changed the way in which I process information. Until I was in high school, the only way to find information for a project was to use the library card catalog (which had actual, physical "cards"), or the encyclopedia (or Encarta if the one computer that had it wasn't being used). Searching by "keyword" was just about impossible, and finding the three "required" sources for a project was actually difficult. If I wanted to research something obscure, I might not be able to find any information at all.

Open Source as God: A Religious Thought Exercise

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 15:38:45 -0700

Over at DailyKos, they're starting a new project called the dKosopedia. The project is loosely defined as an "open-source political encyclopedia." As with any other open-source project, members of the community contribute directly to the project. The theory is that the combined skills of thousands or millions of people working in a decentralized fashion can create something far more advanced far more quickly than a single group of people dedicated to the project.

These projects would not be possible without the internet. Instant communication and the ability to transmit huge amounts of data over great distances at great speed allow the huge open-source software projects like Linux OS to be very successful. The dKosopedia is a similar idea to Wikipedia, another open encyclopedia project. These projects represent a step forward for open-source, where the collective knowledge and ability of users is harnessed not to create a specialized software product, but useful information available to everyone.

Berg Beheading Video II

Sun, 16 May 2004 00:18:24 -0700

I checked the statistics of my website today and noticed that I've had a huge spike in traffic over the past few days. In fact, I've been getting roughly 3-4 times as much traffic as usual.

A quick glance at the referral statistics indicated that more than half of the spike was due to Google searches for "nick berg beheading video" and several dozen variations.

As I stated in a previous entry, I decided not to host the video on this site, although I think it's important that it is available.

I guess I underestimated the amount of interest there would be in viewing it. My personal decision to watch it came after several days of heavy consideration, and I only did it to evaluate claims of inconsistencies that I had heard repeated on various other websites.