Everyone knows I don’t need another email address. I have two domain names (and about 8 email addresses I check daily) and a @yahoo account. So why would I consider getting a gmail account?
Well, I thought about that for a long time before picking up an account (and yes, I had an invite I sat on for almost a week). I don’t need a new email account. I like the ones I have. But that said, I’d read about this thing for gmail that caught my net-geek eye. Wil Wheaton (yes, that guy, Aqualad) has a blog I read fairly regularly. I like him, he sounds like the sort of guy I’d sit and drink vodka with while he had a beer and we made fun of stupid people.
Okay, when I was in elementary school I had a crush on him, but Wil, don’t worry! I then saw Aliens in the theater and Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley changed my life!
But I digress.
The inimitable Mr. Wheaton helped out a friend of his to make http://gmail4troops.com. I’m a touch unclear on if Drew (said friend) made the site and Wil pimped it, or if Wil actually helped out with code etc. Suffice to say, on Wil Wheaton’s blog the guy mentions that we should give our gmail invites to service folk.
At this point, I should explain what Gmail is. It’s Google’s free email service, with 1G of storage. 1G = One Gig = 1000 MB. My hard drive, at home, is 20 G with an 80 G backup (don’t ask why that worked out backwards, but I also store a backup of Ipstenit’s computer). My work computer is 40 Gigs (I’m using 19, which surprised me…). I’m just trying to give you a size ref here. A gig is huge. Yahoo and Hotmail offer far less (currently around 100 MB for Yahoo! and 5MB for Hotmail). Those two emails get a lot of spam, too, so you end up taking up more space than you want.
But as with all ‘new’ email services, the big thing is the name. Yes, I’m ipstenu there, you can email me if you want, but you may as well email me here. With Hotmail, I’d have to be ipstenu### or some such (which does make me wonder who the other ipstenu are out there). Yahoo, again, I have the logical email handle. Gmail as well. So other than getting the name you want, the fun is the size.
This is especially important to troops. They get a .mil account, but it’s limited by space and it’s hard to save things on there. Like an email of a MOV file of a baby’s first steps. Or pictures of the wedding you missed.
See for folks like me, life goes on. We’re not ‘away,’ and people can find us easily. But for people who pay for my freedom with their blood, well, a fucking email account where they can keep their loved ones messages is the least I can do. I’m growing my hair out for Locks of Love, I can give email.
So I picked up the gmail account, and quickly decided that I’d have to use it to get invites. Logic, there. First I signed up all my online message boards to that account. Rarely do I make my email public, but that was a start for traffic. Then I switched over my lesser used email groups (Yahoo!Groups) to send to gmail, so I didn’t have to check on the online interface so often. And then I waited. I got two invites and sent one off to gmail4troops (still waiting to hear back) and then I invited a co-worker to join.
Suddenly it flowed in. I had 10 invites, and now I’m down to much less since I invited a couple friends and a lot more troops. I even posted on http://gmailforthetroops.com so other troops from non-US nations could get them.
All that said, the kindness factor of ‘Oh, here’s an email so you can see pictures’ is not really why I did it. I’m a techie. A geek. A nerd. Don’t worry, we’re still in. But having been dinged once for sending jokes on my office email, I felt pain with the folks who can’t access their personal email from overseas, or who don’t have a personal email.
You have to remember that a .mil email is like my company’s email account. Don’t use it for anything but work, or you can get fired. End of story. Like letters, emails sent via .mil are always read before they are sent out, and little things can get them erased instead of sent out. It’s even against the law to send cybersex comments to a loved one in the US army. Not that gmail will solve all of that. All computer transmissions are regularly screened for operational information, so only a great big loser would email her lover to say ‘I’m going to bed early cause we’re invading
Sadly, I’m sure many free email places will be blocked. My office is going through a round of what to block, again, and Yahoo!Groups got tagged, as did a couple other sites I adore reading (though it’s comforting to know I’m not the only person who reads TWoP).
If you’re in the military and you’d like a gmail account, check out a couple places:
http://gmailforthetroops.com – you have to sign up, but people list how many gmail invites they have
http://www.isipp.com/gmail4troops/servicemembers.php – to request a gmail account. I’ve donated a few that way.