joella's got GMail!

A few months ago, Google asked me (via Blogger) if I wanted to sign up to the GMail beta. No, I did not, as I had read some bad things about it vis a vis data-mining and ad placement, and I am the sort of person who refuses supermarket loyalty cards on principle because I don't want anyone analysing (for example) my san-pro purchasing patterns and sending me vouchers for new things with wings every 28 days. No sirree. I have read The Handmaid's Tale and I have The Fear.

But three things happened to make me change my mind.

1. I have spent the last three days at the aforementioned Online conference, and I have engaged with new (and newish) technology for the first time in ages. I had already moved to Firefox (of which more another time) but I heard some very good things about GMail. Right, I thought, I'll have some of that.

2. Hotmail is shit. I have a very cool hotmail address because I registered in 1996, just after it launched and before spam (and MSN for that matter) existed. So I remain attached to it, but it's next to useless these days because of the sheer volume of crap that comes in. And I need a reliable personal email address, cos what if I leave my job? And I just don't really like Microsoft.

3. joella has had some good mail recently. Since she launched (over two years ago, which apparently makes me quite a veteran, hooray!) I've been using an old waitrose.com account, but - for excruciatingly boring reasons - I can only receive mail via it these days, I can't send. So if joella did get mail, the reply process was convoluted. Who needs convoluted?

Having resolved to sort this out, I was alarmed to discover that my invitation to GMail no longer existed. Fair enough, I suppose, but *then* I discovered that they are very sought after and lots of people want one. Dammit, I thought, that will teach me not to early-adopt.

But then I discovered GMail Swap ("Because people are nice") -- where those with invites can swap them for things they want, and those without can offer things up. And I was lucky. I found a nice person, and indulged my inner geek just a bit.

So. From now on, you can use joella (dot) blogger (at) gmail (dot) com

Roar!

joella