I know about GMail Swap, but that seems lame. I've got two invitations left. Anybody want a GMail account?

In short, why I love my GMail:

- I've .forwarded all of my e-mail there as well as keeping it at home. When I'm on the road, GMail is significantly faster and easier to use than IMAP. It comes up faster. The GUI is actually an elaborate JavaScript thing, complete with keyboard shortcuts. Everything about it is fast.

- They support SSL. In normal usage, only your password is sent over SSL, but if you put https in front of the URL, you get the whole thing over SSL -- nobody's going to watch your session if you're using a wireless network.

- Search is fast. Really fast.

- The advertisements are so unobtrusive that I generally never even notice them.

My only gripes with GMail:

- The spam filtering could be better, although you can "report" spam quickly and it immediately disappears.

- My T-Mobile cel phone, when acting as my ISP, seems to not allow any connections over SSL. I suspect they just block port 443 or something. The result is that I can only get into GMail if I already have the appropriate cookie, and obviously have to do it in plaintext.

I would certainly appreciate one.

I'd like to try it out if you have another invitation.

Thanks

me me me

add my name to the list if one is still available

Invitations are now gone...

I agree. GMail totally kicks butt. The interface is the best I've seen in a web-based e-mail client.

I gave away all my invitations last night, but I expect to be getting more soon. I'll post here if I have any more to give away.

I'd really like an invitation from anyone who's got one. There are at least two account names I want to create in Gmail to make sure that no one else gets them.

[email protected]?

Damn. I've been trying to track down an invite for months. Anyone else that has one palease let me know. I'm sick of Imp. I've been using blogger since they were in a basement in SF and was one of the first to sign up, but damn if i didn't fall into the invite window.

Imp?

Imp

Ahh. Okay. Dibs on an invitation as well. Sucky about how short you can have the name tho.

Speaking of which, anybody want an Orkut invite?

Anybody want a GMail account?

Does a bear.....oh never mind.
Yup, I'd appreciate one if anyone has an invitation to give out.
Thanks.

Damn. I need a sucky job where I can get away with checking the BBS every minute...

/me checks time of posting.

...that isn't also in the last timezone to wake up.

If anyone gets another invite, feel free to sling it my way.

I too have 2 more gmail invites. PM me if anyone still wants/needs one.

You have PM...
-Zeke

Anyone else have extras? I'd love to take one off someone's hands.

Matthew

> I'd love to take one off someone's hands.

Wouldn't we all. Demand is seriously outstripping supply. I wonder how long this invite thing is going to last. I doubt I am going to be able to get one until they quit this and just open it up for everyone.

Anyone gotten an invite and then been unable to get it to work? Mine times out when I try to click on the link.

negative. mine worked properly, as did the first three that i sent to people.

Put me on the list of Gmail wanna-bes.

Ditto, I'd love to try it out

Hugo

Yahoo mail was just upgraded to 100MB. BFD.

As Fark said, Yahoo's also planning to start an online music service offering 1/10th of what the competition is offering.

Thanks, Dan and Tom, I've now got the gmail accounts that I wanted.

Now it would be nice if I could use it. After clearing my cache and cookies, it's back to its old behavior. Any time I surf to http://gmail.google.com , it gets instantly redirected to this:

https://gmail.google.com/?dest=http%3A%2F%2Fgmail.google.com%2Fgmail

And then THAT page fails with "The page cannot be displayed The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings."

If I try to reload THAT, it appends yet another set of "dest=" stuff and the end and does another redirect ad infinitum.

https://gmail.google.com/?dest=http%3A%2F%2Fgmail.google.com%2Fgmail

I just signed into my account using that link. Worked fine. I am using Firefox 0.9.

Crap. Works for me under firefox too. Why would it fail so horribly in IE?

I just cleared my cookies and tried IE. It worked for me without any issue. I have the google toolbar installed, but I don't imagine that would help in any way.

I have also just signed up sucessfully using IE, thanks Heather

Hm. It's a "Cannot find server or DNS error" that I'm getting. Why would I get a DNS error on IE but not on firefox? That makes no sense. They're using the same proxy server, on the same line, using the same DNS and everything. I don't get it.

Going through a proxy by any chance? Check the Firefox proxy settings vs. the IE ones.

Yes, they are both going through the same proxy. In this case, the proxy happens to be the "Ms proxy client" version 2. Which is to say that they both have their proxy settings blank and the OS uses a lower level driver to redirect all non-local TCP communications through the proxy server. All perfectly normal stuff that has worked for years and is in fact working now for every other web site, secure or not.

Also note... I get the exact same behavior on my home computer which is not going through a proxy at all and is just regular dial up.

It's also not the ISP because I'm going through two different ones depending on whether I'm at home or work, and I get the same behavior on both.

Although I think both ISPs use the same DNS server, which is Pacific Bell. But why would one browser fail while another one works, when both are using the same DNS server?

This is so freaking weird.

I've had weird problems comparable to what you're experiencing when surfing GMail from Marriott Courtyard hotels, which use one of these awful transparent proxy services. My guess is that there's some JavaScript inside the GMail client that's trying to work about proxy server weirdness, and that JavaScript works better in Firefox than in IE.

I'd suggest filing it as a bug and seeing how the respond.

Have you tried https://gmail.google.com/ without the querystring? The querystring isn't necessary if you go directly to the ssl address. I wouldn't think that the querystring would be messing you up, but maybe...

My guess is that there's some JavaScript inside the GMail client that's trying to work about proxy server weirdness, and that JavaScript works better in Firefox than in IE.

Then why would I get the same behavior on my dialup line at home which doesn't go through a proxy server at all?

Have you tried https://gmail.google.com/ without the querystring?

That sounded promising. Only I get the same result, cannot find server or DNS error. Darn.

You may not know about your ISP's tranparent proxy.

That sounded promising. Only I get the same result

Dang it... Well, you could of course throw:

216.239.57.107 gmail.google.com

into your hosts file. If you can get to it then it's obviously your dns server you are using that's causing the problem, or the dns server your dns server is using, or the...

Some people on a listserv I belong to said they had trouble accessing Google today. I have a feeling Akamai might be having some regional DNS problems.

I have a feeling Akamai might be having some regional DNS problems.

Maybe more than regional.

But the fact that http://gmail.google.com/ works and https://gmail.google.com/ doesn't points away from DNS and towards some other proxy/firewall/NAT traveshamockery in-between.

Something weird is definitely happening because...

Non-secure links to the invites, such as http://gmail.google.com/gmail/<invite_code_here> work for me in IE

Secure links to the invites, such as https://gmail.google.com/gmail/<invite_code_here> do not work in IE

Neither secure nor unsecure links to any parent page work in IE.

All links work in firefox.

Someone please shoot me now.

Well, you could of course throw:
216.239.57.107 gmail.google.com
into your hosts file. If you can get to it then it's obviously your dns server you are using that's causing the problem, or the dns server your dns server is using, or the...

I get the same result after adding that line to my hosts file.

And I don't think the Akamai problem is related because I've been having this trouble for a week or so. At first I wasn't able to use the invitation Tom had sent me because of it.

Something weird is definitely happening

Have you noticed weird things happening when accessing other areas of Google or other search sites? Or is is just when you try to access Gmail that you have the problems?

It is exclusively with gmail. Every other thing related to web browsing, including other sites which have HTTPS logins and redirects, and including Google itself, works perfectly as it always has.

One thing I've noticed is that IE reports that catch-all DNS/server error for most network related problems -- including the server dropping the connection for unknown reasons. As to why it'd be doing this, I don't know, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a DNS problem.

Thanks for that tip, that's good to know.

Interestingly, the error pops up instantly when it happens, faster than I'd expect for a run of the mill DNS error.

You could snoop the network to see what's really going on.

You know, I've got ethereal sitting here. Why the heck haven't I been using it? *smacks forehead*

I wonder how long this invite thing is going to last.

I imagine they will start by giving the next level of users two invites and then run it out like that so they can keep a lid on the number of users until they are good and ready to open it up.

Gareth

I imagine that, as they add more boxes and scale up the service, they'll keep giving out invitations until the load hits some appropriate level. The "invitation" scheme is a nice way for them to control the number of users and simultaneously create all kinds of great marketing buzz. If you believe that, then they won't go public any time soon because they're already getting all the users they can handle.

I have to say... I just got my Gmail account today and it is COOL! I love it... It doens't really have THAT many more features than other webmail clients I've used, but for some reason it just works better. I really like the interface, too.

Hm. I'm having trouble deciphering the ethereal data. It all seems to be working, it even gets the SSL site certificate, or at least it seems to. It even successfully gets the "favicon.ico" file from the gmail.google.com server and it works. I guess I just don't know what I'm looking for. Anyone with ethereal who knows everything there is to know about the packet sniffing details want to look at the file? It'd have to be someone I trust because my proxy authentication is in that file.

Well, if it's all SSL, then there's not much to be done. Is there no unencrypted way to do it?

But the fact that you're getting real data already means that IE is lying to you.

I'm convinced there's something about the IE settings on this machine that is the cause. Not sure what yet. Because another machine on this same network with IE6 on the same proxy server and everything has no trouble getting to gmail. So it's gotta be something I did. I'm having trouble finding the setting that I might have changed....

It's not any of the security settings because I made sure all my zones were set to default and got the same behavior. I don't think it's any kind of popup blocking software because I turned all of that off and besides it also happens in MyIE2 equally, and I've turned off all its content filtering too.

Very stumped...

Did anyone see this?

Wow!

Well, if they're selling for up to $100 (US) per invite on ebay, I can't imagine anyone wanting to give them away anymore, but if any fellow empegger still wants to share, I'd love to use an invite.

Thanks,

Jim

Well, if they're selling for up to $100 (US) per invite on ebay, I can't imagine anyone wanting to give them away anymore,

$100? For something that will be free to the public soon?

I can't figure out which is more stupid. The person who paid $100 for a gmail account, or beanie baby collectors.

Yeah well with that many pages of listings, I think supply has officially exceeded the demand. My hunch is that a week or two ago very few people were being issued invites, and now everyone and their mother is getting them. I seriously doubt anyone who posts a listing now will get that kind of cash for an invite, but I'm sure a lot of people will take the chance.

The conspiracy theorists among us might think that EBay and Google are in cahoots on this one... Let's create a resource that we have complete control over, get it all over the mainstream press, make people think they're missing out on a gold rush, and then watch the listing and closing fees come in as people try to make a quick buck.

Naaah, couldn't happen...

I saw that too. I can't believe people are so excited about a free web based email service.

Okay, here's something interesting. I just wrote a little program to use the URLDownloadToFile windows API call and get its return error. The error is -2146697208 which translates into hex FFFFFFFF 800C0008.

So I search the MS KB on 800C0008 and get this. Which seems to have no bearing at all on what my problem is. Darn. So I'm still stumped.

or beanie baby collectors

I worked with a woman that I introduced to eBay back in '96. She made over $4k on those dumb things in one bulk sale of all the ones she bought on eBay after she got bored of buying them. She swore off eBay forever after that.

But how much did she spend buying them

Tony,

First, what version IE is it and second, does it have XML capabilities different than the boxes that work?

But how much did she spend buying them

Well she netted 4K, I think it was around $2k spent to obtain them. I think she realized that the chance for a profit margin like that wasn't going to be around long, so she bailed.

First, what version IE is it

does it have XML capabilities different than the boxes that work?

Hm. Interesting question. I notice that "add/remove programs" lists "MSXML 4.0 SP2 Parser and SDK", but I don't understand why I would have a separate XML parser installed on this system since IE6 has XML parsing built-in. I would understand if I were running IE5, but I'm not.

Yowza. I just got five more invitations to hand out. So much for limited supply. Who's left here who still wants a Gmail invitation?

Who's left here who still wants a Gmail invitation?

Me please ;-)

If there are any left going spare after all the earlier requests...

I need to know your present e-mail address. It's not in your profile.

I've sent it in a PM. Thanks.

EDIT: All out of invites for now

Me me me!!!

PM'ed you my address.

Okay, I'm down to one invitation left, and it looks like Rob has another five. Who else still wants one?

Yus please.

[email protected]

Cheers,

Paul.

Okay, my invitations are all gone now. Hopefully, we've got enough people left with invitations to take care of everybody.

Are there any more? I'd love one.

Right. I'm thinking it has to do with the ole IE XML plug-in that was in use before XML parsing was added to IE.

You've had that machine for a while so the XML parser is probably legacy at this point. Try getting rid of it.

I'm thinking it has to do with the ole IE XML plug-in that was in use before XML parsing was added to IE.

Except I don't have that plugin on my work system, and I get the same behavior at work. Or, at least, that plug-in isn't listed in Add/Remove programs on my work system. And for that matter, I don't know what it's doing on my home system because I'm sure I built that home system (fresh-installed Win2K) post-IE6 and wouldn't have needed to install it.

Also, when I use the API call "URLDownloadToFile" which should just grab whatever's at a given URL and save that to a file (no parsing or redirecting), I get an error return instantly (the one I listed above), without any parsing going on.

Seems the only common thread to all the problems is....well....you

Oh, that point hasn't been lost on me. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what exactly I do to all of my systems that could cause this. I'm currently working on setting up my test box with a fresh install of Win2K so that I can start adding crap and tweaking it to resemble my current system, and finding out at which point it breaks.

Perhaps bots aren't allowed to use GMail . . .

Argh, bot-detector code. Must circumvent...

I've got 3 to give away. First 3 people to PM me get them...

Edit: 0 Left

Anyone know of anyplace on a windows system besides the HOSTS file that could screw up DNS resolution of a given address? For instance, do Windows PCs have any sort of local DNS caching?

Wow, they just gave me five more invitations. Send me PMs or whatever.

"ipconfig /flushdns" will flush the DNS resolver cache. I doubt it will fix the problem you're having though.

Correct, didn't solve the problem, but thanks for that reminder (I'd forgotten that command).

Me!

Wow, they just gave me five more invitations. Send me PMs or whatever.

You've got PM!

Anyone got anymore?
I want one please!
my email
jaidev AT paradise DOT net DOT nz

This is not directed at any one here in particular.

But I'm obviously missing a key point or something.

Why the fanatical mania to get gmail accounts???

Is it merely to ensure you get a good choice of email name there?
Or what?

I can think of lots of reasons NOT to have all of my email stored forever by one of the internet's largest portals: passwords, creditcard info, account information, paypal transactions etc.. all pass through my email semi-regularly, and I am unwilling to entrust long term storage of such to anyone outside of my home office here.

So.. like I said, I'm missing the point. What is it?

Cheers

Why the fanatical mania to get gmail accounts???

Yeah. What he said. What is the attraction?

What's the attraction? In short:

- It's the best web-mail interface out there, significantly faster and more usable than any IMAP front-end, and they even support SSL.

- Yes, I'm hesitant to trust Google with all my private e-mail, but I trust them more than I trust Microsoft, Yahoo, or anybody else. That said, if Google were to license GMail as an intranet appliance that you could run internally, much the same as their search appliance, then I'd be harassing our admins to license it yesterday.

- Did I mention how fast GMail is? Several of our students here have made GMail their exclusive e-mail client.

Oh, and I'm out of invitations again...

i got one early just to stake out my piece of namespace

A few reasons I can think of....

- Getting a good email address is part of it. People see Gmail doing to other webmails what the Google search engine did to Yahoo and Altavista. Then they look at their [email protected] email address, and realize they'd like to get in on the ground floor and have something a little easier to remember this time around.

- I am sure that there is also some component of it that is related to the feeling people get when there's a velvet rope up at a nightclub that they can't get past. If someone else has something that everyone says is cool, people find themselves wanting it, just to have it.

- Google as a company has such a powerful brand name right now amongst geeks. They do a great job of using this positive karma to generate grassroots support of their new technologies.

- Everything Google's done they've done pretty well. They can walk into an overcrowded product space with a rookie effort and basically blow away the competition. They do everything right from a PR standpoint, too

- Finally, Gmail is just another webmail, but as Dan said, it's very well done, even as a beta. The positive reviews in the press make people want to try it out as soon as they can.

I have no great desire, but enough to put mild effort into getting one. I wanted it because I'm tired of spelling out my email address's domain to people and I don't want to use a Yahoo or Hotmail account. I figure GMail will be big enough that people will begin to recognize it without me having to explain.

i never send passwords in email. passwords that come in email are changed immediately. i wouldn't put my credit card number in email that went there. it's nice for archving lists when i want better search than my imap clients give me

Why the fanatical mania to get gmail accounts???

For me, it's merely to get the account names I want before someone else snags them.

Just found this, by the way, haven't tried it yet:

Pop Goes The Gmail.

Note: It needs dotnet framework 1.1 to run.

I have no great desire, but enough to put mild effort into getting one.

Yeah, I share a bit of Mark's puzzlement, but I can agree with the "mild effort" approach, if only to try to nail a name better that "jim459882".

Looks like everybody's out of invites, but if anyone gets another, I could save you the trouble of putting it on eBay -- buy you a beer when next we meet in Amersfoort (2005? 2006?).

Beer me!

Pop Goes The Gmail works on my system. It has no trouble connecting to the Gmail server and checking the mail there. So the problem I'm having with connecting to the Gmail web site is entirely in IE for some reason. Hmph. Why don't I have trouble with any other sites? Argh.

Beer me!

Boy, turnaround time on this BBS is abysmal!

> Everything Google's done they've done pretty well.

That is my reason, I have faith in Google doing things right. I have little faith in Yahoo, or god forbid Microsoft, to do the same. I think they will eventually have a better user interface and better spam protection, and of course they already have more space. I have been running at somewhere between 85% and 97% at Hotmail for months now, and I begrudge having to go through and delete stuff just because of space issues.

if anybody still has an invite, i'd really love to try out the gmail service. please PM me for my email.

For the joy of screwing the one other guy in cyberspace with the same first initial and last name as me! Thanks a bunch, Rob!

Ahhh cause I want to direct all my mailing list emails there
Far too many in my inbox, I got too many hobbies..

Not to me too this to death, but me too!

Anybody gets a spare, let me know.

"...I begrudge having to go through and delete stuff just because of space issues. "

I do to. But my SBC Yahoo account has 2GB mail storage and 110MB extra briefcase storage for smaller shuttling.

Since Gmail has ads, and my yahoo doesn't, AND the Yahoo portal has really come into its own as far as feature set and functionality, I don't see much reason to head over to Gmail now.

Of course, the 2GB on Yahoo was a recent change, obviously in response to the Gmail fanaticism.

yeah I got an account early just so I could have just my last name. Oh wait I have my own server and domain with just my first name too...

Oh well

How long do I have to wait before they give me some invites to spread around?

Anyone have any invites left?

I have 2 invites right now, and no friends wanting them, so first two PM's gets them.

edit - My two are gone. I got the ones thus far pretty quickly, will let people here know when I get more.

All right this is toally weird. Messing around with the order of the programs "findempeg" and "empegface" in my StartUp group seems to have fixed the problem on my home system. I can get to gmail now. I'm totally stumped as to why.

let me know when an invite is avaliable. i want to know what all the fuss is about.

I'd love to have one too, if there's anything left


Reasons to get one:

I don't care about the 1Gig space. I have my own server with as much space I may ever need. But I will need an "independent" email address, possibily with web interface. On the other hand, I think Gmail is the best around and most feature rich, I tend to like Google, and since I'm not in a hurry I'll be happy to wait that it's widely available (or to get some invitations, of course). Also, like many others, I'll be hopefully able to chose my address without having to add ugly looking numbers at it

Taym

Invite sent!

Up for grabs:

EDIT: All have been used

Thank you!

Messing around with the order of the programs "findempeg" and "empegface" in my StartUp group seems to have fixed the problem

I take that back. Actually, what happened is that they fixed whatever routing problem they had on the server side, and everything suddenly started working. The fact that I was fiddling with the order of those programs at the time was a coincidence. Now all my machines work without any issues, and they're all back to their original configurations. *SIGH*

For all mah homies in da club.

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1d1cc80aaa-5a9d5e7891
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1d1cc80aaa-b492b17fd3
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1d1cc80aaa-b870d0b283

I have six invites. PM me if interested.

EDIT: 3 left

anybody else noticing the server error message when trying to access your gmail account?

Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.

Please try again in 30 seconds.

I was getting it earlier but it is working now.

And then there were none.

ha! ha!

i.hate.gmail is not available, but the following usernames are:
possible504
special842
general129
frequent734

Thanks! I grabbed the 5th one and all is well!

Anybody else noticed GMail hasn't been quite its normal self today?

Hey man, back off.. It's "beta."

Yeah. It was doing that randomly yesterday. Some people I sent invites to couldn't get it to work at all even though it was fine for me. They getting overloaded from the mass influx of new users?

Probably just making modifications to the servers. It's beta ya know...

The mass amount of invites might be them intentionally doing stress testing now, to see how quickly the system can scale. It's a pretty impressive server backend from what little I have seen about it.

Thanks for the grabs here. I was able to get an account via one of the links posted here even though I got the server errors (obviously the post had been received).

Any invites left?
I seemed to have miss the big release while on a buisness trip.
Thanks!

I've got some, PM me your email address.

My letter to Google:

Subject: Spam spam spam spammity spam

Your spam filtering is terrible. And I mean that in the most constructive way possible, but it is. It is way behind both Hotmail and Yahoo in many ways. I realize that the service is still in beta and that this is probably one of the issues that you will dealing with continually for the life of the service, but as it is right now a gmail account that comes to the attention of the spammers will soon be unusable.

I have an account on my own domain that I heavily use, but is unfortunately very spam-ridden, and I have historically forwarded it to Hotmail with decent results. Hotmail removes almost all of the spam leaving me with, on average, 6 spams a day in my spam email box, and one or two false negatives in my inbox a week. I have now forwarded it to this gmail account, and am getting 20 spam an hour in my spam mail folder, and 10 false negatives a DAY. This makes it nearly unusable. It seems that you are not blocking any spam email at all but just sending it all to the spam folder, and that is a huge mistake. If it is obviously spam it should not even show up in my spam folder, because I have to go through that looking for the false positives, i.e. the good messages you mistakanly marked as spam, and wading through hundreds of spam a day is not workable.

Again, I realize that this is a beta project and I am sure that this is something you are working on heavily right now, but I just wanted to comment on how much needs to be done on this issue. You have done some great and interesting things here, but it will all be moot if it gets washed away in the sea of spam.

That's cool you just posted the links and the first three clickees got accounts.

I got one thanks to andy!
How often do these invites appear to a user? Is there any criteria or is it totally random? If I get any, I will post mine here after I give the one away I promised to a friend.

I dunno how often the invites appear, but I have five more of them. PM if you want an invitation.

I have 6 at the moment as well. I wonder how long they are valid for? I know it seems to be 3 weeks once they have been offered, but are they a 'use it or lose it' deal as far as sending them on goes?

And again.

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d5e11350a9-aec31f20ff
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d5e11350a9-6794464018
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d5e11350a9-a4c3d9f41a
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d5e11350a9-227fed0b08
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d5e11350a9-82a30b939f
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d5e11350a9-72590e0525

to get the links are you guys just sending all the invites to yourself and then posting the links?

Yep

to get the links are you guys just sending all the invites to yourself and then posting the links?

can't you go blind doing that?

This is page 15 of this thread: We *ARE* blind.

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-3a32ad5c51-0bdf27b692

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-3a32ad5c51-db758cc826

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-3a32ad5c51-3146bca74f

Those three are gone. edit time lapsed.

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-f91a872db-62916eaa31
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d5e11350a9-5b1f5b6922

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1d1cc80aaa-32dafd3ba6
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1d1cc80aaa-61dfe40a94

Argh. My problems with gmail came back this morning. Now the page redirect fails on me again like it did two weeks ago. I wish I knew what they were messing with so I could tell them to stop it.

I've been experiencing problems with mail I send to a mailing list, it gets to my regular home email (austin.rr.com) but not to my gmail account that is also subscribed to that list. I guess that's why it's beta...

Damn, I'm just too slow getting onto the URL's with any signups remaining. I'm going to keep monitoring this thread so if anyone has any spare signup URL's I'll be forever in your debt if I manage to catch one!

yeah. pm me your email address

edit: gonzo...