Dylan Schiemann

I was recently invited by David to setup a G-mail account. The system is currently by far the best e-mail interface of the major web mail providers, though that lead may diminish with Yahoo’s recent acquisition of OddPost. The main reason is that Google uses JavaScript and XMLHttpRequests to update data, rather than loading a new page for each message or mail action. What this means to the end user is that the application is fast and responsive. Google also has some interesting ideas in arranging messages by conversation and filter, and by showing/hiding message components in a convenient, intuitive manner. The service does have some negatives: there is currently no direct pop3 access (though there are ways around this limitaiton…), and the color scheme of the interface is a bit too bright (it matches Google’s color palette, which is ok in moderation, but a bit obnoxious in the quantities used within gmail.