The Benefits of Gmail

Like it or not, google does seem to be taking over the internet (if not the world!). Whilst some may see this as a problem, I am fully prepared to reap the benefits of their takeover. One of the benefits of google's domination is their googlemail service (more commonly referred to as gmail). Googlemail was first launched in the April of 2004 as an invitation only beta release. Early 2007 saw it become available to the general public. With over 100 million users, googlemail has grown vastly in a very short space of time.

Mail

Gmail is admired for it's combination of simplicity and power. The basics of email are all covered; mail is laid out in an effortlessly simple fashion, reading, replying and organising your mails is a very simple operation. Gmail also has a very powerful spam filtering system; when any user marks an email as spam, this provides information to help the system identify similar future messages for all Gmail users. Another feature of Gmail is it's storage capabilities. All Gmail users are provided with an ever expanding storage capacity (currently around 7300mb). With a fee this storage is expandable to up to 400gb. Gmail also contains a feature named Labs. Labs allows uses to try out new and experimental features of Gmail , a more recent one being the ability to undo the sending of very recent emails.

Along with mail access, gmail users also have access to an additional four services, these being Calendar, Documents, Photos and Reader. For the purposes of this article I shall focus on my two personal favourites; Documents and Reader.

Docs

Documents (also known as Docs), allows users to create, upload and edit documents online. Word-processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and form applications are all supported by Docs. The ability to create and edit documents online is what, in my opinion, make's Docs stand out from similar applications. I shall attempt to explain this with an example. For instance, if someone had started a document on their desktop computer and uploaded it to Docs, they would be able to work on it on another computer (PC or mac) whenever they had an internet connection, even if they hadn't saved the file to this computer. The ability to edit documents completely online would also benefit this user as instead of downloading the document from Docs, editing it, and then re-uploading it, they could edit it all online and save it when they were finished, therefore saving themselves a fairly substantial amount of time and effort. Docs also benefits from a quick, simple and easy to navigate user interface.

Reader

Reader is a web-based RSS reader. It allows users to subscribe to RSS feeds from the websites of their choosing. This basically means that users can access content from a website, without actually visiting the site. As users can add many feeds, their accessing of information is greatly sped up as they have the ability to view the information all in one place, as opposed to opening many tabs within their browser. Feeds are laid out in a simple and easy-to-read format. Reader is also accessible on many mobile devices including the iPhone and iPod touch, meaning people can access content even when they haven't access to a computer. Reader benefits me as it allows me to access a variety of views and opinions on various topics. I like to keep in touch with current affairs, and the most common way of doing this is to buy a newspaper. One problem with this is that all newspapers hold differing views and opinions on almost every topic. I myself, do not want to be influenced by one source's bias. A soloution to this would be to buy several different newspapers, however, this is not financially feasible. Instead, I use Reader. I am subscribed to 6 different news and current affairs feeds, 3 of these being newspapers. This allows me to form my own opinions and makes me a more rounded individual; in my opinion! Reader allows me to do this completely free of charge, which is why I like it so much.

Thanks for taking the time to read my article, I hope I have encouraged those who don't have a Gmail account to get one, i also hope existing Gmail users have been encouraged to delve a little deeper into it.