Got Gmail?

I was offered to test Google's new Gmail service, and I jumped at that opportunity. A gigantic e-mail box was just what I wanted! However, then I came across an atrocity: selling Gmail invites on eBay! Since this is limited to a select few, I guess the demand exceeds supply. On eBay, one invite link to Gmail went over 40 dollars. Making money off of this was one thing I didn't expect!

It is fabulous though, to have so much room in your email that you may never have to delete a thing ever again. That's great. Unlike Yahoo.com's e-mail, where I get 4 mbs, and hotmail, which feels less than that (I don't know the exact number). However, if you want bigger e-mail boxes without paying for it, there are ways. It appears that in Korea, many e-mail hosts are supplying users with a bigger space. If you register with yahoo.co.kr, Yahoo.com's Korean site, you will see that the mail box has been increased to 50 MB, which is about 10 times bigger than that supplied by Yahoo.com. At Naver.com, where I have set up my Korean Blog, they first have you start out with a mailbox of 20 MB, and then as you continue to use your mailbox, you gain points. When you accumulate a certain amount of points (which indicates that you will most likely need an increase in storage) you can request to increase the size of the box. I believe it is not limited to a certain number, but given as your need for space increases.

Korea has one of the highest concentration of internet users around the world -- a lot of enhancements are visible when accessing Korean webpages. For example, blogs. While blogspot and blogger.com are kind enough to provide us with these minimal spaces to host our blogs, it doesn't give us anything in terms of hosting multimedia and visual files. Naver, as I have said before, supplies their blog users with an infinite amount of space. They just require that a limited amount of files are uploaded per day, to make sure that they aren't taken advantage of, which is smart. Other blog suppliers are similar. Hanmir.com, Empas.com, all have extremely generous spaces for blogging, as well as cyber cafes, which are like clubs on the internet. So why would one pay for a Gmail? Hmmm....

Now if I could only get someone to invite me to Orkit.com. I'm practically an island on Friendster.com!