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Google Businesses Data Storage The Internet

GMail Drive Shell Extension 377

Posted by michael from the oh-the-horror dept.
krmpradeep writes "GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium. GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to."
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GMail Drive Shell Extension

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  • I wonder if they'll try to license Mac (Score:3, Funny)

    by ebooher ( 187230 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:04AM (#10477600) Homepage Journal
    Makes me wonder if they will try to license the Apple iDisk format for this as well for Mac users. I wouldn't mind having a 1 Gig internet drive to access files from home, work, and school without the need to carry DVD's around.

  • For Linux too! (Score:5, Informative)

    by x4A6D74 ( 614651 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:05AM (#10477603)
    http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-files ystem/gmail-filesystem.html

    Haven't tried it yet; I keep meaning to but school keeps getting in the way.

    • For Slashdot Too! (Score:5, Funny)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @04:45AM (#10477880)
      Slashdot-Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Slashdot login, allowing you to use Slashdot as a storage medium. Slashdot-Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Slashdot account using a combination of the read-write Journal pages and the unlimited write-once comment fields. Slashdot-drive enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Slashdot account directly from inside Windows Explorer. Slashdot-Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.

      It offers high availability, and unlimited amounts of file storage.

      Slashdot-drive uses hundreds of slash-dot logins mappens in a raid-0/raid-1 fashion to assure low latency and redundancy in case you are discovered. In the event an account is locked or deleted, SLASHDOT drive automaticaly rebuilds lost raid partiions in new accounts.

      Data is stored in ascii-mapping or using the optional stealth-mode which decreaces storage density but improves undetectability by using phrases taken from other posts to encode a data stream,

      The downside is that it essentially destroys a useful public good by filling its pages with gibberish and causing OSDN to bear unacceptable server costs. But who cares becaue you are an arrogant prick

      • Re:For Slashdot Too! (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 09, 2004 @05:38AM (#10477971)
        "The downside is that it essentially destroys a useful public good by filling its pages with gibberish"

        And this makes a difference how exactly?

        (take this post I've just made for an example)
      • Data is stored in ascii-mapping or using the optional stealth-mode which decreaces storage density but improves undetectability by using phrases taken from other posts to encode a data stream

        Heh, that reminds me of the slashdot Markov [taygeta.com] program I wrote a while back. Here's a small sample output taken from this article's comments:

        But doomed by wonder if it a feature to Windows only takes one is restricted to takes one really plans on your gmail as an easy installation! by but perhaps a hairy reply to scho

    • Re:For Linux too! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Hobadee ( 787558 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @05:02AM (#10477921) Homepage Journal
      I tried it. I added it to /etc/fstab (not automounting). I never use it. Why? Simple. It takes to flipping long. When I was all excited and playing around with it, I stuck a text file that said "Hello World" on it. I did an "ls". 30 seconds later I got the response from "ls". I then catted the file. Again, at least 30 seconds before it came back with anything. It is incredibly horribly slow - and this was with a recent version. (1-2 weeks ago)

      I don't see how this is "news" at all - this has been around pretty much since Gmail went beta.

  • Nice, but doomed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BristolCream ( 102658 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:06AM (#10477604)
    This won't last long. One of the reaosns Google and others can offer so much space is that they're confident that it won't be used.
    • I don't see how it could be doomed. So long as google doesn't implement a maximum file size to incoming e-mails, what would prevent anyone from sending an email to a gmail account with a large file to leave on the google system for any period of time?

      • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:5, Informative)

        by Sneeper ( 182316 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:14AM (#10477642)
        Actually Gmail *does* have a file size limit to incoming e-mails. As one person on the GMAIL Drive Forums [aimlesswords.com] states:

        It appears that Google has put a file size limit on "attachments". I've installed GMail Drive and tried a couple quick uploads. One was a tar.bz2 file that weighs in at 23MB. After dragging the file over to the GMail Drive window, it worked for a while then returned an error message stating that "File is too big. GMail does currently not support files larger than 10 Mb."

        The response confirms:

        Great point Steve. GMail does have an attachment size limit which does limit the usefulness of these file system extensions. One solution would be to handle file splitting in the tool.

        I don't have a gmail account, but anyone who does should be able to easily confirm this.

        • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:5, Informative)

          by wibs ( 696528 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:34AM (#10477720)
          yup, 10MB max attachment size. the help page for attachments also mentions that the encoding is so bloated that attachments of 6MB might hit the size limit, too (alright, they didn't use the word "bloated" but it seems a little absurd to me).

          • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:5, Informative)

            by PayPaI ( 733999 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:49AM (#10477758) Journal
            No, it's not really absurd. Base-64 encoding increases file size by something like 3/2. If you do not use base-64 encoding, then your files may become corrupted in transit.
            • good to know, i was under the impression that it generally did not increase file size by that much. learn something new every day, I guess.

              • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:3, Informative)

                by renoX ( 11677 )
                That's why the yencoding format was created: to have a lower increase..

                But I don't think that it will replace base64 anytime soon, unfortunately.

            • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:3, Informative)

              by Anonymous Coward
              A byte is technically 0-255, and base-64 basically utilizes 6 out of 8 bits of the byte. (0-63, only using A-Z,a-z,0-9,and two others)
              Therefore anything base-64 encoded will be exactly 25% larger than it not.
              I don't see why they can't store the files as a binary attachment to the e-mail, instead of storing the data inside the e-mail as text, however.

    • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by polecat_redux ( 779887 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [hciwmaps]> on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:14AM (#10477641)
      This won't last long.

      They may have tolerated the concept if it had remained within the realm of Linux, but now that the Windows floodgates are open, I suspect that they will put an end to this very quickly.

    • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jeffb ( 139368 )
      I wouldn't hedge my bets. It is, after all Google -- they have a lot of machines (worldwide), networked together by a solid infrastructure (that many of us could only dream of) and all other things considered, disk space is pretty inexpensive.

      Then again, even though there may be no problem with everyone fully utilizing the space that's available, Google may take offence at you violating their TOS in order to do so. :)
      • I will say one thing though. Google has nothing on the credit card companies. Visa's network has more redundancies than anything I have ever heard of. I bet that my Visa card would work until the electricity went out even if the whole world went into social meltdown (mass riots/wars).

      • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @08:45AM (#10478384) Journal

        disk space is pretty inexpensive

        Disk space is pretty inexpensive, but the kind of bandwidth this filessystem will likely use isn't. I'm sure google is already spending more on bandwidth than hard drive space. With people transferring all these files without even looking at an ad, it's bound to cost them a lot of money.

    • Google is a volume buisness. They pay very little for a Gig of storage, and they make $ off ads.

      Google might have a problem with widespread use of this as you don't see there ads, but I don't think they're too worried about the space.

    • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sik0fewl ( 561285 )

      They already have a cache of the entire [public] Internet. What makes you think they can't handle this?

    • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:5, Informative)

      by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Saturday October 09, 2004 @05:28AM (#10477959) Journal
      It'll last plenty of time.

      It's impractical to use much of this storage unless you have an OC-45 to hand. The vast majority of people have internet connections with pathetic upstream bandwidth (128K, 256K - occasionally 512K - and very rarely more than that). It'll be fabulous for storing small files you want easy access to from anywhere, but pretty useless for storing large files or large quantities of small files simply due to the time it'll take to upload/download the files.

    • Re:Nice, but doomed (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Teppy ( 105859 ) *
      Storage costs $0.50/G these days, and all drives are faster than network storage. Why anyone would add another piece of duct tape to their Windows box to save fifty cents is beyond me. Cool hack, but that's about it.

    • Are you sure? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @09:35AM (#10478587) Journal
      I can fully understand the decision if Google decides to crack down on this. On the other hand, stopping the project would be a very bad PR move. After all, it would violate some of the things that Google has found to be true... [google.com]
      • Democracy on the web works.
      • -- Democracy is rule of the people, right? If the people want this function, why take it away?
      • You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
      • -- Obvious. This would make it much easier to access files and to transfer from one machine to another.
      • There's always more information out there.
      • -- Easier access to files that you've created.
      • The need for information crosses all borders.
      • -- Self explanatory. The information that can be gained by this tool should outweigh Google's need for storage space, supposedly.
      • Great just isn't good enough.
      • -- GMail is great. It can be better if Google allows this.

      Besides...wouldn't this be a case of Google being evil? We know that they can't do that...

  • Huh... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:06AM (#10477605)
    I've been meaning to impliment something like this in OS X, but GmailFS uses FUSE, which is Linux only. I wonder how he did this for Windows.

    • Re:Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by julesh ( 229690 )
      I wonder how he did this for Windows.

      Its a kludge. It only works through the shell, the same as Windows XP's "compressed folder" system that lets you do stuff with ZIP files. You have to copy the files locally before you can open them.

      I don't know if OSX supports such a ridiculous concept, but if it does it would probably be easier to implement than a full filesystem.

  • Works as advertised (Score:5, Interesting)

    by erick99 ( 743982 ) <homerun@gmail.com> on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:07AM (#10477607)
    Jeeze, pretty amazing. Downloaded the filed, installed it, and was transferring files in less than 60 seconds. No kidding! Files transfer faster than when I email the same sized attachment which is pretty nice. When you click/double-click on the drive it opens like any other drive/folder window and you see the files that are stored there. A free gig of off-site storage. I haven't tried to transfer something bigger than the 10MB attachment limit yet, but I will give it a shot. A great app!

    • Re:Works as advertised (Score:5, Informative)

      by erick99 ( 743982 ) <homerun@gmail.com> on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:09AM (#10477621)
      10MB limit applies. Oh well, still very cool.

    • Re:Works as advertised (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ebooher ( 187230 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:19AM (#10477659) Homepage Journal

      While I will admit that the concept of having a drive on your desktop that lives somewhere other than your local machine is neat, it isn't really a stretch of the technology, is it?

      I mean, Apple has had iDisk since even before Mac OS X came out on the scene, I was using it to keep my documents synced at school when I was still using Mac OS 8 (I think.... may have been early 9)

      Also, I *know* there was another "freebie" website a couple of years ago that did something very similar that allowed you to connect to their storage via a drive icon in My Computer on Windows.

      And we won't even start on *NIX networked file systems ..... But I think this is going to be a very big gotcha for the service. It will really get some crazy attention now. However, I hope earlier /. posts I saw about "How soon before script kiddies and pirates use this as file repositories" don't start immediately coming true. Kill it before it even starts.

    • Is there a limit on the number of emails GMail will store for you? Would it be possible to do some sort of block based FS on top of GMail, so you have about 1kB pieces of email. Furthermore, use a log based file system design to reduce the amount of rewriting. That way, you'd get rid of the 10MB limit, but it does require a bit more work than simply mailing attachments.

  • It came out, has thousands of members (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zaxios ( 776027 ) <zaxios@gmail.com> on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:07AM (#10477610) Journal
    and now it's being manipulated with third party tools. Is Gmail going to live its entire life in Beta?

  • It Works (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Facekhan ( 445017 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:15AM (#10477650)
    It definitely works, but will probably be made not to work as soon as Google hears of it and you know they read /.

    Still its a cool idea and honestly I would pay a very small fee (as in no more than $2/month) to have a 1GB online drive that was dependable. But I always have my little Sandisk MiniCruzer 512MB so its not like I really need it.

    • Re:It Works (Score:5, Informative)

      by killbill! ( 154539 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:54AM (#10477770) Homepage
      GMX.net has had 1GB (file storage & e-mail) over WebDAV for free for a while now.
      If you have a German or Austrian bank account, you can bump that to 5GB for 3 EUR a month or 10GB for 5 EUR a month.

      Btw the features of their email service just flat out rock. I'm quite sure they are unmatched worldwide. ('been a customer since 98 now ;))

      (I knew all those years learning German in high school weren't a waste of time ;p... Now then, how about you guys give us back the English version you had earlier?)
    • Not withing your price range, but still: http://xdrive.com/ [xdrive.com].

      I'm planning to try it out and see how well their new driver works (which actually _does_ create an additional drive) when putting one giant encrypted file on there (like PGPDisk, but then probably BestCrypt)

  • Cool hack... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:18AM (#10477657) Journal
    But would you trust it? Would you REALLY want to use a hack on top of something that somebody else provided for free for your mission-critical data?

    Neither did I. What I don't get is the advantage. I mean, using no-ip.com [no-ip.com] and your average DSL account, you can turn your home computer into an "online storage" at a cost of around around $0.50 per gigabyte [pricewatch.com].

    Wow. Those google guys are sure being nice! I mean, you gotta love these people, right?

    For a community that seems to love google, this sure seems like a stupid, wasteful, and mean thing to do.

    • Re:Cool hack... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rzbx ( 236929 )
      It makes sense to me. As a business do you not cater to your market? Their market is interested in large email storage, and more. So they deliver. Whether or not it is easy to do, some do not have an interest in doing it themselves. Some want their job outsourced to a company. Not everyone is interested in, or capable of doing it themselves. Not everyone is like the typical slashdot member. Think business when viewing BUSINESS like decisions. Too many submitters here throw out "why" and make their

    • But would you trust it? Would you REALLY want to use a hack on top of something that somebody else provided for free for your mission-critical data?

      Of course not. I'd only put my mission-critical data on RAIGA (Redundant Array of Individual/Inexpensive GMAIL Accounts)

  • Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:21AM (#10477668)
    that Google are doing more towards making the network the computer than companies like SUN and Oracle who have been banging on about it for years now but actually achieved nothing.

  • Tried it a bit... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by chrispyman ( 710460 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:27AM (#10477699)
    This piece of software is really nothing more than a nifty hack. It basically sends an e-mail to yourself with the file as an attachment and uses a funky subject format to determine the "Gmail drive" filesystem. It does work, but it can't support files bigger than 10MB. So, nice try for now, but perhaps a feature to "zip & split" big files is in order. That said, don't expect Google to let this app last for that long :-(

  • Obligatory Slashdot link (Score:3, Informative)

    by fastdecade ( 179638 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:28AM (#10477704)
    GmailFS - The Google File System [slashdot.org] (August 4)

  • Wow (Score:2, Interesting)

    by downbad ( 793562 )
    This is almost as cool as SlashdotFS [slashdot.org].

  • Other limitations (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Leikhim ( 666271 )
    It seems that google won't let you send some file types. I've tried zips and bats, and both types gave me a "Sorry, for security reasons we can't let you send this" error. Next version should rename forbidden file types to work around this. no .inf, .hlp, .dll.... Well, that's as far as I got before my storage medium got slashdotted.
    • It seems that google won't let you send some file types.

      Gah, I hate that. MS did something similar with the Office XP (and later) version of Outlook. Though, at least in Outlook, a simple change to the registry will allow you to enable any extension you please.
      • Personally, I like OE2K3's blocking of bad filetypes...It's great for the lusers who I gave it to, who used to download those things and run them. Now their computer tells them not to...and they don't.
      • Though, at least in Outlook, a simple change to the registry will allow you to enable any extension you please.

        There's actually a preference for it. No registry change required.

        One of the things that annoys me about it is that PDFs are one of the file types it blocks. I mean... what???

  • I can see it now... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MajorG17 ( 676534 ) <majorg17@hotmail.com> on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:36AM (#10477731) Homepage
    Just wait until someone invites themself for 120 GMail addresses... then 1000... then starts SHARING terabytes of copyrighted data... eah, this may not last long.

  • I'm amused. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Awptimus Prime ( 695459 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:39AM (#10477736)
    I'm having a great time reading this thread. The same people who say things like "I would never run IE" are coming out and acting thrilled about this. What about the requirement of having IE to run this? I guess it is okay when it has something to do with Gmail. Hmmmm.

    Selective zealotry at its worse.

    • Re:I'm amused. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by julesh ( 229690 )
      Maybe slightly ironic, but I highly doubt any of them are running a recent Windows system that doesn't have IE installed. Too much shit breaks if you don't.

      I also don't think you'll have to _use_ IE for it to work. I suspect it just relies on some of IE's DLLs, most probably URLMON for making the requests to gmail.

    • Re:I'm amused. (Score:3, Informative)

      by horza ( 87255 )
      I'm having a great time reading this thread. The same people who say things like "I would never run IE" are coming out and acting thrilled about this. What about the requirement of having IE to run this? I guess it is okay when it has something to do with Gmail. Hmmmm.

      Selective zealotry at its worse.

      We're thrilled that IE users are able to catch up with what Linux users have had for ages [slashdot.org].

      Phillip.

  • Don't be evil (Score:5, Interesting)

    by philipkd ( 528838 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:41AM (#10477737) Homepage
    okay, so how does google respond to this.

    I think they just have to throw their hands up and go, okay, fine 1GB virtual drive for ppl, how to best make money off of it?

    Could they analyze your files and serve ads related to it? If you put up an mp3, could they upsell albums related to it?

    If you upload a text document describing to your girlfriend your favorite lingerie, could they flash an adsense for Victoria's Secret?

    If you have an excel spread sheet describing mission-critical CRMs, could they analyze those and start throwing ads related to that?

  • So is it a filesystem? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chris Hall ( 5155 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:42AM (#10477740) Homepage

    I've not got a gmail account, so I can't easily try it and see for myself how it behaves, but the descriptions are rather confusing.

    On one hand, it says that it "creates a virtual filesystem", that it "literally adds a new drive", and that it "acts as any other hard-drive installed on your computer".

    But then elsewhere, it says that it "is a Shell Namespace Extension", and the only usage examples given all require the use of explorer.exe, which suggest that it's not implemented a full filesystem after all.

    So which is it?

    • Does it implement a new local drive, from which files can be accessed using any existing program?
    • Or does it implement a new network drive, so that at least UNC-aware programs will work?
    • Or is it really restricted to force the use of explorer (or other shell-api-using tools) for file manipulation?

    Even if it is restricted in this way, it still seems a worthy project -- but wouldn't it be fairer to warn people first? Or if it's not restricted, how about documenting the ability to e.g. save files directly there from any program?

    • It's a namespace extension similar to Windows XP's "compressed folder" extension (which allows you to manipulate files inside a ZIP file).

      Yes. You'll have to copy the file to a local drive before you can use it with most applications. Windows will handle this transparently in most cases.

      The linux filesystem implementation mentioned above is much better.
    • I've not got a gmail account

      Thank god, I thought I was going to have to fight off the GMail zombie geek army they're secretly developing all by myself. Stay safe! When the time comes I will call for you!

    • Does it implement a new local drive, from which files can be accessed using any existing program?

      No, it's a virtual filesystem that only explorer (and perhaps some other programs) can use. I use command-line apps a lot and can't find a way to access the drive.

      Or does it implement a new network drive, so that at least UNC-aware programs will work?

      Nope, it doesn't.

      Or is it really restricted to force the use of explorer (or other shell-api-using tools) for file manipulation?

      From my swift testing, it

  • Now If Only... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JohnPerkins ( 243021 )
    ...it had a setting that would let me connect more than one gmail account to one virtual drive... I could use my invites to create more gmail accounts for myself...exponential progression...free multi-tb drive for me!

  • is this tool safe? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by johansalk ( 818687 )
    1. I'm increasingly alarmed by any tool that requests a username and a password. 2. would google terminate the account? don't they have a rule against third party notifiers?

  • yawn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:50AM (#10477763)
    excite was doing that back in '99. only offered 100 meg, but drives were a lot smaller then and you could setup multiple accounts

    on a slightly more paranoid note

    how many people are actually going to put their gmail passwords into an app like this and HOPE it doesn't forward them (or contact lists) back to some spammer

    post the source and maybe...

    don't even get me started talking about the possiblities for using this type of util as a spam gateway

  • Abusing Google? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:51AM (#10477764)
    GMail is an excellent web mail service. In fact, it is the best one that I have ever used. They pay for the service and make a profit by pasting ads on their webmail site.

    If we use GMail in this fashion, not only are we abusing their trust but also dooming the service and perhaps destroying it.


    Cheers,

    Adolfo
  • Gmail makes money by showing you adds,
    this kind of automated interface is strictly prohibeted. Just like any automated interface to Gmail, If you use Gmail you must not use any automated tool to read your mail and display it too you out of Gmail.
    There is nothing to prevent you from using Gmail as file storage but when you want to access your files you should pay for your privlage by watching adds.

    Me

  • GDrive? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @04:06AM (#10477796)
    I just used the program and was simply astonished. Kind of reminds me of the days of X-Drive and such.

    Perhaps Google should launch GDrive and provide a web page from where you can upload files to your account. Ok, don't give 1GB, but I think that 50MB should be enough to carry around your bussiness presentations and college writings.


    Cheers,

    Adolfo

  • The Hell... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rie Beam ( 632299 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @06:19AM (#10478043) Journal
    Look. Go down to Circuit City, and buy a 60GB Western Digital hard drive. Now leave the computer on when you go out, and setup some sort of SSH program - problem solved. If you have to rely upon an e-mail service for backing up important documents, someone should have removed you from the gene pool many, many years ago. Sheesh.

  • Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Artifex ( 18308 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @06:28AM (#10478065) Journal
    I find this to be an abuse of the resources Google has provided. They're going to have to end up making the interface and access more restrictive for all users as a result.

  • Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Britz ( 170620 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @06:54AM (#10478126)
    Of course this is interesting, and shows the talents and ideas that can occur in the world of free/open software.

    But Google is a business and they do need to make money and this would be a surefire way for them to lose money (a load of their storage used up, no way to show their adverts, etc) so if anyone seriously used this I can imagine their account disabled.

    What I want is google officially creating (or officially blessing the ones that already exist) a gmail notifier app for Mozilla. Technically, using the 3rd party ones that the Mozilla community develop are against their terms of service. They already do an official notifier but it's Windows only - a Mozilla based one would be cross platform.
    Googlebomb IE - link the IE homepage to the phrase 'piece of shit'

    Sorry linuxci, I am such a karma whore sometimes, but memory seems short at slashdot:
    http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?s id=119770&c id=10101654

  • Nice hack, but you get what you pay for! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by siliconjunkie ( 413706 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @07:16AM (#10478169)
    This is a really cool hack, and has a great "Gee whiz look what I did" value to it. But that's about it. I don't think that it would be practical to start actually using this cool little hack due to the fact that no matter how much you may disagree with the GMail terms of use [google.com], they still reserve the right to either

    A) make it so that this hack no longer works (wouldn't be too hard, in fact it will probably break often as GMail is still in beta and under heavy development if you havent noticed)

    or,

    B) simply close your account, no questions asked (don't think that people using this hack wont be EASY to detect to to a profoundly different traffic fingerprint in their logfiles for the GmailFS using accounts).

    I'm not saying you're "bad" or "taking advantage of google" if you use this software per se, what I'm saying is, don't complain when the Gmail account you've filled to the brim with Bangbus videos get's abruptly cancelled.

    My suggestion, for what it's worth, would be: enjoy this for what it is: a cool, neat-o, nifty hack. Period.

  • others already offer this without hack (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fëanáro ( 130986 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @07:27AM (#10478191)
    Here in Germany we have a free mail provider (GMX [www.gmx.de]) that offers 1 GB (since a few months), for mails AND for files, and you can access them as a file system [gmx.net](link to German site) using the open WebDAV protocol [webdav.org] from linux, windows or mac, so no ugly hacks are neccesary. (Konqueror can do that out-of-the-box, I think)

    Also offers free pop and smtp, mail forwarding, and configurable filters

    Interface is in German only, and you have to give them an existing German, Austrian or Swiss postal address when you sign up. (but those could theoretically be found on the net.)

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