I thought the PageRank press releases were way over the top until I found this. This guy has issued a web article about the great honor afforded him by being picked to be in the GMail beta. It reads in part -

The Landist Society announces that their founder, Andy Louis-Charles, has been invited to join the Google Gmail beta testing group. The Gmail beta version was established in April of 2004 to help Google better understand its customers’ needs and improve their new web-based email service. The Landist Society is proud to have its founder, Mr. Louis-Charles, be selected as a representative individual that will help increase Google?s understanding of customer needs.

“I am thrilled about Google?s invitation to join its Gmail beta testing group. To be selected by fellow beta users to help during the testing period is an honor. The Landist Society is always striving to find and improve the technology services we offer our members. Now we have an excellent channel with which we can express our members’ specific needs to Google,” said Andy Louis-Charles, Founder and Managing Director of the Landist Society. [blatant company plug follows…]

Now that’s creative marketing…

Louis sent me a note today regarding his GMail website, GmailResource.net, The GMail Resource. He has an invitation game called GMail 4444 in addition to other Gmail resources there and the idea is you click the special spot and if you generate the sequence 4444 you get an invite. Invites are tight these days… and his attempt counter proves it - over 280,000 tries. The game information display says that zero invites are currently available. We can hope he remedies this soon.

Source: GMail 4444

Update: The link seems to be dead at this time.

If you use the Google DeskBar, you might want to have a look at netdroid’s plug-in for searching your Gmail account. His extension also presents GMail in a mini-browser window similar to GSuite. I hear a GMail notification feature is coming also.

Source: Google DeskBar GMail Plug-In

Ryan B. dropped me a note yesterday noting that GMail now displays images inline. I was busy stuffing my face and missed this one. Thanks Ryan.

And then there was Walla! Riding on the rising popularity of 1GB email accounts, Walla! has leveraged GMail’s popularity and exclusiveness (still in closed beta) to build a web-based email service with over 1 million U.S. and 1.2 million Isreali users.

Walla! CEO Ilan Israely today, for the time, disclosed information about the company’s upgraded web-mail service, and he has nothing to be ashamed of. Israely said the company’s web-mail service already had one million subscribers in the US and that the number of Israeli subscribers had rise from 750,000 to 1.2 million. He added that Walla! had achieved these numbers without advertising, and that its entire costs for the program were for storage infrastructure, features and a little PR.

via [Globes [online]]

A day late and a dollar short as they say. Google had a festive logon screen yesterday. I’m sure most of you have already seen and read it but for those that have not, I grabbed a screen capture.

Gobble Gobble!

GMail is already the seventh largest (1 month back) email service with roughly a million users. As and when it goes public, signups will increase exponentially. It will probably relegate Yahoo! Mail to the third spot and occupy the second spot by November next year (with the first still being Hotmail.)

via [TechWhack]

I don’t know what their source is but that is a very large beta!

Just a few more applications and GMail will be a full-service office suite. GMail ToDo is a ToDo list maintained in your GMail account. It uses Python and Gnome to present an interface under Linux. Whatever you do, don’t kill Pat!

Source is available.

Source: GMail ToDo List via [Mark Lyon’s GMail page]

Check out the new Google GMail group - GMail Generation. Traffic is picking up and he’s right, this is the GMail generation. The HotMail generation never had a chance, the Walla guys tried but failed, and Yahoo just ain’t hip anymore.

Gmail Generation is the definitive place for users of Google’s Gmail to partake in all on-topic discussion. Among other things, *everything
and anything* related to Gmail may be discussed here. Join us and help
collectively define the next generation of Web-email users worldwide.

Read more about the group on its FAQ!

Source: GMail Generation Google Group

In what has to be a first in the fast growing offers industry, OfferCentric is now offering a $275.00 check or Paypal credit in addition to already existing 80 hour Tivo or ReplayTV unit on their Personal Video Recorders site. In addition, they are offering $275.00 cash on their MP3 Players site and $475.00 cash on their Personal Video Players site. That’s right, you can now opt to receive cash instead of merchandise for completing an offer and getting a few others to complete an offer! The MP3 offer requires five additional completed sign-ups and the PVP site requires ten additional sign-ups. They are also offering between $35 and $75 as a bonus gift if you opt to complete one more offer and get two additional people to sign-up.

Beat that Gratis! As usual, you have to sign-up and complete an offer and have five more people sig-up and complete an offer and the check or the PayPal credit is yours. As always, I recommend you complete the credit card offer since that has no cost associated with it. There are several credit card offers in rotation including the eBay, GM, and Discover cards. The interest rates are competitive.

Join the PVR program here.

Join the MP3 Player program here.

Join the PVP program here.

I suspect that this will be a very popular company real soon.

You can learn more about the offers industry and the companies and their current program on my free stuff page.