Pointless but confusing news item – Google has now made its gmail/googlemail services open to anyone. Previously you had to have an invitation from someone who had a gmail account.(One implication could be that spammers start using gmail more.)

This is just here because, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a wierd “news” item, as I thought they had opened up gmail to anyone shortly after it was set up.

Gmail is quite good. It’s probably useful if you want an extra account to sign up for things without getting your real email buried in an avalanche of incomprehensible spam. You just have to remember the user name and password, (which is why that anti-spam tactic always works poorly for me.)

Googlemail offers a huge amount of storage space. The user interface is a bit jerky and unpredictable but that’s a feature of all webmail. It also lets you use Google talk, which is a lot like MSN Messenger in terms of its facilities – voice and so on. Last time i used it – which is about a year ago -Google talk lacked some of the Messenger additions – not necessarily a bad thing, IMHO in that it didn’t stick ads in your face, Nor did it give emoticons, unlike Messenger which offers loads, ranging from the unspeakably vile to the generally useful. These aspects may have changed. Now I think about it, maybe I’ll give it another try.

When it was first announced, Google talk was supposed to be about to offer free calls to phones. Hmm. I suspect that never took off, but it would be worth me investigating.