mediajunk

What can I write about the Google IPO that hasn't already been written? A lot, probably, but I'm choosing not to ;) Instead, I want to share an email -- or, should I say, a gmail -- that I received from Justin Kistner of JRK Design. Justin is one of the beta-testers of Gmail, and when he mentioned that the functionality was very impressive, I asked him to clarify. Justin replied as follows: "Here's what I think is pretty hot, functionally speaking, about Gmail: - When switching between the Inbox, Sent Mail, Trash, etc. the page doesn't reload, which makes it more like using an installed application vs. a web-based application. - Built-in spell checker - Great spam filters - Any time I send an email, it automagically adds the person to my contact book, which I haven't seen in a web-based email client before. - If I send an email and the recipient replies, then I reply, then they reply, etc. Gmail displays tabs in chronological order on the top of an email so I can quickly click to see what was said earlier in the conversation. Again, it doesn't reload a page if I click on the tab to view it. I'm sure you've read about how Gmail displays emails as conversations as I did, but it turns out to be a cool feature. You can also click a button to display all of the emails at one time on the page and another button allows you to print the conversation as one continuous document. - When I'm reading an email I've received, Gmail has a text box at the bottom of the page where I can launch into a reply. It's actually really nice to not have to click a "reply" button in order to write someone back. - Keyboard shortcuts! Hit the "c" key to compose an email. Typing "n" will take you to the next email and "p" to the previous email. There are more too. Obviously they are disabled when you are in a text field. - Messages displayed in the Inbox not only show the sender and subject, but it also displays the body of the email (as much as it can fit on one line). - Last, but not least, the ads are waaaaaay less obtrusive than Yahoo! or Hotmail. In fact, many emails don't have associated ads. There are more functions than that, but those are the ones I found to be unique." Thanks Justin!