a little help
by John at 6/18/2004 08:08:00 AM
This sounds like a good idea.Here's the deal. Gmail, Google's 1 Gbyte email account, is currently available by invitation only. When you sign up, you get to send invitations to other folks so they can sign up too. The plan is to send these invitations to servicemen-and-women who are stationed in Iraq and Afganistan. Apparently, most of these folks only have hotmail or similar, so sending photos/audio/video to or from home is not really practical. Better contact with home means better morale.
Here's where we come in. As Blogger account holders, we already have our invitation to sign up for Gmail. Just log in to Blogger (like you were going to make a post) and you should see it. If you don't, let me know, and I can send you an invitation so you can join, and so on, and so on, just like the shampoo commercial.
WWDN vows to keep us updated. If they set up a Gmail invite clearinghouse, we should be all set to help out a tiny little bit.
Update: 1) Like the picture says, you have to be an "active Blogger user" to see an invitation when you log in to post. This is probably to keep folks from setting up a Blogger account just so they can get a Gmail invite. Those of you who don't post (or comment, maybe?) probably won't see this invitation. Blogwise, this might encourage you all to participate more! 2) I signed up for Gmail, but I don't automatically get invitations to send to other people. Supposedly, they magically appear in your inbox sometimes. For contributors to this blog: if you don't have your own invitation and want one, let me know. When I am given an invitation I will send it to you (first come, first served, and I'm reserving any extras for the GIs if that plan works out).
Gmail huh? just another password to remember...Also I didn't get an invite when I signed in to respond, what's a guy got to do? Since Jeff went AWOL, I post the second most often of anyone around here. Anyway, send me an invite if you get to and let me know if you like the gmail set up.
Bill: did you sign in to make a post, or just to make a comment? Wendy says she didn't get an invite either.
It's sort of funny, actually. I thought that anyone who wanted one could get a Gmail account. Even though I saw the invitation every time I logged in to Blogger I was never interested in signing up, because I didn't want another email account. But today I read the post on WWDN and it clicked: "Huh. I'm special because I *can* get a Gmail account *right now* and all those people (there are a lot of them!) at gmailswap.com *can't* - I'm signing up!" The illusion of scarcity (in a short amount of time, everyone who wants to will be able to get a Gmail account) caused me to want something I didn't want before. Well, that and the fact that I was going to get invitations that I could magnanimously give to those poor GIs without Gmail accounts. I felt kind of silly about it shortly after making the post and signing up.
Anyway, maybe I will get to make someone's day by giving them the pre-public-release Gmail account they've been itching for. It's good karma, I guess.
I got 6 invitations total. If you want one and haven't told me yet, now's the time to say so. I'm going to give the extras away on gmail4troops.com.
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