Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

I like gmail a lot :-)

Gmail's response times are a lot faster than most webmail for me. Have you noticed how many things don't require fetching a new page?

Also, if you need threading features that Gmail doesn't provide, take a look at Ximian Evolution. Its vfolders might be exactly what you want.

I guess IBM's new email client will have similar features, assuming it incorporates them from the ReMail project:

http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/

It's slow to load, but seems super-fast once loaded. Of course, I'm still at 0%. Still, the interface and search features are big improvements -- enough to cover the costs of switching from yahoo.
AB

I hate all you people. I want gmail!

You can delete single messages, though it's not well documented. Open up the conversation that has the message you want to remove, and in the upper right hand corner of each message, you'll see the "More options" hyperlink. Click on that, and a set of options will appear below the mail header, including "Trash this message". That allows you to delete a message within a conversation without deleting the conversation.

While you're inside a conversation you can also star specific messages -- shows up as a starred conversation in the top-level view, but within the conversation, there's a distinction.

Now if they'd only allow manual separation of a conversation, so when I mail myself Washington Post Articles, they don't all wind up in the same conversation...

Yes, I definitely want the ability to point and say "treat this as a thread henceforth." Also, I want to import my old mail files, and I want to be able to export all or part of my mail from the GMail system. (I believe import and export is planned.)

But overall, GMail is brill. I've used it exclusively for a week and a half, and it's done wonders for my email efficiency. It's not just great compared to other webmail systems; it's flat-out great.

But compared to the newsreaders in Vernor Vinge's _A Fire Upon the Deep_, Gmail is pathetic and pitiful.

I can't believe you've actually read Vinge. I've found one of the few people on this earth who is as big a geek as I am.

As I understand it, part of the threading has to do with the subject lines. Two very different email exchanges with the same subject lines got grouped together into the same conversation.

However, once something is a conversation, it remembers, so if I change a subject line when I reply, it knows to keep my response in the originating conversation.

I actually love the multi-threading, since it means that if my friends are having an email fight about Tenet's (ahem) "resignation" I come back to one conversation with 25 messages rather than 25 atomic messages all over.

However, my favorite feature is the ability to multiply tag the same message with different labels. I can't believe this is the first big email program to let me use relational database technology (I don't even think Oracle's email program let you do that ... it's been a decade though).

-- Ennis

p.s. am glad that you figured out how to delete individual messages. Was going to email you, but didn't have your email in my gmail account, and then, days later, remembered that your blog has comments.

p.p.s. Ennis is a pseudonym, but we've never met, even though we know people in common.

p.p.p.s. the email address is bogus to prevent harvesting by evil spam bots.

i want my gmail - please please please - i too am very annoyed with all of you braggers

Ex gratia - As a favour

Omne initium est difficile - Every beginning is difficult

Aquila non captat muscas - The eagle doesn't capture flies (don't sweat the small things)

Hoc est in votis - This is in my prayers

Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire - I came, I saw, I want to go home

Hoc est in votis - This is in my prayers