A year after its launch, Google has doubled the capacity of its Gmail service and added new features.
Those lucky souls invited to have an account now get a whopping great 2GB of storage, with the ability to send up to 10MB of attachments in a single message with free POP access – with Google promising further increases in the pipeline.
“Since we introduced Gmail, people have had a lot of places to store e-mail, but some of our heavier users have been approaching their limits, and have been wondering what is going to happen,” says Georges Harik, Gmail’s product management director. “So, starting today, we are going to give people more and more space continuously and indefinitely.”
“Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GB by giving more space as we are able to do so. We know that email will only become more important in people’s lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs.”
The move comes hot on the heels of last week’s decision by Yahoo to increase the size of its free account to 1GB. Both Yahoo and Hotmail can offer up to 2GB of storage as well, but users must fork out for the privilege.
The company has announced no immediate plans to increase Gmail’s 10MB limit on attachment sizes, and there’s no prospect of subscribers being able to turn their in-box storage into a full-featured virtual external hard disk.
Google is, however, aware that some crafty Gmail subscribers are using the service for this purpose, mailing files to themselves as a way of storing them online.
Google seems cool about it too, with Harik saying, “We want our users to understand that we have a plan and that we are anticipating their needs, and that nothing strange is going to happen with Gmail down the line.”
Google is also testing phishing protection on the accounts, serving up a warning when it detects a dodgy looking email.
Gmail’s arrival on the scene a year ago sent up a rocket up the backsides of the Web mail market, whose main players had been providing minimal inbox storage for their free services.
At the time, Yahoo only offered a paltry 4MB of in-box with Microsoft providing even less at 2MB.
Since then, most major Web mail providers have reacted to Gmail’s generous inbox quotas with Microsoft and Yahoo both now offering 250MB for their free services. Yahoo plans to begin offering 1GB starting in late April.
Curiously, Gmail is still technically in a beta phase, and is not generally available – the only way users can obtain a Gmail account is by invitation from an existing user (each current user has 50 invitations to give).
Google also randomly offers Gmail accounts via its main Google.com Web page.
Google have yet to clarify whether Gmail accounts would ever be totally open, with Harik cryptically commenting, “We keep looking for ways to make it more broadly available to people who want to use it”.
While Gmail is totally free to use, it’s financed by text ads that are served up to users with each message they open. The fact that the ads are based on each message’s text caused an outcry, but Google insist that text scanning is automated and without nosey human intervention.
Everyone’s heard of Space Invaders haven’t they? Those who haven’t, will surely have been sitting in a very dark room with their fingers in their ears, singing “La, la, la, la” very loudly to themselves since 1978. 
Not wanting to let a good thing go by, Nintendo has announced the latest version of Invaders – Space Invaders Revolution for the Nintendo DS. 
The new version sounds like it has some of those interesting features, such as rules that change as you pass between levels. 
In normal play, the DS version doesn’t make a great use of the dual screens. You can use the lower, touch screen as a controller, tapping the on-screen buttons, in some of the games and sometimes graphics do pass between the two. 
Microsoft has launched MSN Video Downloads, a spanking new mobile service that will provide daily television programming for downloading to Windows Mobile devices, such as Portable Media Centers, Smartphones and Pocket PCs. 
The video content is compliant with ‘PlaysForSure’ video devices, and is optimised for Portable Media Centers and compatible with Smartphones and Pocket PCs that support Windows Media Player 10 Mobile. 
“With content from some of the most recognized brands in entertainment, MSN Video Downloads helps bring this vision to life, allowing people to take their favourite television shows with them whether they are on the train, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, or keeping the kids occupied in the back seat of the car.” 
All music videos on the site will be made available in multiple formats for playing on traditional PCs, laptops and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile-based secure devices including the Portable Media Centers, Pocket PCs and select Smartphones. 
As of early May, Dutch Vodafone customers will be able to say ‘nr!’ to saucy adult content offered via Vodafone live! from their mobile phone. 
With hand-rubbing porn-shifters keenly eying up a growing – and lucrative – mobile multimedia market, it makes sense for telcos to be able to reassure parents that young Timmy’s new handset isn’t going to become a mobile gateway into the portals of smut. 
History will be made in a small corner of Wales today when the residents of two Carmarthenshire villages – situated on either side of the River Tywi – switch to digital-only TV. 
To help smooth the transition, a helpline was set up for residents’ teething problems, with one-to-one support made available to the elderly. 
There are concerns, however, that these fancy-pants new digi-boxes could be a problem for the elderly and those on poor incomes. The government is discussing with charities about how to protect the vulnerable while promising not to authorise a complete switchover until support measures are in place. 
Microsoft has agreed – with all the enthusiasm of a child being made to eat spinach – to adopt all the “main changes” requested by the European Commission to its new version of Windows without Media player components. 
Horacio Gutierrez, a lawyer for Microsoft, was clearly not too happy, telling Reuters that the company has “some misgivings about the chosen name, as we fear it may cause confusion for consumers about the product, but we will adopt the Commission’s name in order to move forward and accelerate the pace of the implementation process.” 
And there’s more! Microsoft are also in disagreement with the EU over plans to appoint a trustee to monitor Microsoft’s compliance (or the complete lack of) – if the company fail to comply with the Commission’s decisions, they could face a daily slapdown of up to US$5 million – the equivalent of a cup of coffee in Bill Gates’ world. 
A large question mark hangs over the future of aggregated news sites supplied by Web companies such as Google after it was revealed that Agence France-Presse had sued the world’s most popular search engine for alleged copyright infringement. 
“AFP has over 600 online clients using their news services, sites like Political Gateway. Being blacklisted by the number one search engine in the world is enough to make a news site immediately drop AFP and go to another news service like AP, Reuters, UPI, and the like. We know this to be true because Political Gateway is looking at options right now. 
Yahoo has whipped out its wildly wedgified wallet and snapped up the online photo-sharing service Flickr, less than a week after launching a beta test of its new blogging tool. 
There will be some early integration, however, with the ability to log into Flickr using a Yahoo ID and password. 
Until now, Apple has been pretty safe in its position of master of all digital music players. That’s lead to speculation of their crown slipping. We’re fresh back from the European consumer show CeBIT and saw many, many good looking, highly functioned, portable music players there.