30Gigs Web Mail Launches Into Beta

gaanagaa writes "Neowin reports, that a new web mail service launched today is promising to bring users an email inbox of 30gb." The original intent of 30gigs.com was apparently to create an "'All in one' site for the webmaster and avid computer users. According to the sites 'about us' page, combining personal file storage, GD2 signatures and anonymous email all in one service, which would be free." In their brief review of the service a Neowin user also offers a word of caution with regards to their extremely short terms of service and privacy policy, calling them "shady".

30 GB?!?!?! 250K oughta be enough for anyone!

[Palal]

I can't fill up my 2 gigs on Gmail, nor my gig on Y! mail, why in the world would I need 30 gigs?

Signup requires invite, like Google Mail

[marcello_dl]

I am not sure i like that. I think a playful method like a web based slot machine that lets you win an invitation (ajax based not to hammer the servers) would be nicer. Sigh.

TOS

[Lussarn]

word of caution with regards to their extremely short terms of service and privacy policy, calling them "shady".

It should be a good thing to not have a long lawyerlike TOS. Terms of service is a way for companies to bypass the laws and shouldn't be needed at all. Period.

Re:30 GB?!?!?! 250K oughta be enough for anyone!

[master_gopher]

Agreed, mail servers seem to be trying endlessly to outdo one another on storage, whereas it's the systems which attract most people I know. As argues elsewhere, many Yahoo!ers prefer to stay with Yahoo despite gmail, because they like/are used to the setup.

Huge Uses?

[Famatra]

With a box that big you could, if you developed a network, work out an eMail p2p system.

Simply upload the stuff you want to trade and forward it to people who need it. How do you know who would want the stuff you've uploaded? You'd need to develop a network where your node advertises what it has available, and autoforwards the file when someone requests it.

After the initial uploading there is really no more bandwidth costs for you as you can forward the files for free - the email providers' servers handles the load.

Re:30 GB?!?!?! 250K oughta be enough for anyone!

[Anonymous Coward]

To store files you want accesible from any computer that can browse the web. Probably a good place to stick family photo's, music files, and home videos.

Re:30 GB?!?!?! 250K oughta be enough for anyone!

[MikeFM]

The number one GMail feature for me was the free pop access. I used to use Yahoo for that and then they started wanting to charge for it. I haven't looked to see if they've made it free again..

If only GMail would let you delete messages read by pop instead of just trashing them. Trash uses quota which quickly, for some of us, limits how much mail we can move through GMail.

I'm cheating and developed a program that reads my incoming mail for attachments, collects the attachments, inserts web links to the attachements, and passes the rest through to my usual mail program (still leaving me with over a gig of mail a day). After seeing how popular the trial version I offered was I'm rewriting the whole thing to handle bandwidth usage better. I can't believe Yahoo and Google are to dense to care about this market. Yahoo and Google Groups are both crap and that is what generates the majority of this traffic.

Re:totally shady

[MikeFM]

As a web developer I can say that I would never promise not to read any data stored on my machines. It just isn't possible to say that. There is always the chance it could come up in some sort of log or be required for some sort of technical or legal reason. It'd be unwise to make such a promise knowing that you probably can't live up to it.

Re:30 GB?!?!?! 250K oughta be enough for anyone!

[PhotoBoy]

I run a few webmail systems myself, you would be amazed at how quickly people manage to eat up space. On one system we have a problem with people who sign up, turn off the spam blocker and then sign up for lots of spam. Their inbox fills up but they never actually use the service, making us wonder what the point to signing up was. We suspect it's just people who have a grudge against the company to whom we are supplying the webmail.

The home page is a mess

[tricheco]

30gigs.com page is kind of a mess. Nice.

Re:Huge Uses?

[MikeFM]

Firefox has a BT extension as well that may be included in future versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. I agree that such use could be interesting although I still think BT is flawed as distribution tool for heavy automated use at this time. As you say speed and reliability is also a problem with BT for small distributions. RSS/BT could do a lot to replace mass transmission of binaries from services such as Yahoo and Google Groups.

I've cheated and developed my own method that is similar to BT, doesn't require any browser add-ons or extra software installed, and fixes the speed and reliability problems as well as making it easier to use in situations where you need to expose many files from an automated system. It also makes uploading files extremely easy. Once I reopen my website with this new feature I am thinking of opensourcing the server and client code for it and licensing it off for those who don't want to agree to the GPL's restrictions.

My site offers file sharing and discussion so I guess it might seem to attract some of that crowd you mention although I'm more interested in artists and other content creators looking for a new means of sharing their work. So far mostly it's been used by people trading amatuer porn. Not exactly what I was aiming for but porn is often at the bleeding (or just dripping with some bodily fluid?) edge of technology.

Re:webdrive? invite me and I'll build it

[Anonymous Coward]

Something like... GmailFS [jones.name]?

Re:With free webmail being all the rage these days

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

"GMail has POP, but the terms suggest they might do away with it in the future

From http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answe r=10350&topic=194 [google.com]

"POP access is free for all Gmail users and we have no plans to charge for it in the future."

What in that statement suggests that they might do away with it in the future? Or were you just spreading FUD based on something you read a long time ago?

Runbox.com

[Powertrip]

And alternative that is not free, but very full featured is RUNBOX (www.runbox.com). Runbox offers 10GB email, and 1GB of file storage. They also offer POP, IMAP, Webmail, WAP and Mobile access. They even provide SSL access to boot. Pretty great service for a small fee. You can also host your own domains email on their server, thus giving you the ability to keep your [e-mail] accounts if you desire. Check it out, I've been using it for several years and love it.

GD2?

[Mike Hicks]

What's a GD2 signature? A quick search only brings up material related to the GD graphics library, plus a handful of articles related to this webmail site.

Re:SMTP is not a file transfer protocol!

[AtomicJake]

You are right: SMTP is the wrong protocol to send huge attachments. However, people are using it. And worse, business people (e.g. marketing guys) depend on its ability to send large files (e.g. Powerpoint presentations, large PDFs, etc.).

There are basically two solutions for this problem: Either restrict your users to send only mails with a limited size, or to install an intelligent SMTP server (e.g. Mailonator [mailonator.com]) that will automatically replace the attachments with URLs to a Web server, where the attachments are stored.