WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A GIGABYTE OF FREE ONLINE STORAGE?
A number of ingenious uses for Google鈥檚 free email service, Gmail, are surfacing before the service has even launched. These include using the Gmail account as extra memory for a PC, or a place to keep an online diary, or weblog.
Instead of the 2 megabytes typically offered by free webmail services such as Microsoft鈥檚 Hotmail, Gmail will offer 1 gigabyte of storage space. Google hopes to make money out of its service by searching emails for keywords and displaying relevant paid-for adverts. Although the service is still in test mode, with access by invitation only, a number of independent software tools for tweaking Gmail have already sprung up on the internet.
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Jonathan Hernandez, a Mexican programmer, has used one such tool to turn his Gmail account into an online diary or 鈥渂log鈥�. Sending an email to his Gmail account automatically posts a message to the blog 鈥� while the email account serves as the blog鈥檚 archive. And Richard Jones of Maryland has gone a stage further, turning his Gmail account into an extra folder for his computer鈥檚 Linux operating system. It鈥檚 like adding a gigabyte to a hard drive.
While experts expect a lot more Gmail ideas to follow, nefarious uses are apparent already. Fraudsters, possibly spammers, last week began Gmail 鈥減hishing鈥� 鈥� emailing Gmail account holders, promising them five more Gmail accounts in return for the user name and password to their existing accounts.
DVD-QUALITY CAMCORDER
Sony has given the movie industry extra motivation to make sure its plans to stop pirates using camcorders in cinemas will really work (see 鈥淚nvention鈥�). Before the year is out, Sony will launch a consumer Digital Video (DV) camcorder that shoots in high definition, enabling users to make a top-quality copy of the pictures on a cinema screen.
Sony鈥檚 HDV 1080i camcorder will use standard tapes. But it will record 1080 lines per picture instead of the 525 and 625 lines recorded for the NTSC and PAL TV standards. The HDTV pictures on Sony鈥檚 tape will be in the MPEG-2 format, the same as used by DVDs and the new camcorder will connect to a DVD recorder or home computer for editing. If pirates can smuggle the new camcorder into a cinema, they will come out with a near perfect movie recording ready for copying to blank DVDs.
