Day of Deceit

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Google announced that they're launching a web-based email service called GMail that will allow people to store a gigabyte of emails and will enable them to search through their mail using search technology. Sounds cool... but can you trust any news report on or around April 1?

Google got in under the wire by a few hours, even on Atlantic Time, and Evan Williams would've had to be in cahoots deceiving his readers, so I can only assume the news is true. So, does this day of deceit actually affect how companies release their news? Does anyone take anything they hear seriously on April 1? I've been burned too many times in years past with promises of incredible occurrences like the year my dad convinced us there was a worm in my sister's cereal bowl... Hmm. Hmmm.

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Daniel Von Fange -

http://www.braino.org/

I wonder if companies ever think of using April first to test out new ideas on the public...

Daniel Von Fange -

http://www.braino.org/

Press release is dated April First. It's gotta be a hoax. Of course, Google is a company that just might make an important announcement on April First for the fun of it.

Lori -

I heard the announcement on CBC this morning-a trusted news source! So believe what you read/heard, we'll be seeing it in a few weeks.

Maggie -

The Gmail idea is true as I'm sure you know now. Think about the invasion of privacy since it searchs for keywords in your email. And, that leads to the capability of keeping a database on you. It's downright creepy. Also I note that there have already been state governments taking steps to limit this - VA I think and CA - legislatively mostly.

Isaac -

I'm sorry, but thats hogwash - plain and simple. Hotmail and yahoo mail have far more advertisements on any given page. Sure - they don't match up with keywords in your email - but that doesn't mean that microsoft and yahoo don't have access to all the content of your emails stored in their free email services.

I really don't get how people are freaked about this. If you use free email servers (hell, even if you don't - its not like email is a secure protocal at all) - there is nothing stopping someone with enough intrest from indexing your emails, and keeping a "database on you". Plus, those already exist, in many forms.

Nick Burka -

http://gallery.whitelands.com

Good review of GMail that sides with Isaac on Salon today.

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Daniel Burka

My name is Daniel Burka. I'm a web designer living in San Francisco. Currently, I'm one of the founders of Milk Inc.. For several years I was the creative director at Digg and previous to Milk, I was the director of design at Tiny Speck. I grew up in PEI, Canada, where I was one of the founders of silverorange. Aside from obsessing about interface design and css selectors, I'm a frequently-falling rock climber, a lazy cyclist, and an often out-of-bounds disc golfer.

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I'm a web designer living in San Francisco, California. I sometimes get the chance to present lectures and workshops at conferences around the world, where I speak about iterative design strategies, designing for large online communities, and more broadly about interface design for web applications. I've posted many of the slides from past presentations I've done on Slideshare.

Currently, I'm the director of design at a small gaming startup called Tiny Speck. Until October 2009, I was the creative director at Digg. I was also one of the co-founders of the social content-sharing site Pownce, which is now a part (heh heh) of Six Apart. Back in 1999, I helped found silverorange, a stellar web development and design firm based in Prince Edward Island, Canada. I continue to work with silverorange, but as an inactive partner.

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