Two gigs you won't want to miss

Twelve months ago today, Google sprang what everyone took to be an April Fool's by promising one gigabyte of storage in its new webmail service, Gmail. Exactly a year later, Gmail has boosted individual storage to an incredible 2GB, with immediate effect today and with the possibility of more.

Prompted in part by Yahoo's matching of the magic one gig, Gmail obviously had to up its game to maintain its unique selling point. Nonetheless, unlike Yahoo, it's a service which is still not freely available and new users can join only by invitation of an existing member.

Not that Gmail is exactly an exclusive club. Every member, including this column, has 50 invitations at their disposal. You want one? Drop me a line: rprice(at)unison(dot)independent(dot)ie - just say please.