On a lighter note, does anyone else know when Twitter’s invite-through-Gmail process is actually going to get updated?  I understand that Gmail 2.0 (or whatever they’re calling it) with its updated contact management has broken things for Twitter, but jeez — I think its been a few weeks now that I’ve been getting an error when I try an “import” my Gmail contacts.

Anyway, many thanks who have added me, and many apologies if I haven’t gotten around to adding you in return.  (You see, the gmail importing thing seems to be broken … ;) )

I’m at http://www.twitter.com/tonyhung if you’re interested in future twitter updates, so please drop a line to say hello!

I noticed that my gmail account has been upgraded to the “gmail 2.0″ today, which is cool — we have some new features, such as an improved contacts function, the ability to filter emails based on a single email (not sure if this means by author and content — I’m thinking ‘probably’), and a little label at the top which tells me if something is loading (because Lord knows I need a label to tell me that); also, its subjectively faster, which is always nice.

To be honest, the one thing that I was hoping would appear still has not, and that is the ability to sort a page of emails base on alphabetical name, or date.

This isn’t the first time I’ve talked about it, and its still mind-boggling how this feature is still noticeably absent.  I know that some folks are still fans of creating ever more filters, but for my money, there’s still no easier way to … well, sort through a ton of emails than by actually *sorting* them by name.

In other news, the free storage space for gmail is now almost 5 gigabytes, which is also nice.  I remember when I first got access and it was just over 1 gigabyte, and how game-changing that was for web based email services.  Man, I am feeling old … :)

Google announced that you can now purchase extra storage that can be shared amongst all of your g-utilities, including gmail, Picasa, docs and spreadsheets and so on.  The price?  Well, it starts at an incredible $20 per year to bump you up to 6 gigabytes.  There is a graduated scale up to 250G which will run you $500 per year.

Without trying to sound absurd, I think that this is incredibly lame. In an era where the price of storage is dropping every quarter, where one of its competitors is offering “unlimited” email storage (although the storage doesn’t carry over to its ‘briefcase’), and where other Web2.0 offerings are offering similarly competitive products at a per-gigabyte price which is just as competitive (or more) with this, I just don’t see how this is anything but lame.

Yes, g-utility users now have the *option* of paying for more space, but that’s like giving car owners the *option* of paying for extra gas once they’ve driven the car off the parking lot.  There’s nothing special or innovative about that — and in fact, runs a little counter to the spirit of “holy shit” when Gmail first shattered the storage barriers about three years ago.

One does wonder if, with this move, Google is now running into a consolidative (?complacent) phase, where it feels happy with the kind of progress and inroads its made into online email, online docs and spreadsheets, and online pictures.  Although gmail isn’t leading the field when it comes to online email.  Nor is Picasa leading the field when it comes to online pictures.

For a company that is banking its future existence on the ability to sort, categorize, and make meaningful the world’s information — that is fairly robust in terms of its assets, brand, and equity — you would think they would try and remove all barriers to getting people to make that information available *to* google. And you would think that would mean, it wouldn’t, at least while it isn’t yet the leader in any one of those categories, because it isn’t … particularly to hard core / early adopters, who are going to be the *only* ones who are running into that limit at this stage in the game.

Google being short sighted? Trying to do a cash grab? Snubbing *its* faithful?

Or, maybe they have something else up their sleeve?

Heck, in this case, I think its a, b, c, but *not* d. Sorry, Google, this move is teh lame, and there’s no three ways of saying it.

And that I would almost pay money for.

I mean there are a bajillion add-ons for Gmail — and some of them are even useful — but for the love of all that’s holy, why hasn’t anyone figured out a greasemonkey script to allow Gmail to sort your inbox/folders by its column? It, by its unchangeable default, doesn’t allow you arrange your inbox by anything EXCEPT by date. You cannot, for example, sort by author, or by subject.

I love gmail as much as the next geek, but when my email is piled way high, I find that this single thing prevents me from sorting things out in an efficent way.

Last week, bordering on the brink of email bankruptcy, I would have done terrible things all for being able to sort by author. Doesn’t anyone else notice how much easier it is to sort through email once you’re able to group and SEE your email by common groups? Like who wrote it?

• “Ah yes, all my email newsletters — they are all crap, good-bye” [delete!]
• “Hmmm, notifications from the university — better save them all” [archive!]
• “Email forwards from my favourite aunt — again?” [spam!]

Yes, I know we can “ask” for it to be done with its next ‘upgrade’ or whatever, but why it hasn’t been implemented by now by Google proper, OR, some greasemonkey ninja is simply beyond me.

If anyone does know how this can be done, please let me know so I can do this and help publicize this important piece of information for the world to enjoy.