Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Google signup restriction and email alias

I wanted to create another email to synchronize my website, my blog and my email id, so tried to create an id without a dot, and i learnt something new today,

1) If you already have a friend, he can send you an invite, but if you dont have an invite, if you try to login via signup, it is not that easy, i saw a unique feature, when you try to login to google they ask you to give your cell phone number, what cell phone ???? lol then how will people in asia or europe sign up, if i give my asian number will you send an sms to that phone.

https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1

There was a big explanation on this link which said, we ask for cellphone so that we can send you an invite which will stop abuse of email, blah... blah.... ok looks innovative, but at the same time i have 97 invites available to send to anyone who can register lol there is a big hole isnt there? You can send an invite to anyone they need not provide their cell phone to register but new users need to provide cell phone to get sms invite???

Any way the idea of sending an invite via sms to phone and allowing sign ups was pretty good, also you have a very good track of who uses the number, just in case you want to track back the user bingo, it becomes very very easy. So you can accomplish a lot, find out who is messing or who is playing prank etc.... but if this is enforced throughout for all users then it is a great feature.

2) I did not know until today that for gmail id, you can use any number of dots in your email id, so let us say the email id is say donaldduck@gmail.com, if some one sends an email to d.o.naldduck@gmail.com or donald.duck@gmail.com or any number of dots donald duck will still get it :) wow it makes the duck sooo happy doesnt it ;)
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en&answer=10313

And above is the link which explains "am i receiving someones email" no you are not.
And also ofcourse they blocked duplicate signups, so if someone else tried to create a new id say do.naldduck@gmail.com they will say it is already used up.

Wow nice idea !!! think outside the box :)