Apparently, AOL will now provide you with your own 2gigs of storage:

AIM Mail

And now, a public message to America Online:

Guys, guys, guys…

Believe me, nobody is more “You can do it! You can do it! You can, you can!” than yours truly, here. But there’s this little phrase called “picking your battles” — maybe you’ve heard of it?

You’re about as subtle as a dumptruck; we all know what you’re doing. It’s not all about space, for crying out loud. It’s about threaded conversations. It’s about searchable mail. It’s about spam protection that doesn’t suck. It’s about an interface that doesn’t look like it was conceived by a kid in kindergarten. It’s about labels instead of folders. It’s about dozens and dozens of features that I don’t even know about. Oh, and by the way? They keep upping their space quotas, bit by bit. They’ll always beat you on that score.

Okay, so it would be kind of cool to unsend an email. But the laws of TCP/IP (the collective voice of reason AND Internet traffic) make that impossible by design. And that’s OK, because TCP/IP protocols are smart, by and large. The rules of the Internet apply to you, which means that, as you very well know, the only email that you can take back are those sent on your own system (read: to other AOL users). And most of them have left you for the enemy by now. Whoops.

Put your heads together and come up with something else. Go for it! I want to be wowed! Sure, I’m a hardcore computer nerd (the Linux boxes sign my paycheck), which means that I’m supposed to hate you on principle, but really, I don’t. In fact, I was an AOL user for years. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I cancelled because your service was awful. Give me a reason to come back, and I just might.

Go find another great idea, AOL. This one’s taken.

hugs and snuggles,
Elizabeth

Oh, and if anyone needs a Gmail invite, I’ve got fifty (and so does every other Gmail user). Drop me a note and I’ll hook you up.