Gmail invites - A small gift to the Bali development team

As usual everybody is working hard trying to get another release out, another fix to do and a new bunch of items in the issue list. Weekends are spent debugging and troubleshooting.

I wanted to distract them in a pleasant way from all the usual things in the daily life. This distraction should be a different one from the past. How about sending a gift that many desire but not easily available? How about getting them an account in:



If you haven't heard about it before, it is the most talked about and sought after e-mail service. Here are some of the highlights.

Search, don't sort.
Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received.

Don't throw anything away.
1000 megabytes of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.

Keep it all in context.
Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation.

No pop-up ads. No untargeted banners.
You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest.

It is currently in Beta but users can't enroll directly. Google has given access to only select users. Those users are randomly given some "invites" which can be used to enroll their friends. Those people who have these invites realized the popularity of it and started auctioning it in ebay.

Gmail felt like a cool gift to give. So, I bought some in auction and e-mailed to each member of the Bali Development team today. I had to buy in multiple auctions from various people and it took some time. Though Gmail may be released in 3-6 months time, good user ids are already running out and our gang will now be able to grab some before the service goes public.

I hope they will enjoy it. If you received a invite from me, please use it right away or it will expire soon. Some tips and more.

Celebrating Sastry's project completion

A few days back, I sent him a note to congratulate on completing the "Generic Filter Framework" project.

First Sastry didn't know what the courier was about. He thought it is some scam and wanted to be sure of what it is before signing. With a irritating voice I told him to first sign and send the courier guy off.

Sastry opening the packet. As he is peeling the covers out slowly, he is wondering who sent him such a big package.



Once he took the note out of the courier wrapper, he started to smile knowing what it is.



Sastry posing with the 5 feet high 7 feet wide note. Even a note this big can't be taller than Sastry.



The note itself is here.



I wish the whole team is in one location when we celebrate like this. I missed all the other guys being around. We have to start similar things in Bangalore and recognize them for their milestones. I am sure many of them deserve it.