Google's Gmail web-based email service
( There was a day when a simple off-by-one (technically, an off-by-999
error) caused quite a stir among early Gmail users. Logging into your
Gmail account, you were met with the double take-worthy:
"You are currently using 16 MB (0%) of your 1000000
MB." I'll see your gigabyte and
raise you a terabyte. Whatever your reasons for trying, switching to, or lusting after a
Gmail account, you're sure to be delighted both by
its proper and "improper"
usesthe latter being the focus of this chapter. As with all things Google, the official interface to Gmail is only
one of many. Thanks to some clever screen scraping, analysis of the
data model and format underlying the candy-coated JavaScript
frontend, and some good old tinkerer's enthusiasm,
you can use Gmail as everything from a filesystem [Hack #78 and Hack
#79] to a backup server [Hack #80]