improving my aim.

I use Gmail for my personal email (and if any of you would like to do the same, let me know and I'll send an invite your way; I've got about 50). There are a lot of features that I like about Gmail, the ridiculous amount of space I have being one of them. I was used to Hotmail, where if I didn't check my email every two hours and delete all the spam, I was in danger of going over my space limit. At Gmail, I'm using fifteen times as much space as I had in the old Hotmail, but the bottom of my inbox states "You are currently using 1% of your 2432 MB." That's good stuff.

Anyway, Gmail also has these sponsored links that show up on the right toolbar of each email. I assume these are powered by Google, because there's obviously some sort of search mechanism that relates the ads that appear to whatever email you're looking at (again, as opposed to Hotmail, which seemed to think that all my correspondence is related to meeting blonds or getting in touch with people from high school). I suppose Google goes by keywords in the email. I've gotten in the habit of checking the sponsored links, just because it's sort of interesting to see what Google has deemed relevant in my email. For example, I got an email from a friend a week or so ago that was just sort of all over the place, and there were links for Italian food, Muppet memorabilia, and luncheon meat. I got an email from an old roommate about her new apartment, and the links were about finding roommates, finding apartments, and, inexplicably, expatriating to Brussels. Today, I got an email from my sister-in-law regarding the recent change in my relationship status. These were the links that appeared beside her email:

Overcome Breaking Up
Powerful subliminal methods. We'll get you through this.
www.innergear.com

I Used to Miss Him
But My Aim is Improving: Not Your Ordinary Breakup Survival Guide
www.improveyouraim.com

Relationships
Find Highly compatible Matches Get A Free Compatibility Profile.
www.PerfectMatch.com

I like how the links tell a story. Notice how they go through the stages of a breakup: depression, bitterness, and moving on.

I'd kind of like to experiment with this feature. If someone sends you an email with about three letter X's in a row, do you get porn advertisements? Of course, if you mention any sort of product, I imagine that makes Google's job really easy, but what about more abstract concepts, like numbers or gravity or sarcasm? And do those ads even serve the purpose of attracting site visitors? I read somewhere that an obscenely large percentage of the population couldn't tell the difference between a search result and a sponsored link (The big hint for me is the heading "SPONSORED LINKS"). So maybe people think it's part of the email, as if they happen to be friends with a lot of marketing people.

It's kind of creepy, both the ubiquity of ads and the fact that Google is "reading" my email. But most email providers do that anyway, if nothing else for spam-blocking. So maybe you might not even get your email with all those letter X's, because it's been sent to the spam can.

But enough. I've apparently got better things to do, according to Google. I've got to move to Brussels, buy some salami, and practice my aim. Maybe not in that order.