Gigs Galore! Spymac follows in Google's steps

[Bombardier]

Spymac, a Web hosting company for Macintosh aficionados, is giving away e-mail accounts that come with 1 gigabyte of storage, mimicking a move search leader Google made last week.

From Monday, current and new subscribers to Spymac Mail will have access to the storage, according to the company. The free e-mail accounts, which can be used with any operating system, do not rely on keyword scanning or advertising, it said in a posting on the Spymac site.

The launch could signal changes to the free e-mail business Yahoo and Microsoft's Hotmail dominate. These Internet companies impose fees of between $10 and $50 a year for a much smaller amount of e-mail storage. Yahoo subscribers, for example, get 100 megabytes storage--10 times less than Spymac's free 1GB--for $50.

"Yahoo and Hotmail may have to (give away more storage), if they want to stay in the game," said Kevin April, Spymac's co-founder and chief technology officer.

Spymac is trying to promote new Web hosting and auction services by giving away copious amounts of e-mail storage. With roughly 47,000 members, the former Apple Macintosh gossip Web site is small potatoes, compared with Google and other free-mail providers. But Spymac's move to offer more storage is among the first signs that the market is moving toward parity and indicates the relatively low cost of such a move.

Last week, Google shook the industry, when it said it would launch Gmail, a searchable Web-based e-mail service with enough storage to let subscribers keep messages indefinitely. Google plans to support the service by scanning e-mail and then delivering ads related to the content of messages. The initiative flagged a new direction for Google, while it also challenged the norm in the Web e-mail market.

Yahoo and MSN have made few changes to their system interfaces in recent years, but they have sought to charge fees for feature upgrades such as added storage. Yahoo is starting to use storage upgrades in its promotions, advertising price breaks for added disk space. And last week, it sent an e-mail promotion to selected subscribers, giving away 100 megabytes.

April said it's relatively cheap to upgrade members to additional storage from the 25 megabytes it had previously offered. He calculated that it would cost an average of $5 per person for 1 gigabyte of storage; that is, if the member were to use the entire allotted space.

A 1-gigabyte e-mail account can store up to 8 billion bits of data, or the equivalent of 500,000 pages of messages, according to April.

He said the storage allotments will help bring in new members, which will support its paid advertising, professional Web hosting and auction services.

http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5185461.html?tag=nefd.top

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Bombardier's own note:

I signed up for spymac's mail service and used it to send a 3.5 megabyte .exe file attachment to my Comcast email address. It hasn't arrived yet. When and if it does arrive, I'm still waiting.

This could be good.

[Bombardier]

I can say I am now impressed.

I don't get real impressed by an email service often, but I like this one.

The message with the ~3.5 megabyte attachment arrived with much speed.

I like having a gig of email space. Unlike Google's Gmail, this service is actually open.

[DudeAsInCool]

Hmm...Does it configure with entourage or outlook?

[Bombardier]

no, unfortunately it has no POP3 capabilities at this time.

It's very good as a webmail though. I just send a 7mb mpc music file to my Comcast email account.

If "1 gig of storage" email accounts start becoming a trend in the market, people could find a new way of passing music around.

[deb]

no, unfortunately it has no POP3 capabilities at this time....

... not sure if this is what you are talking about, but i am able to use my email checker with my spymac account ...

" http://www.spymac.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=71082

Quote: Originally posted by arena

how can i use the spymac mail via pop3?

Use the following settings to setup your external mail client:

1) Account type: POP3

2) User name: Your Spymac member name

3) Password: Your Spymac password

4) Incoming Mail Server: mail.spymac.com

5) Outgoing Mail Server: mail.spymac.com "

:)

[Bombardier]

Wow, didn't know that.

It makes the service even better. They are also working on a way to increase the file attachment size beyond 10 mb

Right now it is 10MB, because it is a technical limitation of MySQL. We are looking for ways to increase it.

[Guest .::BeatFactory::.]

I looked at the info:

1 GB e-mail account, [email protected]*

250 MB of space to upload pictures in the Spymac Gallery

100 MB free space on Spymac Hosting with WebDAV access*

Free iCal Hosting (both public and private)*

Access to the Spymac Forums and Shoutbox

Your very own Spymac Blog*

Access to the Spymac Auctions

The ability to create your very own personal Gallery and Forum

Mail, Blog, iCal and Free Hosting Details

Spymac Mail -- 1 GB of space and external and web mail access

To access Spymac Mail from your desktop e-mail application, enter the following settings:

Account Type: POP

Member name:

Password:

Incoming Mail Server: mail.spymac.com

Outgoing Mail Server: mail.spymac.com

Spymac Hosting -- 100 MB free and WebDAV access

WebDAV Access:

To access your free hosting space from your desktop using WebDAV technology, enter the following settings:

Server Address: http://MEMBERNAME.spymac.net:81

Member name:

Password:

Make sure to upload into the HTML folder on your SpyDisk (the Spymac equivalent of .Mac's iDisk) if you want

the information/files to be available via the Web.

Your homepage is located at: http://MEMBERNAME.spymac.net/

For more information on WebDAV and how to access it from your Mac OS X desktop, visit:

http://www.apple.com/creative/webpro/technology/webdav/

FTP access:

To access your free hosting space from your desktop via FTP, enter the following settings into your FTP

client:

Server: MEMBERNAME.spymac.net

Member name:

Password:

Again, your homepage is located at: http://MEMBERNAME.spymac.net/

iCal Hosting -- Private and Public Publishing

To publish your iCal calendars:

Base URL: http://MEMBERNAME.spymac.net:81/ical

Member name:

Password:

To publish your iCal with password protection:

Base URL: http://MEMBERNAME.spymac.net:81/icalprivate

Member name:

Password:

After your iCal is published, view it at: http://MEMBERNAME.spymac.net/ical or http://MEMBERNAME.spymac.net/

icalprivate (in the case of iCals published you wish to keep private.)  Login to the password-protected page

with your Spymac member name and password.

Spymac Blog -- Simple to use blogging service

To add a blog:

Login to Spymac and visit your Web Manager located at:

http://www.spymac.com/webmanager/user.php

Then click New Blog Entry.

You can visit your blog at:

http://MEMBERNAME.spymac.net/blog

IMPORTANT: You have to fill in some information before some of these services become active.  After you're

signed into your account, visit your Options at the below link:

http://www.spymac.com/user.php?action=options

After filling in the required infomation, a red check mark will appear under that section's tab.

Let us know if you have any questions and enjoy the new Spymac,

The Spymac team

The information about the pop3 access was in this confimation email. The service is great. I just hope it doesn't dissipate anytime soon. .::BF::. recommends spymac.com ;)

[Bombardier]

I'll bet when a large number of people sign up for it, the cool features will drop off :(

Sites usually start out big and free, but as more and more people sign up, features start turning into "pay" features and the amount of webspace & such drops.

[DudeAsInCool]

i have over a gigabyte of my email on my computer and its clogging up my system. How do i dump it into SpyMac, and then take what I want back into outlook? And can it be configured to keep my Comcast web address? Or do I have to change that, too?

[deb]

I'll bet when a large number of people sign up for it, the cool features will drop off :(

Sites usually start out big and free, but as more and more people sign up, features start turning into "pay" features and the amount of webspace & such drops.

... hope that doesn't happen, but that same thought crossed my mind ... there have been quite a few great free-services i enjoyed using that eventually became fee-services after becoming popular ...

[Guest .::BeatFactory::.]

Check out the alexa rankings for spymac:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_...&url=spymac.com

If you look closely towards the right end of the graph, their traffic has spiked tremendously... hehe should Beatking offer a gig of email? j/k we would make big news though

[Bombardier]

Just look at new startup company YouSendIt

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_...l=yousendit.com

Their traffic is rapid on the incline and probably will shoot through the roof very soon.

It's such a great service.

A great recipe for internet traffic:

Free + lots of web space / storage = mass traffic & users signing up.