Michael Castellon

As if Gmail wasn’t good enough:

A year after unveiling a free e-mail service with a full gigabyte of storage, Google Inc. is doubling the capacity of each account and plans to keep bumping up the limit in the future. Once the upgrade takes effect Friday, Gmail users will be able to store up to 2 gigabytes of e-mail and attachments for each account. Even more capacity will be made available after that as it becomes feasible, the company said.

I’ve used gmail exclusively since its inception one year ago, and I’m never looking back.

Oliver Willis makes this interesting observation:

I’ve found this to be a remarkable phenomenon. In the blogosphere, you have almost a reverse dynamic to that found in the media. Overwhelmingly liberal bloggers identify themselves directly as Democrats. Yes, there are many who see the party as the lesser of two evils, and in their hearts would prefer Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader, but overwhelmingly I’ve found bloggers on the left have no problem saying “yep, I’m a Democrat” (I obviously count myself among that group).

But among bloggers on the right, it always seems that great pains are taken to make it clear that they are “independents” or “libertarians” – these are people who usually endorse much of the GOP agenda and reliably vote for Republicans – and they don’t identify as “Republican”. Yes, there are some like GOPBloggers who identify with the party, but that was essentially a recent development.

What does it mean? Well, liberals like to join movements, but as anyone who has watched the rightie echo chamber in progress can testify to, so does the left. It begs the question, are Democrats simply prouder of the Democratic party and what it stands for – for all the handwringing of “where do we stand” could it be that the donkey triumphs over the pachyderm? I think so.

Several Supreme Court Justices on Tuesday grilled attorneys for the entertainment industry who are attempting to sue companies who produce technology that can be used to distribute copyrighted material. This battle used to amount to little more than Metallica versus tweens who used Napster to pirate Christina Aguilera singles. Recently, however, the battle has shifted into an epic saga of The Entertainment Industry versus The Tech Industry.

The problem is if the Supreme Court dismisses the rulings of two lower courts that have already sided with Grokster, then the future of content-based technology can become severely threatened. If manufacturers, designers, and inventors think they might be sued if their technology is used to break the law, it’s likely their innovations may be seen as little more than liabilities — and consequently, go unreleased. If these laws existed 20 years ago, it’s possible we wouldn’t have VCRs, CDRW/DVDRW drives, iPods, or even dual deck cassette recorders (gasp!). I hope that the courts continue to find that technology doesn’t steal, people steal.

The music industry, with the help of Apple Computers, has made tremendous strides recently in offsetting profits lost to pirating with the help of iTunes, and it seems this would be a good time let technology continue to mature in a way that benefits both producers of content, and people seeking on-demand material.