DearMYRTLE - 50 of your closest friends

Providing practical, down-to-earth advice for family historians since 1995, online since 1985.

50 of your closest friends

DearREADERS,
Yesterday four columns came from the desk of DearMYRTLE. My fingers can now hardly type. <naw!> Anyway, there has been an avalanche of feedback from readers about AOL's new policy to have AOL email servers reject all incoming mailing list postings. This is a disaster for genealogists who subscribe to very useful genealogy mailing lists such as those at RootsWeb.

(MYRT'S NOTE: RootsWeb mailing list servers are still down, so none of our postings are getting out to any of the mailing lists, whether you have AOL or not.)

Among the alternatives to AOL email service, I mentioned "Gmail" from Google.

Gmail is by "invitation only" at this point.

This morning (it wasn't there yesterday) I checked my Gmail, and discovered that they have upped the number of people you can invite at one time. I always hover around 4 or 5. That magic number has changed to 50.

YES, Five-O. Oh my. I do believe we are witnessing Google's move on disgruntled AOLers. But how can you get this free email service with 1-gigabyte of storage? As I mentioned a FRIEND must invite you. So those of us with the service need to sign on and invite you. I've got 49 invites left.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN A FRIEND HELPED ME:
I met that friend, incidentally, because of a genealogy mailing list for family history consultants. Anyway, the friend had to go to Gmail and log in. Then that friend clicked in a specific "INVITE" area, which has now moved to the lower portion of the left navigation bar. That friend mentioned that the "invite" area would appear until she had shared it with 5 people. Then it disappeared for a while, until some several days or weeks until magically, Gmail would allow another 5 invitations from her Gmail account.

WHEN I SIGNED UP FOR Gmail LAST FALL:
I couldn't see the "invite" option for about a week or so of sending emails back and forth testing out the service. I successfully subscribed to several mailing lists and began receiving postings. I am not sure if new Gmailers will now have to wait until a few emails have been exchanged before the "invite" area will appear on their Gmail left navigation bars as it did with me.

THIS MORNING:
Inviting my friend Ed was as easy as:

Signing in to gmail.com with my user name and password
Copying his email address from this morning's email
Pasting it into the "invite" form in the lower left portion of the navigation bar.
Clicking the "Send Invite" button.

Hopefully Ed will keep me informed about the availability of the option for him to "invite a friend."

I've got 49 invitations left, which I will gladly share with the first 49 replies. Promise to share with your 50 closest friends as soon as that option has been activated on your Gmail account.

Gmail is Internet-based email, not a method for signing on to see anything on the net.

For Further Reading:

URGENT: AOL will not support Mailing Lists - Part One "...so you won't be able to read the posting or any responses via your AOL email."
URGENT: AOL will not support Mailing Lists - Part Two "...you can "Browse" and "Search" RootsWeb mailing list postings that were normally delivered to your AOL email box. Simply go to...
URGENT: AOL will not support Mailing Lists - Part Three "Using any of these suggestions means you will still "sign online" with AOL, but you'll minimize AOL, and open up your web browser to go to the free email service you select."
URGENT: AOL will not support Mailing Lists - Part Four "If you wish to leave AOL, here are some of my thoughts. They are by no means ALL the alternatives, but let's just get some concrete ideas on the table for our AOL friends."

Happy family tree climbing!
Myrt :)
DearMYRTLE,
6023 26th Street West PMB 352
Bradenton, FL 34207