Gmail

Google's much-touted e'mail service is live in beta-test mode, at least for people with Blogger accounts.

Google's track record as a company suggests that it will be well done and relatively devoid of Evil(TM), but there's been some uneasy chatter among privacy advocates about the potential privacy problems involved in having *all* your personal e'mail correspondence permanently archived and indexed by a third party, especially one which also has access to your Google-searches and, in the case of Blogger account-holders, weblog archives. Brad Templeton, Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, comments on those issues here. And of course there's wildly erratic discussion at Slashdot, as usual.