Gmail users might be aware of these situations that I am just going to describe. This is what we do each morning – wake up, go to the loo, POL (sounds similar to LOL? Yes…Pee out Loud!) and then brush our teeth. This is analogous to what we do each morning in office - put our PCs on, login, reply to official mails and then log into Gmail! It has become a habit for us and I won’t be surprised if few years down the line we find this thing in a kid’s textbook saying ‘Daily Gmail habits’!
So why has Gmail penetrated our virtual lives so much? What do we actually do on Gmail? Keep our status available or busy and wait for people to email us? Or keep searching some or the other email all the time? Or keep emailing others all the time? I would really like to meet the person who says yes to these questions. Hardly does anyone use Gmail as an official email id given the free email ids available for each company’s employee. Then what the hell do we do there?
I think the answer lies in one of the features of Gmail, Gtalk. Let’s go back to almost where we started, slightly changing the question that we asked. What do we do once we log into Gmail? Do we check the few emails that have come in the few hours we have been offline? No! We look for the green and red buttons (with a slit :)) that appear on the left hand side of the page, showing our friends who are online. After having looked briefly at those buttons and counting them somewhere at the back of the mind, we start looking for names, in alphabetical order. We look for the certain characters, certain names and the colour of the button against their name. We wait for the colour of the buttons to change at times. We may not start talking to those having green/red buttons, or sometimes, with the ones we are expecting to have green/red buttons, but we may still keep going back, again and again to the page to check if their buttons are still coloured. And sometimes we even wait for the names to swing left and right on the minimized window of Gmail :) I find it pretty interesting!
And that’s not the only thing that we do. We do wait for some buttons to turn green/red and as soon as they do, we just can’t stop ourselves talking to them. Whether the discussions have a meaning or not is a different thing. After all, who cares! It’s the virtual adda where we meet! Right?
I am happy to be one of the users of Gmail and have the privilege of experiencing all the things mentioned above. I would really like to thank Gmail, for making the talk possible! I would have felt really lonely in this crowded world in its absence. Thanks once again!
So why has Gmail penetrated our virtual lives so much? What do we actually do on Gmail? Keep our status available or busy and wait for people to email us? Or keep searching some or the other email all the time? Or keep emailing others all the time? I would really like to meet the person who says yes to these questions. Hardly does anyone use Gmail as an official email id given the free email ids available for each company’s employee. Then what the hell do we do there?
I think the answer lies in one of the features of Gmail, Gtalk. Let’s go back to almost where we started, slightly changing the question that we asked. What do we do once we log into Gmail? Do we check the few emails that have come in the few hours we have been offline? No! We look for the green and red buttons (with a slit :)) that appear on the left hand side of the page, showing our friends who are online. After having looked briefly at those buttons and counting them somewhere at the back of the mind, we start looking for names, in alphabetical order. We look for the certain characters, certain names and the colour of the button against their name. We wait for the colour of the buttons to change at times. We may not start talking to those having green/red buttons, or sometimes, with the ones we are expecting to have green/red buttons, but we may still keep going back, again and again to the page to check if their buttons are still coloured. And sometimes we even wait for the names to swing left and right on the minimized window of Gmail :) I find it pretty interesting!
And that’s not the only thing that we do. We do wait for some buttons to turn green/red and as soon as they do, we just can’t stop ourselves talking to them. Whether the discussions have a meaning or not is a different thing. After all, who cares! It’s the virtual adda where we meet! Right?
I am happy to be one of the users of Gmail and have the privilege of experiencing all the things mentioned above. I would really like to thank Gmail, for making the talk possible! I would have felt really lonely in this crowded world in its absence. Thanks once again!
4 comments:
Haanji (Jee) TALK!
Very well depicted what Gtalk plays a roles in our heads...
I would agree that at times I do wait for some buttons to turn green and at times i find it amusing that I am still on an orange button while I have been chatting away to glory ... :) - specially only for those who use the mac...
and on a curious note.. which are those buttons that you wait to go GREEN... would you like 4 options or give me an answer anyways...?
:) I remember that dialogue from a film called Maalaamaal - "Parda!" Anyways...nothing specific :) One might argue that it even depends on your mood!
Gtalk is super cool...esp since u can use it right from the same window as ur email...in fact yahoo has nw copied the same funda...
but i dnt check gmail first thing in office everyday...thats coz all personal mail is blocked!!
Yeah, yahoo copied it. If they have blocked personal emails to poora din karte kya ho tum log :D (btw, there are ways to cheat)
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