"Free software is a good thing, its empowering, I might even go as far as to say its the way things should be done. One of the biggest threats to free software at the moment is “web services”, or if you’re an airy fairy Web 2.0 person “The Cloud” (airy could, geddit?).

Version 0.0.3 has now been released, another snapshot of semi-stable code. The biggest change this time, is the migration to YUI (Yahoo User Interface) AJAX widgets.

Gmail, Google's popular Web mail application, is already full of useful features all on its own. But Firefox users can further customize Gmail with a variety of add-ons. Some only change the appearance, while others add functionality that makes Gmail more like a personal planner than just a plain old email application. Let's take a look at three Firefox add-ons for Gmail.

There is now a script called Gnome Gmail that comes as .deb for Ubuntu and .rpm for Fedora and Red Hat which adds support for Gmail to the Linux Gnome Desktop. Unlike the solution above, Gnome Gmail supports "To:", "Subject:", "body", "CC:", and "BCC: fields.

Webmail for Linux Desktops provides a generic mailto: handler and webmail config dialog that lets the user choose his preferred webmail provider on first run and through the desktops Preferences->Webmail facility.

We’re Freedom Socks! a podcast (availible as ogg varbis and mp3) all about free software and GNU/Linux in particular. And, after another random “season break”, we’re back. This week we run over whats been in the freedom news recently, get all angry about normal people, do an interview with one of our own hosts about the AGPLmail project.

The best Linux gmail checker is named CheckGmail. Now why am I raving about a gmail mail checker? You ask, how different can it be from the other gmail checkers, because don't they all do the same thing, notify you when you get mail?

I’m a huge fan of Gmail. I’ve been using it for years, and have converted several small businesses over to Google Apps so they can take advantage of it. I find it fast and flexible, and can get to my seven years worth of email from any computer on the planet.

It appears that Google has underestimated the desire for storage with free webmail services, while the competition (Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo) have grasped the issue and are upping capacity. The Google response has been to dribble a little extra into the free Gmail service, while charging up to $500 a year of you want more.