Korea Life Blog - Gmail



Certain Blogger users like me were given a first chance at testing Google's new e-mail service known as Gmail. I had been eagerly anticipating getting an account and being one of the first to sign up was a welcome surprise. It made my morning! I was excited. Unfortunately, I was so taken off guard by the chance, I hurriedly chose my full name for a user ID before anyone else could claim it. After a couple of times of logging into the mail account, I realized my name is much too long. I envisioned trying to spell it out for Korean friends, etc. So I decided to make a new account. That's where I messed up again. Instead of checking into it ahead of time, I went ahead and brilliantly deleted my account, thinking I could simply make a new one. Wrong. The invitation link no longer worked and my account was gone. I e-mailed Blogger who referred my e-mail to Gmail support who e-mailed me back this letter today:

Hello Shawn,

Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately, there is no way to re-enable a Gmail account that has
been deleted. Each invite link provides a user with the ability to create
one account. Because Gmail is in a limited test period, we periodically
issue a small number of new user invitations. We are not able to reissue an
invitation for you to create another account at this time. We look
forward to announcing a wider release of Gmail, and we thank you for your
patience.

Sincerely,

The Gmail Team


Murphy's Law has gotten ahold of me once again. I have been a fan of Google since they launched their search engine and Google.com has been my homepage for years. I was happy and surprised when they took over Blogger and made a lot of improvements. When they announced Gmail a month ago, I immediately looked into it, frustrated to find out it would likely be 3 months or more before it's open to the public. Of course I would blow the early opportunity. That's me! Now instead of being something like shawn@gmail.com I will likely be something like shawn_102873@gmail.com. Oh well.


Desperation: If any other Blogger users have gotten the invite and don't want the account because of the privacy concerns or any other reason, please! e-mail me. You can sign me up for an account and giveme the password. I'd really appreciate it.

Update: A genuine thank you to Fatman in Seoul for donating his Gmail invitation to me. I am now registered with Gmail with the name I wanted. Make sure to check out Fatman's popular website . He does a wonderful job of making people happy and hungry, though he has been known to disappear from time to time. Unlike me, he has a life. Thanks again, Fatman!