Matt's Blog

The Gmail Team recently announced that they’re stepping up the Gmail space counter to give us more space much quicker. This is part of their Infinity+1 Storage Plan.

As of writing, the current space is 3110 MB. Approximately every 11.8 minutes you get another MB. So, doing some calculations based on these numbers (and assuming the counter has a consistent increase), on October 28, 2007, Gmail users should have 5 GBs of space! Going forward with these calculations, Gmail should have 10GB on December 21, 2007, just in time for Christmas! Still assuming the counter stays at the same consistent increment (not very likely), Gmail users would have 100 GB by December 15, 2009.

Sweet!

I got an email in the ‘box yesterday from Sony saying that ImageStation (their uploading, sharing and ordering pictures service) will be closing on February 1, 2008. You can see a screenshot of the email here.

According to their shutdown schedule, after November 11, 2007, you will no longer be able to upload or order pictures. All you will be able to do is view, download and order a backup (CD or DVD) of your pictures. On January 14, 2008, you will no longer be able to order a backup disc. And, finally, on February 1, 2008 the ImageStation servers will be shutdown and all remaining accounts and pictures will be deleted. No copies will be kept.

To make it easier for all their customers, they’ve teamed up with ShutterFly and you can initiate an automatic transfer of all your pictures to them. But they still recommend you either download your stuff or order an archive disc.

You can learn how to download your images here.

I’m guessing that they’re closing down because of lack of people using it. It doesn’t seem like a very popular service. You never hear about it, and I don’t think they’ve added a lot of new features recently. I didn’t even hear anything about them closing down in the blogosphere. I thought at least TechCrunch would post about it… Sony provided the following reason for the shutdown (in their shutdown FAQ):

Sony Electronics has decided to close ImageStation, its photo sharing service, in order to focus on the company’s core businesses, products, and services.

In the early days of digital photography Sony realized the need to provide an online photo service to support their digital camera customers. In the years since, many capable online photo services have become available and our customers now have a broad range of options for storing, sharing, printing and creating photo gifts.

I signed up for ImageStation back when I bought my first digital camera, a Sony, in 2004. I never really used the service.

I went to sign in to ImageStation to see what pictures I had in there, and I was presented with “This Image is Temporarily Unavailable” instead of my images. Nice…

Sony has setup an FAQ on their shutdown.

ImageStation seemed like a good service, but other, apparently better, services have started to replace it. I doubt anyone will be devastated by it’s shutdown.