As part of your sign-in to gmail, you are shown a set of irregularly-formed letters (ones that will not be machine-readable) and are asked to copy them.
Other services use that device, but gmail seems unique in that the letters it presents can be a real, but obscure word.
Just now I got calcycles. On look-up, a calcycle is "small cup-shaped structure (as a taste bud or optic cup or cavity of a coral containing a polyp). (There's another meaning, even more technical. This word is not even in OED.)
Asa, Gmail is the new email account that everyone wants...it is google mail, and was developed by people who know what people want it email accounts. I just love my account. You have lots and lots of storage, can archive everything, and there the emails are collected together, much like the PMs here. It is so much better than my AOL or Hotmail accounts, though I've never had Yahoo.
Gmail is probably the nicest of all of the free email accounts available on the web. The quota is over 1GB, which is pretty massive as such things go. Gmail went online in June 2004, and within about a week, everyone I know had an account, although it was invitation only. When you are a member, you get a certain number of invites.
I have been a member since June 2004, so I have 100 invitations sitting around, if anyone is interesting in trying it out, or needs one. I remember around July 2004 there was "Gmail for troops", which was a website where you would give your invitations up to soldiers in Iraq who wanted good free web email accounts.
