Once again, my Gmail account has given me another bunch of "invitations" and I'll give them out to the first six people who email me asking for one.

My main email is still brian_plante@sff.net, but I took a gmail account just to lay claim to my name. The domain names brianplante.com and brainplanet.com are already taken, but when a new email system with promise, like gmail, comes out, I want to lay claim to my name before all the other Brian Plantes grab it, so I don't wind up with brian.plante19 or some such awkward name, if I decide to use the system at a later date.

I've already got the "brian_plante" name on sff.net, yahoo, hotmail, and my ISP's system. On gmail, I'm "brian.plante" and "brain.planet" because they don't take the underscore as part of the mail name. I don't use all of them, but it's handy to have a few different addresses for different purposes (e.g. Hotmail is my "spam account" for when merchants ask for an email address and I don't want to give them my "real" one). For free accounts, Yahoo is better than hotmail, and gmail may be better than them all, although I haven't used it very much yet.

Drop me an email and I'll send you an invitation, so you can stake out your own name, even if you don't decide to use it.