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July 13, 2019 12:56 PM Subscribe
Hello and welcome to the gail.com FAQ. “The happy accident of mistakenly logging onto gail.com. Gail knows you were trying to go to gmail but typed “gail.com” instead, and she’s fine with it. Reading her FAQ and seeing the morals and levity that have guided Gail through the strange evolution of her website — from online CV to artifact memorializing her victory over corporate maraudeurs — is a much needed reprieve from the general sinkhole the internet has become. Which made me curious: is Gail’s page a statement? A finger in the eye of a stilted, capitalist system? Or someone simply wanting to exist freely on the web?” [via: The Outline]
It reminds me of the guy that used to own the twitter handle @rogers. Up here in Canada, Rogers is a telecommunications company and he was constantly receiving tweets at his handle about poor service related to cell phones, cable, etc. It looks like he subsequently gave up or sold his handle to the actual Rogers company now, but I can only imagine what that was like and how annoying it was.
posted by Fizz at 1:20 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Fizz at 1:20 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
Gail is my kind of people.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 1:37 PM on July 13, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 1:37 PM on July 13, 2019 [5 favorites]
It reminds me of the guy that used to own the twitter handle @rogers.
See also: @JohnLewis, who is an American man called John Lewis and not a British high-end department store.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:40 PM on July 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
See also: @JohnLewis, who is an American man called John Lewis and not a British high-end department store.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:40 PM on July 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
Anyone else come to metafilter because they were looking for easy ways around NY?
posted by adept256 at 1:52 PM on July 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by adept256 at 1:52 PM on July 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
Anyone else come to metafilter because they had some iron shavings in their drink and they wanted to know how to get rid of them?
posted by lalochezia at 2:00 PM on July 13, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 2:00 PM on July 13, 2019 [7 favorites]
I'm here to overthink and talk about coffee filters with other coffee snobs. You can imagine my disappointment.
posted by Fizz at 2:09 PM on July 13, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 2:09 PM on July 13, 2019 [8 favorites]
This somehow made me remember Dan Bornstein, owner of milk.com. Unlike Gail’s site his site really is just his personal site with music experiments, recipes, and all that early internet goodness.
Rather than being a typo, the domain is a word that instantly (to some [mostly US]) sparks memories of the Got Milk? advertisements, and therefore he too gets some interesting feedback to the site. Like Gail’s site, he also has an FAQ. He has a completely separate page to answer the question whether he would sell the domain.
Some email correspondence he has had over the years with people confusing him for part of the dairy industry makes for fun reading.
posted by Martijn at 2:09 PM on July 13, 2019 [6 favorites]
Rather than being a typo, the domain is a word that instantly (to some [mostly US]) sparks memories of the Got Milk? advertisements, and therefore he too gets some interesting feedback to the site. Like Gail’s site, he also has an FAQ. He has a completely separate page to answer the question whether he would sell the domain.
Some email correspondence he has had over the years with people confusing him for part of the dairy industry makes for fun reading.
posted by Martijn at 2:09 PM on July 13, 2019 [6 favorites]
I loved going to milk.com back in the day. It was a lot of fun and reminds me of the older weirder 90s web.
posted by Fizz at 2:12 PM on July 13, 2019
posted by Fizz at 2:12 PM on July 13, 2019
It could only happen to older websites. It seems like every possible permutation of typos for popular domains have been registered long ago. Firefox won't even let you go to mtafilter.com
posted by adept256 at 2:16 PM on July 13, 2019
posted by adept256 at 2:16 PM on July 13, 2019
Lovely wholesome content but Gail is not timid; I love her response about trademark. "Why yes, here's a link to my lawsuit where I defended my property!" Complete with a shout-out to the EFF.
And then the implementation. Not only no ads or trackers. No Javascript at all. No stylesheeit either.
And then the implementation. Not only no ads or trackers. No Javascript at all. No stylesheeit either.
<p align="left"><font size="+1" face="ARIAL,HELVETICA">posted by Nelson at 2:20 PM on July 13, 2019 [7 favorites]
Q: Interested in selling gail.com?<br>
A: Sorry, no.</font></p>
Anyone else come to metafilter because they had some iron shavings in their drink and they wanted to know how to get rid of them?
I came here looking for a mental filter. So far some success!
posted by srboisvert at 2:24 PM on July 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
I came here looking for a mental filter. So far some success!
posted by srboisvert at 2:24 PM on July 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
I see you all being positive here, and I have to object. I have absolute proof that Gail is a monster:
A: Sorry, I have a cat, but she's pretty unexciting by Internet standards.
On the internet, no one knows of an unexciting cat.
posted by ambrosen at 2:50 PM on July 13, 2019 [4 favorites]
A: Sorry, I have a cat, but she's pretty unexciting by Internet standards.
On the internet, no one knows of an unexciting cat.
posted by ambrosen at 2:50 PM on July 13, 2019 [4 favorites]
This was delightful to read and thank you very much for posting. Reading this made me feel good. Not something I can say about every link.
posted by hippybear at 3:01 PM on July 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 3:01 PM on July 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
And then the implementation. Not only no ads or trackers. No Javascript at all. No stylesheeit either.
Early HTML was like poetry, really.
posted by hippybear at 3:04 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
Early HTML was like poetry, really.
posted by hippybear at 3:04 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
There once was a tag called blink
That made every browser think
The implementation
Sans standardization
Really didn't resolve happily, in the end they just scrapped it because everyone thought the tag was annoying to begin with. Early HTML had so many flaws.
posted by adept256 at 3:24 PM on July 13, 2019 [10 favorites]
That made every browser think
The implementation
Sans standardization
Really didn't resolve happily, in the end they just scrapped it because everyone thought the tag was annoying to begin with. Early HTML had so many flaws.
posted by adept256 at 3:24 PM on July 13, 2019 [10 favorites]
Oh the joy I felt at realizing that that's the whole site. I had no idea how much navigation trees were exhausting me.
posted by spenser at 3:27 PM on July 13, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by spenser at 3:27 PM on July 13, 2019 [5 favorites]
So, I think I pay an extra $20 a year or so to get all mail to my domain forwarded to a single address. This means I can hand out any email address when registering, trying to impress a potential employer, etc. I can only imagine my chagrin on paying the $20 if I suddenly started getting nearly 200,000 misadressed emails per day.
That is a great site.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 3:31 PM on July 13, 2019
That is a great site.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 3:31 PM on July 13, 2019
Inspired by this I visited some other “gmail missing a letter” sites:
mail.com: A site that claims to offer free email but is populated by Outbrain-style “content”
gmal.com: Couldn’t find the server
gmil.com: A page for a mobile app called “Boom!” whose art is a cluster of bald men’s heads
gmai.com: forwarded to a site that claimed I was clicking too many adds and offered a Captcha. Closed the page without Captcha-ing.
posted by ejs at 5:51 PM on July 13, 2019 [3 favorites]
mail.com: A site that claims to offer free email but is populated by Outbrain-style “content”
gmal.com: Couldn’t find the server
gmil.com: A page for a mobile app called “Boom!” whose art is a cluster of bald men’s heads
gmai.com: forwarded to a site that claimed I was clicking too many adds and offered a Captcha. Closed the page without Captcha-ing.
posted by ejs at 5:51 PM on July 13, 2019 [3 favorites]
MetaFilter: A page for a mobile app ... whose art is a cluster of bald men’s heads
posted by hippybear at 6:11 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 6:11 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
MOO
posted by davidmsc at 7:35 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by davidmsc at 7:35 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
This somehow made me remember Dan Bornstein, owner of milk.com. Unlike Gail’s site his site really is just his personal site with music experiments, recipes, and all that early internet goodness.
Bah!
I knew Dan at the time. He registered milk.com as a simple attempt at a cash grab (*) and then "Got Milk?" happened and he realized he was screwed.
(*) This was back in the day when Corp America was starting to pay big bucks for domain names.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:04 AM on July 14, 2019 [1 favorite]
I love this. My mom's name was Gail and it's cool there's a gail.com website for another Gail. Also because my husband is a legal affairs journalist who writes about IP law and we discussed the linked WIPO decision and he approves.
posted by ceejaytee at 7:21 AM on July 14, 2019
posted by ceejaytee at 7:21 AM on July 14, 2019
It makes me happy that the WIPO case for gail.com cites as precedent the cases of tammy.com and donna.com.
posted by moonmilk at 8:56 AM on July 14, 2019
posted by moonmilk at 8:56 AM on July 14, 2019
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Somewhere out there, there has to be site that has aggregated links to websites with proper name domains. I mean, this is the intartubes, amirite?
posted by Thorzdad at 1:15 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]