this is something i often used to do when i got a file (usually software of some sort), and i wanted to keep it so i would be able to access it for later download. i did it once to save aerosmiths mp3 "dont wanna miss a thing" which took me hours to locate on the net. of course at that time, i didnt much take into account the possibility of using online storage servers like znail and so on.

anyway, i would create a blank email, then i'd upload the software and send it to myself. and there it would sit in myemail box until i needed it, when i would download it again.

occasionally, though, there was the problem of the software being attached to the email as a long string of letters and symbols. i experienced this problem when i uploaded a program to my tiscali email account. i could never really account for the occurrence, i simply assumed that tiscali didnt support uploading software to emails. does anyone have a better explanation?

Well I'd say if it's not a media file, it can't be opened on the internet, just like you can't use Exe on the internet. I do know that when you click on something to download, it might come out as a gerb of symbols. To prevent that, you need to go 'Right click- save As'.

gmail is awsome i have four accounts with gmail

and still got 50 sum invites with each account so im set in case i need more space

With Gmail it's no necessary such 'complex' process. There are different tools that create a gmail drive in your pc, everything you store in that drive appears as a new e-mail in your gmail account with the file attached, so you can access the file downloading it from your mail box and from the drive as well. It's quite useful, but Gmail doesn't allow this kind of software used to store files.

Google didn't state whether they allow this kind of software and while upgrading their GMail BETA, it seem to break GMail Drive shell extension's ability to connect to the respective accounts but this doesn't mean that they have already imposed a ban on them because it they do, it will lose its popularity. Besides, who needs "infinite" email storage when they only recieve mostly text based emails that don't even take up 10KB? Well, maybe they'll be "shared" but since alot of people use GMail for online backup solution purposes, I don't think Google will do such a thing.