Ernie The Attorney: "I have heard it streaming through my abode and noted that, were it not for the halting sound that an AAC file makes as it wirelessly fights its way (like a desperate digital salmon) toward the Squeezebox, there is great promise in the idea of streaming music thru the home."

By now you know it was no April Fool's joke. You know it has privacy advocates worried. You know there seems to be a trademark issue. But have you thought about how Google's GMail, and an archive and search strategy in general, will force businesses to kiss their email (non)retention policies goodbye, or at least recognize the fact they may not be very effective?

See, here's the thing. The efficiency of storing and Google searching all of one's email has got to be beyond compare. (I don't know much about the Google Appliance — does it only work on intranets and Web sites, or could you conceivably search a whole network?) From the standpoint of user/employee convenience and productivity, this is pure poetry:

Gmail simplifies this process by placing your messages in 'All Mail' when you use the archive function.

'All Mail' is the holding place for all of the messages you've sent or received, but not deleted. When you delete a message, it's gone forever. With Gmail, you have enough storage space to last for years without deleting a single message. Just archive everything and all your messages will be searchable and easily accessible.

From the standpoint of businesses seeking to keep smoking email guns from coming back to haunt them, it should be a loud wake up call. But wait, you say. GMail won't replace carefully crafted corporate email systems, policies, and IT routines that periodically purge. It's going to be a public, Web based service like Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, right? People will use it to hit on each other and send pictures. What's the big deal?

Well, we're talking a gigabyte — years worth — of storage space, coupled with everyone's favorite search technology. It's going to be really, really tempting for savvy users to start forwarding their work mail to their Gmail account: a.k.a. their ad hoc, kick ass knowledge management tool. (Efficiency, productivity.) Soon enough, those accounts will be just one more thing for lawyers to add to their electronic discovery checklists.

The lessons for smart businesses before Gmail even launches thus are several:

• Invest sufficiently in your own electronic infrastructure so employees won't feel the need to Gmail their work stuff. (Given the quality of Google's search, I wonder whether it's even possible to invest that sufficiently.)
• See if your email policy anticipates this sort of situation. If it doesn't, update it. (It won't stop it from happening of course, and you can't just fire everyone, can you?)
• "Don't be evil." (Still, companies and employees don't have to be "evil" to get themselves in litigatory trouble with email. They just have to be wrong, or careless, or, y'know, humanly fallible. And there's no Fifth Amendment protection for potential civil liability, I'm afraid.)

In other words, Gmail is about to make things more transparent. Did you remember to change your underwear?

For my part, I've also learned a few things before Gmail even launches:

• It pays to hang on to your old, déclassé MSN email address, long after the computer that gave it to you has rusted on the scrap heap. Kind and beneficent Googlodytes might take it upon themselves to move you to a tonier neighborhood.
• Good fun lies ahead in seeding Gmails with vocabulary calculated to give the recipient some, er, unexpected ads and related pages. The email Googlewhack — mail with no ads or related pages — no doubt will make the rounds as well.
• It pains me to report that apparently, without my realizing it, I have become too stodgy and boring to be "denisester-at-gmail.com," though Google to its credit did its level best to talk me into it.
• Firefox is one nifty browser.
• I have no spam. Hooray!

More links, related and un-:
The Topix.net Weblog speculates interestingly about Gmail under the hood.
Here's the story from Professor Lessig's appearance yesterday on The Screen Savers.
It's Masters Friday at Augusta National (and as far as I know Sandra Day O'Connor still is not a member).
The Baseball Crank takes a look at stock blogging and SEC regs.

Audio Lessig is in da house! It all started with AKMA's great idea, and — long and exemplary story short — has culminated in this page on Aaron Swartz's Free Culture Wiki, which links to readings by notable netizens of all the chapters of Professor Lessig's new book. Sure your iPod is crammed to bursting with Will Hung tracks, but it's high time to make some room.

ScienceDaily thoughtfully provides the link to the study (PDF) published in the April issue of PEDIATRICS that has been causing such a stir on Today and CNN among the great unwashed masses (like, who can wash?) of parents with children under 3. As the press release from the Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center explains, the study found that exposure to television while the brain is still developing ups the chances a child will develop ADHD.

ScienceDaily also links to a story about a 2001 study (sponsored by the Children's Television Workshop) on the positive effects of educational television, which were "strongest for children aged 2 and 3." So here's what sounds like a winning long bet. A quarter century from now researchers will be investigating the causes of TVD, or Tunnel Vision Disorder: the inability to shift one's focus fluidly and rapidly from one topic or activity to another.

In case you, like me, have been living under a rock, don't miss Irish blogger Gavin Sheridan and his crash course in Internet/international jurisdiction law — which he passed impressively, with a little help (and more help) from the blogosphere. Here's Glenn Reynolds on the matter: "Does this mean that it's always a mistake to send lawyers after bloggers? I suppose not. But I have to say that so far that's how it looks." Jeff Jarvis throws an apt turn of Shakespearian phrase on the fire, and renews his call for a blogger legal aid society. I for one wish John Maltbie were still blogging. This area of the law, particularly the media/First Amendment aspect, is ripe for regular coverage.

I've obviously been putting the new blawg sightings on hold, since it's far from a done deal that I'm able to sit down at the computer every day. (I'm snatching blogging like I'm snatching sleep — and with, understandably I hope, somewhat less frequency). My list of newcomers is getting looonnnggg, but here are some particularly worth mentioning.

• EFF, long a defender of freedom in the digital world, now is championing the rights of staffers like Fred and Donna to post and comment on interesting news, at Deep Links, and its Verne Troyer, miniLinks.
• The [non]-billable hour is by Matthew Homann, who spotted the first supposed blawg by a large firm's hiring partner, then spotted its mea culpa as a put on. But since the Anonymous Lawyer now says it's fiction, in the topsy-turvy world of legal bloggery that must mean it's dead on.
• If you weren't confused enough, And What Thanks Do We Get assures us, "We are, more or less, who we say we are." Their posts ring true to me.
• The IP News Blog is an adjunct to the Franklin Pierce Law Center's IP Mall, which offers distance learning on IP topics. (Really.)
• And finally, everyone's favorite statutory constructionist, Gary O'Connor, now is covering the 9th Circuit (as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, D.C. Circuit, and 4th Circuit).