GMail just keeps getting better and better. As if the conversation-style view, instant search, integrated calendar and chat, and the best anti-spam in the business weren’t enough, they just started rolling out IMAP access yesterday, a feature users have been clamoring for ever since GMail was launched. IMAP is similar to POP in that it allows you to access your GMail through nice email programs like Outlook, Thunderbird, and Apple Mail, except it provides a two-way “sync” that keeps your online GMail inbox (and therefore every email client program) in step. So if you read an email through Thunderbird on your laptop, and then pull up your email in Thunderbird on your desktop computer, that message will be appropriately marked as “read”. Until now I have always used GMail’s web interface to access my mail because I use many computers and don’t like dealing with POP’s inconsistencies; that will probably change now.

In related news, I found a post on the official GMail blog saying that in a few months, everyone’s storage space (including Google Apps accounts, finally not stuck at 2GB anymore) will hit 6GB!