This morning I logged into my gmail account, and noticed some changes to the system. For starters the "Invites" message has been turned red and moved to the sidebar. There's also a "New Features" heading at the top. And most curious of all there's a new button on the sidebar labeled ATOM which points to a rather sparse atom feed, which I reckon is meant to be used for finding out if you have new mail in your inbox. Although it seems kind of broken right now, seeing as how it's telling me there's new mail in my inbox, yet I have nothing new in said inbox.
Another curious thing about this feed is that it appears to specify the mailbox to check using your browsers login cookie, rather than some sort of REST based mechanism which would make more sense for a data feed, since I for one don't feel like submitting cookie authentication data with each of my feed requests.
Since the status of an inbox, aka NEW MAIL/NO NEW MAIL, is not really a security concern why not ease up on the cookie thing and just make it available through a simple URI such as: https://gmail.google.com/gmail/grimmx/feed/atom

And why is this feed served from a secure server, while the regular gmail interface is not? Now that seems totally backwards and coo-coo to me.

[update: 10/05/2004 11:37am] It looks like the Atom feed button has vanished from the gmail interface. Perhaps they took my critisism too harshly? On second look it appears that the feed is still there, there's just no direct link to it anymore. Once logged into your gmail the following URI should work for you: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom