i just got an invite from someone already using the Gmail service, and got myself a Gmail account now!
the address is: xenomorph AT gmail.com. (i'm typing it like that in the hope that spam spiders don't pick it up.)
you can visit HERE to read a bit about Gmail. it's basically an e-mail service provided by Google that offers 1 Gigabyte of e-mail storage (compared to just a few megs from services like Hotmail or Yahoo).
the Gmail service is in a closed testing state right now, so you can only get an account by first receiving an invitation from someone who already has an account.