Huh? The Gmail API? That’s right… While the release of POP access to Gmail left many people yawning, or complaining, or just looking puzzled and muttering “IMAP” to anyone who would listen, I dug into Mail::POP3Client.
Mail::POP3Client is a perl module that can talk to a POP3 server. (Yes, it can use SSL so it works just fine with Gmail.) You do have to turn on POP access in Gmail, and check the Configuring other mail clients page for the proper settings. I think I had a simple perl script talking to the Gmail servers in about 10 minutes. (It would have been less, but I had to install Net::SSLeay as well.)
So while Gmail’s old web interface is nice and all, it’s really made for humans, while this POP access is made for machines. Go! Go! Machines!!!