You've got mail, lots of mail
One of these days, you'll be telling your grandkids about the time when you needed to delete your old emails to create space in your account.

"Really, old-timer?" one will dubiously ask.

"What's a delete button?" the other will wonder.

Come May, Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) will feature unlimited storage in its free @yahoo.com email accounts. Boy, we've come a long way there. Just a few years ago, Yahoo! and Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Hotmail used to offer just a couple of megs of storage. Then Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) raised the stakes by launching its Gmail service with a full gigabyte of user capacity.

Google made that announcement on April Fool's Day three years ago, but it was no joke. The company has gone on to raise its Gmail capacity, but now it has Yahoo! -- and Time Warner's (NYSE:TWX) AOL -- raising the bar with free, unlimited storage. How do you top that? Free ice cream cones with every tenth piece of spam you weed out?

Free email used to be a crutch. You would create a few free accounts, just to use for site registrations elsewhere. It's gotten to the point where we probably have way too many email accounts to manage. I know that I have to go through the filtering process on the fly whenever someone -- or some site -- asks me for my email address. Just exactly which email address do I want to give? The one I check perpetually? The one that's a heaping pile of unsolicited spam? The one that's easiest to remember?

Getting unlimited capacity on a single account won't change that, but it will certainly make me more comfortable in leaning on Yahoo! in the future. More importantly, it actually beat Google to the punch for a change.

Well done.

BK's chicken dance
Speaking of unlikely leaders, Burger King (NYSE:BKC) announced that it will start to beef up its supply lines by buying some of its pork and egg products from cageless farms. Sow-gestation crates and hen cages are often targets of criticism from animal-rights groups.

The process will be gradual. Still, can you imagine PETA hitting up BK's grinning mascot with a high-five over this? I can't. I know that BK has the veggie burger, but few people view the fast-food industry as a bastion of food ethics.

After watching burger-flipping rivals McDonald's (NYSE:MCD) and Wendy's (NYSE:WEN) rush in first with healthier frying oils and more wholesome sides, it's neat to see Burger King making some waves here.

Nice going, Yahoo! and Burger King. You surprised a cynic like me.

Until next week, I remain,

Rick Munarriz

Yahoo! and Time Warner have been singled out as Stock Advisor recommendations. Microsoft is an Inside Value pick.  

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz recommends windshield wiper fluid when trying to look back. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy.