G goggles
Gmail has now come up with a way for members to avoid sending messages they would later regret, it’s called Mail Goggles.
Gmail engineer, Jon Perlow just wrote a new Labs feature to prevent members sending those late night messages when not of sound mind.
What I have to wonder is why after a long night of partying and drinking would anyone want to sit in front of a PC, log on to their Gmail and send a message they could possibly forget and if remembered would regret? I suppose you do find the occasional person who would rather email than send a text message. Perlow clearly falls into that category,
“I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together.”
So this is how it works.
Mail goggles can be found under the labs tab in your settings, once enabled the schedule can be changed from the default - late night and weekends setting as that is generally when you are not in the right frame of mind, under the general settings tab. When you have enabled the feature according to your specification the next time you send an email at the set time it will check that you are really, absolutely, positively sure you want to send the message.
Now…you may be wondering how on earth Mail Goggles would be able to know that drunk person should probably not be sending an email. The solution is simple. Give them a math test. In order to successfully send the email you have to answer a few math questions, even the difficulty level of the questions can be changed.
It sounds a little odd but it’s a pretty smart idea. Think about it what drunk person could answer math in their state? Okay maybe they could, but would they really want to go through that much effort?
Just for fun I tried the feature but I wasn’t asked the math questions…
I don’t think the G Goggles service goes far enough. There are already email applications that allow you to track back and delete erroneously or hastily sent e-mails to other users (providing their mail server has not already downloaded the file to their computer).
This could save some measure of embarassment for those of us who hit send before completing a mail, or who may bitch and moan about a boss or colleague, only to include said colleague’s email address as recipient.
Nice one Google – better luck next time.
Jude Mathurine
October 7, 2008