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New in Labs: Stop sending mail you later regret  (View post)

hebbet [PersonRank 10]

Tuesday, October 7, 2008
15 years ago6,346 views

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html

<<Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?>>

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/3287/mailgogglessettingstz6.png

David Hetfield [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Real nice feature! :)

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

1. there's always Google calculator in Firefox's search box or in Google Toolbar
2. the feature can be easily disabled

PierreS [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

There should be a degree of difficulty (eg: drunk Joe6Pack (kudos to Palin for making me learn this expression), drunk grad student ,drunk engineers, drunk nobel prizes)

LifeHacked 3.0 [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

[moved]

check this new Gmail Lab Feature its quite unique!

http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/gmail-goggles-prevent-drunk-emailing-on-friday-nights/4808/

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

It looks like a way for Google to experiment with human/bot tests (now that captchas are often defeated by spammers).

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

This feature is funny and may be useful, but I'm quite frustrated.
Gmail has some very annoying issues that still not fixed and should be a priority: the use of contacts groups in filter, the ability to see contact details from a search result in the chat box (we can only mouse-over a contact profile, which displays only its main email address, its photo and status), the possibility to open pdfs in docs, gmail offline (not easy but...) etc.

Zim [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Great! There will be a couple of times per year when this feature may *really* help me!
Now we need the "undo send" and we're done :)

Niraj Sanghvi [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I would much rather have had a "delay emails for xx minutes/hours/days" feature (which would actually be useful for a variety of reasons) than this feature, which is simply sort of amusing and not all that useful (maybe to an extremely small number of people).

WebSonic.nl [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

It's a nice feature, works well. I think another option as mentioned by Niraj Sanghvi would also be nice.

Mambo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Yeah, I like the delay idea. I don't often have "immediate" e-mail conversations with anyone, but if you ever did, you could always have a "Send NOW" button...

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Niraj Sanghvi's idea is far better than the actual feature. I hope a Gmailer is reading him.

Ianf [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Actually, I find this sophomoric at best, a kind of "ha ha funny" feature thought up by socially-awkward teenagers, and do not expect it to make the jump from Labs to Eternal Beta Gmail or whatever.

As for Niraj Sanghvi's suggestion – there's nothing new nor unique about it. It's the old "Queue" function button in place of "Send" that, once invoked, changes to "Send Now!" alongside a dialog for queuing the message for chosen future delivery. Plenty of POP3-mail clients have it, but GMail, with its always-on/ vast online-storage capability cannot seem to make up its mind whether to implement it ('cause I am sure they *have* thought of it!).

[ Come to think of – if done right, such delayed sending function able to accept dates 1-to-50-or-more years in advance would be a perfect way of communicating with, say, one's children and grandchildren. Provided one knows email addresses of those yet-unborn already, or can ensure (via some private annex to public testament or equivalent) that, when they come within time range of delivery, they get themselves the needed recipient-account IDs ;-))]

Above 13 comments were made in the forum before this was blogged,

Matt Moran [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Often blogged depressed. Not so much drunk, but depressed is pretty much my default state anyway.

krist0ph3r [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

hmmm...this one's no help for me. i usually blog/email/text from my phone, and most damage gets done by my blog/texts.

oh and it would never work on me. if i'm sane enough to type something out, i'm also sane enough to use a calculator (online or off-)

J. McNair [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Obviously this is a joke feature, and that's cool. Remember the Snake game? It can't be an attempt to improve CAPTCHAs, because parsing and solving math problems are easy for any computer made after 1990.

Delayed sending would be brilliant if Google gives us a persistent "major" link for it (Inbox, All Mail,..., Queue/To Be Sent). Simply, change the Drafts folder to the Drafts/Queue folder. Then add separate Send Now! and Send on (date and time) to the main Compose/Reply interfaces and build in a little bit of Google Calendar's smarts. So I officially endorse delayed sending for GMail in 2008 as my candidate for President of the United...oh, wait.

Oh, and I most certainly have sent emails I regret and while drunk, Unfortunately, those conditions didn't always correlate. To help me, such a feature would have to force every email to be delayed 3-24 hours. Better still, give me an Exchange feature: Delete an email from all GMail recipients if no one has read it yet.

[put at-character here]Flipo
I've been asking for contact groups in filters FOREVER. Literally years. It took years for GMail to get a TOLERABLE Contacts manager so I don't have many hopes for its sad Filters. At least GMail isn't stagnant like some other Google projects, so we will EVENTUALLY see improvements. Just remember that Google Apps are only about 30% of Outlook, Evolution or Lotus Notes. The refinement and integration are not THERE yet.

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Could be helpful, although most of the time when I say stupid things it's on an IM, and adding this to an IM would kind of defeat the purpose of an *Instant* Messenger :P

I'm yet another supported of the delayed email approach, hope they add it soon!

How ever I have added this and I'll see how it goes, might help at some point :/ (This feature was mentioned on BBC Radio 2 in the UK, the only other times I've heard Google mentioned [other than as a verb] are when they bought YouTube and the Chrome Launch :P)

Iban [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Yeah, this feature is very cool for these druked friday nights... xDD

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

OK I've just tried this out (Just tired not drunk) and it took me 3 attempts to send an email. (Difficulty level 2).

I'm not sure whether this would actually stop me sending stupid emails as I'm the kind of person who sees something they can't do as a challenge. eg. The more I'm told I can't send the email, the longer I'm going to spend trying to send it :P

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