GMail Now Offers "Mail Goggles"

According to the GMail Blog Google Labs has come up with a feature called Mail Goggles which may help prevent you from sending those late night emails that you might later regret.

The new feature which is of course a play on the term "Beer Goggles" (I'm sure we all know what that means), was created by Jon Perlow. John's goals was to help you curb those crazy drunken emails that sometimes go out late at night and on weekends.

Mail Goggles
by Jon P

Google strives to make the world's information useful. Mail you send late night on the weekends may be useful but you may regret it the next morning. Solve some simple math problems and you're good to go. Otherwise, get a good night's sleep and try again in the morning. After enabling this feature, you can adjust the schedule in the "General" settings page.

By default, weekends and late nights is the only time Mail Goggles is active, that should be the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings, just in case you feel the need for better protection.



When enabled Gmail will ask to you to complete a few rather "simple" math problems in a limited period of time before you can send out your email. Get the answers wrong and you simply can't send the email. You'll be given the advice of "water and bed" and an option to try again with new questions. Thew difficulty can be changed from 1-5, 5 being the hardest. (I didn't see much difference)



No folks this is not a joke, the new feature is live and can be added to your GMail right now by going into your GMail settings. Look under Labs and about mid way down the page you'll see an option to enable it. Was you have it enabled you can go back to the general settings and adjust the time and days you want Mail Goggles to be active.

In my opinion this is pure genius! In fact I wish they had this option built into other sites, Myspace, Facebook ect. I know I for one have been guilty of posting a few messages that probably shouldn't have been after a night out on the town. While I really doubt it will prevent anyone from sending out their drunken messages the idea is still a good one. If nothing else it at least makes you think a little before you can actually send those drunken emails.