Ever sent an email that you regretted sending? Perhaps you have been one of the unfortunate ones that have received a drunken call from a friend in the wee hours of the morning, rambling on about off the wall topics. Yes, I’ve gotten a few of those calls. In order to assist people in thinking twice before shooting off an embarrassing email Google has recently introduced a new application called Mail Goggles.

Mail Goggles works by asking the users a series of simple math questions that they have to answer in a certain time frame. If you fail the test your email doesn’t get sent. For those too drunk or a little to angry having time to get their minds on other things might prevent them from firing off that email. Although it’s an interesting concept I’m not sure how effective it will be. I mean, come on? How many drunk people are really going to be logging onto Gmail to see whether they are too drunk to send someone an email? If you’re upset are you really going to be thinking about Mail Goggles before firing off that email? If something upsets me I take time to cool down before responding, which is basically what Mail Goggles is doing if you think about it.

Mail Goggles default is set for late evening and weekends only. Since this seems to be the time when people are most likely to need it most; however, if you need to use it more you can change the settings. I had a chance to check out the application and I really like the idea however I’m not sure if too many will actually use it.

Gmail engineer, Jon Perlow, said this application was created, “to help people who are a too tired and emotional to foresee the consequences of their actions. He also said. ” The program was designed to establish whether “you’re really sure you want to send that late-night Friday email.”

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