Gmail offers 'undo' email option The folks at Gmail Labs obviously dedicate a healthy amount of brainpower to the prevention of regrettable emails sent through their service. Gmail logo Custodial hearts at Google who've brought us Mail Goggles to stave off late-night drunken e-correspondence have now introduced an Undo Send option to their web-based email …
This was a standard feature back in the day, when you had to dial up your ISP to send the batch of e-mail messages you'd worked on for the last hour.
Seriously, five seconds is much too short. Half of that gets used just waiting for the page to finish loading. It would be better to implement an (optional) 'outbox' that holds messages for a user-defined length of time before delivering. One or five minutes would be a good standard setting. Unless the recipient is checking for new messages more frequently than that, they won't notice the difference. If you really need to reach someone that urgently, use the phone.
perhaps people could just use their brains every now and again if they thought about what they were doing before they did it they would realise they didnt have to hit send at all. Proof reading takes maybe 30 seconds for your average email and saves you a lot of hassle. Society is getting more and more stupid but a good idea I guess
This isn't a feature, its just that they've added a timer to you sending your mail. What happens when they decide that you want to "undo" a message you sent the night before, we'll see them delay all mail for a day before sending. If anything this all sounds like a way to ask users to be in a bandwidth shaping scheme for gmail.
If someone hits the "undo send" button, it's a fair guess that there was something in the message that they really, really don't want the recipient to see. After all, if you merely forgot to attach a file {NB: Kmail, which I use as my main email client, warns you and gives you an option to abort sending a message if you used a word such as "attached" or "attachment" in the text, but didn't attach a file. It's saved me more times than I care to remember}, you can just try again; this time sending only the attachment {since the recipient already has the text}.
It's not such a huge leap to imagine that undoing the sending of an e-mail might end up becoming the sort of "premium" service for which money could reasonably be charged. £50 would be a small price to pay to have a "thank you for last night" message {meant for your mistress} removed from your wife's inbox!
considering that most of my regrettable emails, forum posts and general unpleasant internet discourse, are made when I'm completely arse faced and drunk, means that 5 seconds to hit undo is akin to wanking an elephant with a pair of tweasers ...... quite useless
therefore i suggest a breathalyzer affixed to a usb port, which will detect when you are out of it, and prevent you from embarrassing yourself via email, IM twatter, arsebook and other such assorted interweb paraphernalia....
My company uses a combination of Linux (in the research and IT divisions) and Microsoft (in HR and admin) mail systems. I'm always amused when one of my admin colleagues tries to use Outlook's "Recall This Message" option to delete an email that they realise they shouldn't have sent. Sorry, guys, it doesn't work like that over here in Linux land. Now, let's see what juicy gossip was in your original email ... :-)
Learn to insert your own completely user defined pause between finishing the email, deciding to send it and actually hitting the send button.
Surely it's not too hard to learn to add such a pause even when you are in a rush (or in the heat of the moment)?
Such a manual feature should also be completely portable to other mail user agents and other systems that have nothing to do with email at all.
Or is it actually useful to be able to turn one's attention away absolutely immediately, assuming no change of mind, without having to return to hit send some seconds later?
"Scan the mail for attach, attached, enclosed or other such words and warn you if you didn't add an attachment. That'd save plenty of embarrassment."
I have this already for Outklook - see http://manage-this.com/handy-outlook-attachment-reminder-macro/
Also warns you before sending a meeting request with no location or a message with a blank subject line.
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