A Solution for Drunk Dials and Accidental E-Mails

Instant communication is all well and good until you drunkenly call an ex-girlfriend from your cell phone in the wee hours of a weekend morning, or send your boss an e-mail that was never intended for him, because it was about him and how he stinks.

Users of Gmail, the popular Web-based, e-mail service, can now install an "Undo Send" application that gives them five seconds to stop an e-mail's delivery.

In recent days, the very companies synonymous with Web 2.0, Google and Apple have offered a series of new applications intended to save you from your own stupid self.

Say goodbye to errant e-mails and drunken dials and say hello to a future in which you can no longer blame the computer for all the dumb stuff that comes out of your fingertips.

"I got an e-mail from someone I had dated a few years before -- a random e-mail, from out of the blue," said Katie Feola, 28, a lawyer from New York remembering her own recent variation on a common Internet blunder. "I went to forward the e-mail to a friend to share the joke that he had contacted me out of nowhere. In my message, I wrote some pretty rude things about him. It wasn't until after I had hit 'send' that I quickly realized I hadn't hit 'forward' but I had hit 'reply.'

Related

U R Dumped: Breaking Up Via Text

Think Before You Drink and Draft

Life Made Easy: Pregnancy, Buying Cars

"I wish there was a way I could have gone back to undo that message." she said. "Although part of me thinks he deserved to find out what I really thought of him."

Gmail Users Get 'Panic Button'

Google has yet to develop a program that will eradicate the advances of caddish exes, but it rolled out an application Thursday that will allow Gmail users, such as Feola, to stop an e-mail from being delivered with the click of what the company aptly calls a "panic button."

Users of Gmail, the popular Web-based, e-mail service, can now install an "Undo Send" application that gives them five seconds to stop an e-mail from getting delivered.

On the Official Gmail Blog where the new application was announced, Michael Leggett, a Google user-experience designer who created the application, said it was all those sent messages that contained mistakes or promised files that were never attached that led him to design the "undo" button.

"This feature can't pull back an e-mail that's already gone; it just holds your message for five seconds so you have a chance to hit the panic button," Leggett wrote.