No Regrets: 5 High-Tech Ways to Survive the Holiday Season

Dec. 10, 2010— -- Who doesn't enjoy a good holiday party? Fun-loving friends, festive food, candy-cane decked cocktails.

But all that revelry sometimes can lead to regrets.

Surrounded by new and old faces, it's easy to miss a name. All those peppermint-flecked treats pack on the pounds. And, of course, hours of slinging back boozy beverages can lead to e-mails, texts and phone calls you know you shouldn't make.

Technology can't undo seasonal slip-ups, but it can help you prevent them. Check out a few "survival" tools for the holidays below.

Social Media Sobriety Test

Convinced that "nothing good happens after 1 am," a computer security software company introduced a free program last month that prevents tipsy tweets and other kinds of polluted social media posts.

The Social Media Sobriety Test plugs into a Web browser to block you from your favorite social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace and Tumblr) unless you can pass an Internet version of a field sobriety test.

You just choose the sites you want to protect and indicate the hours during which you expect to be intoxicated. When you try to socialize online during those hours, you'll have to follow a moving circle with your cursor to prove that you're sober enough to sign in.

The program works in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome but, unfortunately, does not work on mobile devices.

Google Goggles

If you use Gmail, let Google protect you from drunk e-mails too.

Its Mail Goggles program (which riffs on Beer Goggles) asks you to complete a few simple math problems within 60 seconds before you're allowed to send off your late-night missives.

If you can make it through the math, your message goes on its merry way and you can continue to e-mail without further checks.

But if you have difficulty solving "five times two" or "94 minus 33," Gmail keeps its guard up. You can try again, but it won't let you send until you prove you can add and subtract.

By default, Mail Goggles only "breathalyzes" you on the weekends between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. But, once the program is enabled, users can adjust when it's active and the level of difficulty.