Drunk Emailing?

Google's Gmail program has started a new feature called Mail Googles, which requires any user who enable the function to perform 5 math problems in 60 seconds before sending emails between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. on weekends, according to an article by Alex Williams in the New York Times. The program is designed to censor late-night drunken emails so between cocktails you don't send potentially embarassing correspondence you might later regret.

People's opinions about it? According to this article, people seem to be disappointed that this is only on Gmail and that it doesn't also apply to things like cell-phones as the stop the widespread epidemic of drunk dialing and/or text-messaging. "Indeed, the Mail Goggles program itself was born of embarrassment. A Gmail engineer named Jon Perlow wrote the program after sending his share of regrettable late-night missives, including a plea to rekindle a relationship with an old girlfriend, he wrote on the company’s Gmail blog."

The article says that this new Gmail program raises a larger question: "In an age when so much of our routine communication is accomplished with our fingertips, are we becoming so tethered to our keyboards that we really need the technological equivalent of trigger locks on firearms?"

What do you think?

- Jessica I