A Breathalyzer For Your Email

Yep, that's what I called the new Mail Goggles on KTRH this morning. It was an early live interview and I was trying to give an analogy of what this new Gmail feature does. I think people understood what I meant from the immediate texts and emails I received.

Comments like "I can be the Designated Mathematician" came in fast and furious. So fast, in fact, my guess is that these emailers were not alcohol impaired and didn't have to go through the extra steps of sending the emails using Mail Goggles.

No more drunk emailing, people. Here's the new trick: You're going have to answer a few math questions before you shoot your ex a "guess what I'm doing right now?" blast. Once you set it up in Gmail's Accounts tab, it will require you to answer a series of math problems before being able to send a message.

By default, the program activates on Friday and Saturday nights, though you can customize it for any day or time you might need a watchful eye. You can also set the difficulty level to control how hard the problems will be (1 = a wine cooler with dinner; 10 = eight tequila shots and several number of rum-based chasers).

The feature could prevent plenty of next morning regrets from random girls met in bars ("Who the hell is Joe, and why did he e-mail me at 3 a.m. saying, 'hey u want to hokup tonqiegt/?'").

Mail Goggles is nothing more than a gimmick, something fun you'll use three or four times before growing tired of it -- but for anybody who takes it halfway seriously, there are too many ways around it. Its biggest flaw is that the Goggles don't exist on mobile browsers. And when do we do the most drunk texting, e-mailing, and dialing? Coming home from the bar, that's when.

All that's left is for someone to invent the text messaging equivalent, and the modern day booty call will forever be silenced. Translation for the ladies: Prepare to start getting a lot more post-midnight voicemails.

Remember, a late-night "Reply All" is a dangerous thing. Nothing good ever happens if you hit Reply All after 11pm. And Mail Goggles is here for us now. Friends don't let friends email drunk. Thanks Google.

P.S. Note to genius Google guys. If we don't know the square root of 1369 all we need to do is GOOGLE the answer. Now go figure out how to get around that.