For all it’s convenience, email is a dangerous medium. It’s 9pm Friday night. You’re moaning to your friends about working late and click send without thinking. Monday morning arrives and there’s a “Did you mean to send this message to me?” email sitting in your inbox. From your boss. Oops!
A new GMail feature might help you. “Got the wrong Bob?” is a Google Labs add-on which analyzes the contact groups you email most often and identifies potential conflicts. For example, if you regularly send messages to Tim, Angela and Bob Smith, a new email to Tim, Angela and Bob Jones will alert you that it might be a mistake:
The system was devised by Google engineer Yossi Matias:
I often came across messages sent by mistake because Yossi is a common name in Israel.
One was a communication between two people. They were having a conversation about the future of a colleague but had accidentally included him in the emails. So I thought that maybe we can provide a feature that can recognize this.
“Don’t forget Bob” is a similar add-on which analyzes your send list and highlights recipients you might have missed. To switch on either system:
- Log on to GMail and click Settings at the top-right.
- Click the Labs tab.
- Scroll down to the add-on and click Enable.
- Hit Save Changes.
Could this system help you? What was the most embarrassing email you sent to the wrong recipient?
Craig BucklerCraig is a freelance UK web consultant who built his first page for IE2.0 in 1995. Since that time he's been advocating standards, accessibility, and best-practice HTML5 techniques. He's created enterprise specifications, websites and online applications for companies and organisations including the UK Parliament, the European Parliament, the Department of Energy & Climate Change, Microsoft, and more. He's written more than 1,000 articles for SitePoint and you can find him @craigbuckler.
