4/1/08

Gmail Introduces Custom Time Email

How do I use it?

Just click "Set custom time" from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option. More.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html

John D. Enright said...

April Fool, Rabbi.

Gmail's sign-in page announced a new feature, called Gmail Custom Time, that would allow its users to "pre-date" their messages and choose to have the message appear as "read" or "unread". The new feature uses the slogan "Be on time. Every time."

Around 11:00 p.m. EST March 31, 2008, on the newer and older version of Gmail, but not in the basic HTML version, in the upper right corner, next to Settings, a link appeared labeled, "New! Gmail Custom Time". The link led to a 404 error until April 1,[4] [5] when it led to the full Gmail Custom Time hoax page[3]. Clicking any of the three links at the bottom of the page brought the user to a page stating that Gmail Custom time was, in fact, their April Fool's day joke.

Google wrote that the new joke feature “utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality.” Fake testimonials are given by “beta users” saying things like, “I used to be an honest person; but now I don't have to be. It's just so much easier this way. I've gained a lot of productivity by not having to think about doing the 'right' thing."

the feature only allows for ten pre-dated emails per year, claiming that any more “would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless.”