Flour Power

One more day, one more Gmail Labs feature!

If the last one (Youtube, Picasa, Flickr and Yelp previews) was all about improving the user experience by saving time and providing some extra eye-candy, this one has a very specific objective. It’s just a big red “panic” button. Well, it’s not really red or big, it’s just a small Undo link, but it sure can avoid some problems.

Have you ever sent a message and immediately noticed an error? Like a forgotten attachment, a terrible typo right there on the subject or there’s someone in the To: field that absolutely shouldn’t receive the email? Up until now, there was nothing you could do. As soon as the Send button was pressed, there was no going back.

Well by enabling this “Undo Send” feature, sent email will be on hold for 5 seconds before being actually sent, and you can press the Undo link to stop it. This goes hand in hand with the “Mail Goggles” feature, which requires you to complete a few math problems before any mail is sent, to avoid those late night inebriated-induced messages.

As an improvement, though, the delay should be configurable.

Eh, this is quite neat. There’s a new Gmail Labs feature that enables previews in messages that contain links to Youtube videos, Flickr and Picasa photos and Yelp reviews. So, with the Youtube Previews feature enabled, if someone sends me an email with some Youtube links, this is what I’ll see:

Very handy indeed. No need to click through to Youtube. I can watch the videos right from inside Gmail. Too bad it doesn’t work on playlists.

And a link to a Picasa Web Album turns into:

If you want to link to individual pictures, though, you’ll have to pay attention to the link you’re sending. Be sure to copy it from the address bar, don’t use the “Link to this photo” option on the right side of Picasa Web Albums. For example:

http://picasaweb.google.com/farinha/KrakowMar08#5201735599173133954 - Works
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Xtusb0M4D12GFJ8inb6C1A?feat=directlink – Does not work

Flickr previews work in the same way. Both album and single picture links work:

To activate these features just go to Settings, then choose the Labs tab and enable the ones you want.

(via Gmail Blog)