Interface Design Blog: the good, the bad, and the utterly unusable...
Gmail keeps getting smarter
Posted on | May 6, 2010 | 1 Comment
I love Gmail. I love that it keeps all my emails INDEFINITELY. I love that I can find any email from 5 years ago just by typing in a keyword. I especially love that all these features allow me, a dumb forgetful attention-challenged user, to not bother with folders.
My love suffered a minor blow a few months ago with Gmail introduced Buzz. Much is said about Buzz, most people I polled don’t use it and generally find it annoying, even if mildly so. So that was a bit cooling. For a moment there I wondered where Gmail was headed.
But today my love has been re-ignited in a major way: Gmail is even smarter that I suspected! I wrote in my email that I am attaching a file, then wrote a few more paragraphs, forgot all about the file, and clicked “Send”. And this is what I saw:
Gmail detects the words 'attachment', 'attaching' in your emails and warns you if you forgot to add the attachment
I am truly impressed by this. It’s a great example of a system helping the user where it matters – safeguarding us where our fickle human memory fails.
Comments
One Response to “Gmail keeps getting smarter”
Leave a Reply
May 7th, 2010 @ 8:57 am
You would think Citibank would add this kind of feature to prevent their traders from accidentally selling $16B worth of Proctor and Gamble stock instead of $16M!
For context…
“According to multiple sources, a trader entered a “b” for billion instead of an “m” for million in a trade…”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/36999483