Must be April 1st, ’cause it’s too damn funny:

As posted on the official Gmail blog, Google introduced a new feature on their Gmail service: Mathalyzer tests. Designed to prevent you from accidentally sending out ‘the truth as it needs to be told’ when being drunk it’ll hopefully spare you the regrets of fighting your hangover and discovering what you decided to sent out the night before (as if a hangover isn’t bad enough).

The idea: If you want to send a mail during a certain period of time (by default, it’s Fri+Sat 10pm to 4am, but that can be adjusted), you need to prove that you aren’t drunk or otherwise inhibited by solving some simple math tests. The tests are available in 5 levels, none of which appears to be to difficult to me, even when drunk (I guess I’ll have to use myself as a guinea pig and try that ). Also, there’s a time limit (60secs) in which you’ll have to answer the questions correctly – otherwise you’ll get another set of questions and the reminder that you it’s “water and bed” for you.

The feature is called Mail Goggles and isn’t activated by default, you’ll have to add it to your Gmail settings by switching to the “Lab” tab and activating it manually. Afterwards, it can be configured on the “General” tab.

I activated the feature, and will tell you whether it did prevent me from sending stupid mails…

It’s ‘back to the future past’ time at Google! To celebrate their 10th birthday, Google decided to make the oldest accessible index available to the public again – so it’s 2001 once again. Search the web like in the old days, click a link and you’ll get redirected to the current version of the page – or get linked to the internet archive and have a look at 2001. Unfortunately or not, no ads will be displayed on the 2001 SERPs.

Start right here at http://www.google.com/search2001.html.

What did you do in 2001? I was a mere 22 years old, frequent Google user and on the internet all the time. It was in 2001 when I joined www.dunklewelle.de, an internet radio, and quickly became a regular there. I got my first broadband internet access in 2001 and my studies took a major hit that year – not (only) due to the internet, though.

Thinking about 2001 somehow makes me want to be in that year again, as well as not – it does sound like fun, and I do have some very fond memories of that year, but other things that happened weren’t good at all, and realizing that I’m so much older today (and more grown up, possibly) leads me to believe I wouldn’t really enjoy a visit there as much as I enjoyed ‘my’ 2001.

And as no 2001 post should be considered complete without a 2001: A Space Odyssey reference: “HAL: Well, I don’t think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error.”

Edit: And just because I happened to stumble across a quote that somehow fits and I already started this post with some references to Back to the Future: “Doc: Clara was one in a million. One in a billion. One in a googolplex!” (That’s a quote from Part III, though).