Most useful feature, ever: GMail Undo Send E-mail

How often did you regret sending that e-mail that you wrote to someone in a fit of rage, or where you accidentally cc’d someone that shouldn’t see what you really think about them? It has happened to all of us.

Well, you now have 5 seconds to undo your possibly career-killing e-mails when you use Gmail.

After enabling the feature, Undo Send works much like Gmail’s other “undo” features. When you send an email, you get a message confirming it has been sent, along with a link to “Undo.” This message lasts for 5 seconds, at which point you lose the opportunity to take it back.
While that might not be much time, it’s probably enough to pull back emails where you forget an attachment, forget to cc someone, or catch an obvious typo. As for emails you later wish you hadn’t sent because of the content, Gmail still can’t help you there.

Via Mashable

Microsoft Future Vision

In this Video, Microsoft shows their future vision. Basically, it seems the future is all about Microsoft Surface and really intuitive productivity: technology embedded into everything, Minority report-style, but with more soothing music. In comparison with other future visions, I think the timeline is somewhat realistic. Although, come to think of it, this being Microsoft, I would add a couple of years for the Service Packs until all this stuff actually works. 😉

Thanks Valentin for the link.

Using Wii remotes to do, like, awesome stuff

I’ve been watching Johnny Lee for a while on youtube. Now this stuff might be inspiring only to the techy readers of this blog, but I certainly dig it quite a lot because it gives you a source for an number of new ideas of what you can do technology.

Johnny shares practical and prototypical ideas and uses of standard Consumer Electronic equipment, for free for everyone to innovate with. Here are three examples of him using the Nintendo Wii remote to do new things.

Johnny, you rock!

Augmented Reality that makes sense

Augmented Reality has been discussed for a while, but it not until now that practical application are slowly hitting the mainstream of brand communications. Costs have sunk, processor speed has gone up and applications have been written that makes it a possibility for everyone to try out.

However, application of AR are often for the sake of using the technology and not so much driven by real utility that improves or literally augments people’s experiences. Here is a good case from Lego that actually makes a lot of sense: you can see the assembled toy truck by holding only its packaging up against the camera.

Via Notcot

Redbull’s use of Flash

Check out this highly interactive site by Redbull.

You can easily build your own plane design in this fun application and take it to the sky, to see how well it flies. A great inspiration for all those who program flash. Also, what I found really well done was the level of detail as far as making even forms and buttons usable.

Also VERY surprising for this brand: MOZART. Can only be explained by the fact the Red Bull’s CEO is Austrian, and Austrians think Mozart was Austrian.

Talking about a Change of Perspective, literally

This invention, questionable in its utility, nonetheless seemed interesting enough to share with you.

It stems from one of the projects of Julius von Bismarck, and it is a contraption where its user sees himself only from above. I guess it’s a new category: not augmented reality, but rather altered perspective reality which allows you to experience things in a totally different way.

Thanks, Sabine for the link.

Nokia/Coke Coop: Make your own ringtone

On their site Nokia/Coke work together to give their young audience a reason to interact. In a fun design, you can record your voice, apply effect and create your own ringtone using Flash technology. You then enter your phone number and get ringtone delivered to you. Great way to generate addresses, indeed: Give kids a tool they enjoy using in exchange for their information.

Schick Manscaping

Considering a mustache-do? Well, no need to try it out for real. Schick’s Manscaping campaign features a awesome little facial hair simulator.

See on Between0and1

Corporations and the use of Twitter

Have no real time to make this a proper entry, as I have to get packing for 3 weeks of travelling, but I wanted to share this interesting article on the surge of corporations’ use Twitter as a customer service surveillance tool, as well as to boost brand perception in the favor of transparency, as reported by Businessweek.

via http://twitter.com/Armano

Get ready for the application store wars

First we had the browser wars. Remember? Those days when digital shops had to make websites work for a dozen versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer with no common standards. Then came the mobile device wars which are still ongoing, which means as a user you can’t even download a blackberry app if it isn’t compiled for THAT specific blackberry.

No one really cared about that much about this before, because, frankly, before the iphone, people just sort used phones, well, to phone people. Now all of that has changed. Apple’s iTunes Store made 30 Million bucks in the first month after apps were launched. What a great case of how product innovation and marketing innovation changed people’s behavior with one product launch.

Of course there’s Google, not wanting to be caught with their pants down, and started with Android, who some tech guys think will kick Apple’s butt because it’s much easier to program for than the iPhone Objective C programming language (an anacronism, really). Plus, of course Android has the chance to be a standard to many more millions of mobile devices already out there before iPhones can rule the world.

Well, guess what, now it looks like Microsoft (known for sluggish market entries) is entering, and you can get ready for the application store war. CNET reports:

It appears the software giant expects to launch an applications store called “Skymarket” this fall for its Windows Mobile platform, if a recent job posting spotted by Long Zheng at Istartedsomething.com is accurate. According to the ad posted Sunday on Computerjob.com, the Skymarket senior product manager will head a team that will “drive the launch of a v1 marketplace service for Windows Mobile.”

So now you basically got 3 forces: the closed-sourced innovator apple, the open-sourced Internet Giant Google, and Microsoft who’s just gonna fuel the fire through distribution power until the anti-trust cows come home. Wait… isn’t it always the same warring parties here??

Anyway, it seems that with every new delivery channel, and the random tech territory behind it, a necessary war has to ensue which at first is a hassle to end users.

However, after each one of these wars, we were better off than before. This war will ultimately really get the mobile phone out of the crib of technology used by early adopters and spawn a whole new set of mainstream innovations, better interfaces and usability (especially the iTunes interface could need an overhaul if you ask me). Not only will this make the mobile Internet omnipresent, but of course change the importance mobile marketing as well, as mobile platforms are bound to finally become the new integrator of all channels.

Just like the Web evangelists, the mobile evangelists were right, they were just too early. And however thankful you might be about Apple, they are not gonna win this war with their current closed-source approach. Oh, and agencies, if you don’t have a mobile marketing services business plan yet, get busy!