Gmail Motion Wrongly Labeled As Prank
According to information received by the Modern Times Magazine Lighter Side Division, Gmail Motion was not intended to be a joke..
By Sergei Scott
Modern Times Magazine .com
April 5, 2010 — The unveiling of Gmail Motion was ruined by the inattentiveness of a entry level webmaster at Google, when a 21-year-old employee suffering from a hangover inadvertently linked the new feature to a prank window intended for the real gag.
According to confidential information received by the Modern Times Magazine Lighter Side Division, the link was intended to used with the real Google prank for April Fool’s Day — that of a job for an “auto completer.” The entry-level employee had never heard of Gmail Motion and when he saw it, he just concluded it was a prank, too.
“Apparently, Gmail Motion was such a high-level secret at Google that no one outside of the top management team of Gmail knew of its development,” said the confidential informant. “He has admitted that he was drinking and sources tell me he was the reason why Google developed Mail Goggles.”
See Gmail Motion Site
The source also said Google maintained the story after realizing it had taken them hours to realize the error. In order to mitigate the damage, a spin consultant suggested they just re-create a marketing plan where the idea of an April Fool’s Day Joke is really one of the best ideas of the new millennium.
“All along, they were looking to Gmail Motion as the perfect marriage between e-mail and the Wii Fit,” the source said. “The idea is that since the gag was such big news, the real announcement in a couple of months will break new ground.”
Already, the viability of such a thing is being dribbled to the masses. Mashable.com recently ran an article and sharing a web video of technology credited to the Institute of Creative Technologies.
“The technology is jokingly dubbed SLOOW – Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving – and it uses a Microsoft Kinect camera to control Gmail. The same team used the technology, which is actually called Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST), to play World of Warcraft using only body motions in December 2010,” the Mashable article read. “Amazingly enough, it works pretty much as Google had intended: You can type text into Gmail by using body gestures, and send an email by ‘licking’ the stamp and slapping it onto an imaginary envelope.”
Read Mashable Story
The confidential source said Institute Creative Technologies demonstration is using an early-stage development version of Gmail Motion and that the newest revision is seamless and can deliver a 1,000 calorie workout per 100 e-mail read and responded.
“Google has finally found a way to work off all of the pizza, burgers and fries that heavy e-mail users eat,” the source said. “This is just another way that Google is changing the world.”
